Writing anything for me is difficult, because I have a really loud inner censor that screams, "That's shit!" a lot of the time as I write. That voice sometimes yells at every sentence. It even happens when I write for this blog. I've gotten better at ignoring that censor voice on here and in my creative writing. Now I wait until it's all out of me, and then I declare out loud that what I've written is shit. Some would argue that it's just as bad, but at least I'm letting the ideas flow.

Julia receives some late night visitors that have a little too much to say.

Last night I started teaching a new course at NYU, "Creating Ethnodrama: Theory & Practice." I've taught variations of this course under other titles in the past, but this new course represents an arrival of sorts. I've been working with interview data and field notes to create play scripts for over fifteen years now, and as I prepped the opening lecture for the course, I realized that it might be helpful for my students if I explained how I got there. Like literally what were the steps that lead me to this moment of standing in front of a room teaching a graduate course on this very specific style of work.

In the shadow of the protests last semester regarding campus climate issues, I've been thinking about ways that I could deepen my practice around inclusivity in my classrooms. For a number of years I've included an "Open Door Policy" statement on my syllabi, encouraging students to speak to me if issues come up in the classroom, particularly if those issues are the result of something that I've said or done.