Writing about your values has a significant impact on your actions and mental well-being. Living by what you truly care about won’t always be easy, but it can bring you more fulfillment and meaning. Pixabay/Pexels What do you genuinely care about? It’s a deceptively simple question, but one we often neglect answering for ourselves. As […]
I feel for my students when I hand them their first essay assignment. Many are mathematicians, students, and teachers who chose to study mathematics partly to avoid writing. But in my mathematics education courses, and the discipline more generally, academic writing is part of our routine practice. Mathematicians face some challenging stereotypes when it comes […]
The American poet Maggie Smith (born 1977) has become one of the most popular and most widely read contemporary poets, thanks to her poetry being shared on social media and elsewhere online. Her easy, conversational mode of address makes us feel as if we are being ushered into her confidence, but this colloquial style masks […]
Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash A California Towhee bounced across the deck, its brown feathers tufted like a baby chick’s, proud and naive-looking all at once. I sat very still, fingers poised on my keyboard, silently watching, not wanting to spook it away. I knew its name—towhee—because I had recently become obsessed with birds, […]
Soap School wasn’t its real name. It had no name, no accreditation. It didn’t award a degree. But it did hold out hope of a well remunerated career in the wonderful world of soap operas. And here’s the kicker—it didn’t cost a penny. In fact, it paid its student body of four to attend. That’s […]
The water changes from moment to moment. It is grey, it is ruffled, it is polished pewter or a mirror holding the sky and bouncing light in every direction. I am mesmerized as it furs with the lightest shower of rain, ripples beneath coots or bends under the weight of a swan. Moorhens bicker at […]
Cindy Sherman, the grande dame of the Pictures Generation, has a new show up at Hauser & Wirth’s recently opened space in SoHo—a collection of wacky, digitally collaged character studies, which continue her multipronged expedition into the outer realms of persona building, artifice, and the fun-house world of media images. The gallery bills it as […]
