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Since my last post, life has changed in ways I never imagined: a divorce, a move from Indiana to California, and the start of an entirely new rhythm. I’m still drawing every day, but my focus has widened. I write, I cook, I apply for jobs, I manage household logistics. The life I imagined during my sabbatical—long, uninterrupted studio days—has given way to something messier and, in its own way, more honest.   2025 Mini #6, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperMornings usually start with writing. I work on essays for my two ongoing blogs: Aspie Art Journey, where I write about life as an artist with Asperger’s and how that lens shapes my perspective on the world; and Dating App Diaries, which chronicles the equally unpredictable world of human connection. Both projects grew out of the same instinct that drives my drawings: to observe closely, reflect honestly, and keep creating even when life doesn’t line up neatly.When the writing slows, I move on to practical things—job applications, phone calls, the endless details of caregiving, and keeping a household running. It’s not glamorous, but it’s part of the work. I’ve started to see these moments—cooking for my parents, cleaning, organizing supplies—as an extension of art-making. They’re grounded, rhythmic, physical. The same kind of attention that steadies my line work can also steady the rest of my life.   2025 Mini #13, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperLate afternoons are for drawing, even if only for an hour or so. My large-format days are on hold for now; most of my recent work consists of small 2½ × 3½-inch ink drawings. The pens I used for years finally clogged, so I’m experimenting with new colors and tools. I enjoy the challenge of small-scale pieces—they require precision and focus without the demands of long hours. They also fit perfectly with a new project I’m planning: a Patreon that will feature these drawings as part of a monthly subscription. Alongside them, I’m sketching designs for a new 4×6 linocut print series. Both ideas bring me back to the tactile side of creativity—the ink, the carving, the test prints, the final prints, and the repetition of making something by hand.   2025 Mini #18, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperEvenings are when I reconnect with the spirit behind all this: podcasts about functional medicine, the intersections of Buddhist meditation and neuropsychology, or Spanish language lessons. I also read, yet rarely finish a single book before starting others. Sometimes I draw to music; sometimes I just look at what I made that day and think about how it fits into the larger story of my life. That’s when my mind drifts to Lines on the Spectrum, my illustrated memoir, or to the online course I’m developing, “Art as Spiritual Practice.” The course explores the same process I go through daily: using creativity to stay present, grounded, and aware. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels a pull toward new, transformative experiences, even if they’ve never called themselves creative.   2025 Mini #23, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paperAnyone can become more creative despite the oft-repeated refrain, “I’m not an artist; I have no talent.” The course combines practical exercises with a rigorous examination of terms such as artist and spiritual, a concept that is hotly debated among scholars of religion. The course is a hybrid, combining experiential and reflective elements. Participants practice art-making to encounter transformation firsthand, while also engaging the critical study of language, meaning, and presence.I now see that what I loved most about teaching—the chance to help others notice, pause, and see differently—still guides my days. I just do it now with ink, words, and color instead of “lectures” and syllabi. Art remains my way of thinking about meaning and presence, except now I practice it one small act of attention at a time, line by line, word by word.

Part 1: “Hate”I came into academia sideways. At a slant, you might say. After seminary, I worked in multicultural student affairs at a small, private liberal arts college by day and attended classes in an educational leadership, research, and policy PhD program for working professionals by night. After earning my degree, I served my church denomination as a researcher and was happy in that role, but the constant travel was taking a toll on my health.I longed to find a vocational path that could ground me within a particular community, a place where I might have a day-to-day impact on others and vice versa. I also knew I didn’t want to pastor a church (I never did) but desired to continue engaging in relevant research for the church and community. This is when I saw a job announcement for an administrative faculty position at my alma mater to direct the school’s internship program and decided to apply.Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I quickly realized that “one of these things is not like the other.” My daily activities of running an internship program, overseeing adjunct faculty teaching seminar courses, and planning trainings for intern supervisors and students was quite different from the daily labors of my faculty colleagues. Sure, I taught half the credits that a tenure-track colleague taught, but this was far eclipsed by the kind of work that I and my staff—yes, I also have the responsibility of hiring and supervising staff—faced regularly. Think student affairs/academic dean type of work, with less responsibility but more external accountabilities.My first year was especially difficult. I was asked to conduct a review of the program’s curriculum and the department as a whole, and there was staff turnover during that time. While much of it was not unlike the administrative and supervisory work I had done for the denomination, it was a very different rhythm and workload from that of my peers.Because I came into academia at a slant—from the church, and with a non-religious doctorate from a non-ranked state school—I felt honored that the faculty had chosen me to join their exclusive club. I still feel honored. As a Latina and first-generation college graduate from a poor, rural background, working at a graduate theological school was beyond my wildest childhood dreams. Many of the faculty had been my seminary professors more than twenty years before. They, along with the administration, saw my gifts as a teacher and researcher and nurtured those gifts through various avenues of support and camaraderie. They are now truly my colleagues.Eight years into the life of a teacher-administrator, however, I am feeling the wear and tear of administrative work on my body and my spirit. Having earned a sabbatical (for which I am very, very grateful), I have tasted the sweet nectar of being only a teacher—someone who maintains a certain amount of autonomy over their own schedules for course planning, research, and travel. They are not beholden to staff or adjunct faculty supervisees, leaders in churches and nonprofits, or even students in the same ways. Even though there are committee and guild responsibilities for full-time teaching and research faculty (I have those too), there is more space to read, to think, to write. I realized early on that if I wanted to pursue a research and writing agenda, I needed to adopt a bivocational mentality as a teacher-administrator. Unfortunately, what this has led to is possessing two full-time jobs. Sabbatical affords me the luxury of holding just one full-time position, committing with gusto to research and writing. Adding the teaching of one or two classes and a few monthly meetings to that schedule seems pretty manageable compared to the pace at which I had been running. (I know boundaries are important, and so on; but I needed to produce scholarship at an accelerated pace in order to even be considered for tenure, which is a story for another time.)I don’t really have a “hate” relationship with the role of teacher-administrator because I do not ascribe to the action itself. But with each passing year, I find myself wanting to live more fully in one world or the other. Having now established myself as a scholar in the field, I want to explore further where my research and academic pursuits might lead. Institutions are demanding more from all of us these days, so many are feeling the tensions of the teacher-administrator conundrum in this era of scarcity and rapid change. These pulls often remain unacknowledged in academia, but if we begin to talk more openly about them, we might be able to imagine more sustainable paths forward (and more equitable compensation models).I came into academia sideways. At a slant, you might say. I still feel honored to be here. Might I dare to want more?

A few weeks ago, I stood in a sea of people at a Devo and B-52’s concert, feeling like I’d been transported back to the 1980s. I could see the waves of color from the stage lights, neon, and pulsing. It struck me that this, too, was a kind of art practice—a reminder that movement, rhythm, and attention are inseparable. Sometimes I meditate, and sometimes I find music has similar effects. The musical energy that others might find chaotic calms me. What some might label “angry” or “loud” music—whatever that means—has always soothed my Aspie brain. No, I’m not suggesting that Devo or the B-52’s fit those categories. 025 Mini #7, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That concert reminded me how fully the sensory world animates everything I do. The driving beat, the lights, the crowd—it all felt like a visual composition in motion. When I draw, I’m doing something similar: tracing the rhythm of sound and motion until the lines on the page start to breathe. There’s no boundary between listening, seeing, and creating. Presence isn’t achieved by blocking out the world, but by stepping fully into it.This, for me, is the foundation of Art as Spiritual Practice. It isn’t about ritual, belief, or meditation in the conventional sense. It’s about attention—fierce, sustained attention—to the moment as it unfolds through color, sound, line, and touch. Making art slows perception. It opens a space between thought and movement where something larger than language happens.  