I often feel placeless, groundless. When asked where I’m from, I answer ‘Montreal’, and then immediately turn into an unsolicited tour guide and talk endlessly about the wonders of bagels (real bagels, not this bloated bread shit), bike lanes everywhere, walking to the Jean-Talon market, living without a car, language…

My mum sent me a video recently of me as a 6-year-old visiting family in England. It’s the end of the day and I need to get into my PJs and go to bed. …

At the beginning of every term, I introduce myself to my students. I say, “Hi folks, I’m Anna Cook. You can call me Dr Cook, Prof Cook or Anna. It’s spelled like ‘Anna’ but pronounced ‘On-a’ just to make things difficult. …

During the year I lived on my own, I learned the value of fresh-cut flowers, self-made dance videos and Post-its on the wall. In my tiny little studio apartment, I tried to conjure as much joy as possible. I started buying myself flowers once a week at the market. It…

How bringing tea for my students challenges expectations of who counts as a ‘serious thinker’ I started teaching with tea in my last year of graduate school. I was teaching an Introduction to Critical Thinking class Monday to Thursday from 9am to 9:50am. …

How an online password helped me trust my abilities. I changed my online passwords when I was in the mad dash of finishing my dissertation in two months. A year prior, I changed my passwords to ‘Badass’ (in slightly different forms — you know to make it a strong password…

I switched to Garamond when I was completely stuck in the middle of one of my qualifying exams to become a PhD candidate in philosophy. I was writing a paper about Spinoza, a 17th century Dutch philosopher whose writing in the geometrical method (a mathematical proof essentially), as a result…

I named my monster Lenny. Well, I didn’t name it so much as its (his?) name became viscerally apparent in a therapy session. This monster was sticky, on my back with its arms wrapped tightly around my neck. He had been there for so many years that his sticky skin…