This blog hasn’t been much about me being an academic, or even an educator. That dominated my first blog, fresh off a year on the tenure-track, but now (at first) underemployed with two kids under the age of two in the house, and then as a contingent faculty member, still holding out hope that I…
On Sewing
I should be writing. I have a book to write. I have multiple books to write and to edit. But instead, the time and energy I usually spend thinking about my writing and then writing is now spent thinking about sewing (what I am going to sew, what pattern, what fabric, what next steps) and…
The Worst Summer
No, not the summer of 2020. After my son had to have his arm re-broken in the doctor’s office, without anesthesia, because the person who had put on his cast a week prior had set his arm incorrectly, he looked up at the pediatric orthopedist and said, “You know, I’m really lucky. If this hadn’t…
Thanksgiving
The only year since I moved to the US that I spent Thanksgiving with my family was when my grandmother collapsed and was rushed to the hospital and had an emergency operation because of a perforated stomach that she didn’t even know she had. She had been bleeding internally for who knows how long, thinking…
November 2020: A Poem
I wrote this to a friend of mine who is going through a really rough patch, and I thought, well, maybe I’ll share it here because someone else needs to hear it today. It really has been a year from hell. Sending you light and love and it’s a beautiful fall day, full of light…
Sewing Through November
As I wait, as we all wait, I sew. I browse patterns online, I browse the patterns I own, I browse fabrics, I browse fabrics I own. I do this instead of playing Candy Crush, my nightly distraction for a long time now, but it is no longer enough to distract me. What was once…
Moving Past
Wednesdays are the worst days for my son. Something always sets him off on Wednesdays. Mid-week blahs, I guess, but every week something happens and it ruins his entire day, and it is almost impossible to get him to swim team. Today it was an unexpected (well, to him, I’m sure his teacher said something…
Silences
This is an original essay I wrote for my collection on mental health, Learning to Breathe. I have never been good at keeping quiet. But I had to learn how, growing up, if I wanted to know anything, being that silence was the currency that we traded in, I had to learn to listen to…
Solitude
While I have been socially isolating since this whole pandemic began, I can’t remember the last time I was actually alone for an extended period of time. Someone else is always around: husband, kids, dog. Even closing myself off in my room, I am always aware of the presence of the kids and the dog…
Appetite
I got on the scale this morning. I’ve been avoiding it, trying to be at peace with my body during the pandemic, letting it do what it needs to do under these circumstances. But my clothes aren’t fitting properly anymore and I tried to wear pants last week and ugh that didn’t go well, so…
End of Summer
It’s the last week of summer – whatever that means when you’re in a pandemic. Next weekend is the Labo(u)r Day long weekend, almost falling in mid-September this year because of the quirks of the calendar. While some have already started back to school, my kids’ school distract has (sanely) decided to hold off until…
Meditating While ADHD
I started meditating yesterday. In true ADHD form, I’ve already completed a week’s worth of meditation “training” or practice. Each session is set to be a manageable 10 minutes long. I devour three different sessions in one sitting (or lying as my core has deteriorated so much that sitting is too distracting), and do two…
Success
I’ve written a lot about failure. I don’t write much about success. I have trouble with success because I am always on edge, waiting for the other show to drop, but the success to be undercut and undermined someway. somehow, by someone. Sometimes that someone is me, more often than not, it is someone else….
Baby Steps
I’ve started sewing. Like, really sewing. Like, downloading a whole bunch of patterns of the Internet sewing. Like longingly browsing through the pages of Mood online sewing. Like braving a pandemic to head to a local fabric store (who were very kind but enforced very strict social distancing and capacity rules) sewing. This, as a…
August
My birthday is in less than two weeks. Usually, we’re gearing up for the start of the school year for our kids, going back-to-school shopping, getting hair cuts and the annual physical, buying school supplies…And this year we’re doing none of that. Instead, I’m watching playoff hockey. It’s hotter than it’s ever been where I…
Making Meaning
One of the things I love about my current job is teaching in our Learning, Design, and Technology MA program. Not only are the students brilliant, but I get to teach about Domains and creating their professional digital identity through their final portfolio and beyond. I really enjoy working with the students on helping them…
Pause
Each week, because time moves simultaneously too fast and too slow, our boss has asked that each of us provide a brief weekly summary of what we did the previous five days. Mine is always short on details; at this point if you don’t know how much work doing a Course Design Institute is, then…
Why Do You Write Like You’re Running Out of Time?
