But all those possibilities can make it difficult to figure out our next steps. You may be considering mutually exclusive selves - single or married, employed or retired - that require you to make a decision. As I’ve been thinking more about how to help others navigate these transitions, I’ve been researching exercises that provide some clarity.

I’m a big believer in journaling or writing. I work out who I am now in this Substack every week. I also like to use data. From time to time, I assess how satisfied I am with various parts of my life and think about what those scores mean for my next steps. But I know an analytical approach doesn’t work for everyone.

So today, I pulled out my notebook and markers to try the Stick Figure Exercise. This exercise was covered on NPR’s Life Kit podcast, which brings short advice about how to handle many of life’s decisions. Psychotherapist Satya Doyle Byock, author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, provides clear direction for this exercise if you want to try it yourself.

You start by dividing a piece of paper in half and drawing two stick figures. Byock recommends that one stick figure should represent meaning and the other should represent stability, but that felt overly restrictive to me. I chose different labels for my conflicting selves - sustainable contribution and whimsical life. Sustainable contribution is my way of thinking about meaning, but whimsical life is my own take on a contrasting self.

The next step is to get know your two selves. How do they spend their time? What do they wear? Where do they vacation? I added several additional questions to the list that Byock provides. My favorite is, “What’s in my bag?” But I can imagine others:

• What kind of music do they listen to?

• What’s their favorite way to spend a free day?

• What is on their Christmas list?

The end goal isn’t to choose one self or the other, but to understand their wants and needs more concretely. Drawing the stick figures allows you to access the creative side of your brain. Approaching the activity playfully helps you focus on the positive elements of each self. But these two sketches are simply the raw materials.

The last step is to think about how to blend the two selves. Even if the two selves are mutually exclusive, there may be ways to maintain your independence once you are married or to continue purposeful work after you retire. Until now, I’ve mostly thought about my whimsical self as my weekend self, but I can also find ways to bring more creativity into my work life. I often pull out markers to brainstorm research ideas. And to be completely honest, I do have a rock in my work bag. On the other hand, perhaps I can make a contribution through my whimsy, sharing that new dessert with others or encouraging a 7-year-old friend’s love of dragons.

If you try this activity for yourself, let me know how it goes!

First, being a professor at the University of Iowa is one entry on my CV, a CV that makes it seem as though everything turned out just as I planned. In four years, I earned an undergraduate degree in accounting and math from Culver-Stockton College. I worked as an accountant for four years while taking classes part-time to earn my Master’s degree in decision sciences. I came to Iowa for a Ph.D., which I earned in the typical five years while having two babies. My first academic job was at the University of Notre Dame, where I stayed for three years before returning to Iowa, where I’ve been ever since.

But those lines on my CV hide a lot, including doubts that this path would be possible for me. Just a few weeks into my (first) freshman year of high school, I did not feel well. I was dizzy and nauseous. My head hurt. I stayed home from school for a few days, then tried going back. A few hours into the day, I realized I had come back to school too soon. I went to the office and called Mom, who left work to take me home.

This pattern repeated and intensified, interrupted by trips to our family doctor and finally to specialists in St. Louis, a two-hour drive from my home. The doctors ran so many tests. No one could figure out what was wrong. Mom needed to work, so I spent some days at home by myself, keeping up with schoolwork and reading. Other days, Mom dropped me off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I lay on their couch, watching Jeopardy and breathing in the scent of the camphor, which Grandma was certain would relieve the nausea.

Eventually, I stopped trying to go back to school. The principal told Mom that I’d have to repeat the whole year anyway. So I focused on rebuilding my strength. I saw a psychologist who was certain that this was caused by the pressure that my parents put on me, even after I explained that did not align with my reality at all. I refused to go back to see him. I had several conversations with my priest, Father Kaser, who did not try to diagnose me, but rather talked to me about life and my approach to it. Mom made sure I was eating well and getting vitamins. As I began feeling better, I walked to the Louisiana Public Library once or twice a week and checked out old issues of Time and Newsweek from the Watergate era.

We never labeled what happened to me that year. Perhaps I had a virus or some other illness. Perhaps the anxiety, which had visited me before and would soon become a constant companion, caused the symptoms. Perhaps both were true. Once I had kids, I realized how hard that year must have been for Mom and Dad. I know that they wanted answers, but even when none came, they never minimized my experience, and they never panicked. We took it day by day, and the next fall, I went back to school for my second freshman year.

Fall brings new beginnings for many—starting high school, moving into a college residence hall, starting a new job. It’s easy to look around and believe that everyone has it all figured out. But every path has bumps in the road, detours, pauses, and restarts. Finding out that I was in high school for five years surprises many people (although not as much as finding out that I wrecked the driver’s ed car, which is possible despite that passenger-side brake). In the midst of the year I was sick, I had trouble imagining that I would get back on track. But with a strong support system, I rebuilt my strength until I was ready for an on-ramp.

Caption: Back in the day when school photographers captured multiple selves.

Starting my 20^th year as a professor at the University of Iowa has also made me realize how familiar this environment has become. I am teaching an MBA leadership class this fall, a class that I taught for the first time during my first year as a professor at the University of Notre Dame. I know almost every face in the college and many across campus. I have learned how to navigate Iowa’s formal rules and informal norms. In fact, like a fish in water, sometimes I am not even aware of these invisible rules. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be new. I have to do a bit of time travel to put myself in the shoes of our incoming students.

But even time travel is not always enough. Many of our incoming students have experiences that are different than mine. I know what it’s like to start college as a girl who grew up on a gravel road, who needed a work-study job, who had never really been challenged in school, whose Dad moved all of her things up two flights of stairs and then started helping other families. I don’t know what it’s like to start college in another country, to feel overwhelmed by coursework, or to lack support from family.

One part of Iowa’s strategic plan is to “facilitate a respectful campus environment that ensures access and opportunity for all students, faculty, and staff throughout their Iowa experience.” This aligns with my core values, too. I remain convinced that we cannot achieve this goal without understanding each person’s unique experiences. Access and opportunity for all students require different strategies for each student. I miss the classes that used to be offered through the now-disallowed DEI programs that helped me understand different people’s experiences. Even without formal programs, I will keep learning how to pronounce students’ names correctly, use their preferred pronouns, and find the specific strategies that help them learn.

I’m starting my 20^th year as a professor at the University of Iowa. It would be easy to assume that the systems that have worked for me are appropriate for everyone. But respect requires more than that. Even after 20 years and thousands of students, I will continue to listen to those around me, to understand their perspective. I don’t always get it right, but I am committed to keep learning.

In the neuropsychology department at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, I completed a battery of cognitive testing. I recalled words, completed logic puzzles, and solved math problems. I was in a room with a very calm staff member and no distractions. I was locked in. Other than the spatial reasoning tests, which have always been my weak spot, I felt relatively confident.

When the tests were finished, I only had to wait a few minutes to receive the results. “You did great,” the psychologist told me before going through the specific cognitive dimensions that had been tested. We also talked about what might help slow future cognitive decline. Exercise and reducing stress were areas I knew I needed to work on. I took a few notes about how to improve in those areas. “Finally, it is important to make sure you are regularly using your brain. You might do crossword puzzles or other word games,” the psychologist instructed. “What do you do currently to challenge your brain?”

That answer was easy. In my role as a professor, mental challenge is not something I need to search for. Just this week, I spent time thinking about how a network of community organizations can best organize to meet the needs of people with mental illness, how institutional logics influence organizations’ decisions to prioritize preservation or regeneration, and how to publicize our decision tool so that communities can make better decisions about data center development. I love my job because it provides challenge and variety.

As I continue to gather resources to help people prepare for retirement, I’ve been thinking about how, for many people, work fulfills a variety of needs. In addition to a paycheck, my work provides challenge and variety, meaning and purpose, and opportunities to learn and achieve. As students come back to campus, I have plenty of opportunities for meaningful interpersonal connections. I have the autonomy to choose my own projects. I spend a lot of time at work, partly because it fulfills a wide range of my needs, and that is satisfying.

When people retire, they leave a role that has not only occupied much of their time but may also have fulfilled many of their needs. Some of these needs may become less important over time. For example, the life-stage research suggests that as we age, we may prioritize generativity over individual achievement. Retirement provides a pause to reassess which needs are most important to us.

Retirement also offers an opportunity to choose new ways to spend our time and meet our needs. According to the book, Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You, some retirees proactively add activities even before retiring, while others intentionally take some time to rest and reflect before building their slate of retirement activities. Both strategies require planning to ensure that you choose activities that fulfill your most important needs.

