Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday — No comments
02
Jan 26

Between now and three weeks from now, and also May

Before this all turns into a big block of class prep, and it will, I am just doing a few hours here and there. It helps the focus, or so I tell myself, at least. As I’ve probably said, this semester’s prep will be a bit different — and doesn’t that make for an exciting January blog post?!?!

I only have one new class to prepare. (Compared to last semester’s three new preps.) The difference is time. The general rule of thumb is that you spend about an hour on each class you’ve delivered before, and you spend about two hours on each new class. So, then, I should get somewhere between a third and a half of my free time back from last term. One class will be a breeze prep-wise, another should easily fit in that window many days. And then there’s the new class, which will all the time I can give it, and more, I think.

This class might be singular. Communicating Rituals and Traditions in Sports doesn’t seem to have a direct comparison out there. There’s a fine religion and sports class at Penn, a lot of places have a sport and culture course. Notre Dam has an interesting anthropology of sport class, and reading about that has been delightful, you’ll find a lot of history of sports and a sociology of sport class here and there, but I’ve stumbled into a new niche. It all started because I always wonder what makes a tradition a thing we do, as fans or players. How did they all start? That’s really my question. The class will extend further. Why do they persist? There’s so much fan identity to explore there. And that’s a big part of the class. Last semester I invited the athletic department to take part in this class, and they are on board.

So we will study rituals and traditions, distinguishing between them in the first week or so. We will discuss why we watch sports. We will meet members of the athletic department’s membership team. They are always looking for ways to engage their primary fan base, and I think I can incorporate that into the class. We will develop a campus survey from that meeting, and the class will circulate that accordingly. At the same time we’ll talk about some of the events going on around us. There’s the Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, and then March Madness and the World Cup is coming and so on. We’ll discuss fan identity, game day rituals for players and fans. We’ll discuss the atmosphere of game day experiences, I’ll have them dig up some interesting-to-them traditions from around college sports, and so on. At the same time, they’ll be in these groups, with those survey responses in hand, they’ll be working through that information, the general student experience and the stuff we’re learning in class and they’ll come up with proposals that they’ll suggest to the athletic department. Maybe one or two or more of the things they come up with help them. Maybe these students will see something they proposed in place next year. Maybe they’ll come back for homecoming one day, and see how it has grown.

There will be some other stuff in the class, too, but this is the general direction we’re going. I just need to pull in a few more readings, figure out an assessment structure, and then make the lectures. Fortunately, I have the next two weeks for that.

He said, the bracing fear of panic coursing through him.

Also, two other classes. One I’ve taught twice before, the online version of Digital Media Processes. This class is about the structure of social media. And the other class is the Criticism in Sports Media course which I debuted last term. I’m changing about a quarter of that, and offering up some new material. But I think I’ll have that one under control by early next week. I’ve probably said all this before (Ed. update — More than once!) but that’s just an indication of how these things stick in your head and float around in there. Or, float around in my head, at least. Even when I’m deliberately not working on something, I find myself working on one of these classes. This thing I’m reading, that video I’m watching, I might be able to shoehorn it in somewhere to make a point. As for the time, the online class takes care of itself, except for the hours of feedback I try to offer it. The Criticism class meets for two-and-a-half hours per week, and I’ll spend about two hours per week on that. Then everything else on the Rituals and Traditions class. And the five presentations I have this semester at two different conferences. And my many committee assignments. And then there’s running a search for, and hiring, a new social media manager. And, not at all important, the 900 hours I’ll devote to my contract packet this semester. I will have so much free time!

I admire people who can turn it off and live a different life when they aren’t working. To do that, I have to consciously go do something else. It’s a bike ride or an off-topic book (I’m reading about Franklin Roosevelt’s use of the media right now) or puttering about the house. Fortunately, there is plenty of all of that to do. Unfortunately, there will be little time to do it. See above.

