Now that I’ve completed my dissertation, I find myself turning—somewhat unexpectedly—toward the United States. 2025 is my self-assigned “research year,” not in the formal academic sense, but in the way I’ve always conducted research: through reflection, storytelling, cultural pattern recognition, and tracing the emotional architecture of systems.
In many ways, this is my new project—a return to the civic terrain that shaped me, from my Midwestern girlhood to my current vantage point abroad. To understand the current political climate in the U.S., I find myself digging not just into headlines or history books, but into my own life: how power was modeled, how leadership was practiced, and how I responded—complicit, resistant, confused.
This post, which I originally wrote for my Overseas Hoosier Substack, is a piece of that unfolding inquiry. It’s a Gen X-flavored reflection on leadership, legitimacy, and what school bullies might have to do with authoritarianism.
Thanks, as always, for walking with me—between countries, thresholds, and questions.
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