A short update before I burrow in my home office (or dining table, or couch) for the summer...
May was not only the end of the academic year, with all the attendant end-of-year activities, but also a time to wrap up other sundry responsibilities before starting my next book. These activities included writing my own chapter for Doctor Strange and Philosophy and editing several chapters by much smarter people; finalizing details for The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, which I'll be working on for the next year or so; writing recommendation letters, referee reports, and comments on friends' manuscripts; end-of-year paperwork for the college; and best of all, attending and participating in yesterday's commencement exercises. (There's a nice photo gallery here with many of the usual culprits.)
Below you can see me with my invaluable staff, for whom I'm endlessly grateful...
...and also some of our philosophy graduates, of whom I'm very proud.
It was also wonderful to hear our college valedictorian, Palwasha Syar, spend most of her speech paying tribute to the women at CSI, both students and faculty, who helped her achieve this singular honor. (Until her speech is online, see the short video below — she's truly an amazing person with an inspiring story.)
Finally, it was terrific to hear my colleague Barbara Montero give the faculty address at commencement and, later in the day, receive the college's award for scholarship at our awards ceremony. It was a fine day from beginning to end (and the rain held back too!).
-- -- -- -- --
Now that May is almost done...
...sigh...
...June soon begins, as with it, a new book.
As I said in my last update from earlier this month, I hope this book will go more smoothly than my last one. I've been reviewing my outline and notes, which have been prepared for a while (back when I hoped to write this book — get this — simultaneously with the last one). It is another book on superheroes and philosophy, so most of it will be written at home rather than in coffee shops, so I have the source material close at hand (i.e., boxes of comics and shelves of trade paperbacks). And I've already begun the book journal, an activity that has helped me keep earlier projects in perspective (but which I did not do until the final stages of my last book, to my detriment).
Hopefully, I will be able to devote the bulk of my free time this summer to this book. There will be other things to do, such as editing the rest of the chapters for Doctor Strange and Philosophy and writing a few Psychology Today posts; and undoubtedly other things will come up, such as production on The Decline of the Individual and keeping my eye on course enrollments for the fall. But I'm optimistic about handling these things while writing the book this summer.
(Did I say that? Was that me? Weird.)
By the way, as you can tell from the link, The Decline of the Individual is listed on Amazon already -- it is due for release at the end of October, even if it may say otherwise. No cover yet, alas.
If I don't post here for a while, I'm always on Twitter (though perhaps a little less this summer)... whatever you're up to this summer, do it well and have fun!
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