Sabbatical blogger?
In about two weeks, my sabbatical starts. If you don’t hang out with professors this concept is likely completely bananas to you. Even if you do hang out with us it’s still kind of nuts. Every seven years I can take one semester (full pay) or a whole year off (1/2 pay and impossible to do with SD mortgages) from teaching to do something. That something is pretty loosey-goosey. Some professors move abroad, others create new courses or work on a time-consuming project. I got pregnant on my first sabbatical so it was productive (because I made a human) but not in an academic sense (because I felt like trash most of the time). This time I am going to write (and absolutely not get pregnant).
Unfortunately, graduate school only trained me how to do one kind of writing- the kind that leads to publications in academic journals. Have you ever read an academic journal article? No? Well let me remedy that! Here is a link to my latest peer-reviewed academic article. I’ll wait…
On a scale from 1-10 how dry would you rate the content of that article? Over a 7? Wrong! That’s a pretty sexy little article. We* threw in some current events, brought up Chick-fil-A’s political leanings (#bigotchicken), and explained where companies can go wrong with their corporate social responsibility efforts. That is all very exciting in academic terms but that’s not what I want to write.
I want to write funny, snarky things that people like and that are useful. I want to write the kind of stuff that makes you accidentally snort and then have to pretend it was a sneeze so you don’t look bonkers in public. I want to write the kind of stuff that women take a screenshot of and text to their friends because they find it so relevant. Only problem is that I am not entirely sure how to do that kind of writing. So I’m going start here and see what happens.
*please note my co-authors Ed and Tej are amazing scholars and delightful gentlemen to boot! They put up with my shenanigans and allow me to make asinine comments in our shared docs and I appreciate that.