I should be prepping and need to get some water in so, to practice productive procrastination, I’m posting/compiling the course prep drinking game I posted over on BlueSky when I was prepping for spring. This is the cousin to the grading drinking game, of course. Originally posted 01.30.2025-02.12.2025. I’m compiling it here so it’s all in one place.

1. Find a typo.

2. Realize you don’t understand your own directions.

3. Dead link.

4. Try to find working link of reading.

5. Create a PDF so you have a back up of the reading in case it disappears from the internet forever.

6. Make changes to an assignment based on a note to self.

7. Don’t understand your note to self.

8. Notice your terrible posture.

9. Sit up straight/adjust laptop/pretend this new ergonomic setup will sustain.

10. Correct accessibility issue.

11. Discover you completely left something out of the course during the prior semester.

12. Spend way too much time making graphics.

13. Think while making graphics, “I’m spending way too much time on this.”

14. Also think, “This is LOW PRIORITY.”

15. Ignore yourself, continue making graphics.

16. Go on social media.

17. Look at someone else’s course or course syllabus.

18. Think you’re teaching your class all wrong.

19. Consider adding an activity/assignment.

20. Do(n’t) add the activity/assignment

21. Try to remember how you taught the class before.

22. Wonder if you’ve ever taught the course before or if it was just some weird semester-long fever dream.

23. Overthink something.

24. Realize that something you’re doing in one class should also definitely be done in another class.

25. New syllabus clause.

26. Start to write directions, remember you have already written similar directions for a different assignment. Two sips if the assignment is for a different class.

27. Go on a hunt to find the previous assignment. Take a sip per class you hunt through and/or assignment you click through until found.

28. Edit previous assignment.

29. Update new assignment.

30. Edit previous assignment again for clarity, typo, etc. One sip per typo/error. Three sips if you make more work for yourself.

31. Fail to understand your own logic in arranging assignments/activities the way you did.

32. Lament having too many tabs open.

33. Try to accurately guess which tab you were just working in. One sip per incorrect guess.

34. Wish, once again, that you had a bigger screen so you could SEE all the many tabs/windows you have open for faster/easier copying and pasting.

35. Post link to the screen/set up you want.

36. Re-upload a file to Canvas/LMS.

37. Re-open a file you just closed.

38. Revise a rubric.

39. Have to do math ???????????? (<— The English teacher’s lament).

40. Accidentally update the wrong assignment and/or rubric.

41. Lament the fact that you have integrity.

42. Practice productive procrastination by spending an entire day working on some new thing (a liquid syllabus) instead of actually prepping your class. Drink every time you think, “I should be prepping.”