college

  • Changing the Subject

    Changing the Subject

    Does the time come for everyone when holding it in just won’t do anymore? I kept the story of my abortion to myself until Michael broke up with me two years later.

  • Part-Time Faculty Are Poor

    Writers expecting to supplement their art by teaching college level courses might need to find a new day job. A quarter of all part-time college faculty receive some sort of public assistance, reports Slate. Those numbers include Medicaid and nutrition…

  • His Greatest Masterpiece

    His Greatest Masterpiece

    The banality of evil hides in people, and who they unleash it upon become forever tainted by their names. They become one. Creator and monster. Evil by association.

  • Our Part-Time Labor Problem

    I teach part-time. My students work. They work in fast food or slightly slower food or hospitality. Last spring semester, two were veterans, with at least four trips to the Middle East between them. One of my four parents cut…

  • The Real Problem with Campus Rape

    Fraternities do not have a monopoly on rapists: not at UVA, not at any frat, not even the deep Southern ones where upwards of 100 guys live in the house. (The plumbing; one shudders.) But: what the fraternity system does…

  • Songs of Our Lives: Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope”

    Songs of Our Lives: Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope”

    Distance always seduced me—distance from whatever was most familiar, especially myself—but the difficulties in achieving such remove vexed me.

  • Fail Again, Fail Better

    How it all got so bad is a blur. I blocked the door. I blacked out the basement windows. I remember myself curled in feral positions, sounds on repeat getting louder, climbing up and out of the window to piss…

  • Adjunct Faculty Plan Walk Out

    Adjunct college faculty are at last taking a stand against abominable work conditions and low pay by planning a national walk out on February 25, 2015. Unlike their tenured counterparts, adjuncts lack protection from retributive firing should they follow through.…

  • From Applebee’s to Published Author

    Scott Cheshire explains that he started flirting with the woman who became his wife by telling her he had a novel coming out. Twelve years later, it did. Today, he is a published novelist with a graduate degree, but back…

  • The Magic Building Where English Majors Work

    A professor of undergraduate and graduate creative writing for twenty years, Cathy Day gives some practical advice for students at The Millions, admitting while English majors don’t work in a “magic building,” the degree does have some often overlooked benefits.

  • All Shade, Dusty Books, and Lofty Conversation

    Fresh out of college, Kaulie Lewis already feels nostalgic for the 150 or so books she completed as an English major. At The Millions, she discusses what she considers some of the most important novels she read in school and…

  • I Wasn’t the White Boy Everyone Thought I Was

    I Wasn’t the White Boy Everyone Thought I Was

    My connection to my Puerto Rican heritage seemed as tenuous as my connection to my white skin. I didn’t feel white, didn’t believe I had the privileges that came with whiteness.