It is, of course, old news that social media is no place for most serious discourse. Comment-section or reply fights are often vitriolic, intended to score points with allies who already agree rather than to actively listen to, understand, and counter other perspectives. Algorithms reward certainty, extreme positions, and provocation…
Can you believe that, at the end of the year, I actually thought I might get this posted within the first week of 2026? Ha ha ha! Nice try, optimism! It’s like you thought I wouldn’t be sick for a whole month during a busy semester start! Anyway, here are…
Better late than never, right? It’s been a heck of a fall–well, it always is, if you work in education and also celebrate the High Holidays. Without going into detail, my Fall semester is always more packed than my Winter semester. It’s finally slowed down now, so I can noodle…
Better late than never! This quarter has been a unique whirlwind, as I’ve been teaching summer-semester classes for the first time as well as working within structured writing development program. It’s been very productive and also new to me. Here are some smaller things that helped me stay happier day-to-day:…
(no pun intended) Every time I buy a new article of clothing, I tell myself that I’m finally filling a hole in my wardrobe, and now I won’t need to buy new clothes ever again. This is always a lie. Well, it’s not exactly a lie, because I honestly believe…
We’re already well into Q2, so I can say with the certainty of retrospect and the vividness of recency that everything on this list helped me get through Offspring’s first few months at daycare and my own first semester teaching a new-to-me-course. I’m hoping several will continue to help through…
My nuclear family doesn’t keep kosher. My sister and I didn’t grow up with separate dishes for milk and meat; eating only products with a hechsher on them; or observing the many other kosher laws. We didn’t usually mix milk and meat, and we avoided pork and pork products, but…
Totally squeaking in while these three months are still technically last quarter! Above all, said months were busy, but these little bits of fun and coolness helped make them less stressful. a New York Times digital subscription The New York Times offered first-time subscribers a full year for only $20,…
I started this blog overview of my thoughts before I’d finished Agatha All Along, the MCU miniseries that aired on Disney+ this past fall. More fool me! I should have seen it coming, because I felt the exact same way about WandaVision, the previous miniseries in this storyline. But I’m…
It turns out, returning to work after parental leave is a lot, and returning to a 130% full workload after… well, literally anything is a LOT. Don’t worry, I’m okay: it was just for one semester, which is winding down now. (Hence the return to blog-dom and wonderful things like…