I'm pretty bad at being an employee. I openly despise meetings, I say exactly what's on my mind, and I sincerely believe that many managers exist only to waste the time of otherwise productive people.

A single sentence from a faculty mentor cut deeper than I expected—because it wasn’t the first time my voice had been questioned. I spent decades believing I was not good enough to become a writer.

Research and writing once demanded long hours of manual work. Students flipped through books, copied references by hand, and spent extra time fixing formatting problems after finishing their papers.