“I know you don’t want to hear this, Liz, but I really think you’re on the spectrum.” A friend said this to me during a particularly tense phone conversation back in the spring. It wasn’t the first time they’d suggested I might have Autistic traits, but it was the most forcefully they’d expressed it. When …
I was chatting with someone a couple of days ago, working through how I’m feeling about this season in my life. For the last few months (let’s call them “summer”), I’ve been faaaaaar less ‘productive’ than my normal pace of life. If you’ve been around for more than a minute, you know that doing a …
Hurt people … hurt people. I don’t remember when I first heard this saying, but it has become a near-daily mantra. When someone else’s actions sting, when I’m disappointed or hurt or betrayed, I try to remind myself that it’s probably not actually all about me. Have a seat, Ego. Step up to the plate, …
Our classes start in two weeks, and today I sat down to write an email to my spring-semester students. Are you surprised to hear it was L-O-N-G?? Of course not, unless you’re here for the first time. 😉 I’m so happy with the tone it struck, I thought I’d share with my readers… just because …
Today is our third day of classes on my college’s campus. In person, without any legal backup to mandate masks or vaccines, or even require COVID-positive reporting. In other words, we’re well underway at becoming a COVID hotspot. It’s inevitable. In my class today, 1/3 of my students had masks on. I am literally not …
Note: I’m going to cry while writing this. I’m going to continue crying while thinking about it. And I sense a gusher of tears is coming in the months ahead. I am not afflicted with the worst-case scenario anxiety that routinely sends me spiraling over the small but present probability of terrible things happening. In …
It’s been a minute since my last #100DaysToFall post, which I’ll choose to attribute to my copious reading, family vacation to St. Louis, and general decision to attend to other things that felt more pressing. But here we are at the cusp of July, and the fall semester draws ever nearer. For this installment of …
It’s been a little while since my last #100DaysToFall post; I’ve been working on an R&R for a teaching-centric article and, oh yeah, presenting at The Teaching Professor Conference (*in person*) in New Orleans. My mind is aswirl with all sorts of thoughts about teaching and pedagogy and higher education and equity and collaboration and …
I have so many thoughts swirling in my brain today, mostly because I’ve been consuming information at a faster-than-normal clip (thanks to all the driving I’ve done in the last week — more than 32 hours in the car over seven days). But for a #100DaysToFall post, I pulled out a book I read over …
We only control what we don’t trust. Glennon Doyle As my last post indicated, I’ve been traveling this week — first to (attempt to) visit my brother in Kansas City, then on to my parents’ house in northern Arkansas. I hadn’t seen family since Christmas 2019, in the before-COVID times, so this has been a …