2025 Mini #11, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper I don’t pretend to know what to call that something. Some might call it spiritual, while others might use the language of psychology, neurobiology, philosophy, or anthropology. To me, those vantage points all circle the same experience: the shift from distraction to presence, from noise to stillness. It doesn’t matter whether the source is a rock concert, a blank sheet of paper, or a kitchen sink filled with dishes. Each offers a chance to inhabit awareness more fully.The term “spiritual” itself is hotly contested—too elastic for some, too personal for others. Scholars of religion debate whether its very malleability renders it useless for any serious analysis. I tend to think of it as a working placeholder, a word that gestures toward the transformative quality of human experience when we’re paying close attention. Yes, this is among the varied and problematic definitions of spirituality, and I’m fine with that. I’ve moved toward immersing myself in the experience of art-making and away from debates over how to classify these experiences. Of course, that’s a perk of “retirement,” I suppose. I no longer need to engage in those debates, important though they may be.  2025 Mini #8, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper That’s the spirit behind my forthcoming course, also called Art as Spiritual Practice. It’s designed primarily for non-artists, hobbyists, and anyone who feels the urge to express themselves creatively but doesn’t know where to start. You don’t need to identify as “spiritual,” and you certainly don’t need to believe in anything otherworldly. You just need curiosity—and a willingness to stay with your own process long enough to notice what shifts.Alongside the course, I’m also beginning to share my own sketchbook practice more publicly. The series of small 2½ × 3½-in. ink drawings I’ve been making—each one a study in rhythm, attention, and constraint—will soon appear in a monthly format for those who want to follow the work as it unfolds. 2025 Mini #12, 2.5 x 3.5 in., ink on paper The course mixes practical exercises with reflection. We’ll explore how a daily sketchbook habit can become a form of grounding, how color and rhythm shape mood, and how repetition itself—the steady return to the page—creates meaning over time. Participants will also wrestle with questions that don’t have easy answers: What does it mean to call something spiritual? Who gets to decide who is or is not an artist? What happens when we replace the pursuit of perfection with the practice of presence?In that sense, the course isn’t just about making art; it’s about re-learning how to be with ourselves. Each drawing, each attempt, becomes a mirror for how we approach uncertainty, judgment, and even joy. There’s a moment—whether I’m drawing, cooking, or listening to Devo—when the line between effort and ease dissolves. That’s where transformation begins.I’ve spent much of my life teaching students to look closely, to question assumptions, to sit with ambiguity. I’m still doing that, but now the classroom is my desk, the lesson plan is a page of ink lines, and the students are anyone willing to pick up a pen and see what happens.Presence, not product, is the point. Art becomes the way we practice paying attention. And when we do, even the loudest music becomes a form of stillness.

I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog series that all the most important things I learned about teaching I learned while working as a wilderness guide at a children’s camp in the Adirondack Mountains during seminary and grad school. This is one of the reasons teaching outside makes so much sense to me. It’s why I expend so much effort trying to create immersive outdoor classes. It’s the form of teaching I know best: teaching as guiding.We all have images of ourselves as teachers. I’ve heard colleagues talk about teaching as midwifery, coaching, even zookeeping (a middle school teacher friend). Guiding is a common image, of course, but my personal guiding experience influences how I think of my work: be infinitely flexible, handle challenging questions, inspire students to greater curiosity, provide boundaries for safety both physical and metaphorical, read a group, shape group dynamics, facilitate conversation, empower students to learn for themselves, love even the unlikeable students, and, perhaps most important of all, when it rains, let it, then go out and remember your baptism.This is what teaching outside has done for me. It has not just provided space for a good class session but shaped the very way I imagine myself as a teacher. Teaching outside is wilder, less tamed, less regimented and institutionally rule-bound than teaching in the classroom, at least to me. I hope to be a wilder, less predictable teacher. Not in the way that makes students anxious because they can’t figure out what’s being expected of them at any given moment or because they’ve never been given a syllabus (I have very detailed syllabi and provide much structure to curb anxiety), but in a “you can’t shock me” way. Just last week, on the second day of the semester, when I asked an undergraduate gen ed class “What do you think the Bible is?” a student looked at me a little sideways, testing, and said, “A book of ancient ideologies created to support the patriarchy.” I smiled wide and said, “Yes! Let’s talk about that!” And though the rest of the class wasn’t quite sure what to do or whether I was Christian enough to be teaching a Bible class, this one firecracker of a student found her place in a real conversation – encouraged and challenged both – because I received her in a way she wasn’t expecting. Then she really got to learn.Playfulness and saying yes as often as I can is part of my identity as outdoor-teacher-guide too. When students