Monthly Review: May 2025

I can’t remember the last time I visited, but it must have been at least a couple years. Who’s left to visit but the memories? Growing up in a college town and practically on the campus itself, I always knew colleges to be transitory by nature, but as I led my visiting family through office-lined hallways, I recognized fewer and fewer nameplates. This was my dad’s office. This was my mom’s. But they too left years ago now, and with them my reason to stop by campus.

But with graduation upon us and a cousin of mine matriculating, I returned to my alma mater for commencement, the first I’d sat through since my husband’s six years earlier. I scanned the program for familiar names—perhaps that girl’s sister was in my society, or that kid’s older brother sat beside me in Baptist Heritage. The last name on my own diploma has been married away, and few would recognize it now.

In the muggy gymnasium, forgotten details flood my memory: the tidy rows of folding chairs flanked by bleachers bursting with people, the gonfalons and mace and professors in regalia (all neatly explained in the program), the exact shade of ugly yellow-brown on the front wall, the trails of graduates in black gowns waiting for one chapter to end and a new one to begin. How excited I had been to turn the page seven years ago when it was my turn. My pale blue tassel fluttered in the May breeze, the valedictorian’s medal nestled between the gold cords around my neck, and my engagement ring sparkled its reminder of the next milestone to come only weeks later. There was more joy in that one moment than there had been in the four years leading up to it, and the future seemed as bright as the spring sunshine.

Of course, nothing went to plan. 3 months, 25 job applications and 6 interviews later, I took up residence in a middle school classroom so miserable I regularly cried on my morning commute and resigned on my final day of school. Instead of applying to the grad school in Maryland my favorite professor had rhapsodized about, I put myself through online master’s classes with the retail job I had picked up in college and just never quit. I landed an online teaching position thinking I’d try it for a year (that was five years ago).

Our head of school told us to write “Where I’m From” poems in professional development one year. I didn’t show mine to anybody, but in its half-formed lines I wrote of Bible quizzing tournaments and church pews. In an early meeting with my principal, she wanted to know where I went to school. “You know, they did a good job with you,” she told me.

Sitting in that folding chair, watching the faces of the faculty members on the stage, I think about that poem again, where I’m from. I see my faculty advisor who introduced us to poems that made people cry in class and told us we were human beings, not robots. I see the history teacher who told me I’d make a good college professor. I see the team leaders for the ESL missions trip I took, who still call me Rockstar Rachel even though I did not, in fact, rock all that much. I see the “To the Praise of His Glory” motto overhanging the stage, framing the people who lived out that message before me every day for four years.

You could have gone someplace else, earned more money, taught fewer classes, published more papers, impacted more lives, but this is where you chose to dedicate your time, whether for five years or twenty-five. In the providence of God, your years as a professor coincided with mine as a student. In every class I took, whether it was psychology or Shakespeare, you equipped me with the tools I have used to build my career, such as it has been. You are in the mission statement I wrote at my first-ever back to school in-service, the curriculum I’ve designed, the lessons I plan (even if I don’t use the five-page template you gave me in my secondary and middle school teaching methods course), the poems I share with students, every part of me down to the way I structure a sentence. You sent me out into the world to, as the quotation in my email signature reads, do well and do good. I look up into your dear, familiar faces, and I know: you are where I’m from.

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Here's what I read, cooked, and created in the month of May.

What I Read

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt (★★★★★)

• Beach Read, Emily Henry (★★★★)

• Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (★★★)

• The Unwedding, Ally Condie (★★★)

If you want to hear the rationale behind my rating, head to my Goodreads for full reviews.

What I Cooked

• Rhubarb Streusel Muffins

Difficulty: ★★

Flavor: ★★★★★

Keeper: Yes

Comments: Not too sweet, great crumb. I didn't have whole-wheat flour, but all purpose was great.

• Jalapeño Pepper Jack Cheeseburger Sliders

Difficulty: ★★

Flavor: ★★★★★

Keeper: Yes

Comments: Doing slider meat sloppy Joe-style instead of in patties? Genius. These were so flavorful and fun. I feel confident they'll be showing up on my meal plan again this summer.

What I Created

• Original blackout poem "Memorial Day"

• A little progress in my project

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May your days be filled with beauty, and may your heart be filled with the willingness to see and give thanks for it.