michelle rivers - my adventure blog

Five years ago, I loaded up my Honda with all of my stuff (including my snake friend, Mojave) and drove from San Diego, CA to Stow, OH to start my PhD adventure. Somehow I'm at the end of this journey (already?!), and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on some of the things I've done during graduate school. ( google scholar link ) ( cogbites blog link ) I would not be at the end of this journey without the support of my community. I am fortunate to have too many people to thank individually here, but I appreciate everyone who has mentored, encouraged, or supported me in small or large ways. To my mentors, who have consistently challenging me to grow as a thinker and provided me the tools and support to become the researcher and educator that I am today - I will do my best to support my future students and colleagues by following your generous examples. To my peers, who have been the best critics and cheerleaders - may we continue to lift each other up. To my friends (so...

Names are somewhat arbitrary labels, but they have a profound influence in shaping our lives and personalit y .  I recently decided to change my last name from "Hickman" to "Rivers", and have been thinking a lot about what our names say about our identity. When I ask myself, "Who am I?", my name is always the first thing to pop into my head. But now that I have a slightly different answer, it doesn't mean that I'm a different person. Right?  Usually when we want to re-invent ourselves, it takes a lot of dedication and hard work from the inside out. But a name change works from the outside in - a re-branding of sorts. Even so, in choosing what I wanted to call myself, I had to think deeply about what label best encompasses how I want to been seen by the world. Although I only chose to change my last name, my full name - Michelle Lauren Rivers - now carries additional power because I chose it.  Why change my last name? Actually, I think ...