ask, “Can we have class outside?” thinking that they will be told no because their other teachers say no, I say, “Yes!” When a student asks if they can make a video for the in-class project instead of drawing on the board, I say, “I can’t wait to see it!” Students sometimes ask for things they feel are breaking the rules, or try to get away with something, but when I can say yes, they find they have some agency and can participate in their own learning. In fact, though I don’t often point it out to them lest it make them less willing, their participation makes them learn better and more deeply.Guiding and teaching outdoors has also made me curious. I once marveled at a pool of mud on a mountaintop in the pouring rain with a friend when we discovered that the mud shimmered and became different shades of yellow depending on where we stood. I hope my students develop that kind of curiosity – and find that kind of friend – for themselves. My posture of wonder and curiosity in the classroom ought to demonstrate for them: “Why do you think that?” “What kind of bug is that?” “Tell me more about your perspective.” “How could we solve this?” “What else could that mean?” Many of my former campers are now grown up. Not only have they served as wilderness guides themselves, but they have gone on to get “real” jobs. A few still write letters, and I love to hear from them. I love hearing how they are becoming fully themselves and leaders in their communities: wild, playful, curious people who get to form others. It’s a delight to learn that I am no longer needed. It is a deeper delight still that they allow me to glimpse their triumphs. They still sign their letters, “Your camper, Tim.” I still sign my letters, “Always your guide, Aunt Samantha.” Tim has suggested that I cover the name plate on my office door with a sign that reads, “Dr. Aunt Samantha.” Perhaps I should take this under consideration. It is who I most am. What environments have shaped your image of yourself as a teacher? What outside-the-classroom work has given you aspects of yourself that transfer into your posture as a teacher? What should your office door read?

What they don’t tell you about writing while parenting a toddler … is anything. Radio silence. It never came up in graduate school. All the books told me to schedule writing and be disciplined. But what is discipline to my craft when caring first for my child, a growing, ever-evolving bundle of joy, creativity, and imagination?Write when he naps … What are naps to a 2-and-a-half-year-old? Write when he’s with the nanny or in school or at childcare … I am nanny. I am school. I am childcare. And at my choice. I want every minute of this wonderful life.What they don’t tell you is that writing while parenting a toddler will seem impossible to those who have never had to do it, or to those who did it under very different circumstances.What they didn’t tell me was that writing would come in sputters and scraps—notes scribbled on paper with crayon drawings of cars and trucks on the other side; voice memos recorded at the park, creaks from the swing and melodies of laughter as its soundtrack; random audio recordings during car rides on my commute to campus twice a month, stream of consciousness replacing satellite radio.They didn’t tell me that the creativity and imagination bursting from this little boy would awaken in me a fresh imagination to build new ideas like LEGO and shape and reshape recurring thoughts like the Play-Doh sent to us too soon for Miles to play with it. Keep it around long enough, my mom said, and he will grow into it.They didn’t tell me that when this little human inspires me, I will actually want to write. I will learn that I have things to say, things this human I am raising is giving me the confidence and courage to conjecture. What can I say that you would want to hear one day? What do you need to know that I can put on paper? If you see me writing, will you love words and ideas, too? Can we write together one day?What they didn’t tell me about writing while parenting a toddler is that this toddler will not always be a toddler. There are ideas and powers special to youthfulness that must be lived into while they are happening. So, let me tell you, in case no one has: Write the scraps. Record the memos. Watch them grow and allow yourself to grow into them in due time. Stay tuned.

What they don’t tell you about learned, trauma-induced suspicion is that it is a force. It acts all-powerful, is dynamic. It cannot be shut off. It has no valve. It feels quite eternal, quite useful, deeply harmful, and is the most intriguing companion you will ever have. It helps; it harms. It is a tool of wisdom and an ingredient of destruction.And it lives with you—or dare I say, comes from you. It is not sibling or lover; it is child—part of you yet distinct from you, something for which you are responsible to show love, to teach care, to help guide it into its maturity. But you cannot control it or rid yourself of it; it is always a part of you.So, you learn it.And have patience. And decide that since you both are connected on levels and planes you may not see, you have to build relationship with it—create sites of health and progress and adaptation. This is not resignation or lack of strength; this is clarity and vision—and perhaps a glimpse into genealogical secrets.You are likely not the first of your people to wrestle with suspicion’s place (I, at least, don’t think of them as tricksters in any way).But you can be the first to craft a new relation, an honest partnership.What can suspicion teach you—what has it been trying to instill in your heart? How has it sharpened your spirit? Have you even realized it has granted you more eyes?The impulse is to call suspicion an enemy. It is age-old to lean into fear. But suspicion absorbs what you place on it. Fear is not helpful here. Attention is.What is it showing you about yourself? And are you ready to understand?You are a galaxy of unknowns—are you ready to know something buried in your atoms, to become a scientist of yourself?

