There was some great discussion on this in our breakout room. Group work is (almost) always difficult but also such an important skill. Your story also speaks to the “failure is a greater teacher than success” quote, where you can learn about yourself and how to work better in a group in the future if your group has problems than if it goes…[Read more]

I like your idea of blocking out time for the task to commit yourself to do it. This is something I need to get better at doing myself.

Yes, I think we all feel daunted by grading. Your overall approach of focusing on the big picture and breaking the task into chunks is very similar to my approach. I will have to adopt your mini-awards as well as that sounds great.

As a PI on a grant there was a lot of paperwork to submit that I didn’t want to (receipts, reports etc.) At first much of it seemed to be unnecessary or superfluous. However, I realized that the funders had their own reports to write and it was necessary to make sure money was not misspent. What really helped me to change my mind was to focus on…[Read more]

I agree with this quote in general, although an important part of being able to learn from your failures is to know WHY you failed so that you can make an adjustment to your approach when you try again. In teaching we don’t always help students with that part.

In a corollary, forgetting is a part of learning. Also knowing what we forgot helps us…[Read more]