A wooden sign reading "retreat" with green foliage in the background

An autistic on retreat

I’m currently at a writing retreat in Taos, New Mexico. It’s led by one of my favorite people, and this is my second time attending (last time was in 2019, and you can read my pre-retreat anxiety post here). The differences this time are meaningful. For starters, because I’ve been to this location before, I …

An actual jungle

Welcome to … the jungle?

Several weeks ago, I came across the image above on a college’s social media feed. For the purposes of this blog post, the institution shall remain nameless (including any notable characteristics of the institution). Suffice it to say, the entirety of this graphic was … well. I have a lot of thoughts, on the many …

An old style typewriter sits on a table

Seeking closure

If I were in charge of the world at this moment, you wouldn’t be reading this post. Instead, I’d have sent four letters to their intended recipients directly, privately, using stamps and envelopes and the secrecy the US Postal Service allows. But I’m not in charge of the world, and I have been burned by …

Acknowledgements graphic

Master’s thesis acknowledgements

In fall 2002, I defended my master’s thesis at the University of Arkansas’s journalism MA program. I was one of the only — perhaps to this day THE SINGULAR ONLY — person to choose to complete 12 graduate hours in educational technology en route to my MA Journalism degree. Because I’m participating in Magna’s ChatGPT …

two very wide eyes on a bright green/yellow frog

Gettin’ surreal in here

When we’re young, I think we all imagined that one day, we’ll be famous. At least, I know I did. I remember watching The Disney Channel as a kid, especially The Mickey Mouse Club (the early 1990s revival, starring future superstars like Christina Aguilera and Tony Lucca and Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake and Ryan …

90 days to fall: Teaching Prof talk is soon!

Yesterday, I wrote about how I came to be an invited speaker (!!) at this year’s Teaching Professor Conference, which kicks off in just a couple of weeks. Today, I’m going to talk about the actual content of these TPC talks — how my thinking about teaching has been evolving over these last couple of …

91 days to fall: Finding my voice (and courage)

I wanted to share a little bit about the two presentations I’ll be giving in early June as part of the Teaching Professor Conference — a small portion of which is ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN PERSON (!!!) in New Orleans. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, but today I thought I’d write a little about the …

92 days to fall: The joy of working in coffee shops

On Thursday, right around the time a short line of students, faculty, and the college president were about to process into our campus gym for the 20-something-th commencement of the week, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear a mask indoors to protect themselves from COVID-19 (the disease, not the …

books arranged on a curve

My favorite reads of 2020

I’ve been getting excited about writing up my annual review of the best books I read last year … this is my fifth such annual review, and I have so much great stuff to share with you this year! According to Goodreads, I read 139 books, totaling 39,970 pages, in 2019. My reading productivity benefited …