I avoided Hamilton was it first became a cultural zeitgeist. In 2015, I was mired in a depression and I didn’t want an uplifting piece of pop culture that I was sure I was never going to get to experience in person in my life. The musical (and everyone I knew that somehow managed to…
July
It’s July this week. I don’t know where the time went, because it was just March, wasn’t it? The kids finally finished school, or whatever it was that they had been doing for the rest of the academic year. I have been working and working and working as the world burns. I don’t write anymore…
Stuff 6
Like all good kids in the 1990s, I made mixed tapes. Primarily, I recorded songs off the radio, focused primarily on the weekly Top-40 countdown, waiting patiently by the boom box to press down on Play+Record, ready to press pause as soon as Shadow Stevens started talking. And then, my step-father won the lottery. Not…
Refusal
There are lessons I have learned in my life. I have worked to make myself small as not to be noticed because when I am noticed, I tend to get into trouble. Or ridiculed. Or cause trouble. Or all three. I am an extrovert who was forced into introversion as a survival strategy. But then,…
What If, Pt 2…
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Hi. It’s been a while. We’ve all been busy with the pandemic. Well, maybe busy isn’t the right word. Distracted? Better, but not quite. I’ve been writing a kind of COVID-19 diary on my regular blog, and one of them was a speculative piece…
What If…
It started as a brief Twitter thread, how living in a townhouse complex during COVID-19 is a lot like being back in residence at university. You live with people 24/7 with strange habits and routines and varying degrees of commitment to the work they have to do. And there aren’t enough bathrooms. People are up…
Everything Old is New Again
Hi, welcome back to readywriting.org. Looks a little different. I had to move to from Ghost back to WordPress because…reasons. It has to do with the kind of shared hosting service I have through Georgetown Domains, versus the kind of hosting service I need to run Ghost and that I’m cheap. Fun fact: Ghost makes…
Prune
I love to eat. I don’t really like cooking all that much, with the ADHD and all, but I have always loved to eat. Cooking was always too much time and patience and concentration; I would burn everything, time-blindness made me completely unable to have things come out done at the same time, and because…
Tired
I have trouble getting up in the morning and even more trouble falling asleep at night. I didn’t work out before all of this happened, relying instead on the steps I took back and forth at the pool while coaching, and I’m finding it hard to fit it into the routine we’ve all fallen into,…
Photograph
One of people’s pass-times while being stuck at home is to go through old photographs and sharing them on facebook. One of my friends and former teammates found a picture of all of us at a swim meet, faces orange (our team colors were orange and black), and half the boys with shower caps on…
Birthday
My daughter turned 13 on Friday. We celebrated with take-out Italian from one of her favorite restaurant and a cake we bought, smuggled in, and hid in our overflowing fridge. We sang Happy Birthday and she is smiling in the picture she let me take. Her grandparents all FaceTimed with her. I was sad that…
Pink Moon
There was a pink moon last night, the fullest and closest and brightest moon of the year. It was overcast, but not so much that you couldn’t see the light from the moon shining through, lighting the clouds from behind. The clouds were white in the night’s sky, and when they broke and the sky…
Sunday
It didn’t feel any different than any other Sunday. We got up, husband made a more-elaborate breakfast than most days, while I had to get my daughter up and my son off the Xbox to eat. I started the laundry while the kids grudgingly did their weekly chores. Then I sat on the couch with…
The Future
I never remember if “future” has an “e” at the end or not. In French, the language that I first learned to spell in, the word doesn’t have an “e” and like apartment or literature, I always remember the French spelling and not the English; this is when the red underline is helpful for me….
