It’s been an exhausting two weeks away from my family, traveling for work. There have been many moments when I have questioned personal and professional choices, when I’ve been disappointed by people, and when I’ve wondered if I should just curl up for a long winter’s nap (I know it’s spring), do (and worry) less, […]
Tag: Purpose
Every New Beginning…
[Note: There’s an announcement in this post. I’ll bold it if this is tl/dr for you.] I quoted from Semisonic’s “Closing Time” as the title of a blog post at the end of my first semester as an Assistant Professor at CSULB. In that post, I talked about the challenges of mothering a 6-year old […]
Stillness, Happiness, Hope
It is a new year. For the first time in many years, in the first two weeks of this new year, I have been held, I have been hopeful, and I have been (relatively) still. I get stuff done. I am always running. I am often running from myself, from my fears. Sometimes, I am […]
Showing Up
I’ve been reflecting a lot this weekend on how I show up and who I show up for. I started rereading How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong, a book that was gifted to me during an earlier part of the pandemic by my dear Sister-Friend, Ruchi, and that I had […]
Uncharted Waters (Final Reflection Fall 2020)
Just over 10 months ago, I accepted a new position. Just over 9 months ago, the world, and with it the educational world that I had previously known, completely shifted. 6 months and 3 weeks ago, I started a new position. Just about 4 months ago, I began the fall semester, teaching courses I’ve never […]
Breathing
I am not okay, but I will be. First, I want to start off this post by thanking God, my family, and my many friends and colleagues who have expressed concerned about my well-being during this time, or have seen the signs of stress and overwhelm, overwork, and the unproductive patterns of people pleasing. You […]
You’ll Never Walk Alone
Dear graduating 2019 MA Cohort in the Linked Learning Curriculum & Instruction program (and friends), This morning as I woke up, I saw your many posts from commencement last night. I saw the joy of celebrating this momentous occasion with students, colleagues, friends and family. I saw the light of the culmination of a program […]
Doing the Work: Focusing on Thriving — A Post-#AERA19 Reflection
I just returned from Toronto and the 2019 meeting of the American Educational Research Association. AERA, for many years, was exhausting, in a way that constituted a seemingly endless search to figure out who I was. I would often reconnect with friends from graduate school or would connect with scholars whose work I admired, and […]
Peace in the Process
Last week, my son got a D- progress report that I received via e-mail with no warning. If you know me (and/or my son) in real life, you might imagine that this was an incredibly shocking moment for me. My son rarely gets a B in his academic classes and since the beginning of this […]
Striving Towards Imperfection
Tonight, at family dinner time, I posed this conundrum to my son and husband, “Since I used to work 12 hours a day, and now, I work, roughly 8 hours a day, and am trying to do better about work-life balance, it’s physically impossible to cram the same amount of work into that much less […]