Live and Learn on Purpose.
A couple weeks ago I managed to successfully climb the hardest route I’ve ever completed without falling since I started rock climbing. It’s rated 5.11b, and I spent four different days over a two-month period practicing it before I finally succeeded. During that time, I […]
Couldn’t resist the song reference – Maurice is my middle name. It’s the start of the semester, which means I recently met several hundred new people. Every time, I face a challenge: a student will ask me what I prefer to be called and I […]
The first thing I can remember borrowing real money for (other than student loans) is a TV. I followed this with a brand new car, a furniture set, a vacation, and (my favorite) the moving bill to move all of that stuff across the country. […]
I found out that I was going to be a dad in February of 2016. In March, I attended the Building Future Faculty Workshop. In April, I lost my job after my postdoc funding evaporated. Needless to say, this was a chaotic time in my […]
It’s reference season. Job applications, grad school applications, scholarship applications… they all ask us to find someone respectable to vouch for us. I don’t know if I qualify as respectable, but I do receive a lot of requests for letters of recommendations. What’s it take […]
I’ve always resented resumes. The pressure feels enormous: how do I summarize who I am and the value I bring on the front of a piece of paper? There’s so much more to me. When I was in school, I also felt like I had […]
“Finally, he’s taking a dose of his own medicine.” If you’ve been following along for any period of time, you know I give a lot of advice about how to hunt for, apply to, and land a job that you love. The seeds for the […]
I’ve encountered a lot of people lately who deleted their social media accounts and are quite pleased with the result. They were tired of the negativity and the wasted time of getting sucked into the gripe-fest that was their news feeds, and so they made […]
The world of work has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Not very long ago, a college degree was a guarantee that you’d have a job. Those days are gone, and with this new employment uncertainty comes a second challenge that no one seems […]
I talk too much. That’s what I’ve learned these past few weeks. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, desperate to turn everything into a lecture. You talk too much too. How can I know that? Easy: listening is one of those things that you can […]
