How college educators ignore the elephant in the room — We just passed halfway through the quarter, and my partner hasn’t gone to his classes in a week. He hasn’t done much schoolwork at all this quarter. I started off the quarter strong and started to break down in Week Three, which was mid-April. …

A case study in how not to talk about disability — Last Monday, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a four-minute package, reported by journalist John Hamilton. A podcast episode from NPR about ventilators — specifically, post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) — recycled this package earlier this week. In it, I noticed an unsettling quote from a critical care specialist, Dr. …

Delivery work was hard enough before the pandemic. Now, it’s flat-out unsafe. — Around two weeks ago, I cancelled all of my upcoming DoorDash shifts. I had only managed to get my location updated from Southern California to Washington state a few weeks earlier after moving in September, and I’d hoped I could re-establish a steady income stream. …

Or, the mundane consequences of doing too little, too late — Every week for most of the past three years, I’ve given myself an intramuscular injection of testosterone. This is common among transgender people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), like myself. Like any self-administered injection, though, this process has its risks. And today, after three hours of class via…

Advice, not inspiration, from an Autistic adult during COVID-19 — In the last week, my expectations for at least the next six weeks of my life have radically changed. Much of the global population had, is having, or will have a similar experience as we try to mitigate COVID-19. The thing is, as an Autistic adult with a convoluted and…

Late winter snow and spring’s new growth in Olympia, Washington — I don’t know if anyone in the South Sound area expected snow this morning. One of my housemates had to tell me to look out the window before I got dressed for entirely incorrect weather. …

Insensitive comments and failure to seek basic information are the new normal — At dinner tonight, I overheard a fellow Evergreen State College student refer to COVID-19 as God answering their prayers (because it kills old people, who are bad drivers). Another person at their table said they’d still come to the dining hall even if they were sick. …

A 22 year-old’s reflections on growing up in the long shadow of 9/11 — For my parents, the 9/11 attacks are squarely memory; for my siblings, they’re firmly in the realm of history. I fall somewhere between those poles, in a liminal space without the direct memory people expect of me. My fourth birthday was less than two weeks before September 11, 2001. By…

a poetic expression of existential fear — each morning I wake, each breath I take tainted by fear, by knowing the stakes each minute we waste, living by our luxurious tastes borrows time from my generation, seals our children’s fate the lives we enjoy, the gadgets, clothes, and toys strip wealth from our Earth, to give moments…