One strategy for planning activities that has always fascinated me is the personal projects approach, developed by Dr. Brian Little. Personal projects are self-generated accounts of what you are doing or plan to do. Personal projects are broader than tasks, but narrower than roles. Learning Spanish, perfecting your pizza skills, or running a marathon are examples of personal projects. Originally conceptualized in a 1983 article titled, “Personal Projects: A Rationale and Method for Investigation,” personal projects are a precursor to the current social media trend of creating a personal curriculum.

Personal projects can fulfill a range of needs. In fact, in a 1998 article, “Personal Projects, Happiness, and Meaning,” Ian McGregor and Brian Little developed 37 dimensions on which research participants rated their personal projects, including absorption, creativity, meaningfulness, and pleasure. The 37 personal project rating dimensions can be grouped into two overarching personal project characteristics—efficacy and integrity. This explains the article’s subtitle, “On Doing Well and Being Yourself.” When people have projects that they can do well, they are happier. When projects align with their values, their lives feel more meaningful.

I have honestly envisioned a retirement spreadsheet in which I record my personal projects, rate them on all 37 dimensions, and work to optimize the mix. (Sometimes, I’m still that accounting-math double major at heart.) If you think that is overkill, you might assess your personal projects to ensure you have projects that let you do well and be yourself. But that doesn’t quite feel sufficient to me. So, I’m working on a simpler tool, one that asks people to identify their most important needs—more than two, but fewer than 37—and create a menu of personal projects that might help them fulfill those needs.

I have a feeling that I’ll always have a need to keep learning. In retirement, maybe I’ll take a course or create my own personal curriculum. I hope I’ll be able to keep making a difference in the world. I’ll look for opportunities to volunteer or assist smaller nonprofits with strategic planning. In an era where loneliness has become a major concern, I know the importance of interpersonal relationships. Classes or volunteer opportunities may provide opportunities for connection, or I’ll simply have to make time for brunches and happy hours (which also satisfy my need for French toast and fruity beers).

But in addition to learning, purpose, and connections, I’ve decided that as I age, I have a growing need for whimsy. Whimsical activities are playful and imaginative. My favorite definition of whimsy is “a sudden caprice.” In retirement, maybe I’ll finally write that book about wizard librarians or create a fairy garden. The possibilities are endless.

(Possible Personal Project: Find the best doughnuts. The Holy Donut in Portland, Maine is currently a top contender.)

Jack Carney died suddenly of a heart attack in 1984. By that time, Mom had gone back to work, so she mostly listened to the radio on her drive to and from Louisiana, Missouri. I was twelve and less tuned in to what Mom was listening to, but at some point, she became an NPR fan. As Raygun would say, she listened to NPR before it was cool. People were still getting their news from nightly news broadcasts. But while Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw reported the news, shows on NPR went deeper, allowing Mom to interact with the news, to find her place in it. When I’d come home from college or after I was married with kids, Mom would often share some tidbit she heard on NPR, along with what she thought about the issue or how it connected to something else in our lives. I’m not sure that she ever attended a “dinner party,” but she would have been a delightful guest to be seated next to.

This week, I was interviewed by our local NPR station on a show called River to River. In my role as Faculty Director of Tippie’s Social Impact Community, I have been working with Jen Terry from the Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative in the College of Law on a decision tool to help Iowa communities decide whether to build a data center in their community. The tool does not take a side (although private citizen Amy Colbert has her own thoughts). Instead, we convened communities with experience with data centers and created a list of questions to ensure communities are aware of the variety of impacts that data centers have.

The data center discussion is hot this summer. Iowa is a prime location for data centers because of flat and affordable land, relatively low energy costs, limited drought, and affordable construction costs. Small communities are being approached by data center developers with a sales pitch that includes job creation and tax revenue. But public opinion trends anti-data center, which has resulted in a torrent of media coverage of this issue.

That’s how Jen and I found ourselves in the IPR studios on Wednesday afternoon. River to River producer Samantha McIntosh pre-interviewed us the day before and had prepared us for what to expect. She also met us when we arrived at the IPR studios, along with her dog Jack, and ushered us into a small, unassuming room with microphones at the ready. Ben Kieffer, the long-time host of River to River, asked great questions and helped reinforce the points we were trying to make. The 18-minute conversation (the final segment on Thursday’s show) flew by. It was over before I knew it.

I wish I could have called Mom and told her about the experience. Sharing things with her was like living twice, a way to savor the best moments and get her take on them. Almost every day, I think of something I would like to tell her. I finished Land by Maggie O’Farrell yesterday and wished I could have put it right into her hands. She would have liked the widow and Eugene and the way O’Farrell tells a story with enough space for readers to draw their own conclusions. We visited Ben last weekend, and Maddie is getting ready to start year 2 of the business analytics PhD program. She would be so proud of the humans they are becoming. They have changed so much since she died. I haven’t changed much at all—at least not in any significant ways. Even so, she was always interested to hear what I was up to.

Plus, River to River sounds like a show that was made for her. Here’s how the IPR website describes the show:

River to River is a conversation about the news—from an Iowa perspective. Together, we dig into the story behind the headlines, talking with newsmakers and experts to find out how the news affects you. Ben Kieffer hosts this national award-winning program, which takes on challenging topics, explores issues from all sides, frames community problems, and fosters conversation and understanding.

Mom liked to dig in, understand the world around her, develop her own perspectives, and talk to others about them. She never stopped learning. It’s just one of the many things we have in common.

My answer was almost always the same. I loved the cannelloni. Mom varied her order a little more than I did, but often settled on manicotti (although she made a very good manicotti herself). That gave Dad his parameters. He tried lots of dishes, but never ordered what Mom and I were having.

Especially if we got an appetizer of fried ravioli, Mom and I did well to make it through half of our entrees. We would gradually slow our eating until first one of us, and then the other, pushed our plates toward the middle of the red and white checked tablecloth. My family had never been a “clean your plate” family. When you were full, you stopped eating.

“Are you all done?” Dad would ask before sliding our plates closer to his. He often told me, “Going out to eat with your mom and you is like going to a buffet.” He gradually alternated bites of our entrees with his own, enjoying every bite.

I think about Dad every time I end up at a restaurant with more than I can eat. This weekend, we are visiting Ben and Katie. In McHenry, where their house will soon be built, we went to a restaurant called D.C. Cobb’s. Burgers are their specialty. On the menu is a burger topped with mac and cheese, another topped with a fried egg, and a third with a whole quesadilla on top. Or, for those who really like burgers, The Challenger includes 3 half-pound patties. I got a single burger with mushroom and Swiss and still couldn’t finish the whole thing.

In management research, we refer to this phenomenon as “too much of a good thing.” Many things that are good in moderation have negative effects when taken to extremes. For example, when leaders are empowering and give their teams the autonomy to decide how to do their work, the teams are often more satisfied and motivated. But leaders who take empowerment too far and provide no direction for their teams are seen as absent or laissez-faire leaders. Their teams often struggle.

The same can be said for individual characteristics. My top strength on the Gallup StrengthsFinder is Input. I am curious and love to gather information. I enjoy nothing more than following a rabbit hole to learn about a topic. It’s a good strength for a professor. But taken too far, the strength of Input can lead to information overload, making it hard to move forward.

After lunch, we went to IKEA, another example of too much of a good thing, this time in retail form. I love a visit to IKEA—from bedrooms to kitchens to offices to playrooms, they have it all. I’m especially drawn to office organization systems, and I love the sample rooms they have created to show how each product might be used. But the multiple floors packed with Saturday afternoon shoppers can be a bit overwhelming. Today, we focused on lamps and office supplies, even though we may have missed some treasures in other departments as well.

I’ve used "too much of a good thing" to describe my job as well. When someone asks if I like being a professor, I always say yes. I love it. I have a lot of autonomy to choose what I work on. I’m always learning. I work with great people. If I have one complaint, it’s that I have too many good things I want to do—too many research questions to answer, too many new ideas to try in my leadership class, and way too many ideas about how business schools can have a positive impact on society.

But I know how to handle too much of a good thing. Like at IKEA, I need to focus. Having too many good options is overwhelming only if I don’t make choices. Sometimes, I just have to say no. Even though I really wanted it, I did not order the homemade Twix bar at lunch today. And as I learned from my dad, sometimes I can share too much of a good thing with others. I do not work alone. I’m part of a team.

And so, I begin another academic year convinced that I can right-size my work. Because too much of a good thing is still too much.

But retiring means a change in how we spend our time. Some people look forward to leaving behind tasks that have become physically challenging or that have changed in ways that make them less attractive. But for others, work provides purpose, challenge, connections, and opportunities to grow. Will post-retirement activities fulfill these needs, or will their well-being decrease as they leave work behind?

Although getting to do whatever you want may sound attractive, humans are not that good at predicting what will make them happy. The lack of structure can be paralyzing. I’ve had externally set goals and the shared motivation that comes from working with a team for so long. How will I decide how to spend my time without these external guides?

