If you are a working parent, is your company family-friendly? Take a minute to think about what you think family-friendly really means--in your ideal world (we're not talking reality, here). You can make a list, as I make my students often do in class, whenever I want to challenge them to think about a topic. Some things I would put on my list would be:

1. Good affordable health care benefits for families (including dental and vision)
2. Flexible work time
3. Extended leave for pregnancy/illness
4. Ability to bring children to work on school breaks [more]

Setting: Me at the computer, Sunday afternoon. Scott is gone for the afternoon, taking care of some family business, and the kids are playing "Star Wars" in the family room--building intricate block structures for L.'s Star Wars action figures to inhabit. I'm attempting to seize a sliver of time to get some work done at the computer--desperate to do so because I don't want to spend my Sunday night working. L., who has spent the last twenty minutes delivering a monologue to T. on the ins and outs of the different clone troopers walks into the office.

"Hey Mama!"

"What?" [more]

It was HOT yesterday; 101 degrees hot. It was so hot that when I opened up my car door at 2:30 to head home after a long morning of back-to-school meetings and workshops I thought I would spontaneously combust.

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At one of the breaks during a workshop yesterday I overheard a new colleague talking with her boss. The boss had scheduled a meeting for later that day and the new colleague couldn't make it. She didn't provide a reason, but the boss kept probing.

"Is it an appointment? Can you reschedule?" [more]

On my way to my car yesterday, feeling grouchy and deflated, and after a full day of two long back-to-back meetings (I love my job, but I wish the powers-that-be would understand that a week of meetings and workshops right after a long and grueling semester is just not going to sit well with most people) I fell into step with an older woman headed to her car. I'd seen her around, and didn't know her, but she started talking with me anyway. She was headed out of state for a job, and to go to night school, after quitting her current job cold turkey and doing an about-face career change. [more]

I have learned to appreciate recently that one of the most sensible, truthful, meaningful bits of wisdom out there for me this semester is this: sometimes what doesn't break you will make you stronger. [more]