During the pandemic, I read a wonderful book, David Graeber’s ‘Bullshit Jobs’. He talked about how many white-collar jobs have become full of BS, but that most people really want to do meaningful work and find it much more satisfying. Since the BS is more painful and less rewarding to do than meaningful work, there can be an effect where people themselves begin to ‘nobilize’ the BS–‘good job for you, you really sacrificed yourself there to do all that BS’–and frame the meaningful work as self-indulgent luxury because it’s satisfying to do ‘oh ok, you spent the day doing fun stuff while the rest of us were sacrificing ourselves to do the BS’. Without realizing it, driven by their own knowledge that the BS is BS and their frustration at having to do it instead of contributing meaningfully, tragically they actually encourage the view that the BS should be prioritized over the meaningful work.

After this book, I saw that pattern at the university a lot. I realized that this was why I had always felt guilty when I was spending time studying to understand something better so that I could teach it better. Spending time to quickly throw together an exam was ok since it was necessary and not fun, but reading a classic book to prepare for teaching seemed self-indulgent because it was enjoyable.

Since then I took the time to build a coursepack for the courses I regularly teach, and I try to make them a little bit better every year. It is a slow process so I don’t know if they are yet at the point where they are useful to others for teaching, but the installments are all linked to the course schedules below. If you’d like a print copy (I print them and bind them as books for my students since I think it’s a better format for study), let me know and I’ll try to make you one.

Fall 2025
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition (~undergrad psycholing)
LING640 – Psycholinguistics I (graduate)

Spring 2025
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2024
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING640 – Psycholinguistics I
LING848 – Computing and the Brain (w/ Philip Resnik)

Spring 2024
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2023
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING869 – Seminar in Cognitive Neuroscience: Lexical knowledge and linguistic interpretation

Spring 2023
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2022
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING646 – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Spring 2022
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2021
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING819 – Let’s Get Small – minimal units of language (w/ Omer Preminger and Alexander Williams)

Spring 2020
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2019
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING646 – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Spring 2019
LING879 – Thematic Relations in grammar, acquisition, processing (w/ Jeff Lidz and Alexander Wiliams)
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2018
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition

Spring 2018
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Fall 2017
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING646 – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
LING848 – Violently Multidisciplinary Language Science (with Omer Preminger and Philip Resnik)

Spring 2017
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience

Spring 2016
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition

Fall 2015
LING646/889D – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
LING869 – Understanding and Discourse (with Alexander Williams)

Summer 2015
Neuroscience of Language: LSA Summer Institute 2015

Spring 2015
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition

Spring 2014
NACS642 – Cognitive Neuroscience
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
LING848 – Linguistic Prediction: Brains vs Machines (with Hal Daume and Naomi Feldman)

Fall 2013
LING646/889D – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Spring 2013
LING440 – Grammars and Cognition
NACS642 – Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience

Fall 2012
LING646/889D – Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
LING869 – Seminar in Neurolinguistics