Hi Everyone! 

I was on the phone reminiscing about Easters of yore with my brother. One memory that came up was our playgroup Easter egg hunts, where all the parents littered our cul-de-sac with eggs. Among the dozens filled with candy, there was always one golden egg, containing a whole two dollars! At the time, it felt like winning the lottery, and all of us kids would chat about all the extravagant things we would do with that money. Because it was such a hot commodity, it was always the most well-hidden. I did end up finding it only once, but that was a truly special Easter. 

I hope you all found your golden egg this year.

And with that said, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

While Spring Break is over, Farmworkers Day landed on Tuesday, March 31st. That meant that we would have one day back in school and another holiday. That spelled doom for attendance on that Monday, but I was fully prepared for that. I made Monday a final Asynchronous Workshop day for their informative speech video assignments, allowing them to add the finishing touches to their presentations before submitting and extending their spring break an extra couple of days. I know for a fact that if I were an undergrad, I would not have made it to this class.

Wednesday’s lecture also happened to line up with April Fools. I really fell off my game for creating some elaborate April Fools prank, so I spent the morning thinking of something last-minute, and I came up with a pop quiz. 

I walked into the class as usual, saying hello to everyone and asking about how Spring Break went for them. I then talked about their mid-semester reflection assignments and said that a majority of the students wanted different kinds of assessments besides speeches, and how, starting today, I will be randomly giving pop quizzes. Right on cue, I pulled out a stack of paper quizzes to give to my students. As I was passing them out, some of the students immediately figured out it was a prank, but a few had a look of genuine fear and horror. They quickly figured it out, though, as some of the questions consisted of:

For Question 1, if you answered A) They are cold, you could be correct. If you answered B) They are defensive, you also could be correct. The same is true for both C) They dislike you personally, and D) They are plotting something. It could be any of these answers or like a million other things. It actually acted as a great segue into the topic of nonverbal communication, as it can be ambiguous. This lesson on nonverbal communication was the same lesson that I gave last semester when I was a teacher-in-training, and I got to experience firsthand how I have grown in confidence from teaching. I know for a fact that I would never have tried pranking my students last semester, haha…

In my methods class, we have begun to cover thematic analysis, a reflexive, interpretative approach focused on identifying patterns and themes in data. It is not summarization, but rather a synthesis and interpretation to uncover what lies beneath the data. This version is anchored primarily by Braun and Clarke’s (2006) Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology, which stands as a watershed moment in the field of thematic analysis, shaping how it is understood and applied across disciplines. Actually doing thematic analysis is a 6-part step: familiarizing yourself with the data, generating initial codes, searching for and reviewing themes, defining and naming them, and finally producing a report. Across these stages, a researcher actively constructs meaning, continuously refining themes to tell a story. An important point to note the results do not emerge from the data, but rather are actively constructed by the researcher.

Additionally, courses for Fall 2026 have dropped! I have taken two of the three graduate seminars being offered next, so I am also looking at taking an undergraduate class at a graduate level to have a full schedule(which essentially means doing all the work of the class, and then additional assignments that are more geared to a graduate level. More work for me, Yippee!)

Last but not least, I wanted to give Seb a shout-out for always bringing leftover bagels from his day job at Boichik Bagels to methods. His acts of altruism have saved me from many a snack-less graduate seminar.

Works Cited:

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

On Thursday, Rylee took me to Wine Thieves, a wine shop in Lafayette. I thought it was just a clever name for a wine shop selling wine for so cheap that it’s a steal, but a wine thief is actually a tool used by winemakers to remove small samples of wine from barrels for testing or tasting. 

We went to their Thirsty Thursday, where the shop becomes something more akin to a neighborhood wine bar. They open up their back patio, bring in a food truck, and set the scene with some live music. That night featured Ira Mato singing folk protest music, while a food truck was slinging Mexican dishes. Move over Taco Tuesday, because there’s a new alliterative weeknight, and it’s not Wine Wednesday. 

One reason I love Spring is that all the cities in the Bay Area collectively decided to make March/April their restaurant weeks. This week was the 14th annual Berkeley Restaurant Week and the second of three Bay Area Restaurant Weeks that we would be celebrating. While Berkeley might not have been awarded best food city in America, it is no slouch when it comes to the culinary arts, and this year’s theme of “Seeds of Spring” was meant as an ode to flavors deeply rooted across spring’s bounty. 

We decided to go to Gather, a Californian restaurant, for a 3-course meal of Crispy Brussel Sprouts with a honey balsamic vinaigrette, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries,  and grana padan, followed by a Spring Asparagus Ravioli with a Meyer lemon cream sauce, tarragon, shallots, breadcrumbs, and parmesan, and for dessert, a delicious Blueberry Bread Pudding. My only critique is that there might have been too many breadcrumbs on the pasta(I never imagined I would be complaining about gluten. Am I becoming Rylee?)

On Saturday, we went to the Lesher Center to see AXIS Dance Company, a nationally acclaimed ensemble of disabled, non-disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent performers. We saw AXIS back in December as part of the production of “A Christmas Carol”, and were blown away by their performance, so when we saw they were doing a standalone performance, the tickets were already as good as booked.

Their show was entitled “Patterns: Humanity in Motion,” meant to explore how our movements shape how we navigate the world. I am going to be completely honest, I do not know that much about dancing. It is one of those cultural domains in which I feel way out of my element. I can describe how they were explained to us. The show featured three pieces: “Electric Fish: bring my dead body back to the surface”, to reference deep awareness of the breath and bioelectricity within us, “Right Here, Right Now”, an exploration of perception and identity, and “Exquisite Corpse”, an examination of neurodivergence as a heightened way of moving through the world. While I lack the tactile vocabulary to describe the dances themselves, I love the kineticism of the performance. Besides the obviously impressive action of cartwheeling off a wheelchair, the movements, colors, and sounds all intermesh together to create a spectacle of human motion. As one of the dancers remarked during the performance, “Movement is a universal language. It connects us with our ancestors and beyond”.

This is the April Fools prank I aspire to do for my class in the future.