Representative Pieces
These essays represent some of my best work. If you like them, you can find everything else below.
- The Velvet Rut, Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 2023
- Late Assignments, Failed Tests, Sleeping in Class: My College Students Are Not OK, New York Times, May 13, 2022
- The Future of Work Should Mean Working Less, New York Times, September 23, 2021
- Unfaithful Reproductions, The Point, March 22, 2021
- Notable Essay of 2021, Best American Essays
- Drinking Alone, Commonweal, July/August 2020
- Notable Essay of 2020, Best American Essays
- Letter of Recommendation: Cheap Sushi, New York Times Magazine, December 17, 2019
- Notable Food Writing of 2019, Best American Food Writing
- Taming the Demon: How Desert Monks Put Work in Its Place, Commonweal, February 8, 2019
- Notable Essay of 2019, Best American Essays
- When Work and Meaning Part Ways, The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2018
- Special Mention, Pushcart Prize XLIV anthology
- A Burnt-Out Case: Aquinas & the Way We Work Now, Commonweal, January 5, 2018
- Notable Essay of 2018, Best American Essays
2024
- Ordinary Life, Elevated, Commonweal, April 9, 2024
2023
- How We Obscure the Common Plight of Workers, The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2023
- Cartography of Abandonment (review of Julian Montague’s The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America and his artwork), Commonweal, November 2023
- The Velvet Rut, Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 2023
- Do One Thing: Academic Vocation in the Age of Burnout, Intersections, Fall 2023
- College Students: School Is Not Your Job, New York Times, September 4, 2023
- Letter of Recommendation: Almanacs, New York Times Magazine, August 27, 2023
- Catholic Colleges: Do Less if You Want to Save Your Religious Mission, America, July 19, 2023
- Making a Living Is More than Work (review of Henry at Work by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle), The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2023
- College Students Have Something to Say. It’s Just Not What You’d Expect, New York Times, April 7, 2023
- It’s Not How You Play the Game, Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2023
- Our Big Problem Is Not Misinformation; It’s Knowingness, Psyche, March 27, 2023
- What ChatGPT Can’t Teach My Writing Students, The Atlantic, February 9, 2023
- The Key to Success in College Is So Simple It’s Almost Never Mentioned, New York Times, January 3, 2023
2022
- Mental-Health Days Are Only a Band-Aid for Burnout, The Atlantic, November 14, 2022
- The Closest We Get to the Eternal Present, Notre Dame Magazine, Autumn 2022
- What I’m Reading: The Map and the Territory, Michel Houellebecq, Notre Dame Magazine, September 13, 2022
- “Don’t Lose Hope”: Addressing the Breakdown of College Education, New York Times, June 5, 2022
- Late Assignments, Failed Tests, Sleeping in Class: My College Students Are Not OK, New York Times, May 13, 2022
- What It Would Take for Us to Love Our Jobs Again, Vox, April 20, 2022
- Workers Deserve Better, Plough Quarterly, April 4, 2022
- No, You Didn’t Cause Your Own Burnout, The Muse, February 3, 2022
- Your Work Is Not Your God: Welcome to the Age of the Burnout Epidemic, The Guardian, January 6, 2022
- How Men Burn Out, New York Times, January 4, 2022
- Burnout Dominated 2021. Here’s the History of Our Burnout Problem, Washington Post, January 1, 2022
2021
- The Gift of Burnout, America, December 16, 2021
- Are We All Really Burning Out? Chronicle Review, December 15, 2021
- What Are We Doing? Notre Dame Magazine, Fall 2021
- The Future of Work Should Mean Working Less, New York Times, September 23, 2021
- A Stacked Deck, The Hedgehog Review, June 17, 2021
- Space Invaders, Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2021
- The Exaggeration of “Burnout” in America, The New Republic, March 25, 2021
- Unfaithful Reproductions, The Point, March 22, 2021
- What Coronavirus Taught Us about the American Workforce, America, March 2021
- Experiments in Self-Reliance, Commonweal, February 24, 2021
- Sorry for Your Loss (review of “Regret: A Theology” by Paul J. Griffiths), Commonweal, February 2021
- You Don’t Have to Love Your Job (review of “Work Won’t Love You Back” by Sarah Jaffe), The New Republic, January 21, 2021
2020
- The Christmas Gift Unwrapped, Notre Dame Magazine, Winter 2020
- Drinking Alone, Commonweal, July/August 2020
- Je Regrette Tout, The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2020
- Imagining a Better Life After the Coronavirus, The New Republic, April 1, 2020
2019
- It’s Complicated (review of “The Problem with Everything” by Meghan Daum), America, December 27, 2019
- Letter of Recommendation: Cheap Sushi, New York Times Magazine, December 17, 2019
- Meet the Twitter Account Promoting the Gospel, One Tweet at a Time, America, November 23, 2019
- The Noonday Demon, Plough Quarterly, October 9, 2019
- Can Marco Rubio Help to Break the Partisan Divide Over the Dignity of Work? America, August 29, 2019
- Catholic Colleges Are Searching for New Homes in the Southwest. Can They Succeed? America, April 29, 2019
- How to Save Americans From the Hell of Work, The New Republic, March 4, 2019
- Taming the Demon: How Desert Monks Put Work in Its Place, Commonweal, February 8, 2019
- Sharing Bicycles, Sharing Waste, Stewardship (Luther Seminary), February 5, 2019 (no longer available)
- Precision Instruments (review of “Interior States,” by Meghan O’Gieblyn), America, January 25, 2019
- Millennials Don’t Have a Monopoly on Burnout, The New Republic, January 10, 2019
2018
- Purgatory is Other People on “The Good Place” and “Forever,” America, December 28, 2018
