Paula W. Millet,  Author

I can remember sitting in a college class devoted to the study of Shakespeare. For weeks, we read the numbered sonnets, dissecting every image and metaphor crammed into each fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter. When we finished, the professor calmly closed his textbook and said in his matter-of-fact way, “Basically, Shakespeare wrote these as a study of time.” I’m not sure why I remembered that so many years later, but it serves as a reminder that time certainly i

For much of my life, I was in a classroom. First, I was a student and then a teacher, so the word “test” makes me sit up straight and pay attention. I do so love to make that A, to get the gold star glued to the top of my paper. And the PET scan that I had today is the ultimate high-stakes test, the SAT of healthcare. Last year, I failed. So yeah, I was nervous. In fact, I had a bad case of “scanxiety.” Trust me, it is a word, whispered among those of us who share this kind o

I am about to date myself here, but I am willing to do it to prove a point. I grew up in a simpler time, well before the techno beast took its place front and center in our lives, before a multitude of information was readily displayed with a simple keystroke. I am old enough to remember when a mouse was something you trapped with a bit of cheese, an unwelcomed intruder that made us jump on chairs and shriek with fear. The connotation of the word has been influenced by its mo

The ancient Greeks believed that their gods whiled away the hours by watching the lives of mere mortals on earth. And occasionally, just on a whim, a particular deity would travel down from Mount Olympus and knock on the door of some poor unsuspecting human. The idea was to pose a challenge. How would the stranger be received? Would the visitor meet with kindness and hospitality or distain and disregard? Often, consequences or rewards rested in the outcome, which made folks p

I used to tell my students that they should keep a photo of themselves as a baby displayed on their nightstand, dresser, or other prominent place. The statement always managed to garner some strange looks, which, in my case, wasn’t unusual. But once I went on to explain my reasoning, most of them understood. And agreed. You see, it is virtually impossible to look at the sweet, angelic face of an infant and feel anything other than happy thoughts. There is no denying that a ba