On Second Thought: Learned Women Reflect on Profession, Community, and Purpose

With courageous and insightful testimonies they narrate the intersecting relationships of work, family, students, patients, and colleagues, weaving them together rather than compartmentalizing them. In these dynamic essays, thirteen wise women review their lives for meaning and purpose, striving to integrate both head and heart. Challenges inside and outside the academy and other professional settings are revealed, to tell of suffering and transformation, to tally hard-earned life lessons and to share wisdom achieved.  Lives and words are gathered and generously shared, allowing these women to make sense of their own lives while mentoring a wider circle of younger and older readers alike. They consider how their spiritual paradigms have shaped their vocations as teachers, scholars, guides, mentors, and advocates and how these roles have been integral to their life’s work, not merely to their work life. These “travel tales” of journeys through knowledge and self-knowledge will inform, challenge, surprise, entertain, and inspire. 

“These women bring both experience and an ability to see the overarching picture as they examine the paths that have led to their current positions. Not since Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life have I seen something similar.” —Kerry Noonan, Associate Professor, Core Division, Champlain College