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Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD

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Getting Organized

I organized the apps on my phone the other day. And then I organized my dresser. And then, I organized my calendar. Now, I should note, I was also procrastinating about doing other,

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
5 min read

Unexpected

I took a break from writing over the month of December. I mean, I still wrote things for work and I still tweeted and I still wrote FB posts and I still wrote

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
3 min read

Pulled Together

"You always look so pulled together. How do you do it?"I've been doing a little project this semester on my instagram account, taking a picture of myself every day wearing a different

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
5 min read

Letting Go

Baby Lion has been an integral part of the family since my son was born. We just didn't know it at the time. He was one of the first stuffed animals that was

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
5 min read

Learning to Breathe

My swimmers had an amazing meet this past weekend. They all got at least one best time, and most of them got at least one cut time (which is ultimately meaningless, but goal

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
5 min read

My Favorite Hockey Player

I wish I could remember why I chose Lyle Odelein as my favorite player on the Canadiens. He was an old-school defenceman, tough and reliable, with many, many penalty minutes each season, but

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
9 min read

Plant a Tree, Start a Forest

This is a post that first appeared as a part of Digital Writing Month in 2012. Since it only exists it in the Internet Archive and I was recently haunted by the memory

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
3 min read

Moving Up

I'm sitting in my new office overlooking the Potomac, at my new job, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Nine years ago, I was getting ready to move across

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
4 min read

Messy History

From I Tried Leaving Facebook...But I Couldn't: Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
4 min read

Writing All The Words

I wrote myself into existence, literally, from early journaling to what you see here #WhyIWrite— Lee Skallerup Bessette makes zero magic (@readywriting) October 20, 2015 I have written a version of this

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
4 min read

Anxious Pedagogies

These are my prepared remarks for MLA18 Panel 202: Anxious Pedagogies - Negotiating Precarity and Insecurity in the Classroom. Please join us if you're in NYC on Friday morning, bright and early! I

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
5 min read

Bye-Bye 2017

Looking back, incompletely, at 2017.

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
3 min read

Fun with MLA and AHA Programs of Conferences Past

I work with a pretty smart data science guy. In the past, when the MLA Conference program hit online, I would enter in words like "teaching" and "pedagogy" and

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
4 min read

On Quitting

Why is quitting seen as failure?

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
4 min read

Normalizing Abuse

Thinking about my history in sports, in academia, and how abuse is normalized.

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette
3 min read

Working in In-Between Spaces

I started my second season coaching swimming last week. Well, it’s not my second season ever. I’ve been coaching swimming off and on since I was a teenager. But my second

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
6 min read

On Still Being an Academic

I want every academic to ask themselves: is what I’m writing about important? If so, write a book accessible to more than 100 people. — Sara Goldrick-Rab (@saragoldrickrab) July 30, 2017 I wrote

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
3 min read

Putting the Alternative Academic Back in Alt-Ac

When I left IHE and started this new “blogging” space, one of the things I wanted to get away from was the reactionary hot-takes post that had fueled my writing for so long.

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
4 min read

Friendship, Intimacy, Community, Swimming, and Twitter

While #Digciz is over, I want to put this out to share. This blog post is about making and breaking friendships and the intimacy of swimming and social media, and where I call

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
15 min read

It’s Not Who You Know, It’s How You Help Them

*I was invited to Georgetown University to give a talk on my experience with and vision for Digital Learning. You can find the slideshow at http://bit.ly/DigLearnHelp and the text, mildly

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
26 min read

Remembering Spring

I don’t remember last Spring. I don’t remember noticing the change in the weather, the grass turning green, the trees blooming, and the leaves coming out. What I do remember is

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
4 min read

Thought-Chain on Learning to Code, Credentialism, and Higher Education

We’re deep into our “Learn to Code” module in Applied Digital Studies. The students have all chosen a language (HTML/CSS, Python, JavaScript are the top choices), and chosen a platform (Codecademy

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
3 min read

Challenging the Narrative of "Learn to Code"

In DGST 395, we’re dabbling in coding. I wrote about the experience taking the course and “learning to code” last semester, and this semester, I decided to take a different approach. While

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
2 min read

Erasure

This semester, I’m teaching DGST 395: Applied Digital Studies. It’s an upper-division required course for Communication and Digital Studies majors. It’s the first time I’ve ever taught this course,

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
3 min read

One Last Post...

“I think I do overshare,” Fisher says. “It’s my way of trying to understand myself. … It creates community when you talk about private things.” I wasn’t going to write another post

  • Lee Skallerup Bessette, PhD
5 min read
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