My mother taught me how to make my grandmother’s pie crust about 25 years ago. Over the years, I surpassed her skill level (humble brag), and I’m now the designated pie crust maker for the holidays. I enjoy making pie filling and the crust from scratch most of the time. However, in the spirit of…
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Featured image from: Kaboompics .com from Pexels While you don’t have to get paid for your writing to be a writer, it’s a particularly satisfying feeling to get paid for something you love to do. I have been a professional magazine freelance writer since 2005 when a local campus magazine, Boyd Street, paid me $50 for a…
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Hi there, new JMC 1013 students. As a college professor I believe part of my job is to acclimate you to the college scene. Yes, my first job is to teach you about media, and I’ll be doing plenty of that this semester. But, another lesson I’d like to impart is that professors are weird,…
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It’s an exciting day in my JMC 1013 class, Introduction to Mass Communication, at Gaylord College. Today, thanks in part to a digital initiative from the office of Nick Hathaway, OU’s Executive Vice President and Vice President of Administration and Finance, and with support from OU’s Center for Teaching Excellence, our first-semester media students will be wielding iPad…
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Have you ever heard that teachers make the worst students? I’ll admit, as a professor, when the tables turn and I become the student, I am not often the ideal pupil. However, I also have to say, what makes teachers bad students often makes them excellent teachers. Recently, July 19-23, I ran the Oklahoma Scholastic…
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Two years ago I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. My husband and I finally had a nice, big house, and I was excited. But I ended up kinda hating hostess status, so when my mom told me she missed having it at her house, I pretended to be noble about “giving” it back to…
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→ I’m a very cautious driver. As my sister lovingly puts it, I drive like someone’s grandma’s grandma. (But the joke is on her, because guess which one of us has never had a speeding ticket? That’s right, it’s Grandma.) I’m probably an equally cautious pedestrian, which makes sense to me seeing as how normally…
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Panic. I had made it through the awkward tap dance that is airport security. Laptop out, shoes off, jacket off, body scan, what’s that metal showing up on your head? Security guard pat down, oh it’s just a bunch of bobby pins holding up my messy travel topknot. Grab shoes, laptop and carry on, grip…
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It seems like more people are smiling on campus today than usual. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I don’t think so. I’d like to believe they are smiling about the SCOTUS decision yesterday that lifts the gay marriage ban in Oklahoma and four other states.
The first year I taught a college class as a full time university employee in 2005, I made a rigid, stern, bordering on mean syllabus full of classroom do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts). I thought I needed a harsh syllabus to assert my authority as a 20s-something professor. But, I didn’t want to come off…
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