alissa mc elreath In December of 2004 I was invited, by a senior tenured colleague at my department, to her annual holiday party. I had only taught one semester, and felt that my inclusion was a real sign that I was becoming somebody. My colleague good-naturedly penned the words “Bring your family!” at the bottom […]

angelica duran Before graduate school, my favorite machine was the washing machine. My family’s regular trips from California to the family ranch in Oaxaca, Mexico, no doubt helped me appreciate this common appliance, so gen­erally (and sadly) underappreciated in the United States. The novelty of lugging laundry to the nearest (but by no means nearby) […]

natalie kertes weaver On my way back to my office the other day, I ran into a colleague accom­panied by her son, a handsome, six-foot-tall high school senior. She smiled at me and said, “Mine was the size of yours just a blink ago.” “A blink?” I inquired. “One blink,” she nodded. I grinned in […]

rosemarie emanuele I awoke the first day of classes at my first academic job and realized that I didn’t know where I was. It took me a moment to get my bearings and call my parents, several states away, who told me that I was in Cleveland. Oh, yah. I forgot for a second. Silly […]

On Theater, Academia, and the Art of Failure anjalee deshpande nadkarni I had gone to the annual conference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education to present a paper entitled “The Maternal vs. the Pater­nal: Navigating the Divide in Rehearsal and in the Classroom.” The paper, which explored differences between male and female directorial […]

First Day of School amy hudock I walked down brick pathways to teach my first university class in over two years. I kept my eyes down, looking at each brick as I passed over it, trying to keep from crying. Their deep earth color reminded me of the blood that came with my daughter’s birth, […]

Confessions of a Late Bloomer aeron haynie She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. —Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818) Like Jane Austen’s Persuasion, my story is about waiting—and the disori­enting blessing of getting what I most desire when I’d given up […]

elrena evans You see, Dr. Jiggle, when you know God made you special It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks—you can just be yourself. —Veggie Tales The weather was unseasonably warm in Pennsylvania during the fall of 2004, the semester I finished course work for my PhD and gave birth to my firstborn. The summer […]

susan o’doherty On my first day of graduate school, the dean of the clinical psychology pro­gram assembled all of the new students in an airless basement classroom. “Look at the person on your left; now look to your right,” he instructed us. I felt my face go hot. I remembered this scene from The Paper […]

Jennifer eyre white When I was in elementary school, back in the mid-1970s, my parents gave me a handheld electronic game that was like Ping-Pong. A little LED “ball” would go back and forth across the screen, and you’d have to push one of three buttons on your side (depending on where the ball “hit”) […]