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When did you find your career? Did you know what you wanted to do from a young age or are you still trying to discover the answer to the perennial question of what to do with this life of ours? I spent all of college not knowing the answer to what came next. When I…

This past weekend, I spent three full days with a group of writers at a retreat. We wrote in the morning, had a class in the afternoon and a couple of author chats over lunch. It was great fun! As I drove home Monday thinking about this weekend and the newsletter, I began to wonder…

A few years ago, when I was still at UT Austin, I joined several campus deans for an interview over lunch. We were meeting with a candidate for the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This particular candidate was in an unusual position in that she also knew the person who had…

I’ve always been a fan of sports. I’m a great spectator though, not a participant. When my dad coached little league, I learned how to keep score with all the stats. I grew up watching OU (University of Oklahoma) football. In college, I could go to OU games, but, even better, I could attend world-class,…

The technical definition for the change of seasons is at the time of a solstice (when the sun appears to reach either it’s highest or lowest point in the sky) or an equinox (when the Sun crosses the earth’s equator appearing directly above the equator). So using those technical definitions it’s still summer in the…

Memorial Day weekend, Labor Day weekend – the bookends of summer. Recently I mentioned to a colleague that we started school after Labor Day when I was a kid in part because schools weren’t air conditioned. She was astonished. She was even more amazed when I told her we still had residence halls that didn’t…

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “comfort zones” lately. Last week, the OU College of Nursing had a two-day All College Retreat. There were sessions for faculty only and for staff only, as well as sessions that brought everyone together. In one of those sessions, I led the entire college through the Leadership Dance. There…

It’s May which means it’s graduation season. Since I’m back on campus, it also means I’ll be attending graduation ceremonies this week. Because we are a nursing college, we will also have pinning ceremony making a very full week to come. And a fun week filled with celebrations. Since I haven’t yet attended any of this…

Sunday was a lovely day  in Oklahoma City and I went for a walk that afternoon. It was a beautiful spring day, temperature in the 60′, sunny, fresh breeze, well, it’s Oklahoma so closer to wind than breeze but still a pleasant day to be out and to walk around the neighborhood. It reminded me yet again…

I’ve written about Walker Tower, the location of my first room as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. It was one of the three twelve-story towers OU built in the 1960s. A year or so ago, University leadership decided it was time to tear down this bit of my campus history and now all…