Vanessa Vakharia 0:00

Hey, guys. It's me, it's Vanessa. This is Math I am recording this from my hotel room in Utah I just left Boston, where I was presenting at Get Your Teach On, which was literally magical. My friend Allison Mello put on this entire conference that was Christmas-themed, and it was unreal. There was, like, a gingerbread land. Everything was a vibe. We I had two outfit changes: one in red velvet, one in green velvet. Anyways, it was amazing, and then right away I had to leave and head to Utah for the first time ever to do two days of professional development with Davis County School District starting tomorrow. I'm actually so excited because this is just my first trip, because I'm working with them for the entire year, and guys, Utah has been on my bucket list. I cannot wait. I have wanted to try a dirty soda for, like, literally two years now, and it's gonna happen. And I have a whole day off on Saturday, so text me your recommendations. Anyways, okay, the whole point is, long story short, I ran out of time, things got a bit hectic, and I was like, "Instead of forcing an episode, I'm gonna take a break for a couple of weeks." Now, I hate taking a break. I feel like I'm letting you guys down. I feel like you expected an episode, but instead you have me telling you all the reasons why you don't have an episode. Things have been a bit crazy this summer, and David convinced me that podcasts take breaks apparently, and I'm not a failure, and everything's fine. So I'm choosing to just believe him because I don't really have another choice right now. Honestly, though, I've been a bit burnt out the last few weeks, and I'm always giving out advice about self-care and, like, blah, blah, blah, how to look after yourselves when you're stressed. And of course, I'm really bad at taking my own advice. And I think we can all agree it's way too soon for me to do another episode where I have a panic attack meltdown in your ears. So we're gonna get caught up over the next couple of weeks, and we will be back in no time. We just did a whole bunch of amazing interviews, so we're gonna process those, and I promise you we will have some amazing episodes coming up in the next few weeks. And if you're like, "Okay, cool, like, yes, I want you to take care of yourself, but I also wanted to listen to you", don't worry, I have a plan. There are actually a few interviews I've done recently on other people's podcasts that you can listen to right now. The two that come to mind are, number one, the three-part series that HeartWork did on math anxiety. Now, you may have already listened to this, but if you haven't, HeartWork is actually an Imagine Learning podcast series, and they are so good, They basically did a three-part series on math anxiety featuring me, Peter Liljedahl, Deborah Peart, some other amazing educators, and I'm on the second episode. And I don't wanna give too much away, but we have something coming up on this podcast, like, Math Therapy, that ties directly to Heartwork's three-part series. So if you haven't heard it yet, this is a great time to go hit play because that'll put you ahead of the game when we release our surprise next month. So that's my first suggestion. Go listen to Heartwork's three-part series on math anxiety. The second podcast you can listen to is Kristin Moore's Modern Math Teacher podcast. She did a huge series on my book, Math Therapy. This was actually really cool. She basically treated her podcast like a Math Therapy book study with 10 to 15-minute episodes every week about every chapter. Actually, it wasn't even every week, it was like every day. She, like, really banked a whole bunch. And for the final episode in that series, she interviewed me, and I actually gave her a little bit of live math therapy. So you can binge that right now by hitting up the Modern Math Teacher podcast. Now, here's the bonus idea If you haven't been listening to this podcast since day one, which I'm sure most of you haven't because we've been around since 2020, today's your day to play what I like to call Math Therapy Roulette. I want you to go to your podcast app or maththerapypodcast.com or wherever you're listening to me right now, and I want you to do that thing where you scroll like you're, like, spinning a wheel. Like, you flick your finger over the screen or your cursor or whatever and let it ride, and then just hit play on the first episode you see when your screen slows to a stop. Like, the first one you see that you have not listened to. As I said, we've been podcasting since 2020. There are some deep cuts that I'm sure you haven't heard. Like, go through seasons one through three and pick something from there. Today's your day to find some serious gems, like a treasure hunt, and then I want you to text me by hitting the link in your show notes and tell me which one you listened to, because I'm already dying to know. Okay, I'm gonna wrap this up because the whole point was to, like, make this short because it's not an actual episode, but somehow you've been listening to six minutes of me telling you why this is not an actual episode, but why you're still listening to me anyways. So all that to say, enjoy the rest of your summer. If you're already back to school, get in there, crush it. I cannot wait to hear from you, and we'll be back in your feed soon with more Math Therapy. Thank you guys for being so understanding, and I hope you are also engaging in whatever act of self-care you need right now to get you through the week.