Intermittent Mechanism

Ian here—

This week, I began a new job as a writer for the University of Chicago’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation. In that capacity, I will be writing grants and papers to help fund and publicize the work of its three constituent labs: the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, the Transmedia Storytelling Lab, and the Design Thinking Lab. I’ve worked with Game Changer before, but this full-time position will represent a fairly significant shift in my career focus.

This will inevitably bring some changes to this site. Originally, it served two purposes: as a way for students to post work for classes, and as an online extension of my teaching portfolio. Since I don’t have any plans to teach in the immediate future, nor to re-enter the academic job market in the fall of 2017, those functions are no longer a priority for me. I am not going to remove anything from the site, but I will likely be re-organizing it a bit, so that the parts of it that highlight my work as a faculty member (and as an academic job applicant) are less prominent.

I’ll also be posting somewhat less. This is my ninety-first post since I first decided to buff up the teaching portfolio aspect of this site and posted my first lesson plan last September. I’ve averaged just under one post every three days, which I am rather happy with. I can’t, however, keep up this pace once I subtract posts that reflect on my teaching. Without classroom experiences to reflect back on, I won’t be able to keep up the same volume.

We’ll see what this actually means in the coming months. If nothing else, I’m going to continue posting my silly little videogame cat of the week posts, to help stave off extended dry spells. Given that I’ll be spending 40 hours a week writing, I might also try to skew blog content further in the direction of video essays, as a way of giving myself some variety in my modes of expression. (I do have a couple planned for the summer.)

Thanks a bunch to everyone who has supported me over these past couple of years adjuncting, whether support has taken the form of reading my work, coming to conference presentations, attending mock job talks, or sharing content from this very site. (My practical pedagogical notes on games have gotten a fair amount of hits!) It’s been a wild ride, and I am happy to have shared it with you.