My childhood was not a quiet one. Part of it was movement and conflict. For a brief time, my parents saw building and selling homes as a way to climb out of the lower-middle class, and so my childhood was full of hammering and saws and landscaping and grout, and…

I’ve spent the year traveling, all over the world and country, having wonderful conversations with colleagues about learning, design, computing. It’s been exhausting, riveting, restorative, and revealing. …

Since being promoted to Professor in 2020, and especially since coming out as trans, a significant part of my job has been mentoring faculty. Some junior, some senior, some in my own school, some in departments at my university, and many more outside my university. In any given month, I’m…

Since the age of 15, I was fascinated by consciousness. I read everything I could about it, from popular books summarizing science to non-fiction memoirs like Aldous Huxley’s the doors of perception. What struck me about the topic was how unexplainable it was: how could we feel existence so richly…

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and most of it is bad news, with climate change, loss of civil rights, increases in anti-trans violence, continued police killings. …

After a celebratory weekend of my daughter’s college graduation in San Diego, I went to Atlanta to listen, learn, and talk about equity in computing education. I went with trepidation — not of the meeting, but of Georgia. I don’t have any rational reason to be afraid. My violation of…

This is a stream of consciousness rant, impulsively posted with minimal editing. I’m sure it could be better, but I’m tired. It’s pride month. For a month that is supposed to be about affirmation and joy, at least in its modern incarnation, I’ve often found myself more in the mood…

One of the great privileges of academic life is travel. As someone who grew up relatively poor, I never imagined that I’d see so much of the world, as my family’s reach was wherever we could drive, and the once-in-a-childhood flight to a theme park. But since I started my…

This piece is a bit tongue in cheek. I’m serious about it, but also writing it with the recognition that there are much bigger challenges right now in trans rights than feet and shoes. So consider this a frustrated musing on mundanity of trans inequity and injustice. In an impulsive…