Grades cause anxiety in universities – for teachers as much as for students. 

While there are occasional mavericks who try to get by without grades, I think grading is necessary and even quite useful. One possible suggestion is to think differently about grading. Currently, grade reports and summaries are a dry list of absolute scores with little useful information about how to improve or how past performance connects to course goals and objectives. Thomas Goetz' TED talk below has provocative implications for grading within the university. 

Now, I know that this model depends upon Bell curves, uniformity, standardized curriculum design and so on. There is a governmentality piece of this which we shouldn't accept wholesale. But I claim that it certainly isn't worse than what we are doing now.

I want to take the opportunity to offer a broad view of my academic interests. Yes, that sounds tremendously boring. But I haven't done it anywhere else, and if you're a fellow grad student you may actually find this interesting.

Primary Research Interest (How do I spend the majority of my research efforts?)
I am interested in how immigration enforcement functions in non-border spaces. It's that simple and that complicated. It's a broad topic that draws on social and political theory, legal history, and site-specific field research. This is the substance of my MA thesis, and likely the focus of my future PhD dissertation, as well. I will be the most vague here, since it is the topic of ongoing research.

Secondary Research Interests (What other research am I willing to selectively spend time on?)
Geography & Deaf Studies: There are relatively few geographers who have the experience and language proficiency to connect deaf studies and geography. I am fascinated by the potential connections and contributions that have gone unnoticed due to the relatively little research overlap between these two fields. You'll notice that I'm organizing two sessions at the AAG on this topic. I find this a rewarding way to balance my interest in this topic and more pressing demand of the primary research.

Mobility and Cycling: Like the deaf studies, this is an intersection of personal and professional interest. Through my own experience of cycling for transportation, I have become interested in how mobility is invested with political, cultural, and personal meaning. This actually shows up in my research on immigration, but only a piece of the larger puzzle. I also help to keep Bike OSU going. (See http://bikeosu.weebly.com)

Tertiary Interests (These are the threads in my sweater that I just pick at from time to time.)
Project Management in Academia: After interpreting an excellent two-day seminar on project management, I realized that project management skills were just what I had been trying to develop over the past few years of organizing Bike to Work Week and other programs. I have since tried to apply bits and pieces of project management to my own studies in order to get (and stay) on track with my research. I am now kicking around the idea of how project management (P.M.) might contribute to improved research experience and outcomes, and whether P.M. is not an absolutely crucial but heretofore untaught skill for graduate students and career academics. 

Productivity and Performance in Academia: This is related to my first tertiary interest. I hesitate to mention these together, because it may seem like I'm trying to simply import business concepts. Not the case. I'm genuinely interested in how goals are set, measured, and achieved in a variety of settings: personal life, career life, and social life. I take the position that people generally accomplish what they set out to do. And most of the time, we set out to fail in some way – we just don't realize it because we aren't used to thinking clearly or communicating specifically. This brings up tertiary topic 2.1: writing and communication. I want to have an efficient writing process and produce clear writing products. Like P.M. above, I can't help but see writing as a core skill for academics. And like P.M., the writing process is almost completely untaught; it's expected that students will pick it up as they go along. Some of you may think that's fine. But think of where we've come with research methods. No one used to take research methods classes, and now they are seen as core skills (and required courses) for graduate students.

Relevant Pedagogy in Higher Education: Let's face it. If you are going to work at a university, you will have to teach. And unless you're at a liberal arts college, teaching will always be second to research. So, why bother being a good teacher? Primarily because initial investment in being a good teacher means lots of time saved down the road. Hence more time available for research. But it's more than that. Higher education can be anywhere between enlightening and life-changing, to irrelevant and mis-managed. It's just my opinion, but as a social scientist, I'm supposed to know something about how society functions, no? Even better if I can make a contribution to society, developing much-needed perspective in our undergraduate future leaders. What does all that mean, and how do we do that? I don't know. But I'm watching. And taking notes.