It’s nearly time to write again. By Thursday this week, I will run out of my officially sanctioned excuse, “I don’t have time to write because I’m too busy with my grad coursework.” The big question is what happens when I get two months of free evenings. Whenever I stop writing for a period of […]
Tag: academic training
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The Death of Procrastination
I have finally killed procrastination for good. Allow me to qualify this statement by adding some specificity. I have finally mastered a student’s enemy: schoolwork-related procrastination. I’m still quite the procrastinator when it comes to several other important life arenas (cleaning, you know who you are and i curse you), but I feel that as […]
It’s been an action packed week. It feels like I should have learned something. I don’t think I learned anything new, but I did reconnect with ye olde life lessons (nothing earth shattering but always humbling in constructive ways.) Monday: The endless battle. Nothing is good enough for my writing group. This is probably a […]
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Publish and Prison
I’ve had both excellent news and one devastating experience this week. Maybe this is the shape life is supposed to take: part dream, part nightmare. Anyway, the good news is easy, I heard another piece of mine will be published–three times published makes me feel legitimate. Three times sounds like a streak, like it wasn’t […]
I was sitting in a lecture last Thursday with the Dean of Penn’s School of Public Policy and Practice, and he was telling us about the US’s dismal record when it comes to child mortality due to abuse. The number of children dying from neglect and abuse has remained constant since the 1970s, despite the […]
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A Little Freedom Goes a Long Way
It’s spring break. What does my spring break look like, you wonder? Will I travel to Cancun and try to make out with college age peoples? Will there be moonlight skinny dipping? No. I work full time. This is grad school; my life isn’t some booze-fueled pleasure tour. This week I get two nights back, […]
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Ryan Gosling Cheer
I find it fascinating that professionals, okay mostly women, of all stripes are using the Ryan Gosling meme to remind themselves that the work they do is important, or what they’re learning is important, or that being a feminist is important. It’s great to see popular culture re-purposed for personal cheer rather than commercial goals. […]
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The Last Five Minutes
One of my greatest weaknesses is my chronic, professional grade, Impatience. It’s a family illness, I think. For me, the very hardest part of any journey is the last five minutes I have to spend on the plane, after we’ve landed and pulled up to the gate, while I wait for all the slow moving […]
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Refreshed!
A week’s worth of procrastination, it turns out, can have a blessed effect on my productivity. Witness my ability to crank out a paper in four 40 minute chunks over three days—that’s the direct result of serious resentment and goofing off last week. I gave myself time off–I thought it was just because I was […]
It’s getting to be that time when I get antsy at not writing anything more creative than student papers–student papers, as far as I can tell, require sourcing good information and then organizing and explaining that information coherently. It’s a skill set for sure, but it doesn’t give me a buzz. Okay, it does give […]
Last night I did some homework and I’ve never had such an intense, reflective, and enthusiastic response to academic reading. I’ve landed on a planet of like-minded thinkers. My very own secret society. My brain is being stretched in good ways, really hard and really fast. Emerging notions: 1) I magically happened upon the right […]