June 2020 Monthly Review

disclaimer: these reviews are for my own personal accountability and aren’t really meant to be articulate blog posts. if you are curious about anything I write here, feel free to email me at nichole.lynn.bennett <at> gmail.com

values

• bewilderment
• making a difference
• brilliance
• daring
• joy
• authenticity
• integrity/whole-self
• imagination
• intimacy
• revolution as process

highlights from the past month

• taught week-long intensive in Python coding to Biologists in the Czech Republic
• dancing almost every day with New York Burlesque Academy, Austin Burlesque Academy, Erica Nix, and Minx+Muse
• my birthday — had low expectations because of quarantine but it was really lovely because I got to reconnect with people I hadn’t talked to in a while
• Zoom weekly hangouts
• RPG and board game playing with friends
• found out my grad students in STEM study is getting funded!
• developing a new burlesque act
• Odyssey Works workshop
• did improv for the first time in a long time with Momentum Theatre in Chicago online
• Me & White Supremacy reading group processing
• being on social media less, questioning its role in my life

lessons learned from last month

• giving myself space instead of getting attached
• prioritizing joy and pleasure instead of having them as add-ons

theme or emotion that sums up the month

• surrender, letting go, being open to what comes my way

outcome of last month’s goal, projects completed

• finished rough drafts of assessment tools for youth-activated climate change project
• finished rough drafts of facilitation plans for youth-activated climate change project
• began talks with several partners for the youth-activated climate change project and began planning for the fall

goals for the month ahead

scicomm

• create survey items for scientists empathy study
• fellowship paper revised and submitted to a journal
• continue catching up in reading books from past classes
• PT 2050 IRB submitted
• youth-activated climate change work schedule for fall
• scientists COVID-19 twitter study roles set up and research questions laid out
• scientists COVID-19 data gathered, exploratory analyses
• scientists COVID-19 research questions solidified
• 10 rejections (applications, pitches)
• website draft up
• Storytelling for Scientists online course written and delivered

work

• revise ML course and deliver
• revise Python course and deliver
• PT GRA work
• Marie Lorenz piece
• humanities and climate change podcast pilot episode

personal

• evening routine habit
• garden set up
• motorcycle up and running
• burlesque performance

media consumed in the last month

tv shows

• What We Do in the Shadows
• Avatar the Last Airbender

films

• King in the Wildnerness
• I Am Not Your Negro
• 13th

books

• A Primer In Theory Construction
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Devising Critically Engaged Theatre with Youth: The Performing Justice Project
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
• The New Dress
• Kew Gardens
• A Room of One’s Own
• A Haunted House
• The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World

board games/rpgs

• Pandemic Legacy Season 2
• Lady Blackbird

video games

• Rim World

podcasts

• Small Doses
• Code Switch
• Revisionist History