Taking on a new year

I hope you all enjoyed some nice time over a holiday break. Personally, my favorite time over the school break (and one of my favorite weeks of the whole year) is the first week of January, when the business of holiday get-togethers has subsided, and I have one week of blissful quiet in which I can start the year off right by taking care of myself, taking time to think, read fiction, and organize the house for the coming year. I love the first week for all of the promise it holds for the coming year and the bit of time I have to enjoy some nice and quiet time.

But as it always must, that will end tomorrow with the beginning of the semester. Back to the routine, resuming my posts as Assistant Director of the First Year Writing Program and the Campus Writing and Speaking Program. I'm working on a new website for the CWSP, a project that I'm excited about and that will keep me busy this spring. The CWSP team is also continuing our research project, which we have found out that we will be presenting in a workshop format at Computers and Writing in Raleigh this coming May! Come and check out our workshop, titled, "Screencap Your Feedback: Using Screen Capture Technology to Provide Audio-Visual Feedback to Writers."

Course-wise, this spring is all about preparing for the final legs of my degree: exam and dissertation preparation. I'm taking my final class (I thought the day would never come!) along with directed readings and research. One of my exam lists is in solid draft form, but I must get moving more seriously on the other two. With my goal of taking exams in early October, there's no time to waste.

Travel-related happenings this spring semester:

• Attending the Carolina Rhetoric Conference at Clemson University with Ashley to present our latest research on the Duke Energy-Progress Energy merger. Hope to see you in Clemson in February! 
• Attending CCCC in March with a crew from CRDM and presenting on a panel with fellow CRDMers about establishing a sense of community in hybrid writing courses. With the bit of chatter that is re-emerging on listservs about hybrid courses, I hope our panel will be a timely topic. I also hope to see you in St. Louis this spring! 

Before I turn in, I must get back to reading 1Q84, the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, which I started over break. Each year, I *try* to read just one of the top ten novels of the year, and this is the book I chose for 2011. (Though I'm wondering why I chose the nearly 1,000 page one to read on Kindle... it takes forever!) It is a strange but compelling book. I'm enjoying reading fiction, the one time per year that I do read fiction.  

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes to those heading back to school tomorrow!