Bread
There are so many things I didn’t think I’d ever do. I wear makeup now (yes, now, even today, because I paid for it, damn it) in part because my daughter became obsessed with it (and because she dances, so performance makeup). I prefer dresses now (because, in part, it’s easier to just pick one…
No More Feelings
Given the current situation in the world, if you buy one of my two self-published books, I will donate the proceeds to Hope for College. Buy Learning to Breathe which focuses on mental health, and Twist, Weave, Untangle about my becoming a critical digital pedagogue. I’m tired of talking about my feelings. I am grateful…
Trauma Time
Given the current situation in the world, if you buy one of my two self-published books, I will donate the proceeds to Hope for College. Buy Learning to Breathe which focuses on mental health, and Twist, Weave, Untangle about my becoming a critical digital pedagogue. Next week, April will begin. February feels like years ago….
Canceled
Given the current situation in the world, if you buy one of my two self-published books, I will donate the proceeds to Hope for College. Buy Learning to Breathe which focuses on mental health, and Twist, Weave, Untangle about my becoming a critical digital pedagogue. My kids’ school is out for the rest of the…
Bad Timing
March 2020 marked the 10-year anniversary of my being online. I spent a lot of January and February writing a year-by-year reflection, as well as curating and creating two self-published books that collected some of my extensive online writing from the past decade. All but one of those posts still sits in draft format, unpublished….
In The Moment
I started teaching in an online program for people in prison. I’m teaching a writing course to incarcerated men and women scattered across the country. If you thought the LMS was bad, wait until you experience the prison LMS, let me tell you. The students have to download all materials on to a proprietary tablet…
(Untitled)
When we would have snow days, when the world would shut down because there was too much snow on the ground to safely travel anywhere, we knew that, eventually, and even quickly, the snow would melt. Or at least that it would be cleared enough so that life could return to normal. And, as we…
Working from Home
Day one of the new normal, we’re all social distancing and working from home. Kids are off school, and for two weeks won’t have organized, assigned, and required work while the district scrambles to figure out how they are going to manage this. Daughter snaps and facetimes and texts her friends; they making video diaries…
The New Normal
I want to start with a quote from a good friend of mine who posted this in response to these extraordinary times: “Nothing will be perfect. Everything will be ok.” He wrote this in response to his institution moving to a distance learning format for the rest of the semester, like so many other institutions…
Dreaming Big
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? It’s the end of the year, and so of course my timelines are flooded with “best of” lists, and as an academic, particularly full of best of books lists. I have a friend whose book is (rightfully) on many of those lists. It’s been…
Gratitude
The email showed up in my inbox and, as always, I immediately clicked on the document to contribute. It was the monthly (monthly? bi-weekly? stupid ADHD time) prompt from Mary Churchill, co-founder of the University of Venus blog, where I gained prominence almost a decade (A DECADE!) ago as a blogger, for a collaborative blog…
“Stop moving in and out of time…”
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I’m on a mini-writing retreat at the house I grew up in. My mom took the kids to a cottage, leaving me home alone, without any responsibilities, not really, except for the dog, and so I have a week to just write. Today was…
1k Words a Day
I jinxed myself. Last week, I made the observation on Twitter that I usually write about 1k words a day, and if I don’t, it feels strange, like my day isn’t complete. They could be words written for work, words written for my research/books/publications, or words written for me. I write here, I write for…
#Domains19 Reflections
A little more than 4 years ago, I was at #dlrn15 hearing Jim Groom talk about Domain of One’s Own, and Eddie Maloney talking the graduate degree they were developing, the one that would become the MA in Learning, Design, and Technology. I was about to start at UMW, and Jim’s talk was daunting to…
Alt-Ac, 5 Years Later
I was reminded today that five years ago, I officially received a job offer to join CELT at the University of Kentucky, kicking off my Alt-Ac career as a faculty developer/academic technologist. Morehead feels like another lifetime ago, not five short years. I have (finally?) settled down and found my perfect alt-ac job here at…
Patience
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? There are socks all over my living room. The kids get home from school and the first thing they do is take off their shoes and socks because the weather has gotten so warm. And so there are socks everywhere. Socks on the floor,…
