Fall Curriculum

If you’re an online twentysomething, you’re probably already familiar with the fall/personal curriculum that’s been floating around—I first encountered the idea in the Slow Morning Diaries newsletter before videos started filling my feed. The personal curriculum is exactly what it says on the tin: A self-designed syllabus based on a learner’s interests, often centered on the completion of books. The corporate version of this, as reported by LinkedIn, is The Great Lock In: “Created on, and fostered by, social media, the trend pushes participants to be hyperdisciplined and chip away at their annual goals between August and December.”

Across both trends, I believe it’s compelling to its Gen Z participants since its framework mimics one of schools with its structure of deadlines, required reading, and measurable goals. At any rate, that’s partly why I find the personal curriculum attractive—during university, I also used to draft syllabi for fun, so there’s that, too. Throughout the year, I’ve kept a creativity pact with my friend Via, which has positioned us to keep one another accountable to our own goals. Our fall curriculum is an extension of that.

The shared part of the curriculum involves buddy reading a nonfiction book each month accompanied by biweekly check-ins including wins, works in progress, and what we’re still learning/what we want to have completed by next check in. Book clubs aren’t for me, but I do miss the opportunity to discuss shared reading material with someone and look forward to our October read Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing. Likewise, the biweekly check-ins are great for accountability while allowing flexibility for task completion within a two week period versus one.

As for what’s part of my personal curriculum, my focus is centered around creating a life for myself outside of work. Even writing this dispatch, I have to gesturally adjust when I’m copying or cutting text since I use an external keyboard that maps to the control key for my work laptop and the Windows key for my personal laptop. In the first dispatch of this newsletter, I note that “I’m getting back to creating this year” has been my refrain over the past few years. This fall, I am seriously sitting down with a short story I’ve been thinking about for the same amount of time and really working on it. In part, this is reassociating that the work I do in front of a laptop can be my own work and taking my own goals of wanting to publish my writing seriously. Already, I’ve missed a deadline, but the mere presence of deadlines is motivation for me to make time to write.

Similarly, I printed out Techno-Orientalism from JSTOR in 2022 with the intention to read it as research. As ideas have started to percolate for an essay project, I’m committed to finishing the book by the end of the year. When I ran the math, I realized I could read a chapter a week—with some flex room—and finish by the end of the year. Of all my goals on my fall syllabus, this is the one with the most concrete endpoint, so I’ll probably shame myself here if I don’t complete it.

Outside of my reading and writing goals, I’m trying to have hobbies that don’t relate to my day job—at this point, I no longer consider reading a hobby. Notably, I intend to start playing D&D, which has been a desire of mine since 2019 (are we noticing a trend yet?) I also started Disco Elysium in August and would like to make playing more of it a priority this fall; finishing it would also allow me to truly consider Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games a finished read since I skipped Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s essay “This Kind of Animal” that’s about the game. My last major goal is to get back into trombone. This one’s a bit of a curveball for those who have only met the NYC iteration of Alyssa, but music used to be a significant part of my life and simply hasn’t been since 2018. Rather than being something that’s expected of me, I now have enough distance to have fun with it.

Six months into my new job feels like the perfect time to hunker down and fall (ha) into a new pattern of life closer to the one that I’d like to have. One that isn’t centered around the emotional and physical state my 9-5 may leave me in, but rather a cultivation of richness I believe to be possible by prioritizing myself. Whether or not you have a fall curriculum of your own, I hope you ease into a gentle autumn.