Annual Review

When I started teaching full-time, I was required to write annual reviews. I wasn’t given a lot of guidance on what to present, so I created a template that I used for the next decade. It contained updates about each of my duties, as well as plans for the future. That included professional as well as personal goals, as the two overlapped so much.

In my last annual review as a faculty member before I moved to Japan in 2018, I wrote:

I exist to serve. That was the takeaway from my most recent existential crisis (they happen pretty frequently). I like that my job puts me in the position to be of use to people.

To avoid the stress, however, I have been trying to find distractions, like playing baseball. The great difficulty is time management, and learning to say no to people.

At this stage, I have everything in a very delicate balance. Everything gets done. I have time to think. I tread water sometimes but I’m not freaking out. I could be better at stuff – I feel like I used to get to know students so much more and I move from event to event, class to class so much that everything becomes a blur – but things are good.

If I were to take on any more duties, I would have to start relinquishing things. I’m open to anything. But I would have to prioritize and eliminate things if this balance gets nudged.

Probably more honest than I needed to be but the introspection helped me stay on top of my life. The process made me reflect on what I was doing, and think about how I could do things better going forward.

In my current role, we use an online reporting system, which is much less satisfying. It has generic questions and uses Likert scales so you can score your efforts. Blah.

I haven’t done a real life assessment in a long, long time. So, as we near the end of the year, I’m going to follow my old template and craft my own review.

(This will be the least-read post I’ve ever written.)

Baseball

Starting with baseball? I sure am. Why? I think my two seasons with my New York baseball team, the Gravesend Reapers, speak volumes about who I am and how things are going.

On opening day in our first season we got smoked 30 to nothing. We had no hits. The other team’s pitcher had a prosthetic leg. I think we only played four innings. In our next game, we lost 20 to 0, but we had a few hits.

It was a brutal season. We won two games the whole summer and winning those two was pretty miraculous. Most weeks, we were mercy-ruled twice, as we play doubleheaders.

Within a few weeks of the season, Michelle went from asking, “Did you win?” to “Was it worth it?”

But I pitched well and batted around .500, and I joked around on the mound every week as easy pop flies landed on the field and grounders rolled though infielder’s legs.

There’s something magical in meaningless baseball, and we veered toward the absurd. It was oddly sublime.

Don’t get me wrong: It was often extremely frustrating. I can’t even count the number of times runners scored because our fielders were not paying attention after plays.

A rational person would have quit, for sure.

This 53-year old was just happy to be playing.

We started the 2025 campaign in similar fashion, losing the first four games of the season. But they were competitive. Then we went on a roll, winning a bunch of baseball games, sometimes taking both ends of the doubleheaders. We had several new guys, and there was a brightness on the team – an unbridled optimism that we could win it all throughout the summer and into the fall season.

I had the best baseball year of my life, pitching a few complete games, including one over the top team in our league. I ended summer ball officially at 6 and 0 (though it was really 8 and 2) and I batted over .400, I think. Fall ball was solid as well.

My kid came to a bunch of the games and loved being there.

I fell in love with baseball even more than ever.

And as I approach what will likely be my last season (before I start to focus on my kid’s seasons), I feel like I’ve lived a dream.

Fatherhood

My kid tells me I’m one of his two favorite baseball players. The other is Shohei Ohtani.

It’s pretty good company, I know. But to be fair, I think Kenzo only knows the names of two baseball players.

I love the kid so much. I’m not sure how to assess my parenting skills, as I really just work to keep the kid happy. By that standard, I’m killing it. I mean, about 99 percent of the time, the boy is super happy. Like, so much so that he skips. And sings.

I need to be better at discipline. I should give him more independence (we spend way too much time together). And I should actually teach him things beyond funny noises and silly jokes.

I am having the time of my life raising this child. He makes everything else fade into the background.

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs

Since July of 2023, I have been working at the legendary Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Every day is a mixture of excitement, awe, inspiration, imposter syndrome and confusion.

I do so many different things, so let me try compartmentalizing stuff.

Leadership

I try to rally the troops around a common cause but Columbia is a bit of an odd place. I often tell people that the university is a collection of brilliant people running feral.

It’s hard to herd the feral.

On top of that, I’m not actually faculty. I’m just an administrator. So, in a faculty-run organization, I don’t have a vote on, well, anything. I speak my mind but I’m generally dismissed, usually because I’m an advocate for change in a place that doesn’t want to change.

Example: I read through all the student feedback of classes and then I send notes to all the professors. When the patterns reveal issues, I delicately point them out and invite people to come talk. It’s usually very productive. We talk about pedagogy, and how to prepare these students for the future of journalism. Those conversations are wonderful.

Some people don’t like when I invite them for conversations and they pretty much respond with, “How dare you ask me such things.”

I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the past two years.

