Fall into fun - creating your seasonal syllabus

Sep 22

Hello once again,

It’s now the last full week of September, and at least in my case, the academic year is already in full swing. This fall marks the beginning of my sixth year at university, which feels both surreal (in some ways, I feel like I just started) and surprisingly bittersweet. As I’ve wrestled with these mixed emotions, I’ve found myself reflecting on both what I love about the academic world and what I’m not such a fan of.

My absolute favourite thing about academia is being delivered a well-structured and engaging lecture. I love being able to sit back and listen to someone speak passionately about a topic they’ve clearly put a lot of thought into. As someone who genuinely enjoys learning, I appreciate how academia offers a built-in structure that allows me to engage with interesting topics on a weekly basis.

What I’m less fond of is the constant pressure to perform and the looming presence of deadlines. Which brings me to the actual bread and butter of this post.

If you’ve been scrolling through Substack like I have, you’ve probably come across posts and articles about people’s fall syllabi or personal curricula. The basic idea behind these posts is that people are creating a syllabus, just like you’d have for a university course, for the content they want to consume and the skills they want to develop. I find this concept of being more intentional with what you consume, and setting fun learning goals outside of an academic setting and its demands, really inspiring.

We live in an era of information overload, where we’re forced to make thousands of micro-decisions every day. That’s why even choosing what to watch on Netflix after a long day can feel like a chore. The possibility of reducing decision fatigue while bringing more structure to my media consumption and hobbies is also why the idea of crafting a seasonal syllabus feels appealing to me. Instead of aimlessly scrolling through my Goodreads want-to-read - section, I’d rather just pick the next book from a curated list of “required reading”.

I also think that having a more structured approach to hobbies, like reading or playing music, could help us actually make the time for them. Naturally, work and school dominate our calendars, but maybe scheduling an hour of reading just for fun, or a short piano session, could give our hobbies the same weight and significance.

As a part of this trend, I’ve also seen some people writing mock research papers about the books they’ve been reading and the ideas they’ve been exploring. While, I think this is a cool idea, as a person who is currently working on their thesis, I don’t feel super drawn to the idea of extra research papers. That said, feel free to incorporate tasks or other creative alternatives into your fall syllabus if you think that’d be fun.

Enough yandering now, here’s a sneak peak into my fall syllabus.

Fall Syllabus 2025:

Books

The Tyranny of the Merit - What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
Eurooppa - Poliittisen yhteisön historia by Timo Miettinen
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Katabasis by R.F Kuang

Movies