That is the American way

I've been trying to work out ways to make my classes more interactive, and it's working out decently in one class, but in the other one, it's getting to the situation where, whenever I ask a question or try to start a discussion, the same two people always answer (and one of them usually doesn't even answer what I asked, but just uses that opportunity to ask about something else completely unrelated), and when I try to get anyone else to participate, I get dead silence. I'm trying some things now where the discussion starts with them typing their answers and then I pick a few to anonymously discuss -- maybe having them type stuff first will get them over the "I don't want to talk" hurdle?

Also, I just sent a work email, and then realized five minutes later that I'd phrased it really badly and it could be read as insulting, so I sent a follow-up apologizing for that and saying that I really respect the work that person does and that email didn't reflect that, and now I'm worried that the apologizing might have just made it worse, and, ugh. I hate social anxiety, and I hate not really having a sense of how these interactions are supposed to work, especially when I'm talking to someone outside my department. With math people, we're kind of expected to be blunt and just say what needs to be said, and this email shouldn't have been written like that, I don't think.

Our HR VP is asking us to donate sick time for someone. I have 162 hours, so probably I could afford to donate some of that, I hardly ever use any, but also if I do need it I will probably need it all at this point, ugh, why can't they just continue to pay the person and not involve me.

Bah, the difference between having 4 weeks of sick time and 3 weeks banked is probably not worth worrying about. I'll just donate the max and stop thinking about it.

Which I encourage you to do about that email, Hil, stop thinking about it. You're doing the best you can, the emails are both sent, hopefully it's not actually that bad.

Hil, if you're the host, administrator, whatever they call it, can you mute the annoying one(s)?

Hil, have you tried "think, pair, share"? You give the class a question that they all think about (you could probably send it via email ahead of time), then you pair up the students to discuss it, then one (or both) of them reports out on their conclusions/ideas. If you pair up the two talkers, the others will have more pressure to step up.

Timelies all!

Mr. S's school is using a hybrid model(3 days in person, 2 virtual), but it is a private school with small classes. Also, they are keeping track of COVID status of students and staff, and adjusting the plan as needed. We're lucky.

One of my friends in Cincinnati still has no clue what her kids are doing for school next week. They're in elementary school, and she doesn't feel it's safe for them to go back to school in person (there's a high-risk person in the house, and they're really too little to trust that they and all their classmates will be taking proper precautions, or to put that kind of pressure on them), so they're supposed to enroll in an online school, but she's been saying that the online school enrollment thing is so screwed up that she's not sure if the older one got enrolled even though she submitted the form, and she wasn't even able to submit the form for the younger one.

T that is bullshit. They can give the person more time if they need more time. Having coworkers donate is BS. Ugh.

Rory refused to even walk down the block, several times today (kept just sitting and refusing to go) whether in his cone or his onesie...and then as soon as we got inside ran downstairs and apparently (I didn’t realize until the smell wafted upstairs) shot ALLL OVER the room. Like, how was there that much poop in one dog, I do not know. Why he couldn’t do that on hardwood (or outdoors!) instead of carpet, I do not know. He hasn’t had an accident indoors for a long time but yikes, that was quite the surprise.

Oh no, meara! How unpleasant.

I listened to a panel of academics talk about the insurrection of January 6th and What It All Means, and it was not encouraging, I'll tell you what.

Oh, Rory. That is not the way.

Not encouraging how, Jesse? Like, society is fucked? Or something else?