I like to listen to students, their stories, their existential reflections. I don't honestly give a damn about their commas. I care even less about works cited, apa vs mla. I never cared about that crap. I faked it.

There is a formidable number of people like me who feel the same and now they're flying out the closet -  to us, our students don't need to understand structural inequities vs THEY LIVE THOSE. Blue collar scholars, a huge body of knowledge lives in them. Think about the life and death difference for instance between 14215 (where my Glow lives) and 14214 (literally so close I could touch her but I CANNOT). 14214 is professors. 14215, 14222, 14201 - in Buffalo, each means a specific group of workers and ethnicities, facing a particular set of pandemic impacts. I know where the nurses are versus the cnas veraus profs versus the docs. ALL OF them are dying now, in each their own way.

And now I CAN listen. With funding, my salary and student research assistants to crunch data. But. How do I get health professionals to talk authentically? They want to speak, I know it, I CAN FEEL IT.

And for whatever it's worth, I want to HEAR IT.