Fall Semester 2024 Wrap + Welcome :)

When I graduated in 2024, I felt something like a hole in my heart. After enjoying the “head empty no thoughts” experience of post-grad life, I missed the hustle and bustle of academia and campus life once the fall semester came. This is when I got the idea to form my own semester project, as I have done in previous English courses. Starting on the west coast, I analyzed the ISBNs of twenty-five universities across Canada. Fall 2024 brought a lot of data entry, all 2487 ISBNs recorded by hand (I couldn’t figure out how to work AI in my favour). I discovered the top books of the semester were in about ten or so classes on average. In 2025, I hope to continue data entry for the new semester in addition to growing the book database here, highlighting fun finds among classes!

What the shenanigans looked like before I organized it :?

You may be wondering why I would waste so much time. I liked the autonomous typing while watching tv, so I didn't mind much. I probably spent about 40 hours overall to gather the data.

I’m hoping the data over time will become more precise and show trends among universities and years; I know I felt my university experience changed over the course of my degree, and I’m wondering if books could’ve been a factor (but let’s be honest here, it was probably COVID). January to April will be spent continuing to add to the ISBN database, while using new online tools to explore notable books—I’ve been slowing integrating Squarespace’s AI tools for book blurbs, and it doesn’t appear to be giving me bulls**t so far.

Stay tuned for the future! I appreciate your time here :)