This blog is a commitment to myself. An investment IN myself.

Right now I find myself in a funny liminal space. I’m a first year PhD student studying Higher Education, which means that about 95% of my life consists of reading, thinking, writing, and rewriting. I wake up in the morning, review my notes, go to class, try to stay on top on my reading, meet with my advisors (where they proceed to give me more reading!), and write memos/papers/grant materials. You’d think that the last thing that I’d want to do when I get home is write or read or think more, but…

I find that in the coursework section of doctoral studies there are a lot of thoughts floating around that don’t have an outlet. They don’t fit the papers we’re writing for class, align neatly with the work pursued by my advisor or research team, and aren’t fully formulated enough for formal outlets (plus… time and publishing ambition are both in short supply at the moment, if I’m honest!). So this blog is an effort to give my half-baked, random thoughts an outlet. In an ideal world, perhaps this is a space where I’ll workshop early thoughts that turn into something more significant down the road.

This will likely be an evolving space, but I’ve noticed that most of my ‘unsorted thoughts’ have to do with chewing on language– the ways that our discourse slips and slides in higher education. I find myself wanting to talk about word choices (and their coded histories and connotations) in policy, planning, and strategy documents, but have little outlet for those types of discussions.

We’ll see how this works!