Once Upon A Time…
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? We have a nickname for my daughter: Goldilocks. Nothing is ever just right for her, and she oscillates from it being too hot/too cold, too hard/too soft, too long/too short, too loud/too quiet, etc almost constantly. Shopping is a nightmare. Bedtime worse. Everything has…
We Got A Dog With Issues
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? This isn’t our first dog, a dog that we had to give away (read the linked piece, he’s better than fine). The kids and I have missed Thor tremendously since we had to let him go. When we moved to Virginia, the house we…
When Mother’s Day is Hard
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I am now at the age that people I know are starting to have to care for rapidly aging, sick, and/or deteriorating parents, particularly mothers for whatever reason. I’d get into the gendered expectations of care and the mother-child relationship versus father-child, but that’s…
All The Things I Can’t Do
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? When I was in 10th Grade (well, Sec IV) our English teacher asked us to think back to the point when we were younger, really really young, and we were confronted for the first time that we weren’t limitless. The first time we confronted…
Spoilers Ahead…
There’s something that I do, or rather, there is something that happens to me at the beginning of any big deal “live” cultural event: I tear up and cry. Not great sobs or anything, but water leaks out of my eyes and runs down my cheeks for a few minutes before I finally settle in…
Wasting Time
I lay in bed this past weekend, sun streaming into my room through the blinds, hitting me in the face, warming my pillow. I turned over and closed my eyes again, thinking about what a luxury it was to fall back asleep in the warm sun on a soft bed. There was no place to…
Write THAT
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I’m writing another memoir of sorts. No, it’s a memoir. It’s about growing up where I grew up when I grew up and how that shaped and continues to share my identity. It’s about language and race and class and culture and identity. I’ve…
Writer’s Writing
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? My daughter got her ADHD diagnosis. It was a relief, for her, just to know. We’re still working on finding the right medication, but we’re moving in the right direction, getting where we need to be. She’s started writing. Really writing. It started with…
Being Busy, Being Lazy
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Growing up, I was often accused of being lazy. This, I have learned, is a common misunderstanding of people with ADHD. I heard it all the time – from my parents, from my teachers, from my grandfather, from my step-father. I could, and in…
A Body That Works
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I used to joke with my friends that God put me together slightly wrong. My feet are flat, my arches collapse, I’m quite severely knock-kneed, my legs meet at a sharp angle at my knees, my hips are misaligned, my bottom ribs jut out…
Getting Organized
I organized the apps on my phone the other day. And then I organized my dresser. And then, I organized my calendar. Now, I should note, I was also procrastinating about doing other, more pressing, but less interesting thing. I didn’t want this to be another hot take on Marie Kondo and her Konmari method…
Is This What Happiness Feels Like?
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? We’ve moved. We’re completely unpacked. I found the book I needed to read but couldn’t find after the move because I put it somewhere “safe.” I read the book. I’ve already bought 5 books in the new year, started three of them, finished none…
Unexpected
I took a break from writing over the month of December. I mean, I still wrote things for work and I still tweeted and I still wrote FB posts and I still wrote emails (so many emails) but I didn’t write anything here or on my tinyletter or for Popula or work on my manuscripts…
Pulled Together
“You always look so pulled together. How do you do it?” I’ve been doing a little project this semester on my instagram account, taking a picture of myself every day wearing a different dress to work. I did this in part because I wanted to wear all the dresses I have in my closet, but…
Giving Birth
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? No, not a metaphor. This is literally going to be about my experience giving birth to my two kids. So, TMI.Why? This post from Harvard explaining that women today are twice as likely to die in childbirth than their mothers. Mother’s almost dying, especially…
Fat
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? My daughter has wanted to do ballet since she was old enough to know what ballet was. When she was five and about to start kindergarten, a ballet studio opened up in the tiny town we lived in. We drove past the window front…
