In my time in San Francisco, I’ve noticed the academic parts of my life creeping into the personal. Or vice versa.

Several days ago, I found myself explaining Queer Theory to a friend over brunch. Without trotting out Butler and Foucault, I offered my friend the idea that “people like other people” – a simplification for sure, but an immediately useful one. Lisa Diamond’s presentation on Dialectical Systems Theory was helpful for explaining how the labels one uses to identify sexual identity change over time, and can depend on one’s surroundings. “We expect everyone else to stay the same, while we’re constantly changing,” I said between bites. Using theory to add context, to help make sense of individual experiences, makes sense to me. A position paper is less likely to change someone’s lived experience.

With all of the terms flying around academia like overstuffed turkeys – literacy, reification, performance, dialogue, discourse -   pining even one of them down for public consumption seems a small success. It’s not that these terms aren’t useful; rather, their meaning becomes useful to few when understanding is so closely guarded.

Some of the most interesting terms I’ve learned came from asking friends. A whole evening was spent discussing the differences between bears and...

This summer, as well as this Summer Institute, is flying by. It seems only yesterday I was teaching my last class in Everett, MA and packing for San Francisco. As a community health educator, I seek to bridge the space between research and practice.

Inevitably when meeting someone, I am asked, “what do you do?” and often my condensed answer is “I teach sex ed.” The range of responses I’ve received have been from the bewildered – “How can you do THAT?” – to joyous – “I’m so glad YOU’RE the one teaching them” and everywhere in between. Sexuality, as well as the teaching of anything sex-related, evokes a strong emotional response. I wonder, if chefs receive the same questioning: “How many years of ‘training’ – wink wink – did you have to get?” and “Do you teach Kindergarteners how to put on condoms?” Food, like sex, is a natural, human need. Studying sexuality, in my mind, is similar to studying food or sleep. Yet unlike our sociocultural relationship to food, sex has become taboo, almost a fetish.Explaining my role to people working on sexual and reproductive health involves some jargon: “I direct a DPH-funded, evidence-based, school-based, teen pregnancy prevention program combining class discussions with service learning.” What does this mean? To parse that sentence: I’m the only one working on this...