readywriting

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

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

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.

On nerding out with my kids.

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

Where do you call home when your heart is in too many places?

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,

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking back, incompletely, at 2017.

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" and

Why is quitting seen as failure?

Thinking about my history in sports, in academia, and how abuse is normalized.

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

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

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.

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