Category Archives: personal

Flipping the Switch

personal, teaching 2022.11.07 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of child abuse, bullying, and death.] Even though my everyday behaviour definitely falls in line with what most people would probably refer to as introverted, I’ve never felt fully comfortable referring to myself as an introvert. When I think back to my earliest coherent memories, from when I was around four years old, I remember myself being kind of extroverted within the very small circle that my family kept, and as a very curious child, I was eager to go…

Want Not

mom, personal 2022.10.31 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

One of the more frustrating things I had to deal with in my final years living in Toledo was how Mom’s trash cans were taken from her at one point, and despite promises of them being replaced by the family member generally responsible for these things, that promise was never delivered upon, until I had to spend my own money buying new garbage cans (at a time when I was barely getting paid anything at all). On more than one occasion, Mom simply hauled sacks…

All Its Use

food, mom, personal 2022.10.24 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

When I went vegetarian in 1993, I understood that I would be responsible for cooking pretty much all my food after that point, since my parents rarely cooked a fully-vegetarian meal. I’d done some cooking before then, and I enjoyed it — I grew up watching PBS cooking shows on Saturday afternoons — but the routine of doing so much cooking was definitely more of a challenge than the infrequent meals I’d been cooking for myself up to that point. All these years later, I’m…

Break Glass

personal 2022.10.10 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

The house fire in 2001 occurred in the middle of the night, and even though it was May in Toledo, it was still relatively cold and rainy. After we got our cars pulled away from the house, we sheltered in our minivan while the fire department was putting out the blaze. One of my most vivid memories of that episode was a family member handing me a silver emergency blanket from the first-aid kit we had in the minivan. Even though I was shivering from…

Wiped Out

personal, teaching 2022.09.30 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of illness and death.] One of the near-constants of my teaching career is that I’ve been a last-second hire at pretty much every institution I’ve ever taught at. I’d like to think that this is because I keep myself flexible when it comes to this stuff, but I also recognize that it may just be that there are so many instructors who are better than I am, and I end up being a teacher-of-last-resort on the hiring front. If nothing…