I made the mistake of printing out a calendar and writing out the words “Classes begin” on a date just 18 days away. And this silly calendar is sitting right beside my computer. For the next few days I’ll do things in increments. A couple hours here on this, a couple hours the next day on that. At some point next week the 970 words I wrote about it, here, gets theme music. Terrifying, paralyzing, theme music.

photo / Thursday — No comments
01
Jan 26

Happy New Year

Poseidon, a cat of action, is ready for 2026. He’s been helping us put things away, like the Christmas dishes, which have been used since Thanksgiving, back in their place of honor in the heirloom china cabinet.

Phoebe, she’s more of a thinker, and she’s not at all sure about 2026.

We are now launching a campaign to try to convince them both that nothing of substance will change this year. They’ll get cuddles throughout the day. They’ll still be fed in the evenings. The squirrels and the birds and the rabbits will all be outside, just beyond their reach.

I wonder what their resolutions would be, if they made them.

Mine …

Patience | Thoughtfulness | Kindness | Productivity | Personal Peace | Happy Pursuits

Mine will be ridiculously challenging.

Rowan / Wednesday — No comments
31
Dec 25

My class prep begins to shudder back to life

Doing work was a bad idea. It made my head hurt.

The first two times I wrote the previous sentence I wrote “It made my hurt.” It took three tries to get “head” into the thing. You know, the critical part … both of me, and the point I was trying to make.

Anyway.

Maybe, for the new year, I’ll re-name the blog “Anyway.”

Anyway, I wrote my old English teacher. Or the woman my keen world wide web research skills convinced me was her. Maybe we’ll find out one of these days. By the way, nothing takes you right back to grade school quite like writing someone who used to meticulously assessed your grammar. I spent some time on that letter, is what I’m saying. It was probably too light and breezy by the time I was done. Also, it was edited to within an inch of it’s life. Usually those two things are at odds with my process. I’ve no idea what this means. Maybe my former teacher can explain it to me. I wrote a few other people, too.

Then I did some more work. I did some more wrangling of my inboxes. This, I’ve learned, is best done in doses. Otherwise I just might delete everything in a fit of delight. Some things need to be kept. Some things need to be filed. I tend to use the inbox itself as a To Do list, so I try to keep it under 30 items. Somewhere between 20 and 30 is where my mind switches from “Can do!” to paralysis by volume. And that’s a good speed for an academic, otherwise you might get ideas.

Currently my work inbox has 30 emails, but eight of them are from me, and one other one will be dealt with on Monday. That’s a good number, for now. I’d like to keep my personal inbox, also a To Do list, under 20, but it is presently sitting at 33. There are a lot of articles in there to read. This, too, will be done in stages.

I also opened, I dunno, roughly 30 new tabs for a side project I’m considering. I am considering too many side projects. But I’ll have a lot of time for them when the semester begins! (I will never learn.)

I had a look at my course evaluations from the fall. Generally quite good. One student complained about their commute. If that’s as bad as it gets, I had a good term. Here are a few thoughtful answers. We request the feedback, I do not insist it is all positive.

“I really loved taking this class and learned so much from Professor Smith. He uplifted me in moments where I didn’t know I needed it. Professor Smith gave me academic advice on numerous occasions and was very gracious with our entire class. Overall, this class was a 12/10!”

“Professor Smith is one of the best professors I’ve have had at Rowan University. He is a great professor, and I will be taking more of his classes next semester.”

“This class was always one I was excited to attend due to the fact of Professor Smith’s way of communicating to his students.”

“I could not have imagined any other professor for this class. I will be taking one of his classes next semester, and the only reason I decided to take it is because he is the one teaching. I’m looking forward to having another class where he is the man in charge.”

“He’s legitimately a once in a lifetime professor take this man’s class whenever he offers.”

“Professor Smith made it a very comfortable setting that has allowed me to thrive. It is clear he cares for this subject matter, and cares about his students more. He is a vital part of this program.”

Maybe some of these classes are pretty good. I can tell in the evaluations which comment comes from which class, but I can’t tell which person. One of the two classes represented here, Criticism in Sport Media, will be taught again in the spring. The other, Organizational Communication in Sport, I’ll teach again next fall.

I made calendars for the spring term. I started scribbling on the new calendars. This will be handy for about three weeks. Most importantly, I managed to lay out roughly half of the new Rituals and Traditions course in outline form today. There’s a lot of prepping to be done beneath that, but I know what half the units will be like, and when. I’ll give it a few days and then come back and look it over, for quality control.

