One of my students recently shared something that perfectly demonstrates how our brains work. She’s taking a creative writing class that she absolutely loves. Before each class, she’ll spend hours editing her work and reading it repeatedly. She’ll...
It happened yet again this Spring morning. I was on a Zoom with a brilliant Ph.D. candidate. This is someone who manages a corporate department by day and writes about socio-economic shifts by night. She leaned into the camera like she was about to confess a serious...
I have 23 voice memos on my phone right now. Some are untranscribed, unlistened-to, slowly accumulating like particles of digital dust. There’s one from last October where I’m apparently making a to-do list while walking to the cafe down my street. Another...
I’d like to tell you I wrote this piece in one glorious sitting, fingers tip-tapping away, ideas cascading onto the page like energetic espresso shots. In reality, I wrote a few sentences, checked the weather in New York (no, I am not in NYC), made chai tea and...
As a Ph.D. student, are you concerned about your mental health? The journey of a dissertation can often feel astonishingly solitary, a terrain where the weight of stress, anxiety and daily worries can create a profound sense of isolation. The modern world carries its...
