My Actifit Report Card: April 28 2021

Now that I finished reading the other books I was reading, I’ve returned to the trivium. It’s interesting stuff, but it’s also really complicated and technical so I’m not sure that I’ve understood it all properly.

One of the major elements that I hope to work on going forward is an overhaul of my writer’s site at kwilleywrites.com.

That’s not so much a technical side thing, because I recently redid the website in a way I consider more aesthetically pleasing and more futureproof, as it is a matter of going back to some of my early content, polishing it, and finding ways to link between articles to encourage further reading.

Physical activity has been good. My tracker shut off this afternoon and missed some steps, but I had 10,000 by 9 AM if my memory serves correctly, and that’s good because I figure that getting as much activity as I can before I eat in the morning is basically a tremendous calorie burning method.

I also finished the last assignments for my last classes today. Assuming that there is not some disaster or misunderstanding of the assignment curriculum on my part that prevents me from getting a passing grade (since technically more than half the balance of points remaining in either class is still in progress, making it possible for my current A in each class to turn into an F if I received a score of 0, which is astronomically implausible but it is not wise to count chickens before they hatch), I have now finished my MFA and will be the proud holder of a terminal degree.

That means that I can teach basically anywhere I would choose to (given my background in education, which would normally be an additional qualification), and that’s a refreshing feeling.

Of course, I’ve become more picky about the places I’d like to teach. It’s not so much a question of the money side of things, because I have plans to use writing and freelancing to secure some money on the side, but rather a question of finding institutions that match my values and goals as an educator. That seems like it would be easy, since there are very few people who would decry rigorous standards and academic excellence, but many places still act in ways that are fundamentally at odds with the proper principles of pedagogy and instead embark on those false principles of education that Stirner decries in his writing.

As such, the problem of finding a school that is worthy of being taught at is not a mere trifle but instead an endeavor that requires careful contemplation.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, one of my plans is to create a few Outschool classes and teach them for some money and perhaps as an alternative to classroom teaching if I cannot get a full-time teaching position (I would prefer, as a general rule, the stability and authenticity of a classroom environment).

My goal is to create two of these which are focused on the idea of being single-session courses that can be delivered in a short span of time. One of these is going to be an introduction to patterns and archetypes in storytelling (or perhaps this would be better split into two one-session courses, given the differences in the underpinning philosophies of the structuralists and the archetypal critics).

Then I hope to have a longer course on Shakespeare. There might also be a longer course on Star Wars, which I taught both as a means of addressing film and as a way of examining storytelling principles.

Other potential course ideas include general grammar and the history of the novel.

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Walking