Halloween
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? My son has never dressed up for Halloween. In his nine years on this earth, Halloween has been fraught holiday, to say the least. We’ve bought costumes only to have him refuse to wear them when it came time to trick-or-treat, we stopped buying…
Letting Go
Baby Lion has been an integral part of the family since my son was born. We just didn’t know it at the time. He was one of the first stuffed animals that was gifted to my son, one of many, however, sent to us by a family member before my son even born. He was…
Fall
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Fall is my favorite season. It wasn’t always. I love swimming outdoors, so summers growing up were always my favorite, after long, cold winters spent swimming indoors. There was a freedom in the summer, too, being able to ride my bike everywhere, but especially…
Chez Nous
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? There isn’t a word for “home” in French, in Quebec, not the way there is in English. Say “home” and it immediately conjures up images and memories and feelings. Say “maison” and, well, all you see is a house. When we say we’re going…
Learning to Breathe
My swimmers had an amazing meet this past weekend. They all got at least one best time, and most of them got at least one cut time (which is ultimately meaningless, but goal times are goal times and it keeps them motivated, so ultimately not meaningless at all). This is my third year coaching some…
Insomnia
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I have always had trouble sleeping. Many of my strongest memories as a child are of me, lying in bed, in the dark, unable to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed, or make noise, or anything, so I would just lie…
Socially Awkward
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? My son, who also has ADHD, is an introvert. I’ll often find him sitting on the couch, under his heaviest, thickest blanket, watching YouTube on his phone. I call it his Fortress of Solitude. He prefers Cocoon of Awesomeness. He knows he’s an introvert,…
My Favorite Hockey Player
I wish I could remember why I chose Lyle Odelein as my favorite player on the Canadiens. He was an old-school defenceman, tough and reliable, with many, many penalty minutes each season, but a player that could be relied on. He wasn’t flashy, although he did score a hat-trick once which absolutely delighted me. Somehow…
Mob Rule
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Last night, I guest lectured in a graduate-level class about social media. There was a lot of anxiety around the utility, viability, and benefits of social media, and understandably so. As a walking, talking social media success story, I wanted to counter some of…
Becoming an Author
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I’ve got two manuscripts that are in various stages of being edited, by me. One of them will come out in 2019, the other in 2020. The one that is coming out next year is almost ready. The one with another two years needs…
Plant a Tree, Start a Forest
This is a post that first appeared as a part of Digital Writing Month in 2012. Since it only exists it in the Internet Archive and I was recently haunted by the memory of writing it, I’m re-posting it here. I can’t believe it’s been almost six year since I wrote this. Obviously, I’ve written…
Good Enough
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I got an email the other day from a reader who had found some of my posts and wrote to tell me how much they resonated with them. They are also a writer and thinking of graduate school and wanted to know how I…
Turning 41
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? It’s my 41st birthday next week. It’s a pretty benign birthday. Usually 40 is the big deal. I didn’t really tell anyone other than my closest friends that I didn’t think, when I was younger, that I would live to see 40. I’m not…
Moving Up
I’m sitting in my new office overlooking the Potomac, at my new job, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Nine years ago, I was getting ready to move across the country, having given up my tenure-track job that I had held for only a year. This isn’t new or news; it’s…
Time, Writing, and ADHD
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I am writing two manuscripts right now, both memoirs of sort. The first one, which is largely complete, is a collection of my blog posts over the past 8 years that fall under the umbrella of Bad Female Academic. A number of people are…
On Being Happy
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I got good news. Out of the blue, I get good news, professional news. My mind immediately starts to spin, and panic sets in: What does it mean for our family? I think about all of the things that will have to happen, have…
Messy History
From I Tried Leaving Facebook…But I Couldn’t: Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours our parents spent keeping their address books up to date, knocking on doors to make sure everyone in the neighborhood was invited to…