I’ve decided to do a little research. I’m paying attention to what I do on days when I don’t have much structure. Take yesterday, for example. It was Saturday, and the humidity in Iowa was 173%. (Corn sweat does not care about math.) I knew that would limit my outdoor activities. We had planned to go out to dinner with friends, so I had that to look forward to (and to rest up for). I also needed to prepare for the birthday party I was throwing the next day for a seven-year-old friend. Beyond that, I had a lot of free time. Here is what I did:

• I wrote rhyming clues for the birthday party treasure hunt.

• I read a chapter of Retiring, which gave me the idea for this Substack.

• Maddie took me to Blick’s to get small things for the birthday treasure box. I found small cats in boxes that you can pull back, and they drive across the floor. I bought two. I don’t know why they delighted me so much.

• I got Diet Coke and Coke Zero at the Bread Garden (because different people like different things.)

• I made a Minion (pictured below). I am not crafty, but I am very pleased with how this turned out. I think my birthday friend will like it. And after everyone makes one, we will use them as bowling pins for a party game.

• I watched a little 14U flag football on ESPN (just because it was on).

• I wrote this Substack.

• I finished the audiobook of The Women on Platform Two, which my friend Joyce recommended. Strong women fighting for women’s rights never gets old!

• I laid down for a short nap.

• I read some of Maggie O’Farrell’s new book, Land. I’m still only 100 pages in, so I can’t tell if it tops Hamnet, which I loved, but it does have that Maggie O’Farrell spark that comes when sharp characters are put in richly depicted places and must figure out how to survive.

• I hung out with my dog Annie. What makes her happy is so much easier to figure out than what makes me happy. Some treats, some pets, and her big backyard.

• I went to dinner with friends. The food was delicious, and the company was even better.

• I watched the WNBA All-Star Game. Although defense was in short supply, it was raining threes, and Olivia Miles made things happen.

It was a good day. Some of these tasks were things I enjoyed. Some brought unexpected joy. Some were for the good of other humans (or canines). Some were just for me. Some were planned. Some were serendipitous. I was creative. I used my brain.

Perhaps variety is key. Adapting the advice to “eat the rainbow” (meaning food of many colors, not a diet of Lucky Charms) may lead us to plan activities that meet different needs. Many of the ways I fill my time are other-focused. Research shows that helping other people brings joy and positive energy. I need a daily dose of helping others in my activity diet.

But any good diet requires balance. One day, when I was trying to figure out how to shift my work tasks due to the depleting effects of Parkinson’s, two friends sat down to give me advice. We had several criteria. I wanted to choose tasks that had an impact, that allowed me to make a difference. “But what about the tasks that you enjoy?” they asked. “Maybe you need more of those.”

I loved creating a treasure hunt and Minions today. Writing rhyming clues is much more fun for me than baking a cake (which HyVee does very well), so that’s where I chose to spend my time. But in addition to choosing tasks I enjoyed, I also gave myself time to enjoy them. I wasn’t so rushed that I missed being delighted by the motorized cats or the turns of phrase in Land. I paid attention, and I paced myself. Maybe that’s the key.

People have mixed feelings about retirement. Some are always counting down, planning to retire at the earliest possible moment, dreaming about a life free of exchanging labor for money. Others say they will never retire. They tend to be concerned about how they will fill their time and who they will be without their work roles.

Retiring summarizes the findings from a research project undertaken by five management professors - Teresa Amabile, Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas (Tim) Hall, and Kathy Kram. Those of you who are also professors will recognize what a group of absolute rockstars these authors are. At the time they undertook this research project, they were also all in various stages of their own retirement journeys. So the book is informed by rigorous research and personal experiences.

Retiring acknowledges that, for some, retirement may carry negative connotations. The roots of the word retire mean to pull back. It is easy to focus on what is lost through retirement. We are pulling back from our work roles. But the book defines retiring with this metaphor: “Retiring is crossing a bridge from a land where work was a dominant feature of the landscape to a land without work—or with work appearing in a vastly diminished or vastly different form.”

With that definition in mind, Retiring provides strategies to help you detach from the old land and create the new land. Thinking of retirement (or any life transition) as an act of creation is appealing to me. It provides us with agency and possibility. While it is true that we are leaving behind one set of activities, one set of relationships, and one identity, we also have the opportunity to create new answers to three questions.

1. Who will I be in retirement?

2. How can I maintain relationships and create new ones?

3. What activities will I pursue that bring me joy, satisfaction, or fulfillment?

As I dig deeper into this research, I will share what I learn that might help you design your land of retirement, a land that helps you find an identity, relationships, and activities that will allow you to thrive in your next act. I’ll be pulling together resources, designing journal prompts and self-assessments, and posing discussion questions. We hope to pilot the program in spring 2027 with a small group of University of Iowa faculty and staff.

I’d love to hear from those of you who are retired both about the challenges you’ve faced and the ways that you’ve created your own next act. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create a land of retirement that is flexible and allows me to pivot as my situation changes. This is partly because of the uncertainties that come with Parkinson’s disease and partly because I watched Mom navigate this process.

Mom retired on July 1, 2013, from her job as a bookkeeper at LaCrosse Lumber Company. She decided to retire partly because Dad hadn’t been working for some time. He had struggled with chronic back pain for years. He had been to lots of doctors—one of whom ordered some scans and then asked him when he had broken his back. “I didn’t know I had,” Dad replied in his calm, slow voice. Mom hoped she could be some company for him and maybe encourage him to move and stretch. He spent a lot of time in his recliner, the one place where he found a little ease.

Less than a month later, Dad died unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism. Throughout the fall, Mom told me several times that she wished she hadn’t retired. She missed the daily connections with her coworkers, and a little income would have been nice. Instead, she gradually sketched a revised next act. She stayed involved with her church, helped Aunt Joan with the animals, became a voracious reader, occasionally climbed on the roof to patch a leak, and was paired with a spunky blonde girl who needed a little extra support. (She had always been good with spunky blonde girls.) Her next act evolved in ways that brought fulfillment and joy alongside struggle and loss. It was not easy, but she kept revising it to make it hers.

(Mom and Maddie waiting for Ben to perform at The Mill.)

I am not, nor have I ever been, athletic. When my kids started playing soccer, I don’t think I had ever kicked a soccer ball. Once they signed up for soccer, I played with them in the backyard and cheered for them and their teams. I understood the basic theory behind soccer and learned the offside rule, but I was no expert. Even so, as the kids got older, I would occasionally shout encouragement or advice from the sidelines. When Maddie started playing goalie, you might hear me say, “Good try,” or “You’ll get the next one,” or even, “Jump just a little sooner.”

But when Maddie’s parents-versus-kids scrimmage rolled around, Mike was the assistant coach and claimed that he needed to coach the parent team, which meant I was out on the pitch. The other parents decided that since Maddie was a goalie, I should be too. I felt good about that - not much running! So I stepped into the goalie box, bouncing from foot to foot. As the first kid headed down the field with the ball, I watched every move. One kick. Another kick. Then the kid pulled his foot back and took his shot.

I didn’t even react. The ball whizzed past me like a rocket. Thank goodness I wasn’t in its path. That would have hurt. I make my living with my head after all.

“Why didn’t you dive?” Mike shouted from the sideline. I quieted him with a glare. “This is hard!” I replied.

After that, I continued to cheer for my kids’ successes on the pitch, field, or court. And after each game, I told them, “I love watching you play.” But I saved my coaching for the math homework.

For the last several weeks, I’ve thought about that experience as we’ve watched the World Cup. These are professionals, some of the best soccer players in the world. Even so, passes get stolen, shots on goal sail over the net, and goalies dive the wrong way. Passionate fans - in the stadium and at watch parties around the world - cheer on their teams and likely shout more than a few pieces of advice to the players on the field. Soccer fans take passion to a whole new level.

But one of the most interesting parts of the World Cup matches for me has been the moment when the teams take the pitch before the match. The teams walk out side by side, and each player is holding the hand of a child. The kids don’t just walk beside the players; they hold hands. A small arm stretches up, and a larger arm stretches down, and the two connect. The kids stand in front of the players as each team’s national anthem is played.

My limited research suggests that this tradition began at the 2002 World Cup, when FIFA (which was apparently less evil back then) partnered with UNICEF to draw attention to children’s rights and support social causes benefiting children. The presence of children on the pitch also reminded players and fans alike that they were role models for the next generation of soccer players. Competition can get heated at soccer matches. Sometimes the tension spills into the stands. But with the children present, the atmosphere shifted. Winning was, of course, the goal, but both teams were a part of something bigger, something that would live on long after they were retired.

