In the sticky, sweltering heat of late summer, I wrote a little post called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dissertation,” which translated my writing struggles into a therapeutic list of writing tips. This post was written as I despairingly grappled with many of the negative emotions that can accompany slogging through a long form project like a dissertation (guilt, self-loathing, and a healthy dose of but I don’t wanna, primarily).

One of the challenges to teaching with technology is helping students figure out the "who", "what", and "how" of internet messages.  As a grad instructor of “Human Diversity, Power, and Schools”, a course that centers on issues of difference, this challenge coincides with a key concept: social construction, or the idea that dominant groups’ norms are positioned as natural, to the exclusion of non-dominant groups. I have stumbled into memes as one fruitful teaching tool for helping students to uncover the ways mass media shapes how we view ourselves, others, and the world around us.