Too Many Words
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I’ve always had too many words. Too many thoughts, too many feelings, too much of everything. I was always overflowing with everything, and it poured out of me every which way, always, overwhelmingly. In silence, the words would crash against the inside of my…
There’s Something Wrong, There’s Nothing Wrong
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I officially got my diagnosis yesterday: ADHD. I will probably start medication, but I have to talk it over with my doctor. It was a relief. As I said on Twitter, it’s confirmation for me that there is something wrong with me, but at…
Close To You
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? My son does this thing where he covers himself completely with his blanket to watch videos on his iPhone. I call it his fortress of solitude. But if you sit on the same couch as he is, or he’s in another spot and notices…
Rejection
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? We’re less than a month away from the day my son broke his arm, which also happened to be my daughter’s birthday. It wasn’t quite rock-bottom for me, but that week, it was for him. He had been having trouble in school, blessed (because…
Frayed Threads
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I had a good weekend, mentally. I got stuck because of weather, as did my husband, trying to get back home to our kids. As I told him, the meds keep me from spiraling; there’s no cure for mom-worry. But I stayed chill. I…
Parenting Differently
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I dyed my hair red this weekend. And I helped my daughter dye her hair blue. It didn’t really turn out all that blue. I wanted to avoid bleaching her hair, and I didn’t use enough of the semi-permanent dye, so her hair looks…
Writing All The Words
I wrote myself into existence, literally, from early journaling to what you see here #WhyIWrite— Lee Skallerup Bessette makes zero magic (@readywriting) October 20, 2015 I have written a version of this tweet a couple of times on Twitter, and it has been my pinned tweet for a while now. I meant this in a…
The Other D-Word
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Disney was wonderful. It was a perfect family vacation, as perfect a family vacation as you can get given that we were four very different human beings spending an intense amount of time with each other over five days. But it was what our…
Anxious Pedagogies
These are my prepared remarks for MLA18 Panel 202: Anxious Pedagogies – Negotiating Precarity and Insecurity in the Classroom. Please join us if you’re in NYC on Friday morning, bright and early! I dedicate these remarks to Miranda, to Margaret Mary, to Robert Ryan, to all the adjuncts and contingent faculty who literally gave their…
I Still Feel
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? I’m having anxiety dreams about our upcoming Disney trip. I always have these dreams when I’m about to travel – missing flights, delays, lost luggage, forgotten important items, getting lost, getting separated, ending up in the wrong place… These dreams have plague me for…
Bye-Bye 2017
There are two sides of 2017 for me – before the anti-depressants and after the anti-depressants. That cleaving of the year in two roughly coincides with my son breaking his arm this year, twice, the second time right in front of me. That moment of me, doubled over, hysterically sobbing on the pool deck in…
Fun with MLA and AHA Programs of Conferences Past
This post is missing the original images because I’ve moved this blog around way too much. Sorry. You’ll have to take my word for it, I guess. I work with a pretty smart data science guy. In the past, when the MLA Conference program hit online, I would enter in words like “teaching” and “pedagogy”…
On Quitting
My daughter quit swim team today. Or rather, I sent the confirmation email to the appropriate people that had her removed from my roster (she swam in my group). It’s been a tough four months; she does three different activities before school and was swimming or doing ballet every day after school. We were constantly…
Normalizing Abuse
I have always been “coach mom” – emotionally invested in my swimmers, and attempting to be nurturing to them and their love of swimming. I’m the “nice one” or, to others, the one who is too easy or soft on the swimmers. I coach 8-11 year-olds – I’m ok with the accusation of being too…
Halloween: One Year Later
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? Yesterday was Halloween. I had a good time. In fact, I had an outright delightful time. The weather was clear and cool (but not cold), the kids were in good moods, the candy was flowing, there were friends, and there were no tears, especially…
We Take Pills
This post originally appeared on my tinyletter, Where is my Mind? A few years ago, my husband, who is loath to go to the doctor, went and found out he had high blood pressure. He had been living with a headache and generally not feeling well for months, living with the misery of it. He…
