I really appreciate all the responses, but I'm overwhelmed by the amount of information and possible starting points. Could I ask you to explain or reference learning content that talks to me like I'm a curious five year old?

ELI 5?

Most challenging teaching experiences of my still new career. I'm having a lot of anxiety over how students are responding in one class, if I'm getting through to them, and adjusting lesson plans and my lectures to ensure I am. I'm teaching a very difficult subject, with a history of students failing out of it. So after taking it over from the last professor, I've toned it down. It's a "why we budget" class and most of the students are either a) completely accounting illiterate but great at decision making or b) accountants and don't understand why we're talking about theory and decision making. It's a bit of both, across all major sectors, which makes it notoriously challenging for professors and students. Trying my best, but I'm loosing a lot of sleep over this class.

Am I getting through? Why did only 2 students provide mid-term feedback? 1 positive, 1 not so much? All fair critiques, and fair praise, but where's everyone else? Is anyone actually doing the readings or is my approach (you read, you research a little, then I lecture and summarize what you need to take away), not working here?

Struggles, and I also decided no scotch this week which was my "I am home now, not in the classroom" mental break from the day.

Manor Lords. Its got some annoying bugs in this EA version, but the developer should be really happy. Enjoying what is in front of me. Its beautiful, mind boggling at times, and fun.

So many story telling memories. ME is still a treasure to me despite its challenges and missteps. ME2 is among my favorite game of all time, right behind Dragon Age: Origins.

But ME3 has a scene that was so well executed that I don't think anything has ever topped it, for me, in video gaming storytelling. From his decision to rectify what he now believes is a past wrong, do it alone, to his final remark about seashells.

It, to me, is extremely emotional and in the best way that a good story can be.

I'm using Claude (subbed) to help me do qualitative coding and summarizing within a very niche academic framework. I was encouraged to try it by an LLM researcher and frankly I'm happy with the results. I am using it as a tool to assist my work, not replace it, and I'm trying to balance the bias and insights of the tool with my own position as a researcher.

On that note, if anyone has any insights or suggestions to improve prompts, tools, or check myself while I tinker, please, tell me.

I'm in a glass box of emotion, in an easy to read list:

1. SCOTUS and the entire justice system in the US scare the shit out of me and are giving off some very Weimar Republic vibes with their handling of important issues. We are all thinking of how tiered and corrupt this cavalcade of insanity has been, but I've yet to hear anyone at the top do or say anything to fight back.

2. I have a student who is just a total asshole who absolutely needs to be kicked out of my class. Really disappoints me. The mountain of paperwork is exhausting but I'm doing it because someone in a position of power needs to do the right thing once in awhile.

3. I'm loosing weight and just need to get over this plateau and into my goal area. So close but wow is Laphroaig delicious on cool evenings.

4. New "older me" personal best on the bench. So I got that going for me, which is nice. I use our college gym and it's amazing. Most of the staff use the faculty hour but early in the morning, it's only dedicated athletes and people who want to be there. It's incredible and extremely satisfying to never need to wait for anything, and loose myself in heavy metal. 10/10.

5. Since AI is all the rage here, I used it for qualitative coding. Not to do my research. But to summarize and make suggestions. After playing with prompts it was pumping out time saving insights to empower me to dive deeper. Saved me MONTHS of work.

6. Finished a really funny article in the Atlantic on cruise ships. Awesome writing. Great story.

I was on two Boeing 787 flights and made it back to type about it. No problems. However, I have to admit I was irrationally nervous since all the whistleblower reports on the 787 came out as I was checking in for the second, a 10 hour direct journey.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Dragon Age: Origins

I'll need to learn to swim better than a dead fish, but yes, I should look into doing this.

A long long time ago I had two serious knee injuries on the same knee. They warned me after injury and surgery 2 that the day would come when running just would became impossible and I should do everything I could to keep my muscles and health good. I was a runner my whole life, the injuries were not running related, but I could go on a 10 mile run like it was nothing and was pushing 60 miles a week for most of my adult life.

