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Jenni Halpin

@halpin.bsky.social
178 followers 166 following 161 posts

Literature professor, broadly construed. Teaching composition and having OPINIONS about uses of "AI." Scholar of literature and science. Trying to feel hope and practice usefulness in these present times. She/her.

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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
I think it’s going to become increasingly important for cis queers to resist the nice man in uniform who is hustling us this way toward the lifeboats on the deck of the Titanic while explaining that trying to squeeze in the trans folks will just slow the boats down so jump now and don’t look back
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
"measure with your heart": thank you for this!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I'm not sure whether I will be signing up for future midterm check-ins in the dorms, but I am glad that I went on this one: I learned a little more about the campus and probably had a minor positive effect on the way some of my students see me.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
As well as trying to make ourselves seem more accessible and to ensure students were aware of upcoming break and homecoming and registration dates, we asked if they had issues with their rooms. One major leak. One rodent. But, most excellently, half a dozen confessions that their rooms were a mess!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We did interact with quite a few of my students, as it happened. Among the other students: -one wearing a towel and apparently returning from a shower; -one surprised to learn that our fall break is next week; -one apparently unaware of what "homecoming week" might entail
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Imagine yourself a first-year student living in a controlled-access building. Four people, all clearly well past the traditional college age, vigorously knock on your bedroom door not long after lunchtime. Go ahead: guess how many times one of the staff members led with "you're not in trouble."
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Last week student life solicited faculty to join them in a walk through the dormitories here at mid-semester. I'm new. I could make the time. I volunteered. So, for about 90 minutes this afternoon I and another new member of the faculty went through two dorms with a couple members of the staff.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I'm in seat #7, obviously. Where are the rest of you?
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
(I'm still waiting for the stars to align to get me off my butt to hook up the replacement dryer exhaust at the house. Meanwhile, the town has a nice, convenient laundromat.)
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Maybe it's not "early": I'm the oldest member of my department and I know all the references in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," which is now playing at the laundromat. (Props to a lyricist who came up with a rhyme for thalidomide.)
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Early adoption of senior citizenship: I have become one of the ladies who quietly sings along at the grocery store and the laundromat, both of which regularly feature songs from my peak radio-listening years.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Exeunt Omnes", a very short story by Roger Zelazny, has delighted me for decades and informs my angle of attack for most of my analysis.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I'm genuinely worried about things for y"all: chaos is the baseline.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Hard agree. Also: it says nothing good.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Was talking just today with my students about the usefulness of being clear about why what they have to say is worth their readers' time.... Elected officials have, for quite a while, failed on this measure for me for a long while.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It's possible that I am sat on the front porch of the venue at which my new colleague has been advertised to be giving a performance in 4 minutes. Wherever I am, in the last 20 minutes I have seen only statuary and a hummingbird. The building's locked and I'm not certain this is the front porch.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Perennially rereading the October Daye books by Seanan McGuire to lead into the newest release.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
SSB? Attractive sign!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I REALLY enjoy the quiet potential of the virtually empty pre-8:30 campus.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Noooooooo! Wishing you an abundance of discretionary time.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Unless they've changed their ways and implemented actual plans to act on the assessment reports, take the advice I have been giving you for most of a decade and do less paperwork.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I had been going to post a HEAVILY redacted one, out of sheer distrust for the actual intended uses.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Keep corrupting naivete about the context in which we are embedded!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I suspect they have the causality backwards, my friend.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So much truth here!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It is, apparently, Swedish flower day, if I correctly understood the young person handing out lovely flowers to passers-by. I've had a lovely stay in Zurich and would have liked to be able to explore more.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Funranium (AKA Phil Broughton) @funranium.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
[sighs deeply] Before feeding any of your research into any LLM, please check your grants and institution's information security/academic integrity policies. You may be surprised how very little of your work are allowed to let anywhere near the Plagiarism Engines.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
For the record, I saw no signs of the run-off today on the way to or from the campus today.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is me! That is, in class my students and I sit together around a table, me with notebook and paper, they with laptops. I think that I am o.k. being Big Bird in this scenario.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Let this article become part of your framework for thinking about American politics. "Democrats are entertaining years-old complaints about the left, while daily political discourse often fails to register just how catastrophic, corrupt, and fascist the reigning politics of the moment have become."
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"this edible ain't shit" two hours later:
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Not unless there's a verse structure that suggests it.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
We try. It's all we can do, though there's only so much of it we CAN do.
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Reposted by Jenni Halpin
worm @rfksbrainworm.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
the little legs kicking
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
One of the best people I have ever known has died. She was an absolute force of nature, very quietly. And she made the paths of those of us in her orbit smooth. I'm lucky to have known her.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Noooooo! Best wishes to you and condemnation to whatever power allowed your last brief vacation to go awry.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Giving Star Trek: Enterprise a shot. I'm not sold on the dog. This doesn't bode well.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Dinner tonight was a slice of toast with peanut butter and an inordinate number of cherries. Yay to past me for having pitted all those cherries!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I love it, but I have a hard time imagining that it works well for readers who haven't previously encountered Lord Peter.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Indeed: the woman whose office has become mine is gifting me books to aid in the teaching of a course I'm taking over from her. (Of course, I'm the fool who responded to her open call for takers on the books she no longer needed!)
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I get to cheat: my office on campus is soon to become home to a lot of weight: there are 3.5 bookcases!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I've been thinking about this recently (last month the movers tallied my stuff at 5500 pounds). So...much...stuff.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
May they give you some peace!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Making citation style consistent and doing so to a style sheet that doesn't _quite_ align with my default style, I have just relocated the page range for a article for the THIRD time. Hobgoblins of small minds, indeed!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Sounds like the genre should be horror!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Sometimes "this part needs to be about this long" can be part of my process, but once I start setting myself "this many words by that day" I start getting snarled up. Keeping track of the path I need to follow is more useful to me than sketching a pace at which to follow it.
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
(1) four per semester (2) planning on 6 hours per week, (3) in blocks around teaching (4) service, reporting/documentation, and institutional failure to value research (🤞for the last to be a past problem!) (5) benchmarks + defined next steps work better for me than word count target dates
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Pen and paper, for the win!
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Jenni Halpin @halpin.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
For #WorldEmbroideryDay I wish to announce that I was only up to April in my #YearLongStitchAlong when my summer of relocation began. Today seems like a good day to try to get back to it!
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