In 2018, I participated in an AAR session on self-disclosure in the classroom. I recall having a heated debate with some colleagues about whether we should reveal elements of our personal lives to students—especially the struggles or darker experiences we might have had—to help students connect their contexts and personal experiences with the material we teach, which are key components of Ignatian pedagogy. I recognize that self-disclosure for the sake of personal promotion is not a good thing. But what about self-revelation that might connect meaningfully with the subject matter or with students’ own experiences? As Parker Palmer writes: “many young people today journey in the darkness as the young always have, and we elders do them a disservice when we withhold the shadowy parts of our lives” (Let Your Life Speak, 18).Several years ago, some colleagues and I engaged in a writing retreat where we explored our vocational calling as teachers, which eventually became a book of essays entitled Why We Do What We Do (2014). The focus of that retreat was to explore whether there was a moment, an event, or an experience that not only led us to pursue college teaching as a vocation, but also shaped the path of our teaching.My own story relayed how my Irish twin brother’s suicide at Christmas affected my faith in God, leaving me wondering where God was in a time of tragedy. It was my theology professor’s willingness to share his own tearful reflections on the meaning of the words of Jesus on the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”—that challenged me. He highlighted the notion that the good news of the cross and Resurrection was not that God protects us from harm, but instead is present with us as we create new possibilities out of tragedy. While other students complained he was dismissing their conservative theological beliefs, here is what I wrote:“I responded with tears of my own, not because his words made me sad but because he was the first to speak directly to my experience and to what I was feeling and thinking. The tragedy of my brother’s death was senseless. We never found out why he did it; we could only surmise. But his suicide brought my family together, really together, for the first time in years. Bobby’s death confronted us with the reality of how much we were strangers to one another and how little we knew about each other’s lives. His death rekindled our sense of what it meant to be a family and the love we felt for one another—a love that continues to this day. This was the meaning we were creating together. Was God a part of that? I didn’t know, but it made more sense about God’s role in our lives than anything else… It was then that I knew what my life wanted me to do—to teach, to express the same passion for the ideas, for the people who generate them, and for the students who encounter them.”The text we wrote together became the common reading for the required first-year seminar the following fall. My colleagues sent me notes about how much the students who read my essay resonated with my experiences of loss and grief, of faith and doubt. It gave them a chance to voice their own questions, to see that their struggles—emerging from their contexts and experiences—were not unique. And it opened the door for them to connect meaningfully with the faculty who were teaching them.One of my colleagues wrote:“I just finished reading a stack of journals from my two COR100 sections, in which we read the Why We Docollection. I wanted to let you know that your essay moved a number of my students. I'd say at least a dozen wrote about your piece. Sadly, at this young age, many have already experienced personal tragedies, and your essay really spoke to them. They were stunned by how honest it was, and they felt comforted that some faculty could relate to their experiences (or, in their words, are ‘real people too’). I hope that some of these students will find their way to you someday to ask their own questions. Until then, it's good for them to know that you're here. Thanks for writing the essay you wrote.”Over the years, some of the students did find their way into my classroom. One student wrote:“For some happenstance I found Why We Do What We Do on my shelf tonight and decided to read a few of the essays in there. I found yours and I want to thank you for writing your piece, it brought me to tears. One of the reasons being is that I have been questioning as well for a long time, and I haven't been able to express it to anyone. Your writing made me feel like I wasn't alone in questioning and there's a certain comfort in that.”Another student, who had recently lost her estranged father to a heroin overdose after years of drug addiction, wrote:“The reason I'm telling you all this is because I can barely put in words how much your story impacted me the first, second, and 30th time I've read it. You put into words exactly the struggles I'd been feeling towards my faith, my father's choices, and the pain I've felt for my family as they deal with their own relationships with my dad. I cry whenever I read the interpretation your professor gave you in class that day of Jesus’ words on the cross… I don't even know if I'm giving you enough credit for how much your story has helped me grieve for my dad and process my own relationship with God through this time. There was something so cathartic about realizing the doubts I was having in my faith and in God were not unreasonable or something no one else had felt before.”Self-disclosure of our growth experiences, both good and bad, in the service of teaching and learning lets our students know that we are “real people too” who have struggled and continue to struggle to find answers and meaning. By embracing our own liabilities and limits as well as our strengths, and by connecting them to the subjects we teach, we not only live out our vocation as teachers but contribute to our students’ search to find meaning and wholeness in their lives.

