End-of-year appreciation lunch

Uh-oh... Our department will have an end-of-year appreciation lunch in a few days.
Should I be worried? :-)

"Is there a particular faculty or staff member at FAU who especially helped you succeed? Who and how?"

This is a question that FAU seniors are asked on the Graduating Senior Survey, one of the many useful instruments devised and maintained by FAU's Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Analysis.

Survey results for 2007-08 have just been published and are available here (as well as results for previous years). 

Browsing through the survey results and thinking about the students who wrote their comments and the faculty and staff who impacted their lives for better is a great way to examine how it feels to be on either end of the equation. It is also a powerful reminder of why I chose to be a teacher in the first place.

Can we handle honesty?

It's always bugged me that although most (or all) of us highly value honesty as a desirable moral virtue, we may not be equipped to handle ruthless honesty as we think we are. I know this is a serious issue that can lead to long and deep discussions. I'm choosing to take a more humorous approach, instead, pointing you to this piece by one of my favorite authors, A.J. Jacobs, the author of "The Know-It-All" and "The Year of Living Biblically". Enjoy!

Interview with David Allen

The latest issue of the Costco Connection magazine has a story+interview with David Allen. As a bonus, you get a crash course on GTD and its main schematic diagram (below). Well worth reading.