Working in In-Between Spaces
I started my second season coaching swimming last week. Well, it’s not my second season ever. I’ve been coaching swimming off and on since I was a teenager. But my second season where I have my own group on a local team, going to meets, building swimmers. Building swimmers. I’m really looking forward to this…
On Still Being an Academic
I want every academic to ask themselves: is what I’m writing about important? If so, write a book accessible to more than 100 people.— Sara Goldrick-Rab (@saragoldrickrab) July 30, 2017 I wrote some pretty strong words last week about putting both the alternative and academic in alt-ac. Now I’m living with the reality of putting…
Putting the Alternative Academic Back in Alt-Ac
When I left IHE and started this new “blogging” space, one of the things I wanted to get away from was the reactionary hot-takes post that had fueled my writing for so long. I was exhausted from the cycle, which the inevitable counter-reactions I would get. I also wanted a space for longer, slower posts…
Friendship, Intimacy, Community, Swimming, and Twitter
While #Digciz is over, I want to put this out to share. This blog post is about making and breaking friendships and the intimacy of swimming and social media, and where I call home. I swear it will all make sense at the end. I write a lot of words. They always create something more…
It’s Not Who You Know, It’s How You Help Them
*I was invited to Georgetown University to give a talk on my experience with and vision for Digital Learning. You can find the slideshow at http://bit.ly/DigLearnHelp and the text, mildly edited, is below. * Good morning. Thank you all so much for this opportunity to share my approach to and experience with digital learning. In case you’re not…
Remembering Spring
I don’t remember last Spring. I don’t remember noticing the change in the weather, the grass turning green, the trees blooming, and the leaves coming out. What I do remember is slowly falling apart, and then all at once. I remember being with friends, thinking to myself, I should be happy, and so I acted…
Thought-Chain on Learning to Code, Credentialism, and Higher Education
We’re deep into our “Learn to Code” module in Applied Digital Studies. The students have all chosen a language (HTML/CSS, Python, JavaScript are the top choices), and chosen a platform (Codecademy is the big winner). For the next two weeks, their task is to regularly and systematically “learn to code” using the platform of their…
Challenging the Narrative of “Learn to Code”
In DGST 395, we’re dabbling in coding. I wrote about the experience taking the course and “learning to code” last semester, and this semester, I decided to take a different approach. While we’re going to spend a few weeks on Nick Montfort’s book, I want the students to think critically about the rhetoric and strategies…
Erasure
This semester, I’m teaching DGST 395: Applied Digital Studies. It’s an upper-division required course for Communication and Digital Studies majors. It’s the first time I’ve ever taught this course, and the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to teach an upper-division course of any kind. Given what’s been going on over…
Blogging my way to the MLA (2017 Edition)
I have a strange relationship with the MLA, especially now that I am in an alt-ac position that doesn’t have anything to do (not really) with my original research and PhD. But I was invited to participate in the panel Working Out Loud: Online Identity Building, Digital Networking, and Professional Development, and then in the…
Dear 2016
I’ve written this post, variations and fragments, bit and pieces, stops and starts, in my head over the past week. And when I open up the text box, it all melts away. The words refuse to be made concrete. The thoughts resist being articulated. My whole self shuts down at the thought of making sense…
Assessing Non-Traditional Assignments Design Sprint
When I advocated for this Design Sprint over the summer to be a part of our Digital Liberal Arts series, I envisioned the opportunity to bring in Fine Arts faculty to describe and walk other faculty through their process of assessing the kinds of work (art) their students produce. I thought it was time to have…
One Last Post…
“I think I do overshare,” Fisher says. “It’s my way of trying to understand myself. … It creates community when you talk about private things.” I wasn’t going to write another post this year. I thought I was done writing about 2016, and that I would start fresh in 2017, writing about going (once again)…
Finding Their Place on the Web: Ed Reform by Undergrads
*This is a lightly edited version of a talk I gave at MLA 14 that is still seems relevant. * In 2014 (or rather, in 2010 when I first created this project), doing a class blog is neither cutting edge, nor particularly revolutionary for many of us. For the students I teach, however, it was, in fact,…
Learning to Code – Why Now?
