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…
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…
[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…
One of the techniques I teach my students in nearly all of my classes is that when they take notes, whether in class or while doing work outside of class, they should try to put their notes in their own words as much as possible. The reason for this is simple: When you are able to paraphrase someone else’s ideas, that shows likely understanding of the ideas themselves. On the other hand, when your “understanding” is limited to repeating someone else’s phrasing (as best you…
[The following blog contains mentions of child abuse and bullying.] I bought my first Nintendo system (the original NES) when I was thirteen years old, around the time of my life when the abuse I was dealing with, both at home and at school, was near its peak. Really, for the first twenty-five years of my life, save my first all-too-brief stint at college, I was constantly being told by nearly all the people around me that I would always be a colossal fuck-up, and…