Sometimes I wonder if we should expand this practice. Perhaps our elected officials should walk into legislative sessions holding hands with the children who will be affected by the policies they create. Perhaps CEOs or Boards of Directors should walk hand in hand into corner offices or well-appointed boardrooms with the young people who will be impacted by their decisions. I can even imagine nine young people in robes ascending to the bench beside the Supreme Court Justices. It’s easy to get stuck in our own perspective, to think we understand their experience and what they need. We all need a reminder sometimes.

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” -Mary Oliver

For the past two weeks, I’ve written about summer vacations. We’ve spent time in beautiful places, looking out at Lake Como in Wisconsin and the Atlantic Ocean in Maine. After two weeks of vacation, I had planned to jump right back into work, but my body had different ideas. I spent the week recovering, trying to return to full speed after the health issues at the end of our Maine trip. I moved slowly, rested frequently, and worked in small chunks.

My brain was still in vacation mode. The narrative that usually plays on loop in my head—what needs to be done now, what can be put off to later, what might be lurking around the corner—had slowed significantly. This voice in my head is so consistent that I felt a little lost without it. Occasionally this week, the voice in my head asked me what it was supposed to be thinking about. I gave it the smallest list possible—take meds, drink water, care for my nose.

I found myself with time to pay attention to what was in front of me. After a couple of weeks of admiring bodies of water, I realized that beauty is not only found on vacation. My backyard is also worth my focus. From my living room, I look out on lush green grass backed by a forest that extends to the Iowa River. Squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits scamper through. Since sitting down to write this Substack, I’ve seen a cardinal and a groundhog.

Perhaps I was nudged into paying attention to the natural world. During this week of rest, I’ve been reading Terry Tempest Williams’ new book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. The book begins with a dream that Williams had one week after the COVID-19 pandemic caused her to return to her home in Utah and connect online with students in her class, “Finding Beauty in a Broken World.” In the dream, she is standing in the ruins of Cassandra’s Temple and meets a professor who asks, “Do you remember the vow you made to us?”

“Remind me,” Williams replies.

“Your vow is to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians,” the professor instructs.

I was not familiar with the word “glorian” before reading this book. It has several meanings, including a divine spark, a moment of grace, or an encounter with the holy ordinary. As she teaches her class and nests more deeply in the wilderness surrounding her home, Williams recognizes that the world is unraveling. Both the physical and the social are coming apart at the seams. But unraveling also reveals what has been hidden. Wild animals return to urban areas. Her students reach out to support healthcare workers. We become more aware of our interconnections with all living things.

In this broken world, Williams sees an opportunity to “reweave the world anew.” She quotes theologian Thomas Barry who set forth a similar challenge:

Our challenge is to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. It is to transcend not only national limitations, but even our species’ isolation, to enter into the larger community of living species.

Williams begins this task of reweaving by paying attention to her own backyard. Her book includes many short essays documenting the Glorians—dozens of ravens, signs of badgers, and the roots of sage—the ordinary holy.

I grew up rich with Glorians. I lived on a gravel road, near a creek and a pond and a forest. Mom and Dad not only lived among the Glorians, but also revered them and cultivated them. They knew the names of plants and birds, the rhythms and wisdom of animals. They noticed, and so I noticed too. What they didn’t know, they learned. I was old enough to remember when they turned a small section of our backyard into a prairie, and we learned about native prairie plants. They nurtured the plants until the plot grew into a riotous abundance of colors and shapes—one of the hardest things for Mom to leave when she moved to Iowa to be near us.

This week, I’ve thought a lot about what the next chapter of my life might look like. My thoughts have turned from what I will accomplish to how I want to live. It’s an amorphous question, slippery like the frogs that lined the banks of our pond in summer. It’s also a question that requires a consideration of context if my answer is to be more than an exercise. How do I want to live now, in a world in which Glorians receive little attention? It’s honestly an overwhelming question, as I consider the limits of my ability to shape my corner of the world.

And so I return to the strategy that I have used since I first became overwhelmed in third grade. I focus on what I can see and what I can hear and what I can smell. I remember sitting with Mom in our backyard, seeing whatever the season had produced for our delight. I remember her reverence for this holy place. I remember the words of another chronicler of the ordinary holy, Margaret Renkl, who tells us in her book, The Comfort of Crows:

The world lies before you, a lavish garden. However hobbled by waste, however fouled by graft and tainted by decision, it will always take your breath away. We were never cast out of Eden. We merely turned from it and shut our eyes. To return and be welcomed, cleansed and redeemed, we are only obliged to look.

Perhaps the question of how to live isn’t as overwhelming as I think it is. Maybe I need only to return to Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Our seminars with Lyz were held in the conference room/breakfast area of The Inn at Camden Place. Eleven writers gathered around three small tables each day of the retreat. On the first day, I arrived ten minutes early, momentarily forgetting that I wasn’t responsible for setting up the technology or pulling out teaching notes. Lyz brought her knowledge and experience, but she encouraged us to focus on what we were there to write. We wrote about our moments when everything changed, heavy subjects that we learned to blend with light. Lyz encouraged us to find our voice. She was certain each of us had something unique to say about the world, something that made our voices necessary. By the end of the weekend, I believed that too.

Working with a teacher like Lyz is a gift. Honestly, I may enjoy learning to write more than I enjoy either writing or having written. I had no doubt that Lyz would be an excellent teacher. Every Friday morning, I read aloud the funniest parts of Lyz’s Dingus of the Week newsletter to Mike, and I was delighted to find that she is as insightful and funny in person as she is on the page.

I also found something I wasn’t expecting in Maine—a collection of aspirational selves. Writers have no shortage of aspirational selves, writers who represent the pinnacle of achievement. I aspire to write like Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, and Elizabeth Strout. But those aspirational selves are what management scholars call Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). A BHAG is a stretch goal that may be motivating, but it may also feel as far away as landing a man on the moon felt in the 1960s. I am more likely to be motivated to write when my aspirational selves are more accessible.

The ten women who attended the retreat with me came from across the country and across generations. Their writing experience varied, but each one put words onto the page that made me feel lucky to be present for the meaning and the rhythm—the magic that comes when we read our work aloud. One by one, each of these amazing women stood behind a podium decorated with the beauty of Maine flowers, fresh from the garden, and put words together in ways that outdid the blooms' colors and textures. These women helped me create a crisper picture of who I aspire to be as a writer.

When Mike and I checked out of The Inn at Camden Place on Sunday morning, I felt energized. I am still not sure what form my writing might take, but I will continue to put words on the page. For me, writing produces the kind of adrenaline others may find in more adventurous pursuits, but it does not yield this jolt of energy easily. Writing requires work. It asks me to be vulnerable and to understand craft. I’ll never reach my writerly aspirational selves, and this is what makes writing a good candidate for my next act. I will never be finished.

On our way back to Portland, Maine, Mike and I visited one more lighthouse, walked among some tide pools, and ate a final lobster roll. We took a walk along the waterfront in Portland and checked in for our Monday evening flight back to Iowa. We would have time on Monday morning to make one more trip to The Holy Donut and visit Longfellow Books before heading to the airport. We were the good kind of tired that comes at the end of vacation. While I was writing, Mike had explored Maine and photographed puffins. Like writing, the puffins were elusive, but Mike’s pursuit paid off.

As I finished my last hotel shower on Monday morning, my nose started bleeding. . . a lot. (Think Niagara Falls, not the gentle waterfalls we had seen in Maine.) When we couldn’t get it to stop, we quickly packed up and headed to urgent care, and then to the emergency room. The ER doctor inserted a Rhino Rocket (a balloon that inflates in the nostril to stop bleeding). He asked what we were doing in Maine, and Mike told him that I had been at a writing retreat. I sat quietly, crafting metaphors in my head to describe the plastic tubing taped to my face and connected to the balloon.

We ended up driving home. We missed our flight, and driving seemed more advisable than flying. We were both scared that the bleeding would start again, either while in the air or between major metropolitan areas, but we didn’t share our fears until we were home. I reserved hotels with two beds so that my restlessness wouldn’t interrupt Mike’s sleep, and I wrapped the pillows in towels because my nose was unreliable. Each time we stopped at a gas station, I left my DNA in trash cans from Maine to Iowa.

And now I find myself where I’ve been so many times in the past five years - mentally motivated, but physically tired. My Google searches (Parkinson’s and nosebleeds, menopause and nosebleeds, Parkinson’s and menopause and nosebleeds) suggest this was a fluke. But it was another reminder that, along with finding my voice, I also need to find my pace. I still have things to say. I just need to figure out how to say them on my own terms.

The Inn at Camden Place is built over the Megunticook River. In fact, the river is right below my window. The sounds of running water provide the background that white noise machines can only aspire to. This room has good writing vibes. The ingredients are here. Now I just have to quiet my mind enough so the words have room to emerge.

