"Huh, half-way through #writtenonthedark but haven't seen a patented Guy Gavriel Kay POV tense change yet, I wonder...." BAM. *There* it is. And reserving it for *this* character, in *this* story? Oh, marvellous.

Woo hoo! Congrats to all the D2L winners, looking forward to meeting you all next month.

Steve and I have the opportunity to do something *very* silly.

Congratulations to all this year's 3M National Teaching Fellows! Looking forward to meeting you all in Saskatoon.

#stlhesapes2025
#3mntf

Most 2026 @ciccheminst.bsky.social & CSC awards have a Jul 1 nominat'n deadline, but *not* the Chem Educ Division awards (CIC Awd for ChemEduc, Margaret-Ann Armour Awd for Early Career ChemEduc): still Sep 1, 2025! Plan nominations now!
www.cheminst.ca/awards/cic/c...
www.cheminst.ca/awards/cic/a...

Chekhov's teapot!

Happy manuscript proofs correction day to all who celebrate. (It's me! I submitted proofs!)

While a seemingly incongruous double feature, WICKED and BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE are linked by the roles of Cynthia Erivo. Elphaba and Darlene Sweet are women dismissed due to their skin colour but who triumph in unwillingness to submit to white male authority figures. In this essay I shall

And *that* is a 22-year unbroken streak of *not* losing any final exam papers in a large multi-section first-year course, please clap.

HE HAS A LITTLE CAPE HE'S SUCH A GOOD BOY

Kelly Resmer from Mt St Vincent University just gave us a talk on specifications grading in chemistry labs, and it triggered a half-hour discussion among the *grad and undergrad students* in the audience about pedagogy and assessment and the purpose of learning AND IT WAS AMAZING.

Dear person texting me from the Philippines and claiming to be an urgent message from Canada Post unable to deliver a package, during the three-weeks-long-and-counting Canada Post strike: at least you tried.

🎶
(Hey! Hey!)(You! You!)
You wanna be my next Dean?
(No way! No way!)
We're looking for a new one!
🎶
The Faculty of Science is the largest faculty (>200 faculty, ~3k ugrads/~400 grad students) at UBC Okanagan, in Kelowna, British Columbia. It looks like this! Position details at the link. t.ly/IeqdF

4:51 on Friday, what got done this week?
Book chapter revision submitted! ✅
Paper revision done ahead of schedule! ✅
Teaching award nomination package, done ! ✅
Answer key for problem set ready, next problem set posted! ✅
Appointment booked to put on winter tires! ✅
Monday's class prepar... oh no.

Submitted a revised paper with a limit of 5000 words. Problematic, in that my first draft was 6950 (shut up), but after banishing two sections to Supporting Info & editing fiercely it was ... 5000 words! No, not 5000 with 1 or 2 or 3 sigfigs, it was 5.000×10³. I will be riding this high for a week.

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, unless it's an image in your abstract for the American Chemical Society conference, in which case it's 350 characters stolen from your 2500 character limit.

(Narrator: "He had not remembered this.")

Well *that* was cool.

What's that? A two-day teaching & learning conference? In May? In Kelowna? FOR TWENTY-FIVE BUCKS??? A collaborative event presented by UBCO's Centre for Teaching and Learning and TRU's Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, May 9-10, abstracts due Apr 1.

ctl.ok.ubc.ca/events-award...

Bioinorganic chemistry: switched to specifications grading for assignments and moved some take-home assignments into class as guided-inquiry activities w follow-up written summary prompts and I’VE TALKED TO STUDENTS ABOUT π-BACKBONDING LIKE 14 TIMES THIS WEEK I’M SO HAPPY