I worked at a job where 90 percent of my coworkers were Spanish-speaking, and some of them were only Spanish-speaking. My rule was if someone came into the office needing something - I worked in HR at the time - they had to bring a Spanish word to teach me. That was the deal.

If someone comes up to me, 90 percent of the time it's about Office Space.

I had definitely never heard of anyone peeing in a cup and leaving it in their own office on a bookshelf to evaporate and be absorbed back into their body through the pores on their face.

I was a teenage girl once. I was not an overweight teenage girl, but I had really bad acne when I was 11 or 12 years old. It was heart-rending, and people made fun of me. People whispered when I walked by in the hallways, and I was sure they were whispering about me. My adult perspective is maybe they weren't.

I came from a state where 35 percent self-identify as Tea Partiers, so I'm a bit distorted perhaps in my appreciation for the larger American population.

My most profound growth as a writer came when I joined an online critique group. What a harrowing, terrifying, wonderful experience that was.