I watch people gripped by fear for a future that hasn’t arrived, and when I try to say gently, this panic is over something not here yet, it only deepens […]

You can’t supply wisdom to someone simply by showing them words. That’s the trick in the teaching business. Like Arnold, the psychiatrist, used to say at our staff meetings, “a […]

When I applied for the job, I thought, Why not? I need full-time work, wasn’t that the reason to start the PhD after the house-fire and fuck-you-get-lost-rejection from the insurance […]

Nine As, eight Bs, eight C+s, seven A-s, six B+s, five B-s, five Cs, five C-s, three A+s, one D+, two D-s, three Fs. The statistics for my final marks […]

Most people cannot play guitar. Some people can play open chords, some can play barre chords but less and less can actually play well. Many are ok, but only a […]

The sequence of ideas in our class conversations never stops amazing me. I have a lot of international students. When reading from their journals, which is where they explore writing […]

The student who sits at the front but never speaks had an answer when I asked what she thought of the last student’s writing. It was a song about being […]

Often students communicate in email. Sometimes they present me with situations I cannot easily fix. Adding to the frustration is waiting for a reply to verify they have read the […]

After I read this in a student’s journal, “I wake up hating myself or is it hating that I am not the imagined self? Hating that I should be this […]

A student in class finally did his first performance. He is a nice fellow, comes to every class, sits at the back, quiet. I do not sense much of a […]