On a recent, overbooked flight, me and the guy behind me—we were at the end of the boarding line—were upgraded to first class. We scurried to stow our carry-ons and buckle in. Buzzed from the unexpectedness of that random sprinkling of fortune, I sank into my leather-upholstered seat, stretched out my legs, and shut my eyes. When I heard the click of my...
Read More
It is a Wednesday night in early February. About 40 of us sit around tables in one of our conference rooms. We’ve gathered for the first of four meeting to help craft a university policy around AI use in academic work. As a writing professor, I’ve been awash in research, anecdotes, white papers, and jeremiads about AI and student writing. AI is a vast,...
Read More
Tears matted my hair to my face as I staggered out of the clammy bedsheets ripe with the sour smell of sickness. I lurched toward the bathroom for another round of diarrhea and vomiting; my intestines had been slam-dancing for five days. It was 1985—40 years ago–and I was alone in Pokhara, Nepal, a small town at the ankles of the Himalayas, the last...
Read More
During Covid, one of things I missed most was fleeting encounters with strangers. The cashier at the grocery store, the seatmate on a plane, the person behind me in a slow-moving line. More often than not, I am a person who talks with strangers. Often I prefer them to talking with people I know. With strangers, I can gauge and widen my understanding of how...
Read More
On a July day before my fifth grade school year began, Mom and Dad circled my three brothers, my sister and me. They told us we were moving to Indiantown, a one-stoplight village in rural South Florida. We’d be moving in a week to my grandfather’s cattle ranch, which was acres of palmetto scrub. We’d live in a doublewide trailer encircled by some scraggly...
Read More