Organization and Structure

I am the Jon Wu, a reference that very few people will appreciate. My primary job is to make the academic operations function properly. I schedule classes and faculty. I budget. I build programming and run events. I meet with students, faculty and staff often to make sure the student experience is the best it can possibly be.

I think I’m competent and maybe even good with this stuff, which is a blessing and a curse. I handle a lot of stuff that most people take for granted. It’s tedious, and it keeps me awake at night, worrying that I messed something up.

But I get things done and I do it quickly. I sometimes wonder if my quick responses and speedy resolutions make people think I don’t have a lot to do. But it’s totally the opposite: If I don’t take care of things immediately, they will get buried under the immense amount of work I have.

On top of all my regular tasks, this year, I designed a 5-class undergraduate program, I drafted the proposal to take our part-time master’s degree online, and I wrote the 92-page self-study for the school’s re-accreditation process.

Unlicensed Therapist

On any given day, there’s usually someone crying in my office. Some days, there are multiple. I know how difficult it can be to be that vulnerable, to reach that point when you have to express your concerns and feelings. I take it as an honor to be trusted with this stuff.

It’s a lot of pain to absorb but the issues are usually related to things in my sphere (classes, teachers, etc). I try to find paths forward.

Some days, though, I’m reminded of working the police beat at the Daily News. After doing house ends – talking to the grieving families of the recently deceased, I’d sit in my car and cry.

I vividly remember talking with a mother who had just lost her 20-year old son. He caught a stray while playing pool in a bar in Tioga. The actual target got away.

That day, I decided to take a buyout from the newspaper.

Teaching

Since I started doing administrative work and academic leadership a decade ago, I’ve become a much better teacher. I was already a decent teacher – mostly because I’ve always been student-centered, but I was really winging it. I had very little training on how to teach, pretty must just a one-week workshop in Indiana in 2007.

I’ve studied and thought so much about the act of teaching, and how students learn today. I try to have conversations with faculty about these things whenever possible. I love talking about lesson plans and curriculum development. I love hearing faculty talk about ways they engage students (partially because I want tricks and techniques that I can pilfer).

In my classes, I work very hard to create active learning environments that are informative, relevant, interactive and fun. I experiment a lot, and fail occasionally.

Michelle says I’m a different person after classes. I glow.

Teaching feeds my soul.

Teaching, however, is not officially a part of my gig. That seems so bizarre to me. The associate dean of academic affairs at any institution should be in the classroom.

So, I assign myself classes here and there, and I started teaching at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (below).

I get my fix when I can.

The Future

I’ve never felt more settled and in flux at the same time.

I mean, life is grand. I have a good job. I love my wife and son. Our little family is thriving.

But New York is stupid expensive. Most of our relatives and friends are in the Greater Philadelphia region. And Kenzo will start kindergarten next year, which is complicated in New York (we’ve applied to five private schools and will likely apply to several public schools, too).

We may move … but where? And when?

Who knows?

Here are the goals I’ve set out for the next year or so:

• I will continue to push the Columbia Journalism School to reimagine what we are and how we do things. It’s just too important for the future of the school, the future of journalism, and the future of democracy. We have to evolve.

• Did I mention that I have people who hate me? I do. At least one person. I call that person my arch enemy even though I’ve done nothing wrong, their hatred is misplaced, and I don’t actually have any feelings about that person at all. I will continue to be a friendly, accommodating person in response, as I know that just infuriates them all the more … and that makes me laugh.

• I want to teach in a graduate education program, at Columbia’s Teachers College or elsewhere. I believe in the transformative power education. After I burn out from higher ed administration, I think there could be a role for me in teaching higher ed pedagogy, leadership, innovation, curriculum development and/ or ethics.

• I need to write more. I have barely done any journalism since 2018, when I gave up JUMP and moved to Japan. Since then, I ran a campus, moved to Philadelphia, had a child, finished a doctoral program, and then moved to New York. We’ve been busy. But in 2026, I will post here monthly at least, and I may even try to freelance again.

• I spend way too much time sitting in my office chair. I need to be better about taking actual lunch breaks, and walking around. I eat too much pizza to be this sedentary. My goal is to lose 10 to 15 pounds this year. That will make me a better baseball player and, hopefully, it will extend my life.

• We intend to spend several weeks in Japan next summer. Kenzo needs to understand where he comes from.

Postscript

When I was a kid, I thought I’d be dead at 40. I can’t remember why I thought that. But that number was anchored in my brain for a long time.

Then 40 came and went.

And everything since then – all 14 years – has seemed like bonus time.

My greatest desires in life are to enjoy every day, to keep my family safe and happy, and to leave a positive impression on everyone I interact with.

Life is too short to get mad about the little things. Most of the little things are so absurd that they are really kind of hilarious.

Maybe that’s a coping mechanism?

I don’t know. I’m having fun.