Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

Things tend to be neither as good nor as bad as I think they are. My estimates tend to be further from the center in either direction than I expect.   I did a sun salute recently. I was tight but I was able to do it, whereas I had not done much yoga for a while and expected it to be horrific. I made a lasagna that is popular with my family for Thanksgiving. It came out well but not as well as I remembered it.  My expectations tend to the extremes more than is justified and I try not to invest too much emotional energy in those expectations and save it for better uses.

I have many deficiencies; one of my particular strengths that has emerged over the years has been my preparation. I didn't always do well with preparation. When I was young I was clever and cocky enough that I could improvise quite successfully. As my responsibilities grew this became unsustainable and I made a commitment to try and maintain that level of success through preparation. I give a lot of credit to my first yoga instructor Gloria Pilot, who taught us new postures by first demonstrating them and then asking us to visualize what we would need to do to achieve them, breaking down complex actions into individual steps. This became a mantra for me, this visualization. Nowadays it is second nature for me to approach a future task by identifying what I need to achieve it, what resources I need to acquire, who will be involved in working with me and when is best to ask for their assistance.  This carries over to teaching as well as public speaking. I have given much thought to w...

I've been teaching since I started at Elon in Fall, 1988 so not counting this semester I've been teaching 70 regular semesters, maybe 20 or so January terms, and 8 semesters when in graduate school. I stand a pretty good chance of making triple-digits, for whatever import that milestone has. I'm down to my last projects to grade, my last exams and homeworks coming in next week, and final exams. Not much course preparation to do, just teaching, grading, and getting my final exams ready. Fall and Spring semesters are very different in flavor. Students more often than not have more energy and sometimes even enthusiasm in the Fall semester. They are depleted a bit in the Spring, as are the faculty. Each semester has its rhythm. Many of my STEM colleagues do as I do in offering three monthly exams (or comparable major assessment), which offers a bit of a pause for reflection on how the month's content coheres.  Each month then has its own cycle of weeks; the first week after...

A certain fraction of my work as faculty ombudsperson is spent dealing with bullying and its consequences. Please note:  I have neither the training nor experience to investigate claims, so I am always aware that my visitors as ombudsperson tell the truth from their perspective which is not and can not be perfectly accurate and true. When I present such claims below please try as I do to always be aware that they are claims and not facts which differ in many ways. When I was young my parents encouraged me to stand up to bullies, something that is easier to encourage than to do. Being small of stature I was on the receiving end of a good deal of bullying until I realized that I could often talk or joke my way out of it. I say this only to stress that I understand how weak such encouragement is and shy away from relying upon it when working with others who are on the receiving end. Academia draws folk who tend not not be normal. Thankfully that is often in a good way in terms of clar...