So it was a solid afternoon. Let’s see what this builds into.

One work day down. I’ll take off tomorrow to watch too much football. And then, on Friday, I’ll set a timer to see how much I can do before I throw my hands up in disgust.

memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — No comments
30
Dec 25

Back to … wurk … Wurk? What is wurk? Why is wurk?

It was not my best idea, but it was a good idea. I spent most of the day in front of a computer, beginning the class prep for the spring term. (Just twenty-two days away, but let’s never bring that up again.)

Cleaned off the desktop of my work machine. Moved the subdirectories filled with material from last term’s classes into a larger Fall 2025 directory, which I will open less. I started working on some syllabi. Here’s how that is going.

Sometime in junior high I learned that the plural of “syllabus” is “syllabi” and that’s always just be a fun word to say. Thank you, Mrs. Newman, for that. Here she is, in a quick shot from my high school yearbook, which is full of soft focus shots like this.

(I did not shoot for my high school yearbook. But I worry that I might have inadvertently taken on its soft focus style.)

I had Mrs. Newman for English in the 7th grade, and she did not care for that. She taught high school, but she wanted to be at our school. That was her first year there, 7th grade English was her foot in the door, and she made sure we knew it. She didn’t like us much that first year, was our impression. But, by quirk of scheduling, and her progression to where she belonged, I had an English or literature class with Mrs. Newman in 7th, 9th, 11th, and 12th grades. By the time we made it into honors English as juniors and seniors, my cohort was much more her speed. We’d earned a bit of respect. And she’d shaped us into something.

She was a demanding teacher, and she was excellent at what she did. We had to write, daily, on a random topic of her choosing. I wish I still had those notebooks — I am glad I do not. On Fridays we had to write a précis (her class, in the 7th grade, was where I learned the word “précis”) on a magazine article of her choosing. There we all were, 7th graders subscribing to Newsweek. (It was still a terrific magazine back then.) We did this in every class, for four years across junior high and high school. For whatever reason, she graded these things on a scale of one to nine. I recall I once got a six or a seven on a paper and she wrote in the margin that she expected better out of me. In terms of writing, she made me expect better out of myself, too.

She bragged on her Lexus. Bragged on her son, the actor. Bragged about the writers she’d met. She told a story about randomly knocking on an aging William Faulkner’s door, and every time I think of it, now, I’d really like to know if that story was true.

I credit her often, mentally, but that amount could never be enough. Whatever writer I could become, she did the most formal shaping of it. Oh, I had wonderful training in college, and there’s nothing like reading and writing to up your game, but Mrs. Newman was the one that made me try. She smoothed the firmament and laid the foundation for me. She taught me how to be comfortable with volume, made me learn how to synthesize complex and nuanced works, made me write every day, opened the door that allowed me to expect more from what I’m reading, All of this has served me well. All of it was in her classroom in what was, then, called The New Building.

I talked to her once when I was in college. Called her out of the blue, made her tried to guess who I was. She figured it out. I had a question about a paper I was writing and knew she was the person to ask. That was the last time we spoke. She retired soon after that. Presumably she realized she couldn’t improve upon the good work she’d done on us. Her husband, a prominent attorney for decades, died a few years ago. She still lives in the area, I think.

I’m going to write her a letter later this week.

Anyway, I’m working toward three classes for the spring term. One is an online course, Digital Media Processes, I have taught twice before. This might be the first class in the history of me that I’ve taught three times. My hypothesis is that it takes three times to get a class right, but I’ve never been able to try it. If nothing else, I am excited to have a class that’s already prepared.

I’m also teaching my new Criticism in Sport Media again. This will be my second time with that class. The first experience, in the fall, was positive. I saw ways I could make it better. A few weeks ago I started sketching out how that will look. The student feedback was encouraging. They also professed enthusiasm for the point of the class. (High school teachers and librarians are seeing the same thing: kids know they need to be more literate in the world they are growing into.) Will I get to teach it a third time, applying polish from that second effort? No one knows.

