Year in review, or why the world needs more doggerel

If I had a time machine today, I wouldn't go back decades to kill baby Hitler or tackle Lee Harvey Oswald before he pulled the trigger or demand that Dickens reveal the ending of Edwin Drood. No, I'd do something entirely selfish: go back to January 2025 and give myself a good sharp kick in the shin while delivering some pointed advice: Don't stop walking in the woods! Buy a new telephoto lens! And for heaven's sake write some poetry once in a while!

I've just spent a couple of hours reviewing the past year's blog posts and while I admit that it's been an odd year, a frustrating year, a year that taxed my annual quota of futile tasks, nevertheless I can see points where I could have made the year more bearable just by doing more of the things that bring me joy. I know why I cut down on long walks in the woods--knee injury plus broken telephoto lens plus enervating malaise--but I also know that walking in the woods with the camera provides an ideal palliative for futility and oddness and malaise, and it might have helped my knee recover more quickly too. 

And that's another thing I'd kick myself about: I injured my knee in early August but didn't seek medical help for two months, months of pain and misery and lack of sleep. What was I thinking? Granted, the cortisone shot took a while to work, but if I'd gotten it earlier I could have avoided two months of agony and perhaps even motivated myself to spend more time in the woods.

And what made me (mostly) stop writing poetry? I've never suffered the delusion that the weekly doggerel I used to compose was any good, but at least it provided an excuse to have fun with words while distracting from the surrounding chaos and, yes, futility. Maybe part of me thinks that doggerel is far too frivolous for times like these, but if I give up doggerel, the terrorists win. Or something like that.

I'm venting, but I'm mostly mad at myself. So many opportunities to connect with thinking people everywhere but mostly I've been griping about my aches and pains, my foundering career, and my impending retirement. Who wants to read all that? (Here's another kick! And another!)

Now that I've got that out of my system, let's take a look at some of the more memorable  moments of 2025 as recorded on this blog. 

My favorite blog post of the year happened in November after I drove home from my daughter's choir concert while pondering what happens When Wordsworth visits Wendy's. Another pair of holiday concerts inspired a post highlighting Angelic voices, eclectic spaces. 

Literature, like music, feeds my soul in more ways than I can measure, so it's a good thing that (Some) visiting writers rock! In November my soul gorged on visits with two visiting writers: Mary Roach, who taught us A little more than diddly, and Jonathan Johnson, whose homely poems made penultimate Friday fabulous.

It's no surprise that my classes inspired many blog posts in 2025, but I was surprised at how few of them deal directly with Artificial Intelligence. I may be obsessed with AI-induced paranoia and the awe of the Oracle, but I wrote more frequently about other teaching topics. I saw evidence of the continuing decline of intellectual curiosity in my first-year seminar class, where students got Pig-headed about Pygmalion while eluding illumination about "Illuminati." I applauded students willing to ask awkward questions, though some of them hit a bit too close to home.

In my upper-level writing classes, I pondered The tragedy of TL;DR and gave students Some practice in probing for the story as well as A step-by-step guide to writing a step-by-step guide. And my students taught me a thing or two, from the existence of a hybrid sport or elaborate prank to a novel suggestion for constructing a nap rubric.

But a whole host of posts dealt with frustrations endemic to higher education that go far beyond teaching. Some of these frustrations arise from this peculiar cultural moment, when higher education is being undermined and attacked from a variety of angles, requiring career academics to spend far too much time dealing with the Department of Aggravation, Obfuscation, and Angst (the AOA department). Federal Budget cuts hit home while cancelled grants undermine valuable projects.

Other stresses arise from my own peculiar situation: my skills are being underutilized so I'm Twiddling the time away, dealing with malfunctioning campus systems, tiptoeing around topics too sensitive to write about, and banging my head against the wall. My administrative role(s) often leave me Clambering through the claptrap and wondering why academics are often compelled to Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. On the one hand I'm agonizing over how far I should go to keep students comfortable, and on the other I'm devoting hours to trying to find sexier names for my courses so students might actually enroll--and all this leads me to echo a lament from a Douglas Adams character: Brain the size of a planet and they've got me pushing piddling paperwork.

And yet I found some things to celebrate in academe. I enjoyed Celebrating second chances while Turning up the sound on the symphony of learning. Students inspire me, which is Why I'd like to retire--but not today. As I enter my final year of teaching before retirement, I assure myself that I'm not just Mailing it in and I wonder what happens When the door swings back. There's no doubt that I'll need a new challenge, but where will I find it when my students are gone?

Maybe I'll be the type of old person who rambles on about my aches and pains, like the knee injury that cramped my style during fall break or the vertigo attack that helped me make the world a better place or the dreaded polyps that inspired a TMI alert.

Or maybe I'll charge full-bore into Grandma Mode, rambling on about my intelligent and talented grandkids ad nauseam or describing in great detail all the joys of Grandma and Grampa Camp: the wild times, the Things I had forgotten about having a house full of kids, the answers to questions no one asked, and the rare moments of Peace, quiet, and nothing to do.

Or maybe retirement will give me more time to focus on the joys of nature and travel: the Road trip back to winter, the bootless endeavor in the snow and the coming thaw, the encounters with Bird people, with Spring ephemerals, with Summer sunshine and sweet corn season and Pumpkins, peppers, pawpaws, pizzazz. At some point I need to get more closely acquainted with the chickens, who landed in the spring and eventually suffered a close encounter with life (and death) in the slow lane, and whose diminished numbers were enriched by the addition of Guineas in the mist.

Or maybe we'll find the funds for more home renovation projects, like the bathroom renovation that first required Excavating the family landfill. I wished for a self-demolishing bathroom, praised a project that's going well, and eventually found myself Flush with success, with a room that sparks a frisson of satisfaction every time I walk by.

The new bathroom provides tangible evidence of a job well done, but this was also the year that brought kudos for a writing job well done, when an academic journal editor's praise inspired me to beg readers to Stop me before I get "brilliant" tattooed on my forehead. It may not be as visible as a renovated bathroom, but that close and careful reading of my work reminds me that futility need not be the overarching theme of this past year, or of the next either. 

In fact, what this brief and perhaps agonizing plunge into my personal time machine tells me is that I don't have to settle for futility. I can carry on, fight the fight, grapple with boondoggles and conquer the claptrap--but to make it bearable I'll need to I buy a telephoto lens, go for walks in the woods, and make a regular date with doggerel.