I am in Camden, Maine, for the Falling Forward writing retreat, a weekend of writing and reinvention. I met the other 10 women attending the retreat last night at dinner. None of us is quite sure how the retreat came to be or what we will make of it. The organizers have woven together structure and possibility, providing space for each of us to find what we need here.

Camden is a town of just over 5,000 people on Maine’s coast. My initial reading of it suggests that it is a town of contradictions. Summer tourists are evident, in line at the ice cream stand and taking pictures of the harbor. But I also sense a strong local community here. The people I’ve met seem proud of this place, pointing out the town’s foundations and its innovations.

The writing retreat is coordinated by the Midcoast Villager, a weekly local newspaper that resulted from the merger of four legacy newspapers, with roots back to the early 1800s. The Villager’s website describes it as a new weekly newspaper (founded in September 2024) with an old soul, another contradiction. Its mission is to build community through reliable information, great storytelling, and convening. Yes, convening. In this era of online news, the Villager hosts live events and weekly editor office hours. The Villager Cafe shares a building with the newsroom, and community members are invited to events that encourage conversation.

The Villager is also hosting this writing retreat, another opportunity for convening. I signed up as soon as I learned about it because the closure of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival left a hole in my summer. I had been browsing other writing opportunities, many of them online. I love the convenience of online opportunities. I have had the chance to learn so much about writing that I would not have otherwise had access to. But I wanted one in-person experience this summer.

Like Camden and the Midcoast Villager, retreats are also spaces of contradictions. The word retreat means “to draw in,” “to draw back,” and perhaps most interestingly, “to leave the extremities.” Retreats break routines and pause obligations. They are spaces for contemplation, for soul searching. They bring us back to what is core in our lives. But this retreat is done in community. The organizers have planned intentional convenings, chances to have ourselves reflected back to us, to be seen, and to see others. We are drawing back not from each other, but with each other. And still, I expect I’ll spend many hours here in this chair, connecting with myself.

As I am writing this, our first workshop, taught by Lyz Lenz, starts in just 45 minutes. I have intentions for this workshop. I want to take time to figure out what I’m doing with my writing. Last night, at dinner, as we were introducing ourselves, I shared the many transitions that have occurred in my life recently, transitions that have left holes and been threaded with grief. And then I quoted a line from Ross Gay: “Maybe there’s some other story.” I am trying to write my own story, one that takes a thread from my past and weaves it into a new tapestry that exists alongside the grief. Although this starts my 3^rd year of writing weekly Substack posts, I’m not working on a memoir, or a novel, or even a collection of essays. . . not yet. I am writing myself first, but I appreciate you being here for the process. Yes, another contradiction, writing myself in full view.

That’s how we found ourselves spending a week near Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Ben’s fiancée, Katie, recommended it as a fun vacation spot. It’s about an hour from her house and about 3 hours from Iowa City, making it easy for Ben, Katie, and Maddie to come and hang out over the weekend.

Lake Geneva is also where Ben proposed to Katie, so we got to see the spot where it happened. (More soon on my newest identity transition - becoming a mother-in-law!) Ben had arranged for one of Katie’s friends to hide behind a tree in Library Park to take pictures. He and Katie were walking along the lake when he stopped to propose. Unfortunately, he dropped to one knee right behind a trash can, making it hard to capture the moment, but I’m grateful to a couple on a nearby bench for clapping when Katie said yes.

But most of the week, Mike, Annie, and I sat on the deck of our Airbnb overlooking Lake Como, occasionally wandering down to the dock that extended into the small, calm lake. Annie started the week with mixed feelings about this adventure. She explored the house, sniffing the corners and staying close to us. She seemed happy to see her stuffed duck and lamb, which Mike had packed, along with her favorite snacks and familiar towels. But I wondered what she was thinking.

I follow a few Instagram accounts where people share videos of their dogs and do voiceovers to tell us what the dogs are thinking. One of my favorites is a mini Goldendoodle named Coco. Coco is often perplexed by the things her mommy and daddy do. I have a feeling that Annie feels the same way.

Annie has been “visiting” before. She has gone to our friends’ houses, and Mike recently took her to St. Louis to visit his mom. So the idea of going to another house wasn’t completely foreign to her. But what did she think when we went to bed that first night? She quickly snuggled between Mike and me, but did she wonder if we had bought a new house? Did she miss the spaciousness of our king-sized bed at home?

As far as we know, Lake Como was the first lake that Annie has seen. She is not a fan of water in general. She likes to bite at water as it comes out of the hose, but she doesn’t like getting her feet wet. She was incensed when a frog tricked her into jumping into the pond at our local dog park. At first, she kept her distance from Lake Como, but gradually she edged nearer to investigate why the water was moving. She climbed gingerly onto the rocks, barking at the small waves that lapped against the shore. Soon, she was playing in the lake like she’d been doing it her whole life. We struggled to get her to come inside at night, and she headed straight to the back door every morning.

But Annie also spent a lot of time just taking in her surroundings. While she has bouts of energy, she’s a pretty calm dog. She was fascinated by boats going by on the lake, the changing smell of the air as storms rolled in, and the geese who had no interest in becoming friends. She seemed to know that vacation was an opportunity to experience things that we don’t experience every day. She slowed down to savor it.

Our vacations have changed over time. We’ve driven across the country, explored national parks, spent time in cities, and been evacuated from Yellowstone. I miss seeing new experiences through my kids’ eyes, but I’m ready for a shift in my vacation self. Traveling with Parkinson’s brings challenges. It takes me time to figure out how to get around in new places. I am much more cautious than I used to be. And I often wake up confused in unfamiliar places.

So this summer, I’m trying a different approach. I’m learning how to slow down and appreciate the unexpected delights of being somewhere new. (Lake Geneva has some of the best fried cheese curds I’ve ever eaten.) I’m no longer trying to cram in as many experiences as possible, as if vacation were a competitive sport. I’m taking it slow, exploring the lakeshore thoroughly before cautiously stepping into the water.

But many of the in-class exercises from my Iowa Summer Writing Festival classes live in my Lowly Worm writing notebook, their purpose already served. These were the exercises to get the juices flowing, the ones where I wrote without picking up the pen. The instructors gave us a small prompt and set the timer. Free writing is what some call this.

Free writing doesn’t feel very free to me. When someone says, “Write the first thing that comes to your mind,” the first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m supposed to be writing. I have limited time, and I want to use it well. What if I start down a path that dead-ends at a cliff or a gully that is impossible to cross? I know the point is to get the pen moving, and writing many words might lead to an interesting sentence or a well-captured detail. I’ve read Bird by Bird and The Artist’s Way. My freeze response says more about me than about the exercises.

Still, I am a rule follower, so I start. And when the time goes off, I finish. And sometimes there is an interesting sentence, a well-captured detail, or a memory I got to revisit. The outcome may not be impressive, but the process was satisfying. Here’s one example. The prompt was, “Write about ice cream.”

Ice cream has come and gone from my life over the years. Grandpa Bob loved butter pecan. He had a dish almost every day - a very big helping. What kind of ice cream did Grandma Louise like? No one knows. It never came up. We all ate butter pecan in a quantity that my mom would have insisted was for sharing.

The local Dairy Queen was across the street from our church. It closed for the winter, but from spring to fall, we would each get a cone after church. I longed for the dipped cone, but Mom was afraid I would spill it on myself. Dad was the only one who got a dipped cone. The chocolate stains came out in the wash.

Now that I have a family, we buy small tubs of Ben & Jerry’s. Everyone gets their favorite flavor. Sometimes we share, but other times we don’t - allocating our tub across days, or eating it all in one sitting. The patriarchy of ice cream has ended with my generation. We have doggie ice cream, too, because Annie is also against the patriarchy.

I was going to write about Carver cones, but the timer went off. A story for another time.

Photo Credit: Little Village Magazine

This has happened many times since the song was released in 1981 - at high school dances, college parties, piano bars, and gatherings around campfires. But never at an academic conference. . . until now.

Last week, I attended the Center for Working Well’s inaugural research conference at Purdue University. The conference was capped at 90 participants, a size that I love. Larger conferences have become more difficult for me to navigate. Small conferences require less walking, fewer large gatherings, and more opportunity to participate in ways that work for me. In addition, I knew that the Director of the Center for Working Well, Professor Allison Gabriel, and the Associate Director of Research and Impact, Professor Kate Zipay, would create a well-planned, developmental experience. They had already signaled this in the pre-conference emails, inviting us to bring doctoral students so they could receive constructive feedback from senior scholars.

Allie and Kate have their own Substack, Paying Attention with Kate and Allie, and they wrote about the conference in a recent post, “A Disputable Purpose.”

We gathered to create a rigorous but deeply human scholarly space where people can think generously, challenge ideas developmentally, and experience a model of academia that feels intellectually alive rather than stiff and performative.

