Today always reminds me of my grandmother who would announce that March 4th (forth) was the most commanding day of the year. It always seemed to me to be a day ripe to be made into a holiday. Two months after the new year, it would be a good day to reaffirm your dedication to resolutions.
I spent the better part of the day refining thank you letters to the search committee at Wayne State. Taking the time to send a letter to each one of them was practicing a bit of what I preached all week. Unfortunately, I also boasted that I wrote good thank you letters while there so I had an obligation to write particularly well. It wasn’t difficult for the most part since I was grateful to different people for different things. However, I hate to be derivative of myself in my letters so I endeavored to talk about my abilities in different ways.
Now that I have returned from my interviewing, it is about time to complete this experiment in reflecting upon my experience as I had suggested in my Feb 24 entry and go back to my stated purpose of finding practical applications to theories. (Another reason to look for a new blog host–this one doesn’t have the tools to allow me to link to earlier entries)
I was happy to see an article on the Washington Post website talking about the value of reflectively blogging about your performing experience. In this case, it is about a musician who is travelling and blogging about his impressions and experience. The article mentions many of the same concerns I expressed in my entry about an organization’s rightful concern about what uncensored, unguided thoughts an employee is conveying in his blog. The entire process seems to be a success and rather pleasing to all parties involved.
Although the blogging musician, Sam Bergman, didn’t know if his efforts would be valuable to audience members, another Arts Journal blogger, Drew McManus, felt differently and invited people to give their reaction.
Since I essentially argued exactly all of this during my visit to Detroit, I really have to restrain myself from forwarding these articles to them with a big “SEE, I’M NOT CRAZY!!!!” in the subject line of an email.
Tomorrow, perhaps I will place the text of the class I taught in my good ideas section. It integrates a great deal of what I posted in my earlier entries, but also talks about things I have been mulling over for a long time.