The Working Poor in Academia

My office mate’s eyes light up when he begins talking about a new approach he’s just tried with his college students that worked really well. He clearly loves what he does, and he’s endlessly curious about how he can do his job even better. 

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Confessions of a Workaholic

Last weekend, I spent all day Saturday reviewing and commenting on my students’ first drafts of their memoirs, as well as working on Sunday’s comprehensive sexuality education

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Thinking About Peyton

Okay, so I don’t have his millions—of dollars, of fans, of accolades. But the other day, when the great quarterback Peyton Manning made it official and tearfully announced his retirement after eighteen seasons, all I could think was, “I feel your pain.” The number eighteen is familiar to me. It’s the number of seasons I…

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A Better Question

We meet someone at a cocktail party, and one of our first questions is apt to be “What do you do?” By that, we usually mean, “Where do you work?” and “What’s your job?” Whether the answer is accountant or domestic goddess, we tend to make certain assumptions about that person. Aha, we say, the…

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Cleaning

I like to imagine that I’ve really “evolved” and matured over the years. And then every once in a while, I realize there are some things that haven’t changed at all. The other day, I came across something I’d written years ago (back in prehistoric times when there was such a thing as video stores,…

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