The wayward confessions of a
Rogue Academic
Yo! I'm Jennika and White Ink Diaries is my love letter to the unorthodox, the eccentric, and l’enfant terrible of academia.
While the name may sound like the title of a coming-of-age novel—and maybe it is in a few ways—this site is designed to encourage unconventional educators to change the way they think about teaching and research. I want to show them how to use the unexpected as a weapon against academic apathy.
When I was a kid, I lived fearlessly.
In those days, my imagination was a bonfire ready to set the world ablaze. I told my stories with words written in bright red crayon on paper without borders or boundaries. Unfortunately, the modern education system is built out of boxes meant to keep this kind of reckless creativity in check.
It says something when the schoolyard becomes more like a prison yard.
Where every weekday, we trudge to classrooms like jail cells and count the minutes until our parole. Teachers, beaten down by the destruction of their childhood wonder, mutate into wardens determined to indoctrinate their students in this one-size-fits-all education system that values conformity and consumption over innovation and individuality.
Eventually, my stories found their way to sheets of paper bordered by doubt. The fire that drove me was little more than smoldering ash and my crayons had given way to the uncertainty of pencil and eventually the finality of pen. All that was left was white ink on a whitewashed world.
I was no longer fearless.
Maybe you've seen it in the vacant expressions on your students' faces, or the lackluster quality of their work. Or you've felt this way yourself and it's affecting your teaching or research. So what do we do when we love education, but not the system that governs it?
WE REBEL.
Not by burning the institution to the ground, but by changing it from the inside. We hack the system because rebellion is the foundation of reform.
It took me years to rediscover my courage; to reclaim my voice.
Grad school helped a lot with that. It reignited my interest in education and sparked my desire to teach a collective of students repressed by a system of standardization and convention.
All too often, we sacrifice our innovation and individuality for stability and security. We do it to ourselves and we force it upon our students. But what if we change that narrative? What if we encouraged ourselves and those we teach to once again tell their stories boldly in crayon?
As educators and scholars, we can give our students a chance to cast off the shackles of education-as-usual so that instead of filling their diaries with white ink, they can cover the walls of the world in a kaleidoscope of markings…
maybe even some in bright red crayon.
Want to work together?
If you’re ready to take your course to the next level, I would love to work with you. Just use the form below to drop me a line.