We wanted to rewrite the script: that a life in academia can involve rigorous, serious, scholarly work and involve joy, friendship, laughter, and fun.

And we f*cking seriously delivered.

Yes, you did! I enter events like these as both a participant and a qualitative researcher. I’m attentive to details - moments of greeting, moments of gathering, and unscheduled moments. The details had been crafted with intention. Even before I read Allie and Kate’s post about their intentions for the conference, I was describing it using the same language. I left with new research insights, feedback on my own work, and the joy that comes in trying to help colleagues develop their own research. Eminent senior scholars and graduate students alike brought scholarly rigor.

But the rigorous feedback was delivered in a developmental and humane manner. Allie’s opening toast and Kate’s introductory remarks as our cruise director named this goal. The structure of the sessions provided time for it. Purdue faculty and graduate students who helped organize break-out sessions picked up the baton that Kate and Allie handed off and ran with it, creating inclusive spaces filled with learning.

In a talk that capped off Day 1, Professor Sue Ashford spoke honestly about the risks that come with charting your own path through academia, and encouraged us to resist self-doubt. Her advice to know yourself, be yourself, and trust yourself resonated with the graduate students in the room, but it was also a good reminder for me as I consider the shape of the next chapter in my professional life.

We also shared meals, including a lovely dinner at Purdue’s football stadium. (No sign of Purdue Pete, which was honestly OK with me. I find him a little creepy.) I chatted with new and old friends about life, families, hobbies, and future plans. A DJ played music throughout dinner, then moved to the open area with a sundae bar. The cha-cha slide caused a rumble throughout the crowd. Two professors moved to an open area and started the familiar synchronized dance. The DJ tried to encourage a couple of friends and me to leave our sundaes to join in, but he quickly backed off after I stood up with my cane in hand.

But let’s be honest, friends, Parkinson’s disease is not what prevented me from joining in the cha-cha slide. Neither was a concern about how I would be viewed by my academic peers. I was not blessed with rhythm or grace. The cha-cha slide has always been outside my comfort zone. Honestly, I struggle with YMCA and the chicken dance.

But when the opening chords of “Don’t Stop Believing” started playing, I knew my time had come. Without a thought, I joined a circle of people and sang at the top of my lungs. Joy, friendship, laughter, fun.

Researchers draw a distinction between space and place. A space is a three-dimensional container where activities take place. Offices, conference rooms, and banquet halls are spaces. But people can create culture in a space, giving it an identity, meaning, character, and norms. In those situations, a space turns into a place. At Purdue, Allie and Kate created a place where we could bring our whole selves and be honest about challenges, a place where we could learn and experience joy. This place allowed me to share some of my most personal research and sing off-key. What a gift.

(I was so engaged in the conference that this was one of the few pictures I took. Jordan Nielsen, professor and dad to four of my favorite small humans, took an assist from his kids in developing this visual for a session on the evolution of our field.)

I worry that places like this are becoming rarer. The intention to welcome everyone is not enough. We need to be aware of the needs and fears each person brings to the space. I no longer worry quite so much about whether I’ll be taken seriously as a scholar (although the thought still occasionally enters my mind), but I was thrilled to see each presenter’s research given attention and respect. For me, navigating stairs has become harder than explaining theory, so I felt seen when several of the conference organizers checked in to make sure I could climb onto the raised platform for a panel discussion. After this conference, I renewed my resolve to create places like this. After reading Lyz Lenz’s article about online bullying in Rolling Stone, this resolve became stronger. We all have a responsibility to create places where everyone can be their best selves.

But then our journaling guide, Randon, added a sub-prompt that opened up a whole new line of thinking (as she so often does). How do physical places and things help us find our way back to ourselves? I started with a list of places where I feel most like myself - home, Prairie Lights, a classroom, Joe’s Place, New Buffalo, the Ped Mall.

I’ve written about Iowa City’s Ped Mall before. Over the years, I took walks there when the stress of graduate school became too much. I’ve watched my kids play on the playground outside the Iowa City Public Library (and learned that Ben tested the new equipment's safety one Saturday night when he was an undergrad). I’ve wandered through art festival booths and listened to free concerts. I’ve let Annie smell all of the Saturday night smells that linger on a Sunday morning. I’ve caught more Pokémon than I can count.

But just a few hours before our journaling group began that day, I had woken up to a HawkAlert at 1:51 am. “Gunshots COLLEGE and CLINTON ST. Avoid the area.”

Groggily, I scanned the map in my head. If you head west on College Street, it technically ends before reaching Clinton. For two blocks, only pedestrians are allowed. The gunshots occurred on the Ped Mall just before bar close.

I later learned that a fight had broken out on the Ped Mall, just when last call sent students out into the spring air. Shots were fired into the crowd. Three University of Iowa students and two other people were shot. They were bystanders, pulled away from an evening out when bullets pierced their skin. Luckily, there were no fatalities. Even so, this event shook me.

What happens when our favorite places become a little less safe? I am never on the Ped Mall at bar close, but I dream of having a studio apartment at the Vetro, which overlooks the Ped Mall. When sleep will not come, I can imagine myself wandering down to street level, allowing the anxiety that sits heavily on my chest to float away. The reminder that nowhere is completely safe doesn’t shatter this dream, but tinges it with reality.

This is a reality that many people live in almost constantly. I recently spoke with a management scholar who is researching perceptions of workplace safety among members of the LGBTQ+ community. Many individuals in this study described themselves as safe, even when they faced significant identity challenges or harassment. Perhaps defining their reality as safe is a defense mechanism, a strategy that allows them to continue to show up. Perhaps they feel relatively safe, compared to others they know.

But I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like if we expanded the spaces where everyone feels safe to be themselves. Masks are heavy. What if we put them down and used that energy to reflect others back to themselves? Who can you be here? Exactly who you are.

Independent Bookstore Day takes place on the last Saturday in April. This year, Mike and I were in Des Moines with our friends Laura and Brad on Independent Bookstore Day. Des Moines has an interesting bookstore ecosystem. There are lots of neighborhood bookstores scattered around the city, each with its own character. We visited three - Reading in Public, Storyhouse Bookpub, and Nos Books.

All of these stores have small footprints, but they are beautifully curated. Nestled beside bestsellers are books I’ve never heard of. In a new bookstore, I head straight for the staff recommendations shelf. This is one way the store tells me who it is. Does the store specialize in current fiction, romance, or underrepresented authors? Is there a mix of current and classic picks? When the staff recommendations shelf includes some of my favorite books alongside new discoveries, I know I’ve found my home.

I also get a sense of a bookstore’s identity by reading the “shelf talkers,” a brief description of a book written by a staff member who loved it. Compared to the dust jacket copy, a shelf talker spends less time on what the book is about and more on what happens when you read the book. A handwritten note tells you what you can expect from the reading experience. When we visited Reading in Public, a shelf talker led me to My Broken Language, a memoir by Quiara Alegria Hudes. As I paid for the book, a staff member commented that she loved everything Hudes has written. “Have you read her fiction?” she asked.

“No,” I responded, “I chose this because of the shelf talker.”

“If you like that one, read her fiction,” she advised.

This is the beauty of an independent bookstore. The staff members are readers. They understand the reading experience in a way that, I believe, will never be captured by an algorithm. One year, when Christmas shopping for my mom at Prairie Lights, a long-time bookseller asked me, “Can I help you?”

Usually, I politely decline, but that day I decided to give it a try. “My mom loves Olive Kitteridge, The Good Lord Bird, and Louise Penny,” I told him. “What do you recommend?” I could see his synapses firing. He moved nimbly through the fiction section, putting three books in my hands, telling me why he had chosen them. I hadn’t heard of any of them. I bought all three with no reservations. (I wish I could remember now what they were.)

Just for fun, I asked Claude, a large language model, the same question to see how artificial intelligence handled the task. AI spit out a list of 14 books, all of which I have heard of, many of which I’ve read. The list included the sequel to Olive Kitteridge, a book called Olive Again, which is a rather obvious choice. Other books on the list are major bestsellers. I’m not surprised that the list included no surprises. Algorithms make recommendations based on data. They prize prediction, not discovery.

At our second stop, Storyhouse Bookpub, we encountered another staff member with book wisdom. Laura was looking for the book, Yesteryear, and we hadn’t seen it on the shelf. As I was checking out (after waiting in a delightfully long line of other readers!), I asked the bookseller if they had Yesteryear, a novel about a tradwife who is transported back in time to the 1800s (a time when many of the traditions highlighted on today’s social media originated).

“Noooooo,” she said mournfully. “It’s sold out. I’ve already read it twice. Well, I read it, and then I made my boyfriend listen to the audiobook on a road trip. It’s sooooooo good.” And then, to be sure that the whole store got the memo, she began chanting, “Yesteryear! Yesteryear!” (Although we did not find the book in Des Moines, I bought it on my Mother’s Day trip to Prairie Lights. I’ll let you know if it lives up to the hype.)

