Wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be.

    Closing out another semester trying to figure out if this is what I need to be doing with my life, where I need to be doing it, how I need to be doing it.  In the the throes of my weekly existential crisis I remembered these tidbits of my career trajectory.  I'll tell [...]

Running Giveth and Running Taketh Away (Maybe)

Running gave me confidence I didn't know I lacked. My body changed internally and externally and I surprised myself by achieving things I had considered out of my league and moreover out of my reach. Then I had a disappointing race experience at the end of a phenomenal training season.  Which led to more disappointing [...]

Monthly Meter: April

fellowship/publication submissions: 1 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 0 books: 0 Secret Shame: I see Stupid all around me which could very well be arrogance. (Or maybe evidence I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time). Mantra of the Moment: 11 Seconds

What Students Really Need to Hear

Hell. And yes.

Chase Mielke's avatarAFFECTIVE LIVING

It’s 4 a.m.  I’ve struggled for the last hour to go to sleep.  But, I can’t.  Yet again, I am tossing and turning, unable to shut down my brain.  Why?  Because I am stressed about my students.  Really stressed.  I’m so stressed that I can only think to write down what I really want to say — the real truth I’ve been needing to say — and vow to myself that I will let my students hear what I really think tomorrow.

This is what students really need to hear:

First, you need to know right now that I care about you. In fact, I care about you more than you may care about yourself.  And I care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about you as a person. And, because I care, I need to be honest with you. Do I have permission to be…

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Good Girls

(About Breathing Lesson 101) I was 25 the first time I fully understood. I was navigating the tenuous journey of the Good Girl. At the time I was being courted by an older man who decided out loud and before our first real date that I was a sexual outlier—an adult virgin. The encounter was [...]

Monthly Meter: March

fellowship/publication submissions: 1 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 3 books: Home - Toni Morrison Secret Shame: I surrender all. Mantra of the Moment: Know when to hold/know when to fold/know when to walk away/know when to run.

Because, and all the other reasons

I don't like titles.  On me, they feel accusatory and restrictive; they never seem to fit or they're itchy; they're always a little uncomfortable. I eat a plant-based diet.  I'm vegan.  This will be a revelation for some of you especially after the Mike and Ikes episode the other day.  It is an unwieldy title [...]

Guilty: Interrogating Cultural Appropriation

I've studied North African/Egyptian dance (also called belly dance) and West African dance since 2007. I've felt uncomfortable in my body sometimes--a lot of times--and sometimes unsure of what I was undertaking in what I call(ed) the study. When I read this article, I understood my uncertainty.  Randa Jarrar writes: Women I have confronted about [...]

The Boss of This Body

Dear Womb, You've noticed: three close friends are becoming parents for their second times. How can I tell?  Because lately You, characteristically quiet and cooperative, have turned (in Your own still fairly quiet way), rebellious. For someone who has claimed and wielded ownership over this body since I took Puberty to task for its lies [...]

My Modeling Gigs

On today in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway.  Huge fan of the play that I am, I've been thinking in its monologues all day: "My what this new world has wrought," I thought as I was sorting some digital photo files, especially the second one (in light of [...]