Blog Did Abraham Pass the Test? I made many mistakes in my oral qualifying exam, halfway through grad school. The first…Ben McFarlandAugust 5, 2022
Blog The Word that Doesn’t Wear Out In my work as a pre-med advisor, I help students navigate the pictures and words…Ben McFarlandMay 24, 2022
Blog Teaching with Fire, Part 2: The Open Inner Core In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that the structure of a flame is,…Ben McFarlandFebruary 25, 2022
Blog Teaching with Fire, Part 1: Why It’s Easy to Burn Out My friend left academia for industry last month. He posted online: “I spent years hearing…Ben McFarlandFebruary 24, 2022
Blog The Meaning of Dreams: Creation Through Selection Sidarta Ribeiro, in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams, has written…Ben McFarlandDecember 13, 2021
Blog COVID-19 and Romans 15, Part 2: Pauline Solutions Coming back together for education this Fall is a long process that is more a…Ben McFarlandOctober 14, 2021
Blog COVID-19 and Romans 15, Part 1: Problematic Reunions A year and a half ago, in the middle of lockdown, it seemed like reunion…Ben McFarlandOctober 13, 2021
Blog Fall Plans and the Delta Variant Two weeks ago, a meme circulated with two pictures, labeled “My Fall Plans” and “The…Ben McFarlandSeptember 1, 2021
Blog The Garden of Extinct Trees In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, the character Lucien keeps a library of “every story that…Ben McFarlandAugust 11, 2021
Blog If a Tree Falls on a Campus, Does It Make Any Sense? In the space of about a year, three big trees fell in middle of the…Ben McFarlandJune 17, 2021
Blog A Chemist’s Spring Break, Part 2: It is Solved by Walking In the first part of this post, I discussed the pressures academics face with a…Ben McFarlandApril 16, 2021
Blog A Chemist’s Spring Break, Part 1: Systems Under Pressure “Spring break” is a misnomer for faculty and staff at colleges on the quarter system…Ben McFarlandApril 15, 2021
Blog The Precedents of an Unprecedented Virus On Friday, March 6, 2020, at 4:05pm, our Vice-Provost sent an email that the remaining…Ben McFarlandFebruary 26, 2021