Our third stop was my favorite. Nos Books opened last year in the Drake University neighborhood. This was my first visit, and the selection of books by and about people who are underrepresented was immediately evident. I broke my “one book per store” rule, perusing all the shelves before circling back to cradle Woodworking, The Witch, and How to Live Free in a Dangerous World in my arms. I added my stack to Mike’s, and he headed to the cash register.

The small store was packed, and I was nearing the end of my energy. I found a small, uncrowded corner and paused to look around. I recognized a family that we’d seen at a previous store. The woman, who had a book-themed purse, was browsing the children’s section with her son. Three friends walked through the door and immediately began picking up books and asking each other, “Have you read this one?” I was breathing in the scene when Mike waved me over to the cash register.

“This guy doesn’t like your selections,” Mike said, nodding to the man behind the cash register, who we later learned was the owner. The man’s brow wrinkled briefly before breaking into a smile. (Not everyone gets Mike’s humor right away.)

“You’ve got some good ones here,” he said.

“It’s a beautiful store,” I replied, “Such a great selection.” He beamed, slipping a hand-painted bookmark into one of the books.

Some might think of summer reading as a solitary activity, but in independent bookstores and libraries, communities are built, connections are made, and the books you are meant to read will find you.

I received one of two University of Iowa Distinguished Mentoring Awards from the Graduate College. As I’ve noted before, mentoring is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Our PhD director, Chad Van Iddekinge, coordinated my nomination. Madison Mucci-Ferris, a current PhD student, and Jordan Nielsen, a PhD alumnus who is now an Associate Professor at Purdue University, wrote letters of support. And I was given one page to summarize my mentoring philosophy.

This may have been the first time that I’ve put my mentoring philosophy into words. My philosophy is informed by research evidence. For example, Professor Kathy Kram’s research identifies a range of mentoring functions to help mentees advance in their careers and to build strong, supportive relationships. I’ve also learned a lot from my own mentors, and my approach has developed over time.

So, who am I as a mentor? Here’s my philosophy:

As a management professor, I research strategies that help employees do well and be well at work, which informs my approach to mentoring PhD students. Students know I am here to help them succeed and thrive. I have a regular cadence for checking their progress and well-being (weekly meetings and at the beginning and end of each semester). I also strive to build trusting relationships, so students feel safe coming to me anytime they face challenges. We celebrate big and small accomplishments and strategize about how to address challenges, normalizing both.

To support students’ development, I help them set both learning and performance goals each year. Although we have program milestones for all students, my goal-setting process is individualized to help each student develop their own interests and passions. I am curious, so I find joy in exploring new areas alongside my students and watching them grow into distinct and capable scholars. I also connect students with other researchers and academic communities by encouraging them to chair symposia, helping them network, and consistently showing my respect for them. My approach to mentoring shifts to meet students where they are. Each year builds on the last until students are on the job market with the skills and resources they need to begin a productive career.

A PhD program is a marathon, and a lot of life happens in those five years. My students have faced significant health issues, lost parents, and become parents themselves. I provide not only instrumental support, but also psychosocial support. Supporting the whole person allows me to form close relationships with Ph.D. students that last for years after they graduate. Students I mentored early in my career support my current students, creating a family of sorts.

I also support all PhD students in my department and the college by teaching a doctoral seminar, serving as an informal resource, and advocating for policies that help them achieve their goals. I introduce pre-PhD students to research, help applicants assess their fit with the program, and ensure new students are oriented to our program and community. I can think of no greater impact than developing the next generation of management scholars.

But here’s the thing about a philosophy. It’s a goal. It’s how I would like to mentor. It’s who I am on my best days. I was gratified that my students’ letters talked about times when I lived up to my philosophy. But it’s also true that sometimes, I give advice that doesn’t work out. Sometimes, I miss deadlines. Sometimes, I don’t live up to my ideal mentoring self. This is why mentoring relationships should be built on trust and reciprocity. I let my students see my opportunities for development, which helps them feel comfortable sharing theirs.

One of my students described me as someone who “co-navigates the doctoral journey with intention.” I love this. I don’t have all the answers, but I want my students to know that we are in this together. I am here to support their goals and help them become the best version of themselves.

So when fifth-year PhD student Ah Jung Kim, who recently defended her dissertation, came to the awards event with a crown, a sash that read “Queen,” and a sign that UI President Wilson complimented from the stage, I told her, “I couldn’t have done this without you.” And that is true on so many levels. An effective mentoring relationship is reciprocal. I have learned as much from my students as they have learned from me. They keep me current. Their enthusiasm is contagious. They model persistence. And as our relationship develops, they support me as well. I hope they learn that no one does this alone. I hope they know I’ll always be there to cheer them on and to marvel at who they are becoming.

When I found out I was selected to give the faculty toast, I started thinking about what students going into the world might need to hear right now. I wanted to be realistic and positive. I wanted to share some wisdom and recognize that no one can tell the future. I wanted to draw on research evidence. (Can I count the toast as research translation?) I wanted to be done in 5 minutes or less. No problem!

I ended up reflecting on an idea that Sarah Wittman, Bethany Cockburn, and I have been writing about. We argue that you learn from each life transition and that what you have learned may be applied to similar transitions in the future. We often tell college graduates that they are now entering the “real world,” but they have already navigated the transition from high school to college. So, I decided not to shy away from the fact that graduates are moving into an uncertain world. Instead, I reminded them that they are ready. Here’s the toast:

***

Class of 2026. It’s such an honor to be here with you to celebrate this moment in your lives. As Dean Keane mentioned, I study life transitions, moments when we take on a new identity. Life transitions, such as graduating from college, are moments to celebrate. Earning your degree is no small feat. But life transitions can also be challenging. So I’m here to tell you that after watching you for the past 4 years, you have what you need to take the next step. It’s partly because we at Tippie see this as an important part of our jobs. We want to provide opportunities and experiences that prepare you for your future careers. But you are also ready because of what you’ve done in these last four years. And that’s what I want to celebrate tonight.

Transitions are unpredictable. Some of you may have your next steps mapped out. But many of you do not, and this can cause concern. I want you to think back to when you first arrived at the University of Iowa. Some of you walked onto campus having planned to be a finance major since 2nd grade. But many of you figured it out along the way.

You took Intro to Management with Eean Crawford or Intro to Marketing with Rob Rouwenhorst and declared yourself a management or marketing major. You participated in a pitch competition with Kimm Harris, and an entrepreneur was born. My husband, Mike Colbert, convinced you that you have a programmer inside, or Mike McCourt or Greg Hall looked at your resume and helped you see the early seeds of a career in finance or accounting. Maybe it was Alexandra Nica who introduced you to the world of economics, as only she can. You found your path forward, one that was right for you. You’ve done it before, and you will do it again.

It is also true that you are graduating into a rather uncertain world. You may have read news stories about entry-level jobs disappearing or the impact of geopolitical conflict on business. Someone may have even said to you, “This is a tough time to be graduating.” These people have a point. But, again, this is not the first time that you’ve entered a new phase of life with a less-than-ideal story playing in the background.

When you started college, we were just coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The news media were reporting disengagement among students. We were concerned that students might not participate in class discussions or join student organizations. But you came to campus and wrote a different story. You started Tippie’s sustainability case competition for undergraduates, which has become an annual event. You partnered with faculty and staff to create Tippie Impact Week and gave back to our local community. When it was necessary, you created a student organization so that the Black in Business dinner could continue. You heard the story being told about you, and you wrote a different story based on your goals and passions. You’ve done it before, and you will do it again.

But no one navigates life transitions alone. When you came to campus, you met people in your residence halls and classes. You joined student organizations and connected with faculty and staff. You found your people. College provides a structure to encourage those connections. As you start a new chapter, you may need to expand your network. Remember that faculty and staff do not graduate. We will continue to be here for you. There’s nothing that brings me more joy than hearing from a former student. Hawkeye Nation is waiting to support you too. You may have already had the experience of having someone give you a small nod and a “Go Hawks!” as you walk through an airport or another city in your University of Iowa hoodie. As you expand your network, you’ll learn that the solutions to many of society's challenges are out there. We just need the will to adopt them. And perhaps you’ll be inspired by how others are creating paths forward despite uncertainty. But mostly, I hope you’ll find community because success is sweeter when we celebrate together. That’s what we are here to do tonight.

So please raise your glasses with me to toast the Class of 2026, in celebration of all you have accomplished and all you have in front of you. You’ve got this. Go Hawks!

