{"id":6691,"date":"2025-03-05T12:38:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T20:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/?p=6691"},"modified":"2025-03-05T12:38:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T20:38:38","slug":"on-my-soapbox-from-michael-wallis-march-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/2025\/03\/on-my-soapbox-from-michael-wallis-march-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"On My Soapbox from Michael Wallis | March 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michael Wallis is the Student Learning Consultant for The Washington Center. His collaborative services are available to faculty who wish to improve the equity and student learning focus of their curricula.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot recently is how to organize information. My brain is not exactly the most efficient tool at my disposal for keeping hold of new learning, nor does it find much effect in establishing robust routines. One of the great quests of my recent life has been to discover the boon of a simple strategy that reflects my brain\u2019s natural desire to call up bits of information from a wide array of categories, without hunting through a hundred folders and sub-folders in order to find the specific notes I took, only to ultimately realize that I never made the note in the first place because I didn\u2019t feel like doing all that work to put it where it belonged\u2026 yikes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My work and school life are all about improving the standards of learning and teaching. So what beef do those files have with each other that they need to be restrained from ever meeting? Life doesn\u2019t deserve to be compartmentalized like that. How revolutionary would it be if we allowed ourselves to connect our life experiences to one another, rather than perform the personal\/professional severance that says what we love and what we do shouldn\u2019t have anything to do with each other? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, I\u2019d like to balance that drive towards intellectual primordial soup with an equal desire for a true everything-in-its-proper-place organization. It\u2019s a great idea to keep all of your laundry in the same pile (so convenient!) until you realize that you ran out of underwear yesterday and now you\u2019re late for work and pantless. Not only do I need to know where everything is, but I need to be able to see it with first-order retrievability. If I\u2019m looking for shirts, I want to open one drawer that makes all of my shirts visible immediately. If I\u2019m looking for something green, I want to be able to open a drawer with all of my green clothes\u2013 including any green shirts from that other drawer!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok, enough with the laundry metaphor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the rub. I don\u2019t know how to have it both ways yet. I\u2019ve found workarounds with quick-access links and tab grouping; I\u2019ve combined my weekly to-do\u2019s with my weekly notetaking; I\u2019ve done all kinds of work to supplement the natural process of schematic equilibration that Vygotsky and his cohort loved to whisper about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, Ol\u2019 Lev taught me one lesson that I haven\u2019t misplaced yet: when the work is too difficult to progress alone, it\u2019s time to reach out to a more capable peer for help. So hear my plea, dear reader\u2013 How the hell do you<\/em> organize your mind? Please respond to the survey link below if you have a program or strategy that really works. I know I\u2019d love to learn about it, and I\u2019m sure I speak for many others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next month, I\u2019ll keep you posted on what I find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Survey Link Here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Wallis is the Student Learning Consultant for The Washington Center. His collaborative services are available to faculty who wish...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6691\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/ltc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}