A short(ish) introduction
This site is, perhaps obviously, still very much a work in progress. It’s not yet set up exactly the way I want it, nor does it have all the bits and pieces it will eventually. It seems silly to leave it totally blank, though, so while you wait, here’s a few random things about me. (Very random: these facts are not necessarily important and/or interesting.)
- I live in Melbourne, but I’m not from Melbourne. I’m not even Australian. I have Canadian citizenship, but spent most of my childhood and adolescence in the United States. I like being Canadian.
- I love chocolate. A lot. And I love coffee. A lot. I consume more of both than is probably good for me.
- I moved to Melbourne in 2011 to do a PhD. (More on this later.) Doing any sort of advanced degree tends to be an experience with a lot of extreme highs and lows, but so far, I’ve enjoyed it.
- I’m a sex geek. (More information on what a sex geek is, exactly, is here.) It started when I discovered the brilliant Scarleteen.com around 2004, and sort of spiralled from there, to a point where it essentially took over my life. I now consider myself a sex educator, and in addition to my ongoing volunteer work at Scarleteen, I also volunteer for Youth Empowerment Against HIV/AIDS (YEAH) here in Melbourne, and research the connections between gender, sexuality and social status in high school. I even have a t-shirt that says sex geek on it, and yes, I wear it out in public, generally to have drinks with the Melbourne sex geekdom crew.
- I like commas and parentheses a bit too much. I’m very wordy. I hate editing my own work. It’s a terrible combination.
- I am unabashedly feminist. This means that I am frequently outraged about the general state of the world, and I have to have a bit of a rant. Sometimes I upset other people in the process of ranting, because my mouth works faster than my brain a lot of the time, but I’m working on that.
So. There you go. That’s a bit about me. This blog will probably be a combination of posts on the process of doing a PhD, various sex education-related ramblings, shameless self promotion, and possibly an occasional post ogling a pair of shoes I will never be able to afford.