But, for now, it’s another syllabus I don’t have to start from scratch. There are a few key changes to make, but it only took a few minutes on this first pass.

I’m also teaching another brand new class, Communicating Rituals and Tradition in Sports. So this syllabus, the lessons, the outline, everything is … well, not a blank slate … I have many scribbled notes and an outline on my phone and a dozen or so open tabs and things I’ve emailed to myself.

Whereas last semester I had three new preps — my 9th, 10th, and 11th since — fall off 2023 — I only have the one new prep this term. It won’t feel leisurely, but in comparison …

Today I started putting it all in the right order. I got about half of the semester situated in some kind of way. The idea here is that we’ll study individual rituals and team and organizational traditions and try to figure out why they are so important to us as fans. And we’ll also work with the athletic department at the university to try to help them come up with some new ideas for cultivating their campus fan base. This class could be really fun. I have it on the books for the spring and again next year. Whatever I learn this time out, then, I’ll be able to improve upon for fall 2026. Will I get to teach it a third time, applying polish from that second effort? No one knows.

Ah. Well. The same worries as every day are now the worries for a different day.

Now, it is back to finding interesting ways to talk about a variety of theories to make this class interesting and useful.

adventures / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
29
Dec 25

One last Christmas party

All told, we had three family Christmases this year. One with my family, last week, and then with the in-laws on Thursday. Today, with the god-in-laws. (Just go with it.)

So there we all were, 15 of us in one lovely little three-bedroom split-level home. This was where my god-sisters-in-law grew up. Their parents are my lovely bride’s godparents. And my in-laws are their godparents. And, of course, there’s the next generation, five between the ages of 5 and 17. We visit, listen to the standards, Sinatra, Martin, a lot of Nat King Cole this year, which was lovely. We have appetizers while the kids run around. We open presents, by order of age.

In that room I’m the sixth oldest. That’s on the wrong side of the median, but I try not to think about it. It’s fun watching them all pair off. My father-in-law and my godfather-in-law have known each other since elementary school. My mother-in-law and my godmather-in-law went to nursing school together. My godparents-in-law met at my in-law’s wedding. And this family has grown up together, three generations worth.

Nine of us gather for dinner around a table built for six. There are place cards. I am usually sat at the right hand of the other end of the table, but today I was at the left hand of the head of the table. We have homemade lasagna. It’s better than what you know.

It just is, and I’m not sorry about that, but I am sorry for you.

My godmother-in-law reads a bit of scripture. The kids dine in the kitchen, and the oldest one, is gracious enough to dine over there. Better than spending time with us, I’m sure. She is on the right side of the median age, and she’s smart enough that she figured that out long before I did.

She is now preparing to go to college next fall, where she’ll play field hockey on a campus that looks like it came straight out of a European fairy tale. (They have a castle.) People are buying her gifts to decorate her dorm room. I am trying to decide how to buy her car things and not hurt the tiny little ember of credibility I have in her eyes.

We chat. Some people have coffee. Cookies and other treats appear from nowhere. Before long, someone has to scurry off to this event, and then someone else must slip away for that event. It’s a lovely way to wind down the holidays, and mark it all with people who like you enough to include you into things. I am grateful for that. And the lasagna. But mostly to be included.

A little while later, everyone sets out for home. I help move a few things around so our hosts don’t have to. There are many hugs and all of the usual things. My in-laws head north. We head south.

We stopped in to check on the cats of a friend. The front door was partially open. I grabbed something sturdy and swing-able and we walked through the whole of the house. No one was there. The cats were there. The lights were on in the proper configuration. The back door was locked. The pantry was open. We called the neighbor, a woman who dashed right over in her pajamas and long coat. She’d been in. And she’d opened the pantry. Maybe she’d forgot to latch and lock the door. We all had a laugh. I made a joke about wiping down my fingerprints.

We got home around 8 p.m., and for some reason I thought it was time for bed, but it was 8 p.m. So we sat up and watched the game and read and I’ll soon go to bed. Tomorrow, it is back to work.

The first part of this break flew by. Now I’ll need the second part to pass much, much more slowly.