always timely questions, no?

IMHO, yes-always.

Well, for one thing, the Winter ’26 semester is now officially finito.
Done – and as we head into the spring semester, it is with relief that I am able
to relish in the knowledge that I have decided to offer no courses –
only a lecture scheduled for June 5th on AI. Yup. AI. Really, it is intended to
provide a comprehensive overview and update of the state of AI – at that moment.

We are talking 9, 10 weeks into the future.

I can assure you, it will have changed dramatically again, in that brief window.

Over the course of this past 10 week semester, in working with both
Creative Writing Study Groups/courses, I encouraged the students to actively
undertake the writing assignments and submit same to me in advance of the following
class. Upon receipt of their submissions, in a Word document,  I copied all to the end of   
their work, and then proceeded to identify, mark-up and comment – and then return
their work to them.

In the following class, those who wished to, could read aloud via a ZOOM share screen,
so the class could see, firstly, their submitted work, then following that, we displayed
the next version with markups, changes, comments.

This turned out to be an extremely valuable teaching model……for all students. 
Moreover, as those who chose to do so, read their piece, it served to alleviate or
eliminate what is generally the normal, numbing paralysis that tends to make them
‘freeze up’ when they expose their work to others.

It is, after all, perfectly in keeping with a large part of the teaching mission I set for myself:

• to allow one to seek, to find, and to speak, their voice……

However, you can probably imagine the kind of time it takes to undertake such an effort.

But – you also need to know, how hugely appreciative they all were to such an exercise.

And for me – that made it all worthwhile.

In that process there was some remarkably good writing…… to the extent that I am now
exploring how I might create a ‘Writers Corner’ on this site wherein, with permission of course,
selected pieces will be displayed. 

And that, is a good thing, no? 

So – for now, that’s whussup and wutzNew

BTW – I write a couple of columns on substack. Currently I publish an episode of an ongoing fictional piece, The Thinn Man
which can be founf here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelxmoore/p/the-thinn-man-5ad?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

This car, is featured in this month’s issue, Chapter 12:

Thanks for listening

m><m