- Vocation and the Realities of Burnout, Vocation Matters (blog), November 13, 2018
- All Work, No Ethic, The Hedgehog Review (blog), November 5, 2018
- When Work and Meaning Part Ways, The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2018
- Is Your Job Necessary? (review essay on working life), America, October 24, 2018
- Try to Lower the Stakes of the Job-Interview Dinner, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 2018
- Why Dallas Republicans Skipped an Interfaith Forum, Religion Dispatches, October 16, 2018
- The Bible Passage at the Heart of the House’s Punitive Farm Bill, Religion Dispatches, September 11, 2018
- On Pilgrimage in Texas, in Search of Light and Color (review essay on Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin,” the Rothko Chapel, and the Chapel of Thanksgiving), America, July 9, 2018
- Here’s What Happened When NRA Members Encountered a Prayer Vigil Outside Their Convention, America, May 10, 2018
- A Tale of Two Commencements, Notre Dame Magazine, April 2, 2018
- Still in a Work Place, Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2018
- Please, Millennials, Don’t Destroy Us Just Yet, The New Republic, March 7, 2018
- A Burnt-Out Case: Aquinas & the Way We Work Now, Commonweal, January 5, 2018
2017
- The Year the Robots Came for Our Jobs, The New Republic, December 29, 2017
- “You’re F*cked”: How Pouncing on Mistakes Helps the Right Escape Moral Accountability, Religion Dispatches, December 20, 2017
- Louis C.K. Has Confessed. Now It’s Time for Contrition, America, November 10, 2017
- The Trumpocalypse: One Year Down, 999 to Go, Religion Dispatches, November 8, 2017
- Out of the Woods (review of “Henry David Thoreau: A Life,” by Laura Dassow Walls), The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2017
- Opting for Lucy Over Linus: Watching The Great Pumpkin in the Age of Trump, Religion Dispatches, October 23, 2017
- Time to Reject Religious Conservatives’ Use of “We’re All Sinners” to Excuse Immoral Acts, Religion Dispatches, October 3, 2017
- Parenting is Not a “Job,” and Marriage is Not “Work,” The New Republic, August 9, 2017
- The Costs of a Calling, Inside Higher Ed, May 12, 2017
- The Rich We Will Always Have with Us (review essay on inequality), America, May 3, 2017
- Douthat’s Wager: Go to Church, Even if You Don’t Believe, Religion Dispatches, April 18, 2017
- America Must Divorce Dignity from Work, The New Republic, March 28, 2017
- Searching for George W. Bush in His Portraits of the Soldiers He Sent to War, America, March 3, 2017
- Right-Wing Suspicion of Experts is Martin Luther’s Fault, Religion Dispatches, January 10, 2017
2016
- The Dignity of Work: A Surprising Point of Division, The Green Room (blog), December 9, 2016
- From Gown to Town (review of “There is Life After College” by Jeffrey Selingo), America, October 24, 2016
- When Being “Christian” Means Supporting Trump: An Argument for Hiding Your Faith, Religion Dispatches, October 19, 2016
- Field of Vision (review of “Last Chance U” and “A Season with Florida State Football”), America, October 17, 2016
- Clinton is Wrong. You Shouldn’t Have to Work to Have a Place in America, Washington Post, October 13, 2016
- The 40-Year-Old Burnout, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2016
- What Good is Work? Part I, Part II, Part III, Stewardship (Luther Seminary) October 2016 (no longer available)
- Labor in Today’s Vineyard: Why We Need a New Theology of Work, America, September 12, 2016
- Don’t Hate Twitter Because of Trump, The New Republic, August 4, 2016
- Review of “Self and Soul” by Mark Edmundson, Expositions (Villanova University), Spring 2016
- Alternate Reality (review of “The Man in the High Castle”), America, January 19, 2016
- Reconsidering Booker T. Washington in the Age of Amazon, Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2016
2015
- Henry David Thoreau’s Radical Optimism, The New Republic, October 19, 2015
- America Wants You to Feel Ashamed About Procrastinating. Don’t, The New Republic, September 6, 2015
- Taking Sin Seriously (review of the comedy of Louis C.K.), America, August 6, 2015
- I Had “The Least Meaningful Job in America” — and I Loved It, The New Republic, July 23, 2015
- Robots Might Save the Humanities, The New Republic, July 6, 2015
- Don’t Search for “Purpose.” You Will Fail, The New Republic, May 28, 2015
2004 – 2014
- Student Evaluations Aren’t Useless. They’re Just Poorly Used, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7, 2014
- A Catholic Case Against MOOCs, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 16, 2013
- College Should Be an Intellectual Workout, Liberal Education, Summer 2013
- Parsing Academic Theology and Religious Studies (letter to the editor), Chronicle of Higher Education, September 7, 2009
- A Scholarly Book and a 4/4 Teaching Load, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2009
- How Dumb Do They Think We Are?, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2006
- Dispatches from the First Year, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2006
- The Subcategorical Imperative, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2006
- Yielding to Convention, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2006
- The Smell of Indoctrination in the Morning, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 17, 2005
- No Longer a Desperado, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 27, 2005
- At Your Leisure, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2005
- Rooting for the Competition, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 1, 2005
- The Goofy Job Search, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2004