And then. . .

On Friday, I woke up to a set of text messages in my family's What's App chat about Anthony Bourdain. I quickly Googled his name and saw a flood of information about his death. I say death because I don't want to say suicide. If I say it, the many memories of all the shows I shared with him get watery before my eyes. The ballsy man from Jersey who I wanted to be when I grew up becomes human and frail and hurt.  The days following his death, I stayed away from social media as much as I could. My habit of scrolling through Instagram was a brief reminder, then I would shake my head and close the app. Brief glimpses showed me photo after photo of him with one of his many quotes and a caption about resting in peace.  I had the similar gross feeling of disdain that starts in the back of my throat after countless thoughts, prayers, and needs for God after a school shooting flood my social media. My stomach turned. I found something vulgar in all the shares and social media se...

Dear Seniors, Goodbye's have never been my strong suit. Usually, I only have students for a semester, so it's a weird, odd feeling to say goodbye and good luck to a group of students I spent most of my Saturday's with and met a year ago this summer. I wasn't sure what to do to celebrate the end. Cupcakes and snacks seemed cliche (and we only have 30 mins for our last class), so I thought about what I would want to know if I could go back and give advice to baby-face-me. Then, I remembered this song that came out when I graduated, and I remember thinking it was so profound! I looked it up as I'm writing this, and it is still pretty profound except now that I'm older I think, "Oh, yeah, that is totally true!" Each of you have twenty different people telling you what to do right now. I don't want to be twenty-one. This moment is probably going to be one of the biggest, scariest moments of your life, up until now. Note, I said up until now.  For...