Category: News
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How It Works, I
My recent posts have been focused on issues of stress, mostly because I’ve seen the effects on my own life and worry about colleagues, students, and friends. Some of you have asked me to clarify how mindfulness works: what it actually does, how that happens, and what it looks like. With these great questions in…
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Stories of the Slow Professor
Last week, I attended my 10th consecutive conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL)–in many ways, the highlight of my academic year, as it feels very much like ‘going home.’ After five days, though, it’s good to be back in my real home, and I’m grateful for a Sunday…
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This Embodied PhD
Two weeks ago today, I had a lumpectomy, and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I’m writing a bonus post this week to celebrate–and to stake a faculty claim in the land of women and men with bodies and emotions and cells. I have a gnarly, three-inch incision in my right breast, but I…
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Playing with Others
I recently received an email that, in another time, would have tested me. It’s a genre familiar to all of us: several paragraphs registering a complaint, only some of which we have control over, written out of frustration and haste, and expressed in a way that (we think) we would never use in face-to-face communication.…
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Being Fully Present in the Classroom
A recent study on students’ laptop use in the classroom has brought a lot of attention to the issue of, well, attention in the classroom. As their title indicates, Sana, Weston, and Cepeda (2013) found that “Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers.” In a 45-minute lecture, half the students were…
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Reducing Stress
In recent weeks, I’ve talked with quite a few colleagues–faculty (full-time and part-time) and graduate students–who were nervous about teaching their first class, or their first class on this campus, the first session of a new course, or a new group of students. This concoction of stage fright, imposter syndrome, natural uncertainty about anything new,…
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The Easy Way & The Easier Way
I came to mindfulness only in recent years—first through a regular yoga practice and a handful of retreats, then through guided meditation, then through a mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) course and a few multi-day workshops, and now through a weekly mindfulness-teacher training group. It’s only slight hyperbole to say that these experiences have saved my life.…
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A Beginning
I’ve never been much of a blogger—I don’t even follow many blogs—but here I start a blog series. Why? Based on my constellation of experiences and what I’ve been learning more recently, I have something to say to my fellow PhDs and PhDs-in-training.* But more about my story next time. Not too long ago, I…
Nancy L. Chick 