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Master’s thesis acknowledgements

In fall 2002, I defended my master’s thesis at the University of Arkansas’s journalism MA program. I was one of the only — perhaps to this day THE SINGULAR ONLY — person to choose to complete 12 graduate hours in educational technology en route to my MA Journalism degree. Because I’m participating in Magna’s ChatGPT …

two very wide eyes on a bright green/yellow frog

Gettin’ surreal in here

When we’re young, I think we all imagined that one day, we’ll be famous. At least, I know I did. I remember watching The Disney Channel as a kid, especially The Mickey Mouse Club (the early 1990s revival, starring future superstars like Christina Aguilera and Tony Lucca and Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake and Ryan …

90 days to fall: Teaching Prof talk is soon!

Yesterday, I wrote about how I came to be an invited speaker (!!) at this year’s Teaching Professor Conference, which kicks off in just a couple of weeks. Today, I’m going to talk about the actual content of these TPC talks — how my thinking about teaching has been evolving over these last couple of …

91 days to fall: Finding my voice (and courage)

I wanted to share a little bit about the two presentations I’ll be giving in early June as part of the Teaching Professor Conference — a small portion of which is ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN PERSON (!!!) in New Orleans. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, but today I thought I’d write a little about the …

92 days to fall: The joy of working in coffee shops

On Thursday, right around the time a short line of students, faculty, and the college president were about to process into our campus gym for the 20-something-th commencement of the week, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear a mask indoors to protect themselves from COVID-19 (the disease, not the …

books arranged on a curve

My favorite reads of 2020

I’ve been getting excited about writing up my annual review of the best books I read last year … this is my fifth such annual review, and I have so much great stuff to share with you this year! According to Goodreads, I read 139 books, totaling 39,970 pages, in 2019. My reading productivity benefited …

Judgy cat sits in judgment of you.

Never, ever read the comments

When I first started this newest iteration of liznorell.com and started blogging right here on this site, I was pretty excited about the ability to have conversations on the page. Because I actively don’t want fame — I dread it, in fact — I never anticipated that the comments on my blog would become hotbeds …

pages of a book

Going to battle with Resistance

I’m leaving later today to attend a week-long writing retreat with Jen Louden (in Taos, New Mexico, squee!) Writing that sentence immediately sparks fear, anxiety, and excitement in me … a flutter just below my sternum that is probably the reason I haven’t slept more than about six hours a night (WAY TOO LITTLE for …

books

Best Books of 2018

This is my third annual best books post (see 2016 and 2017, respectively), and it’s a doozy! This year, I began using Goodreads to track my books, which has become WAY more addictive than I would’ve guessed. (In the same way my DVR is like a to-do list for entertainment, Goodreads has become a to-do …