TL;DR – BECAUSE, THAT’S WHY. This semester, I’ve put myself in the strange position of being a student again, in my colleague Zach Whalen’s DGST 395 class, Applied Digital Studies. It’s strange for a number of reasons (for me at least), least of all is being a student in the same space as students who…
Faculty Development for the 21st Century and Beyond
*This is a talk I gave for a job interview almost two years ago. I’m still pretty happy with it, and I thought it was time that I share it here. Unfortunately, my slides were lost in a former google account email from a former institution. Sigh. All you need to know is the image…
Many Hands, One Manuscript
The Acknowledgement section of my book, A Journey in Translation: Anne Hébert’s Poetry in English, (WHICH IS OUT) is four pages long. That’s what happens when you’ve been working on something for more than fifteen years. And even that, to me, seems excessive. No one write that many pages of acknowledgements. No one thanks everyone. Not in…
On The Tragically Hip
Today, all of Canada, and most Canadians around the world, are suffering from a massive emotional hangover. Last night, CBC broadcast, live, the last ever concert by The Tragically Hip, as their lead singer. Gord Downie, has a terminal, inoperable brain tumor. You can read here a piece trying to explain to Americans what The Tragically…
Reflections on Praxis at DPLI2016
It’s done. I did it. We did it. It was hard and challenging and exhausting and invigorating and inspiring and just so much fun. But it’s over, and I’m left trying to make sense of what exactly happened last week during Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute 2016. I taught the Praxis track, and you can see my…
30lbs and a Two-Piece
Last summer, I finally relented and agreed to buy my daughter, then 8 years old, a two-piece swimsuit. She had been begging for one since she was old enough to express an opinion, which means since she could talk. That’s not exactly true. When she was younger, she wants the ruffliest, most blinged-out swimsuits she…
On Failure
My kids are on the swim team this summer, for the first time in their relatively short lives. They both love the water, and have taken swimming lessons occasionally on our various stops to here, alongside my attempts at teaching them how to swim (a total failure, despite my continued instance that I USED TO…
#YesAllWomen – A Response to Rape Culture
*This post first appeared on Educating Modern Learners, and I’m finally republishing it here in reaction to the recent light sentencing of convicted rapist Brock Turner. The intended audience for this piece was K-9 teachers, but I share it here because it needs to be said, over and over, we still have far to go. * When…
Keep Fighting
You know, I made my name blogging everything and anything. It brought me joy. Don’t know why I don’t go back to that.— Lee Skallerup (@readywriting) May 30, 2016 Years ago, when I had just started blogging, unemployed, trying to start a business, taking care of two kids under the age of three, in a…
The Fog is Lifting
Timehop is helpfully reminding me of the time back when my son, only a few months old, screamed and cried about about 90 minutes every night when we put him to bed. Of course, it felt like hours (and some nights it was). And even though it only last a few months, to our family,…
Praxis – Digital Pedagogy Lab Tentative Course Outline
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I’m going to be teaching the Praxis track at this August’s Digital Pedagogy Lab here at UMW (Sign up today! Spaces still available!). I’ve written elsewhere about my approach to the course (Intimacy! Vulnerability! Fun!), but I was inspired by my fellow instructor, Audrey Watters, who is teaching…
Bob Ross-ing It
Jess: What is this sorcery?Me: We didn’t need Harry Potter; we had Bob Ross. It’s late afternoon in the office, and, looking for something else, I happen upon The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross on Hulu. I decided that there wouldn’t be a better way to end the day than with 30 minutes of…
What if I Never See You Again?
Last week, I was at the Educause ELI conference. I have more thoughts about the conference, particularly as it relates to my new role at DTLT and UMW, but for now I want to reflect on the experience of the conference itself. Going to ELI meant that I was able to more fully connect with…
Teaching and Learning as Paying Attention
Last semester, I taught a book and an author I have long loved and studied, but haven’t been able to engage much with in a classroom setting: I am a Japanese Writer by Dany Laferrière (yes, he’ll come up a lot in this space). The book is a meditation on identity, authorship, creativity, and memory. I…
Telling and Retelling
Dany Laferrière has a new book out. It’s a(nother) retelling, another version of his arrival in Montreal as a young man, fleeing Haiti and dictatorship, in 1976. I have been fascinated by his constant and continual revising of his life story through varying levels of autobiographical fiction. I also just love his writing. I sat…
