I miss my mom. She passed away from complications of her multiple sclerosis in 2014. These feelings are epitomized in a current pop song by Luke Graham titled “You’re Not There,” when he sings: You’re not there To celebrate the man that you made You’re not there To share in my success and mistakes […]
Tag Archives: advice
Life Lessons from the Super Bowl
Football is the quintessential American entity with both simultaneous awful and awesome aspects. There little doubt that ticket prices are exorbitant, player salaries are not equitable, and injuries are potentially extreme; nevertheless, it provides some measure of unity across social, age, gender, and economic classes. The topic transcends the sport. When you have nothing to […]
American Friendship
In my position as a Community College instructor, I often read ESL college placement exams. A theme that I encounter again and again is how living in the USA is a lonely experience. People attend college for a variety of reasons, one of which is a simple desire for better communication. Even my degree-seeking students […]
Friend in Me
My grandpa seemed to embrace William Butler Yeats’ idea of not knowing strangers.He was friendly to all until his last days. This is my favorite picture of him and me, taken right before he passed away in 2015. Even before the terrible Alzheimer’s disease that ultimately took his mind, I remember he was always friendly […]
Telling Lies
People lie and they always have and they always will. Abraham Lincoln once said, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Given the current news for the past week and […]
The Idioms of Protest
In honor of the Women’s March, which occurred this weekend, I thought it would be appropriate this week to cover some of the incredible English idioms based around marching and protesting. Here are some that I found interesting and usable in current speaking and writing. March to the beat of a different drummer means […]
Right to Assemble
Today, I want to take a brief journey into one of the American freedoms we have based on the First Amendment – the right to assemble- and how that freedom has been and is continuing to be expressed in our country. Before we dive into the actuality of a protest, let’s look at and understand […]
Handling Crisis
Crisis – not a vocabulary word we truly want to understand, but one that can’t be escaped in life. Crisis is a word with a negative connotation. As I thought about this word today, It seemed to me to be a stand-alone word and I could not easily think of an adjective form of the […]
Spring Semester
School starts next week! I both love and hate the beginning of the new semester, how about you? On the one hand, I love the possibility of it all: the new students, the new curriculum, the new learning opportunities, the new relationships… it’s all so exciting! On the other hand, the first week is so […]
Ask Mrs. C – Class Petition Question
The semester is getting ready to begin in colleges across the country. In Southern California, students will be having difficulty getting their classes, and they will be petitioning to add classes during the first week of school. Consider the following question asked by more than one frustrated student the first week of school and my […]