Note: Academic articles are great, but they’re often long and detailed. #articleremix lets us present shorter versions for a popular audience. This is a rewrite of my longer article on name changes; I’ll share others as I have time! Have you ever considered changing your name? And what would you choose? …
1. The Job Offer Before accepting a recent job offer, I asked friends and mentors how I should negotiate. “Go for everything,” Raya advised. “Relocation, housing, a bigger salary… maybe they’ll pay for utilities set-up fees? My library did.” “Don’t negotiate,” Jillian said. “Lean In said that women never…
Given these many ways of doing relationships, I want us to look at all paths: single life, community life, or partnership with another person. Given the Bible’s focus on not making hasty vows, I’d challenge my fellow western Christians not to pressure young people to make lifelong vows before they’re ready….
One path doesn’t work for everyone, as I wrote before. So people are starting to discuss just what an honest commitment means. The New I Do suggests that young couples–and even long-married folks–discuss their values and goals in a relationship, before making or reaffirming a commitment. In this model, you could choose: A “beta”…
So that path to becoming a monk or nun looks very different from America’s “relationship escalator.” You know, the one that moves smoothly from dating to relationship to engagement to marriage to children, in perfect happiness: Or as Jenna McCarthy puts it in her TED talk, two million American couples each…
Don’t have time to read right now? Consider downloading the PDF of this four-post series here. In college, I considered becoming a nun. I think I was drawn by the focus, the devotion to a way of life. I even took private vows for a year… thinking that if I stepped…
So John Oliver’s just come out with a Chrome extension called Drumpfinator, that changes all web mentions of Trump to his ancestral name, Drumpf: This is fantastic! But why stop there? There are so many other Chrome extensions to change your perspective! If you feel like the Internet (or the…
We’re more like the monkeys than we think. In one classic research experiment, Frans de Waal found that caged monkeys will give researchers rocks in exchange for tasty cucumbers. But when one guy gets paid a delicious grape, and the second gets cucumbers for the same work… well, he…
For hundreds of years, influence has circulated among affluent European folk, highly educated and living in cities. These guys formed our laws, built networks of influence, ran companies and nonprofits, and produce creative works that influence us today. And often, it’s hard for others to really be heard until people…
I get a lot of readers curious about Kazakhstan, and about working as a librarian abroad. In this post, I’ll share how I got abroad, moved up, and then transitioned back to my home country, the United States. This is one story, so be sure to check out the…