We have mass shootings in America all the time. But it hits and hurts differently, intensely, when your hometown is the one that has become a hashtag, and one of your identities, a target again. I am coping by having a coffee with milk and sugar and fake whipped cream.

In February 2020, I wrote a post titled “PhD, Semester 4: An Inventory of Exhaustion.” It was a very long post about being tired. I guess I needed to think and write through this exhaustion, make sense of why I was so drained. Today, in May 2022, I’ve just wrapped

At one point, I decided not to write an advice post on quals. People seemed to have wildly different experiences. I didn’t think I could present my experience as typical; does a “typical” quals experience even exist? I’d also received advice that just didn’t work for me; maybe my advice

In my last post, I wrote about my day-to-day experience taking the qualifying exam (“quals”) in September. As I worked through that blog post, my narrative got mixed up with commentary, recommendations, and half-hearted attempts at advice. Instead of doing a poor job of cramming everything into one post, I

I took my qualifying exams (“quals” for short) September 13-15, 2021. Then for the rest of September, I tried unsuccessfully to write about the experience. It took me four attempts – four separate word documents of brainstorming, notes, and partial drafts – to accept that I needed distance from the

“It’s terrible but I’m not surprised.” It’s been over a week since the Atlanta shooting and I’m suddenly feeling averse to statements about surprise. If I hear one more person describe a horrific event as “not surprising,” I think I may explode. I’m guilty of repeating the “no surprise” line