Category Archives: personal

Years ago I started playing Candy Crush. I still do play Candy Crush (I’m at level 9606) but at the start of sabbatical, I took up Yahtzee with Friends. The premise is something many of us are familiar with–I’m playing rounds of Yahtzee with strangers on the internet. In addition to regular Yahtzee games, thereContinue reading “The Allure of Sabbatical Yahtzee”

I’ll spare you the apologies for not posting since January — the spring semester, like most spring semesters, was a blur of personal and professional obligations. Since I knew I’d be on sabbatical for the 2022-2023 academic year, I allowed myself to schedule as many things as possible through August. I don’t intend to letContinue reading “Starting the School Year: Sabbatical Edition”

Hi Everyone! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it. I thought I came up for air, only to have the semester throw more things at me. I took the winter break off and now we’re back for the second day of the spring semester. My goal, as always, is to post more frequently. However, to startContinue reading “My Semester of Not Working Weekends”

Welcome back! The school year has started, so I’m resuming my weekly-ish blog posts. Looking forward to sharing lots of interesting things now that I’m tenured. Woot! Heads up–today’s post isn’t about my current life as a professor, but how I got started in higher education. Slightly different than my usual posts, but this isContinue reading “It’s Another Academic Year!”

The first time my mother suggested that I didn’t work in the summer because “you aren’t teaching a class,” I politely explained how academic life goes–that while no, I wasn’t teaching, I was still working, catching up on the various reviews and manuscripts and proposals that languish during the academic year. While I don’t ascribeContinue reading “The Proverbial Summer Break”

When I first started at Purdue in 2014, I was also training for my first marathon. This came up during a brief conversation with a colleague–I think he asked me how I was adjusting. Anyway, after I mentioned this, he looked at me somewhat sternly and said, “how do you have time as a newContinue reading “More Than Just Saying No: Why Academic Boundaries Matter”

On Friday, April 9, 2021 Purdue University awarded me tenure. I feel like tenure is one of those processes that is both very specific and also mysterious. There are reasons for this (like most things, I both agree and disagree with these reasons), but it still makes the experience of going through it challenging. SoContinue reading “The Tenure Timeline”

We made it to week 15! The second-to-last week of the semester. Any expectations I had for this term went out the window in August but I’m happy to say that I think everyone did the best they could. I moved one of my classes from in-person to remote, because it made sense for theContinue reading “The Penultimate Week of the Semester”