I’ve been interviewed by just-rambling, and here are my responses:

1. What are three words you would use to describe yourself?

fair-minded, spiritual, progressive

2. What do you consider your most significant accomplishment?

Finishing the PhD despite all setbacks and obstacles and after so nearly giving up.

3. If you had the power to change one (and only one) thing in the world, what would it be and why?

oooh, so many thoughts. Um. Well.

If I had the power to do so, I would increase every person’s capacity and inclination to make judgments based on a careful and compassionate attention to diverse perspectives – especially in the cases where prejudices would tend to preclude their consideration. Why? I think it would change almost everything if more people could tolerate a contextualist ethics. It would encourage the toleration of complexity and ambiguity without stranding anyone upon a helpless morass of indecision. It would decrease both the dehumanization and the romantic idealization of others. It might even make some headway into the problems of greed and corruption. It would certainly give us a decent ground for discussion, especially regarding difficult and controversial issues that divide us as well as “group” us. Anyway, it would be a start – and it would be something that I think would have a minimum of negative consequences.

4. If you found a penny on the sidewalk, would you pick it up or leave it there?

Pick it up – don’t you know all the day you’ll have good luck? (grin)

5. If you could go back in time and meet yourself 10 years ago, would you tell your former self anything about the future?

Only ten? Yes, I would tell my former self about the future – she really needed to hear that everything in her personal life was going to be ok – that she would be happily married, that she would have a wonderful son. I would warn her to spend more good time with Dad before he was gone. Most of all, I would tell her to stop researching, stop driving herself nuts trying to write the masterpiece of the century, and just start writing 8-9 pages a day on that dissertation. If I had finished writing it then, I wouldn’t be anywhere as deeply in debt, I would have been the first to write on the topic, and I would probably have gotten a tenure-track position while universities were still hiring in the humanities in interdisciplinary fields. I could have saved myself a truckload of misery if I had taken it all less seriously. I would tell her that the loans were already accruing interest while she was in school (she didn’t know). I would have told her that some of the things she thought were so important wouldn’t matter very much in ten years – of course I would have told her which ones! My 31-year old self was floundering – I would give her an informed refocus and pep talk. I wouldn’t tell her everything – just enough for her to avoid a few significant time-wasters.

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying ‘interview me please’
2. I will respond by asking you five questions (not the same questions you see here)
3. You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions