New semester resolutions
Ask any educator. August is a month full of intense ambivalence. The last vestiges of summer feel tinged with anxiety over to-dos …
The emotional roller coaster of graduate advising
I wasn’t supposed to be in the office that Tuesday morning, but the deadline for a conference paper was looming, and I …
Today’s lesson in “don’t read the comments”
I always read the comments. Obviously. I’m a qualitative researcher. The comments are where evaluations come alive. Except this week on Rate …
That time I invited my class to negotiate the syllabus
“So how did this work in your other classes?” Gulp. “Well…” And then I admitted to my senior seminar students, on the …
On teaching my first grad class
“I think I broke a grad student today,” I said to Mr. T, walking in the door from my night class. It …
Talking feminism and controlling my face. Kinda.
We’d just finished watching the eight minute trailer for the documentary Miss Representation, a film about harmful gender stereotypes against women, and …
10 ways to celebrate the end of grading
Like most college professors the day after finals week, I should be grading. The paper piles, more than half-vanquished but still huge, …
Teaching professionalism one email etiquette lesson at a time
Years ago, I conducted research about the strategic uses of email at work. My colleague and I interviewed a bunch of folks …
It’s Professor ‘Twitter Girl’ now, thank you very much
I tried not to be offended when he ran out of class in the middle of what students usually describe as the …
Why I appreciate veterans in the classroom
At the end of last semester, one of my students handed me a small, but weighty envelope. When I opened it, I …