Wood-floored hall of library (specifically Poets House in NYC) If I had known anything about teaching interviews, I would have bowed out. Or at least that’s what the talking head version of me, filled with hindsight, says from on high. I had aced the first interview, I thought. They were enamored with my writing […]
“I expressed to Rare Groove that, to me, music is like a beach. If you were to go to the beach and pick up as much sand as possible with your hands, that would be the most music knowledge and experience that any one person would ever have. Just as you can never pick up […]
My environmental science professor asks hardball questions. I finished presenting on environmental justice movements – thankfully slowed down from the double speed I had while practicing it – and was waiting for the silence to break with questions and comments. My professor started to ask about prioritizing a sewage pelletizing plant for the whole city […]
I talked a bit about appreciating my American identity while being abroad, but now that we are down to the very last wire, I wanted to share some of the other lessons that I’ve taken away from this trip. Here it goes: Flexibility with earnest effort will take you a long way. Even when I […]
Expectation is the enemy of humility. I don’t know if that’s a quote by anyone famous, but it’s something that I’ve put away in my mental filing cabinet for whenever I feel like I’ve failed at learning something. And trust me, on this trip, there have been many times when I’ve felt like I’ve failed. […]
Homemade burfi! It’s a sweet milk cake. Since I talked about fasting earlier, I thought I should talk about what I’ve actually been doing during this month – often, people assume that I’m not doing anything but feeling hungry/thirsty all the time! Instead, here are the most common things I’m doing each day. 1. Sleeping. […]
My English advisor often tells me that you’re only going to learn what you teach yourself – formalized lesson plans and reading lists are great and all, but if you’re not engaging with the material on your own, it won’t really stick. And I think that’s very important in relation to the articles I’ve written […]
I feel like magic and anxiety and annoyance and laughter. Yes, all at once.There’s a cluster of emotions falling in at the end of the year. The idea that maybe I should branch out and improve my life, the feeling that maybe I want to embrace something old… the classic feeling of frustration as teachers […]