by Jenae Cohn | Jul 19, 2014 | Personal
Last week, I sat cross-legged on the floor of my living room sorting through piles of old papers. It’s only when I begin a move to a new apartment that I go through this purging ritual. This time around, I had to exude an enormous amount of personal strength to...
by Jenae Cohn | Jul 7, 2014 | Pedagogy, Professionalization
Over the weekend, I saw the documentary, Ivory Tower, and was prepared to be completely depressed. Going in, I knew the documentary was about student loan debt; the trailer for the film revealed that the amount of student loan debt in the United States is now higher...
by Jenae Cohn | Jul 1, 2014 | Personal, Professionalization
The greatest treat in the world for me is getting up and working in my pajamas. To roll straight from bed to computer and dig into a project is a fantastic luxury for me and it is one of the prevailing parts of an academic (and I suppose freelance) lifestyle that...
by Jenae Cohn | Jun 29, 2014 | Literature, Personal
Perhaps one of the most common questions I get asked as an English grad student is, “So, do you still like to read? For fun?” When I tell people that yes, I promise that studying books and words has not soured them at all for me, they’re usually a...
by Jenae Cohn | Apr 1, 2014 | Personal, Professionalization
“You know, what you really want to do is create a personal brand,” the career counselor announced, a PowerPoint display glowing behind her with the image of a man in a suit shaking hands with a woman in power heels. I looked at the audience members around...
by Jenae Cohn | Feb 28, 2014 | Digital Literacy, Personal, Professionalization, Web Culture Musings
It’s no news that decision-making in academia is slow. Journals, conferences, edited collections, new haircuts – all of these things seem to take a while to happen in academic settings. So far, I’ve had the most experiences with waiting for...
by Jenae Cohn | Feb 22, 2014 | Pedagogy, Personal
Our instructor faced the class, arms crossed over his chest, stern face piercing us all into extraordinary guilt. Most of us had bombed the latest French quiz – a pop quiz, mind you – and he adopted that distinct teacherly Not Pleased tone....
by Jenae Cohn | Feb 18, 2014 | Digital Literacy, Pedagogy, Personal
When I take notes on books I’m reading, I’ve got comments and sub-comments. The comments are of the most mundane variety: I flag down quotes, make note of important moments, and process through key concepts. The typical stuff. The sub-comments, however,...
by Jenae Cohn | Jan 2, 2014 | Personal
I have a common New Year’s story for you. It starts with an evening of carnivalesque revelry, of glitter and alcohol, of photographs and finger foods. It ends with a chorus of declarations of hope for the New Year, of promises to do things better and to make the...
by Jenae Cohn | Dec 16, 2013 | Literature, Pedagogy, Personal
I’m a little self-conscious about the title of this post, mostly because I don’t intend to talk Ezra Pound or Modernism here and in fact, I find both the poet and the movement a little tiresome. This is for a number of reasons, primary of which is the...
