Academic institutions have a rigid hierarchy. The effects of that hierarchy are everywhere. Most of those effects are not good, so when I see them, I mutter to myself, Nothing like a pecking order to make you want to peck someone. I had always attributed this saying to David Rakoff, from his book Don’t Get […]

I learned about kindness rocks from Pinterest. The idea is simple: painted rocks with encouraging, inspirational, sweet, or just kind messages. I loved this idea. Our front yard includes some sections of rock garden. I smiled at the thought of the neighborhood kids discovering special, painted rocks among the drab, regular ones. I spent a […]

Dear Husband is in the doghouse. In uncharacteristic restraint, I am not going to share all the gory details here. This too shall pass, and I don’t need a transcript of it on the web. Nobody does. Why then, you may ask, bring it up at all? In the spirit of noticing silver linings, here […]

You may have seen this flyer making the rounds on social media: According to the BYU Math Department, the flyer design was not satire, but instead, well-intentioned outreach. No hard feelings, at least from me. I visit the Math Department on our campus often. The walls have lots of interesting attractions: flyers, posters describing research, […]

I was at a New Year’s party. It was catered and servers were passing trays. Everything was really yummy, including the coconut shrimp. The poor guy, though, who kept approaching people with his shrimp plate. After a time, he got a lot of polite refusals. As a parent and a person who works with young […]

From Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation, Three things that no one has ever said about me: You make it look so easy. You are very mysterious. You need to take yourself more seriously. In 2003, when I was at Duke, the school released a study about the experience of women at all levels of the […]

My mother-in-law once told me, “No is a complete sentence.” At the time, I mentally filed this pronouncement with other Al-Anon maxims like One Day at a Time, Easy Does It, and I Cannot Give What I Do Not Have. Hard to argue with the helpful vibe, but not clear how to change my behavior […]

I keep a journal. It’s a physical one, usually just a spiral notebook, that I scribble in with a pen. Most of the entries are snippets from books. The journal is where I collect ideas or turns of phrase that I want to revisit. I also sporadically use it to record details from my nighttime […]