Luis F. Morales Knight's Academic Homepage

Meaning

Luis Morales Knight — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 18:44:31 +0000

Because I fell in with a bad crowd at a young age, I had become accustomed to thinking of language in terms of the jobs it does (and less in terms of the “meanings” “words” “have”, long before ever falling in with another bad crowd (notably one of the gang leaders) and being more thoroughly introduced to a functionalist, i.e., non-referential, view of language. (The behaviorist / scientific-philosophical version is a little different than the linguistics version, which is actually very much to my point, now that I think about it.)

I had been thinking a lot about how best to present this viewpoint to my doctoral students. Today, a door opened very swiftly and simply: my students were feeling confused about the multiplicity of apparent definitions being given to terms like “temperament” or “personality” in their readings. So I briefly outlined the functionalist viewpoint, and noted that it probably will work better for them to treat technical terms as words that do specific jobs depending on who’s saying them, and that should not be restricted to working any specific effect on the student as the student reads them.

We shall see where it goes, but I can definitely say that I had fun today.

Prep

Luis Morales Knight — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 04:59:28 +0000

Having adjuncted in this program for a while now, I feel like I rather have the hang of prepping for a term. But I wonder whether I will ever lose the sense that I’m missing something, have forgotten something, have contradicted myself in the syllabus or between the syllabus and a grading rubric, or between the syllabus and Blackboard, or or or or.

(Because I always bloody have, every time.)

The urge to tinker, tweak, rework and reorganize, always optimize, also pushes me hard. But it has to fight with the fear of doing something new and screwing it up. It is easier every term to see why some of my own professors taught an apparently invariant syllabus for twenty or thirty years.

Still, I don’t think I know how to be satisfied with my teaching in a world where something new is always close to hand.

I’m also doing different kinds of teaching, now. I’m starting to do primary clinical supervision and dissertation supervision. These are really showing me that I really do want it all to mesh. I want to teach the same principles for addressing human behavior, whether it’s the behavior of a learner, a teacher, a client, a clinician, a writer, a supervisor, or a supervisee. The content varies but the guiding principles are always there. There is something comforting emerging out of that, for me, now.

Crossfade

Luis Morales Knight — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 03:51:39 +0000

So this week I’m bidding farewell to life as a 100% clinician psychologist, and bidding hello to a new incarnation as full-time graduate faculty. Yet another plot twist in a drunkard’s-walk career. Today I started the day co-piloting ACT group supervision and ended the day with a full afternoon of clients. (Monday’s the official start date.)

This is the job I’ve always wanted: teaching-intensive, congenial colleagues, motivated students, thoughtful conversations about important ideas. But I’ve come to love the job of clinical work and will be sad to see it go, or at least shrink radically down. And, of course, the new gig brings with it plenty of its own anxieties and frustrations. As it should, because I care about it. As it must, because I’m human.

Next week: Orientation. Even odds on whether it’s more orienting or disorienting.