My college prides itself on the motto, “Find a need and endeavor to meet it.”  We all proudly embrace the notion that everyone deserves a college eduation, and we can provide it.  I’ve written many times about the obstacles to that optimistic view: about death&/… Read full post »

A week or so ago, while slurping watery soup from a styrofoam cup and taking a twenty-minute break from grading the fifty portfolios on my desk, I came across an article in the Washington Post titled “Do College Professors Work Hard Enough?” by David Levy. The author’s answer to tha… Read full post »

I know a seventeen-year-old boy who stays at his dad’s house sometimes.  He’s a good kid, but like all kids his age, he can be impulsive and a little stupid. He loves to play Xbox, he’s good to his siblings, and he loves his mother. His grades fluctuate -- sometimes a… Read full post »

I’m late to the conversation about Trayvon Martin. Or rather, I’m late committing to writing the conversation that’s been going on in my house and in the media and in my head for weeks. Last weekend, I read Leonard Pitts’ column to my husband at the breakfast table and choked/… Read full post »

I was four years old when I fell in love with Davy Jones.  He had been around for a few years by then (the Monkees were born the same year I was), but that’s when I discovered him.

Afternoons, while my sisters were at school, my mother played… Read full post »

I went to my first sit-in yesterday.  I had no idea when I headed off to campus that I’d spend part of my afternoon sitting crosslegged on the floor of the college library with my back to someone who was explaining to the assembled… Read full post »

My little rustbelt city has been hit hard by the recession.  When I started teaching community college in the early aughts, very few of my full-time students were over 25.  Now, there are displaced workers in every section of every class I teach.  Many of them haven’t set… Read full post »

February is always hard for me.  I don’t like the gloom, or the cold, or the grayness.  But usually, I’m able to surrender to it and tough it out. 

Maybe this particular February is even harder precisely because it doesn’t feel like… Read full post »

Reversal or no, I just keep getting more and more angry at the Susan G. Komen Foundation. 

I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with Pink October.  My sister was diagnosed in that month, and not an hour after receiving her phone call, while doing my grocery shopping and trying… Read full post »

Christmas is not a religious holiday for me; it’s a sentimental one.  Funny, then, that the only two items of holiday paraphernalia in my home that have anything other than decorative significance are an Angel for my tree, and a tiny, three-piece Nativity scene.

The angel was… Read full post »

Last week, a smart and funny 20 something blogger wrote a list of 15 Things White Girls Love to do on Facebook.  Herewith, an homage to her list, amended for the 40-something crowd:

Fifteen Things Middle-Aged Women Love to do on Facebook 

1.  Post lines from John Hughes movies or… Read full post »

I have been trying all morning not to write the rant that has been percolating in my head ever since yesterday afternoon.  That wasn’t the first time I’d heard of the Penn State tragedy (and it is one, by every definition) but that was when, for whatever reason, it crashed through… Read full post »

Pat Robertson actually said something that made sense this week.  He of the 9/11-was-God’s-punishment-against-a-city-populated-by-homosexuals-and-abortionists, he of the Haitians-got-what-they-deserved-for-making-a-pact-with-the-devil proclamations, actually admitted that a certain questio… Read full post »

It is a worn out story at my house: the one where I confess to the crying jag that occurred when my first child was three days old.  My husband came in the room and asked, “Are we happy?”

It was hard for him to know during those first few… Read full post »

My dad is a big, serious guy.  Or at least he was when I was growing up.  He worked for almost forty years at the same corporation.  I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he did at work, only that when the company said, “Go,” we went:  from the Midwest to the… Read full post »

It’s June 16^th.  If you were not an English major, are not a lover of all things Irish, or if you don’t listen to NPR, perhaps this date means nothing to you, but to lit nerds everywhere, it’s the day we celebrate James Joyce, his greatest novel, Ulysses, and the day/… Read full post »

Over the past several years, I’ve developed a small ritual during finals week at the  community college where I teach.  I go to the bookstore on Monday, the day the paper avalanche starts in earnest, and pick up my Josten’s packet -- black robe, mortarboard with tassel, and Mast… Read full post »

In the wake of the news about Osama bin Laden’s death, I found myself in a messy swamp of emotions.  As impressed as I was with the operation itself, from those who planned the mission to those who carried it out, I had no sense of euphoria.  I was puzzled by… Read full post »

I was an early adopter of social media.  Well, not really. But early for someone my age, which is a newly-minted, very solid and foreboding 45.  Halfway to ninety.  Firmly middle-aged.  A bonafide grownup.  Sort of.

Anyway, I was among the first of my contempora… Read full post »

This week marks the release of a book that is sure to be controversial.  “Professor X,” an adjunct instructor at two institutions (one of them with open enrollment), has parlayed his 2008 Atlantic article, “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” into a book-length exa/… Read full post »

Every time my writing is published, my husband asks me if I’m going to be paid for it.  I nearly always make some sort of snorting sound and say something defensive.  I tell him that’s not how it works, or point out that no one gets paid because the site in… Read full post »

When I started teaching college twelve years ago, I had very few avenues through which to communicate with my students outside of class.  As an adjunct instructor, I had no office or campus phone number.  I didn’t have a cell phone. I didn’t even have my own email address, and s… Read full post »

Last week, I wrote about the New York Times coverage of the brutal assault of an 11-year-old girl.  The reporter pointed out that the girl had been dressed provocatively and quoted several townspeople who were concerned about the perpetrators’ lives being ruined.  /… Read full post »