Why do all those immigrants carry flags? Why do they wave Mexican flags? Why do they wave Colombian flags? Why do they wave Honduran flags? The images on television are striking. They are often interpreted as an invasion—an assertion that these people are irreconcilably “other” and will never be accepted.In carrying a flag from another nation, these individuals are calling attention to their identity—whether Mexican-American, Guatemalan-American, Salvadoran-American, Honduran-American, Venezuelan-American, Colombian-American, etc. Justo González notes that many people of Latin American descent live in the dash between their Latin American heritage and their U.S. identity. When they wave these flags, they highlight how their culture has had to survive in a society frequently hostile toward them. Many of these protestors are U.S. citizens, asserting their heritage precisely to those who find that heritage offensive. They are saying: This is where I come from, and I am here. I am also an American. For some, their connection is personal—parents or relatives may have entered the country without documentation. First-generation U.S. citizens may want to honor their culture, their heritage, and even the complicated circumstances by which they came to be here.However, in other protests, they wave the flag of the United States.[i] Jennifer Brown’s 2006 article notes that, in one day, 75,000 marched in Denver, 400,000 in Chicago, and an estimated 300,000 in Los Angeles. Many carried the Star-Spangled Banner. Yet they were still criticized. It is as if no action they take is perceived as acceptable.Here lies the tension in the phrase e pluribus unum—“out of many, one.” The United States is a nation built from many cultures. From the earliest colonies, the land included Europeans of many backgrounds, people of African descent, Indigenous peoples, and immigrant communities. Over time, the pluribus has only grown. Minnesota, for example, has a large population of Scandinavian descent (hence the NFL's “Vikings”). Even within whiteness, some groups have historically been considered “more white” than others.My own heritage is Honduran-American. Typically, Honduran families are Roman Catholic or Pentecostal. They value education, family life, and often dream of starting small businesses. These are among the reasons many voted Republican. Yet the same political forces they aligned with are now deporting their families, friends, and community members. Immigration scrambles the usual political categories.The foreign flags are meaningful. I often recall the image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the podium during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, raising their gloved fists in protest of racial oppression in the United States.[ii]Their gesture cost them their careers, yet it declared the beauty, dignity, and power of their identity.Likewise, the Mexican and other Latin American flags being raised in protests today make a statement. Many waving those flags are U.S. citizens. The flags speak to the Latin@ experience in the U.S.—an experience marked by racial profiling, exclusion, and cultural erasure. They are told not to speak Spanish, though the oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S. is of Spanish origin (St. Augustine, Florida). Their music, food, and customs are ridiculed. They are called slurs. They work jobs many refuse to do. And so, they wave their flags because they refuse to be erased. Notes & Bibliography[i] Brown, Jennifer. “A Roar for Respect.” The Denver Post, 1 May 2006, https://www.denverpost.com/2006/05/01/a-roar-for-respect/. Accessed 13 June 2025. [ii] Burke, Myles. “In History: How Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s Protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics Shook the World.” BBC, 15 Oct. 2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231011-in-history-how-tommie-smith-and-john-carloss-protest-at-the-1968-mexico-city-olympics-shook-the-world. Accessed 14 June 2025.

Katherine Turpin reflects on the emotional impact of student plagiarism, especially in the age of AI-generated content. She shares how these incidents erode trust, complicate teaching, and prompt deeper questions about course design, student engagement, and the purpose of theological education. Despite compassion for overwhelmed students, Turpin grapples with feelings of betrayal and the challenge of maintaining integrity in remote learning environments.

