I am doing so much EndNote training these days! So. Much. It’s actually pretty enjoyable, though. EndNote is a citation management program (there are lots of them out there, see Zotero, Mendeley, Papers, Reference Manager, etc.), which is an application that lets you keep track of what you’ve read, organize the reference or PDFs of the papers themselves, and then insert those citations into a paper. It can update your bibliography according to style type on the fly. As you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to create a bibliography by hand, this is incredibly useful.
I like teaching EndNote more than most of my other subjects because it’s practical–I know that when I send someone off into the world with more EndNote knowledge, that’s going to help them in a concrete way. If I teach a student how to use a database, that may be helpful…or they may never use it again. Everybody likes productivity tools, though.
A colleague and I are also working on a systematic review. I’ve never done one before, but I’m learning a lot. You have to do a huge amount of reading before even beginning to understand the question that the review is trying to investigate. This is actually pretty fun, as it turns out. Then you have to come up with an exhaustive search and think of ways to replicate that search across different databases (this part is not so fun). We’re embarking on the next step, which is abstract reviews, next week. It’s interesting to see the whole process in action, it’s very (wait for it) systematic.
Recently, I moved across town. Moving is so stressful and exhausting, but I’m closer to most of my friends now and live in an actual house instead of an apartment. Perks! Next up on the list is getting a new-to-me car to replace my aging, beloved miata.