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Few workplace experiences are as universally frustrating as being ghosted. Maybe it's the recruiter who seemed enthusiastic and then vanished (was that just a scam?). Maybe it's the prospective client who requested a proposal and never responded. Maybe it's the networking contact who insisted you "grab coffee sometime" and then never answered another message. When we're on the receiving end, it's tempting to interpret silence in a myriad of ways. They hated my work. I wasn't

I wanted to return to a topic I posted about recently on Linkedin. When I started my PhD, I was terrified to write emails. Not research papers. Emails. Every message felt too consequential, and I worried about sounding too informal, too deferential, too confident, or not confident enough. I would spend twenty minutes drafting what should have been a three-sentence reply. Over the years, I've heard many young PhDs and young professionals of all kinds report the same thing. If

When I was a freshman in college, I took part in a new study abroad program that took low-level French students and sent them to study in Québec, Rouen, and Dakar. It was an incredible opportunity and one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. But wow was that first day in France difficult. I arrived jet-lagged, more than a little nauseated, and overwhelmed by trying to keep up with a flurry of important conversations in a language I had not yet mastered. Sitting around th

There are certain moments in teaching where you realize students are not simply “learning material.” They are trying to figure out how to live in our current moment. I felt that acutely a few weeks ago while teaching Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” in an undergraduate close reading course. On paper, this should have been one of the hardest texts we encountered all quarter: fragmentary, allusive, dense with references, and written in a philosophical sty

When people talk about “clear communication,” they usually mean efficiency. We imagine clarity as speed, brevity, or the ability to deliver information without friction as if it were simply the shortest route from one point to another. But clarity, in its most meaningful form, is something deeper and far more human. Clarity is empathy made visible. It’s the willingness to meet someone where they are, to orient them gently, to make sure your words don’t just reach them but als

If you haven’t yet encountered Kathryn Harlan’s short-story collection, you absolutely need to order Fruiting Bodies for the next cozy, rainy weekend on your calendar. I stumbled onto this beautiful book about halfway through a long drive from Southern to Northern California. I was in the part of the trip where you can’t beat to listen to another song, but the silence stretches out like the long, flat road ahead. If you’ve made that drive, you know the feeling. Since I was b

Ding. Ding. Going Up. As an educator that often works with first-year students in a college or university setting, I have tried a lot of party tricks to get the conversation going on the first day of class. Breaking that ice is so important for having a term where students feel comfortable, connected, and engaged. I’ll be talking about my favorite activity that relies of shared experiences in another post, but today I wanted to advocate for the use of an elevator pitch in t

For years, my work has centered on how people move through space—how they make meaning as they travel, cross cultural borders, and find their place in the world. In my research, this meant tracing literary figures across maps and centuries to understand how stories create belonging when geography itself feels unstable. What I didn’t expect was that this fascination with movement and orientation would eventually guide my own path away from academia and toward a new profession