“What are you working on these days?” the President asked. The setting was a professional meeting. I was on the Board of Directors of my professional society, and I was at my first meeting. I discovered that we begin each meeting with this same question. Everyone went around the room to talk about the book, the essay, the project they were working on. Then, it was my turn. I changed the focus away from my own work to the work I did for our professional society. I was brief, and then the person next to me picked up the question.The others at the table didn’t know me; didn’t know the anxiety I was feeling. Given all the work that these professors had published, many I had read, a few I regarded as superstars, I wondered what I was doing in this room. How did I get on this board in the first place? I had no brilliant book that is a must-read for anyone in the field. I had not garnered a prestigious NEH grant worth thousands to my institution. I was just one of the worker bees – chairing a committee where people often ask, “What is it your committee does?”I am a poor kid from the projects who went to a small, little-known church-related college with an open admissions process, not Harvard (although I did live just up the street – a “townie” I am told, often with an air of condescension). My neighborhood was where the Harvard students would come when they wanted to “give back” to feel good about themselves; noblesse oblige I later learned. I was a charity case; I needed their help to succeed – at least that’s what I was told.Yet there I was, sitting with them steering the future of the academy, or at least our part in it. Who was I to be giving suggestions? What the hell did I know? So, at first, I didn’t say much for fear that I would be found out for the imposter I was.I remember completing coursework in grad school and having an obligatory meeting with my advisor. Apparently, the department had conversations about me and my performance to date. My Ivy-League-bred advisor began the conversation, “In truth, we were not too sure what we would be getting with you given your background. We decided to take a chance, and we have been pleased with your performance.” Did they really think that the preparation I received in my previous schools was that poor? I wondered if he had the same conversation with my peers, all of whom had graduated from prestigious schools, one of whom had already received a Fulbright. I knew I wasn’t as polished as they were. Did they think I even belonged in the program with them? Perhaps not.After I graduated, I was not sure I wanted to go into academia, into a profession where I felt –  where I was often made to feel – inferior. I had been working as a community organizer in public housing projects like the one I had grown up in. I felt at home there; I knew their struggles and they appreciated the work I was doing.I taught part-time jobs in prisons and in the historically black colleges in the area. Most of my students came from similar backgrounds to me and I found joy in teaching them, which was the reason I pursued a PhD in the first place.I ultimately decided to go on the academic job market and surprisingly landed a job as a “teacher-scholar” at a small, church-related college, much like the one I had attended. My department welcomed me, offered me help as I started my teaching career. This too felt like home, but I was still nervous. The research and publishing requirements were not overly burdensome, but research and writing were not my passion, at least not in a joyful sense; writing was torture save for those times when I could write on behalf of the poor, the unemployed, or about baseball.I poured myself into teaching. I spent countless hours researching and conversing with colleagues at the college and the academy about pedagogy and the best ways to engage students who were in my classes because they were required. I experimented with and developed some competence in active learning and nontraditional adult learning theories and practices even though I knew it limited time for other research. My students appreciated my efforts, nominating me for a teaching award. Had I “made it”? Did I now belong to the academy? My confidence was bolstered by invitations to write about my classroom experiences, to engage in what became the scholarship of teaching and learning. My peers welcomed my contributions at professional societies’ presentations and eventually through the nascent peer-reviewed publications that were emerging in the field. I added a teaching professorate, staff positions on faculty development programs, and several other teaching awards to my resume, including an academy-wide excellence-in-teaching award.The highest achievements in the profession, however, were still measured by and given to scholarship. I could work for my professional society but could never be nominated for its presidency. My contributions to my field of religious ethics have been much less successful. My rejections outnumber my acceptances three to one for both presentations and publications. Was I really a teacher “scholar”? I had earned a place at the teacher table. But I was still a stranger at the table of scholars who gathered at the board meeting. Would this ever change? Does it really matter?After thirty years, definitive answers to these questions elude me. The imposter syndrome still feeds on my soul, periodically eating away my confidence when a student writes he didn’t learn a thing in my class (even though he was only one of thirty-five), or my proposal or paper is rejected. But its meals are less frequent now: in part because I am a tenured full professor; mostly because I have embraced the imposter within. I have learned to use the angst it generates to propel me forward, to become the best teacher-scholar I can be, however limited – just like so many of my imposter colleagues, who I have discovered make up much of the professorate.I still feel uncomfortable at times sitting at the boardroom table, especially with the superstars of my field. But I am no longer quiet. My experiences, my insights into the world in which we work and the struggles most of us endure, are valuable, perhaps even the norm. Imposter or not, I would be irresponsible if I kept quiet. After all, most of the higher education world is filled with “townies” like me.