Second World Life Writing: Doris Lessing’sUnder My Skin

My second life as a teacher.

18 years after I got my Ph.D., when my luck securing grants dried up. It can happen to any of us, and that was my year. Over the next 2 years, I applied for several more grants, hoping that I could sustain my career in academia, but none got funded. In the meantime, I began considering options beyond the hallowed halls. During those years, I spent a summer teaching a high school astronomy cours...

My life as a doctor in the world health organization.

The Permanente Journal/ Fall 2006/ Volume 10 No. 3 Editor’s Note: Over the course of time, I have come to see how easy it is to believe that what we believe and what we do medically in the United States must generally be the way medicine is viewed and practiced in most countries. We hope, therefore, that the readers of The Permanente Journal will be interested every so often to hear physicians ...

Me, my Self and my Avatar Some microsociological reflections on "Second Life"

More than most other web applications, Second Life illustrates the potential of the Internet to amplify the fragmentation of human personality by inducing a manifold of "dummy identities" strictly dissociated from the piloting core personality behind the screen. In contrast to partialized offline identities as they emerge as correlates of "crossing social circles" (Georg Simmel), they transport...

My Life

My second acts.

thought that I would leave research. Ever since I arrived in the United States as a Ph.D. student with the proverbial two bags in my hand and $50 in my pocket, my goal had been to become the best possible cancer researcher. I marched through my Ph.D. and postdoc, taking one weekend to get married followed by a honeymoon in the lab. Everything was on track as I landed a job as a tenure-track ass...