Check In, Please: My Academic Autograph Book

Check In, Please: My Academic Autograph Book

Check In, Please: My Academic Autograph Book is an activity book for people involved in academia: students as well as instructors. It is a 32-page half-legal sized book that functions as a shell for content added by its owner and/or their friends. Users are prompted to pick a line-number, then fill out their answers to the questions posed at the top of each page. Check In, Please was closely modeled after a early-1980s book series called Sign In, Please, whose three books invited youth to answer dishy questions about classmates and preferences. (The series was wildly popular at my elementary school, to the horror of teachers — one of whom gave me detention for “keeping secrets” after she discovered me passing it around during reading class in grade 3.)

Check In, Please serves as an archive and an incitement to historicization and contextualization – of both ourselves and our surroundings. It is a personalized reminder of the inevitability of change. Like memories of our pasts, it’s potentially uncomfortable and maybe embarrassing, but also hopeful.

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