I started noticing some pain issues and swelling and had to stop running cold turkey two years ago. I got some training and hired an expert to craft a program to support my leg. Personal best in squats and deadlifts, it was incredible, looked and felt great for two years. But then, just like that, I went down on one knee to do a pallof press and HOLY MOTHER OF ALL THE GODS OLD AND NEW the pain.

I lost what remained of the cartilage. The muscle atrophy as I've gone through the systems to get a treatment plan and learn what's going on has been brutal. I'm looking at major life changes to hold onto the knee until I'm old enough to warrant one replacement I can die with. And it absolutely devastated me. I drove home and saw a jogger and just got so insanely depressed. I want to go and start doing the exercises I know can help me regain some strength, and support that joint, but I also know an f'up will make it way worse. So I wait for PT and am just getting depressed AF.

It's only Monday and I'm already falling asleep from exhaustion. Must. Turn. This. Week. Around!

I suggest you go to your local library and check out, or request via inter library loan - William Connolly - Capitalism and Christianity American Style. It builds on Max Webers work on the early Puritan influence into economics (The Protestant Work Ethic). Connolly incorporates much of his contemporary philosophy to try and explain the bootstrap mentality, cruelty politics, and the modern religious nationalist movement. Plus the book cover is metal.

What a great game and great memories for me. I remember, as a kid, building this huge coastal city and putting signs down to buildings I thought my grandmother would like and showing her. She loved architecture so it was always a nice experience for me.

Enshrouded and Valheim.

I want to go on an OG RPG run with KOTOR, KOTOR 2(I admit, never played 2), then DA:Origins. But I need time to loose since I get too lost in the story.

Except the Fade in DA:O. Skip the Fade mod all day every day.

First. Thanks for your kind words! Needed that.

Second, I think I'll own it and do a "so you watched me break stuff live, let's debug so I can show you how I go about it"

I have this unsubstantiated theory but hear me out. I challenge an economist to look into this. Anyways, shareholder focus has replaced capitalism, even late stage capitalism, with something else. I'm not sure what it is, but it's whatever this subscription milk every penny movement is now built to support. It's like revenue maximization on steroids, like we must seek revenue maximization while remaining 100% efficient in revenue pursuit.

And it's killing everything in the way. There's no give.

Economist, get your nobel prize. What is this phenomena?

501 is not that easy. Sure, getting nonprofit recognition can be fast. But you are now buried in reporting requirements that put a heavy admin burden on you.

Very broad and simple but: You must register in a state and abide by their rules. Then apply for tax exempt status in that state. Then ask the IRS for your 501c3. Boom. Now what?

You need to setup systems to maintain a balance sheet to complete your 990 or 990ez, keep minutes on record, have a board, board manual, whistle lower and harassment policies....it gets paper heavy fast.

Why? States and the Feds trust you to provide a public service or good, and thus determine you shouldn't pay taxes in exchange. They will absolutely bury you if they find you are violating that trust.

I actually trust you all (like everyone here) to do the right thing and find a solution. My two cents:

-Find another fiscal sponsor as a stop gap to more stable roots. -501c3 can be faster than you expect. But you get complicated with your board governance, required reporting and records keeping, etc. -There are many types 501c orgs (c4, c6, c3) maybe this fits in a 3 or somewhere else. -Incorporation, in any sense, can lead to governance, legal, and fiscal issues that may be beyond volunteer capacity to deal with. -Shit happens, thanks for being transparent.

Wall-E. Well done.

Had a rough lecture the other day and the imposter syndrome smacked me hard. I was teaching students in a skills lab, a sort of optional space where if they are struggling they can join me and learn basic items their prior courses didn't prepare them for. For context, a budgeting class where they never opened a spreadsheet before.

So I walk them through the basics, how to use formulas and functions, simple stuff like SUM and using conditional formatting to make negatives red. I must have clicked it typed something and missed it and f'ed the last 10 minutes. Pie charts broke. Wouldn't filter or sort my data by color. Man. It was a cluster fuck.

I woke up this morning, huge headache, and realized I'm just damn tired and drained. And it's resulting in cracks in how effective I can be in the classroom. Really need this term to end, I've got too many classes and too many students to teach in top of my own research, family balance, etc.