(Thanks for the picture, Samantha Gray!)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of Drew’s research for my own work on individual identity. Last week, Drew sent me an email with this definition of history: "knowledge that is collected and meaningfully interpreted about what happened in the past" (Foster et al., 2017). The interpretation of history is what interests both Drew and me. History is a social construction. Organizations and their leaders construct history in ways that align with the image they want to portray. Individuals do this too. Organizations and individuals also want to present a coherent identity, one that makes sense over time. This is partially what drives decisions about how to construct history.

For example, Wednesday was Earth Day. In my role as the faculty director of the Tippie College of Business Social Impact Community, I support faculty, staff, and students who wrestle with how to maximize both economic and environmental sustainability. I find this work very meaningful because I care about the planet. This is a part of my identity that has been around almost as long as Earth Day (which has been observed in the United States since 1970).

I can tell a coherent story about my identity as an environmentalist. It starts with stories about my mom and dad:

We had a huge garden (which today I would call an organic garden, but back then was the only model I had for growing your own food). I still remember the joy of picking strawberries warmed by the sun and putting them on pancakes fresh from the griddle.

My mom taught me how to press flowers and dry flowers to make them last longer. When we went on walks, she introduced me to the flowers. Spring Beauties were my favorite, one of the first signs of the world waking up from winter.

My dad taught me how to tap maple trees and took me with him to check the buckets. Waiting for sap requires patience. We visited the buckets many times, but found only a few drops. But when the time was right, the buckets were filled to the brim, so heavy only Dad could carry them. This was a joy that no instant gratification could provide.

The stories I tell gradually shift to stories about my interest in the natural world and the environmental movement.

I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 3rd grade. Even now, Silent Spring remains a challenging read, with lots of details about the dangers of pesticides and the deliberate misinformation spread by the chemical industry. But my favorite teacher, Mrs. Page, put it in my hands in 3rd grade, and so I read every word.

In middle school, I won a tree-identification contest. This is not because I felt intimately connected to trees (although I did, and can still tell my life story through the trees that were there). I was simply good at memorizing details. But the fact that I still talk about this moment shows that “tree identifier” fits with who I am now.

But research on how organizations use history to shape their identities also points to the role of selective forgetting. Organizations leave out moments in their history that do not align with the image they want to project. They emphasize elements of their history that align with who they are now, or who they want to be.

I see this pattern in my own story about who I am now. As I claim the identity of a friend of the planet, I leave out my decision to choose a career that didn’t have an explicit impact on environmental sustainability, and the time we bought the cheaper car rather than the most energy-efficient car. I work in a business college that supports a Social Impact Community, but we still have work to do to help students fully consider the impact of business on society. And even now, I am wrestling with the need to integrate AI into my classes before we have a fully formed governance system that considers the broader impact of AI on society

Leaving these moments out of my identity narrative lets me tell a more coherent story. Maybe this is a more convincing claim to the identity of “friend of the planet.” But I believe there are risks in forgetting the parts that don't fit and presenting a coherent story without them. Including those parts of the story is honest - that’s the way my life actually unfolded. It’s also a good reminder that history is not deterministic. Our past influences our present and future, but it doesn’t determine them. Our story may not be coherent because we are all still becoming. A messy story reminds me that I can reconsider, pivot, and choose a new direction. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

Many of the faculty at Boston College are qualitative researchers. They are experts at developing explanations about how the world works based on analysis of interviews, observations, and other textual data. I knew this group would provide insightful feedback about an early-stage qualitative research project that I’ve been working on. The goal of the project is to understand how people navigate identity transitions under unpredictability.

According to Blake Ashforth’s book, Role Transitions in Organizational Life, transitions vary in their unpredictability. A transition is unpredictable if it is hard to anticipate when you may have to step away from one identity, when you may take on another identity, and what the events surrounding identity loss and gain may look like.

We create processes and rituals to reduce the unpredictability of some transitions. When you graduate from college and start a new job, commencement ceremonies and a Hy-Vee sheet cake mark the end of your identity as a college student. Some organizations have orientation periods and mentors to help you settle into your new identity as a working adult. That’s not to say that the transition is easy. For some, the college student identity may linger until that first Thursday night out with friends makes for a tough Friday morning. For others, internships and part-time jobs mean stepping into the working adult identity during college. Even so, the timing of the identity shift and the events surrounding it are relatively predictable.

My experience of the identity transitions associated with Parkinson’s disease has been much different. On the surface, there was a clear moment of identity transition - the day of my diagnosis. However, I had been experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease before the diagnosis. Additionally, it took time to think of myself as a person with Parkinson’s disease and even longer for other people to reflect that identity back to me. My identity as a person with Parkinson’s disease is also more or less salient from moment to moment and day to day. My symptoms are highly variable. At times when they are well-controlled, my Parkinson’s identity fades into the background. But sometimes, when Mike or Maddie asks me how I’m feeling, I say, “I’m feeling especially Parkinson’s-y today.”

(But is a diagnosis really an identity? I’m saving that thought for a future entry.)

Further, as I’ve written about frequently, being a person with Parkinson’s disease has influenced my other identities. I’ve shed some identities, taken on new ones, and changed how I live out others. I’m no longer a driver. I am a Tai Chi practitioner. And my contributions as a professor are leaning more toward those based on wisdom and less toward those based on speed and novelty.

Interviewing people with Parkinson’s disease and other degenerative diseases has provided me with new insights about how others navigate this transition. As I presented my initial findings, questions from the Boston College management faculty and graduate students helped me clarify how this transition differs from other transitions we experience in life. By definition, degenerative diseases diminish capabilities over time, but the progression is uncertain. The audience also encouraged me to broaden the types of people I’m interviewing. Clearly, navigating this transition as a professor is different than my dad’s experience of becoming a retired roofer with Parkinson’s.

But there was another layer to my visit to Boston College. I was not just giving a talk about how the unpredictability of Parkinson’s impacts work identities. I was also living that experience. Travel makes me more aware of having Parkinson’s disease. When I’m in familiar space, I can keep going even on a Parkinson’s-y day. But the unfamiliarity of my surroundings, not to mention the heightened difficulty level of changing planes at O’Hare, makes traveling with Parkinson’s difficult. I still get a little anxious when I give a talk, and stress intensifies my Parkinson’s symptoms.

Before leaving for Boston College, I wondered if traveling to other universities to give talks was becoming one of those identities I might soon leave behind. I even voiced that concern during my talk. But I’m not sure I’ve reached that stage yet. First, I’m learning how to modify travel to work for me - no quick turnarounds in O’Hare, no plans to be productive on the plane, plenty of time to rest when I’m there, and honesty about how my schedule might need to be altered. Most importantly, Mike travels with me. I worry much less knowing that if I become confused in an airport, he’ll probably get me where I need to go, or at least we’ll have a good time trying.

This trip also made me realize that another set of supports was available if I was willing to speak up. I’ve known two of the professors at Boston College - Jean Bartunek and Mike Pratt - since I was a graduate student myself. Jean offered to pick me up from the airport and drove me back to my hotel after my first lobster roll of the trip. Mike Pratt took me to lunch and helped me navigate the buffet in the faculty dining room.

People I had just met were gracious as well. The two students who took me to breakfast made sure I didn’t forget my phone on the table. Others carried my backpack for me and guided me to an elevator every time we needed to switch floors. All of these kindnesses were offered in a way that helped me feel comfortable, but not singled out.

The itinerary for these sorts of visits almost always includes meetings with other faculty members and time with the PhD students. I love these meetings, especially the one with PhD students. This is a chance for them to ask me anything, and this group of students took me up on that offer. I learned about their research interests and struggles. I provided advice tailored to their needs and helped moderate their fears. In meetings like this, I fade into the background. It’s nice to put the focus on others. I ended my meeting with the PhD students by telling them they could reach out if they ever had any more questions. Of course, they could connect with me on LinkedIn, but I also told them that I was their person now. “Just remind me where we met, and I’ll be happy to do whatever I can for you,” I said.

After my visit was done and I said a final goodbye to Jean, Mike and I got ready to return to the hotel and rest. I felt good during my visit, but my body was starting to get tired. We were wandering the halls looking for a restroom when we ran into one of the PhD students I had met with earlier in the day. “Can you help me find the restroom?” I asked her apologetically. “Of course,” she said, leading me down the hall. “Thank you so much,” I said as I handed Mike my backpack. “My pleasure,” she replied shyly. “I am your person too.”

I’ve always prided myself on being self-sufficient. But self-sufficient may be another of those identities that I’m going to have to give up. Or maybe it’s an identity that I should have left behind long ago. In unfamiliar situations when I’m having a Parkinson’s-y day, Mike has stepped into the role of care partner, allowing me to hold onto valued identities a little bit longer. My kids, colleagues, and close friends play this role too. But countless others have shown that they are happy to help in ways that I can’t always anticipate. Maybe there’s a difference between “I can’t do this anymore,” and “I can’t do this alone.”