Thread by @JonathanHsy

Hey tweeps I thought I'd share with you this weird, vivid, non-allegorical academic anxiety dream I had last night #AcademicTwitter 🧵

I had this dream that we were back to in-person teaching but the University had randomly decided the faculty would be grouped into mandatory 5-person teaching pods.

Each pod was an interdisciplinary team that would teach some Big Idea course (e.g., Mind, World, Life, etc.)

So I was assigned to a pod with 4 other faculty from totally random disparate departments/programs. None of us had ever met before.

We wanted to make sure in advance that our teaching & workload was equal, so instead of rotating lectures or dividing up modules, etc. we decided that each team member would adopt a boy-band/spice-girl "persona" ... and we'd teach each class session "as a band."

It was *so much work* to compose a new song/routine for each class/lecture, but we kept at it due to the equity plan.

I felt so stressed out concentrating on the lyrics/choreography, costume changes, etc. each time that I don't even recall "content" of whatever we were teaching

The students totally hated it (none of us were good singers/dancers) & there were so many complaints that the dean finally took mercy & said we could divide into 5 separate classes in our proper subjects/fields ...

but we didn't want to "break up the band" so we refused

We persisted and made it to the end of the semester. The course evals were abysmal & they immediately ended the pod initiative.

I leave it up to you to interpret the meaning of this dream / FINIS