Bunnies & Epiphanies.

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Easter 2024.

As much as I detest the Easter holiday (insert traumatic childhood story about my pet bunny), this “date” marks five years since I decided against a Ph.D. program and fell into a rabbit hole (ooh, a pun!) on Twitter that led me to #OER webinars and #ungrading posts (that freaked me out), among other learning opportunities. 


The summer of 2019 is when I took a MOOC class on Open Pedagogy and spent $500 of my own money to enroll in the Creative Commons Certification Course for Educators. That summer marks the turning point in my pedagogical journey. And it was a path set out by the universe after Sadie passed away in October of 2018. I wanted to distract myself, so I applied - sent in the application on Christmas - to the School of Ed at my alma mater.


Yes, they eventually, sometime after Easter that spring, informed me that I didn’t make it into the program, and I believe that was the second time I applied to NDSU (first time might’ve been to the earn a Ph.D. in English). As much as that appears to be a failure, it was a “fail” that was necessary because once I was dipped into the upgrading pool of knowledge, I became a new teacher. I slowly walked away from being so harsh, so mean, so adversarial.


From Easter of 2019 until now, I have gone through epiphany after epiphany regarding my teaching, my attitude, how higher education is constructed, and how the world functions, too. It’s been a very rough ride, but it has been so impactful.




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