As a young teacher I learned a valuable lesson: the hardest paper to grade was always the first one. The longer I put it off, the more I procrastinated and did something else, the larger the stack of waiting papers loomed and the more difficult it was to start.

On the other hand, if I just picked up a paper and graded it – any paper, long or short, good or bad – the psychological advantage was amazing. The stack was basically just as high, but I had started. I had made some progress. It wasn’t nearly as daunting to pick up and grade the second paper as it was the first.

I hope writing this blog post will be like that. Having been essentially inactive on my site for far too long, I am hoping that writing this will be like picking up that first paper and grading it. Maybe it makes the next blog post easier to write. Maybe.

And as I bring this first real blog post in some time to a close, I have to give a shout out to my friend Rob Treskillard, who has totally redesigned my site. He set up my first blog, has been my technical guru from the beginning, and has once again volunteered his precious time to bring me into the modern world.