The recent synagogue shooting has prompted me to be more open about my thoughts and feelings on being Jewish* in today’s America. We’re caught somewhere between whiteness and historical disenfranchisement, a simultaneous well-known and invisible minority. Read More
Category: Personal
Why graduate workers need a union, and why it matters to everyone else
Right now, my colleagues at Columbia are preparing for a strike in an attempt to pressure the university administration into bargaining with our union. Here’s why I support them and why you should too. Read More
Emotion and Food
All aspects of culture are slaves of fashion, and cooking and by extension our relationship to food is no exception.
Learning Motherhood
The day I left the hospital, holding my child made me physically ill. Read More
So it begins: An Unmoored Year
This morning marked a major success when I made it downstairs with both of my children by myself. This is going to be an interesting year. Read More
Money in grad school: budgeting, taxes, and the privilege of extras
Money is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when most people consider pursuing a graduate degree, and for good reason – this is a life built on financial uncertainty that is, for many people, prohibitively expensive to even enter. Read More
Thoughts on Raising Boys: Peter and Wendy
At the end of high school, I became really interested in JM Barrie’s classic story of Peter Pan. This made a lot of sense at the time – I was on the cusp of adulthood. But as I contemplate giving birth to two boys, I’m revisiting the story from a new perspective. Read More
Working Hard – On anxiety, laziness, and imposter syndrome
For me, one of the hardest aspects of pregnancy has been the conflict between not wanting/being able to do work, feeling obligated to work, and my impressions of other people’s expectations for my work. While this is a tension that reflects a perfect storm of being pregnant while also having a fairly work-intense job, the basic dynamic here is common to academia broadly. Read More
How much help is it reasonable to expect from your parents, and what makes someone “lucky” in that regard?
Over the past two years, I’ve been embarrassed to tell people where I live. Read More
What you need for pregnancy and what you don’t – goods and state of mind
Pregnancy, like any major life event, has a steep learning curve. You can’t really prepare, because you don’t know how things are going to be for you, but at the same time, you can learn about the range of things you can expect and know what resources are available once you run into trouble.
Robin Writes 