Laurie McMillan

Some people say that in one day children laugh up to ten times more than adults. Whether or not this is true, we can all agree that laughter makes you feel good. Have you always had a sense of humor or do you make a conscious effort to bring humor to your daily life?

I have definitely always had a sense of humor; I love to be around funny people, and my husband and my two kids make me laugh on a daily basis. They all say I’m the least funny one in the family.

My dad loved to tease and joke around when I was growing up, so I’m very comfortable with silliness and physical humor. Sometimes life feels like one long to-do list, and acting like a goofball helps me break out of that daily grind. Also, as a teacher, it’s important that I make my classes entertaining so our brains are engaged. Humor is one way to make that happen.

It’s tough to say how much of a conscious effort I make to bring humor to my daily life. It’s definitely there! But it’s not something I always think about.

Tell us a little about your WinkyFace videos. I understand your original intent was to demonstrate gender trends on YouTube… but the videos seem to have taken on a life of their own. What do future do you see for them? Do you have any other videos in the works?

WinkyFace is the YouTube channel I co-developed with my colleague and friend Lindsey Wotanis. We do parodies of faculty life, parody interviews with fictional characters, and assorted behind-the-scenes videos. We have had a LOT of fun planning and producing the videos, and we have learned a lot. We didn’t plan on doing the channel forever, but we don’t have a definite endpoint in mind either. We have a lot of videos that are either scripted or brainstormed, so I see us sticking with the work for awhile still. It may be tough to let it go!

Although I do a lot of feminist research, WinkyFace was never focused on gender trends. Lindsey and I developed the channel because we saw a need for our students to learn social media, and we know that the only way we can teach our students is if we ourselves are using the media. YouTube is the ideal challenge because a) it’s possible to make money (so it will seem like a good option to students), b) it involves multimedia so we’d be learning a lot of skills all at once, and c) it involves media presence across platforms, so we would need to learn instagram and twitter if we were to do YouTube.

Learning how to YouTube successfully was our first goal, and the content was secondary.

We brainstormed a few ideas. I really wanted my kids to get involved because it would be easier for them to reach an audience on YouTube than for me to do so, and I figured they’d enjoy making some money. But they weren’t interested, so Lindsey and I decided we would do it ourselves. And we made the content fun so that we’d get a kick out of doing it!

Once we decided on a focus, we also developed a behind-the-scenes blog titled Margin Notes. That might be where you noted our interest in gender issues. Because I had already done a YouTube channel, I was familiar with the inappropriate ways people talked to me (or about me) when leaving comments on my videos. Also, Lindsey and I published research analyzing the comments on Jenna Marbles’ videos versus Ryan Higa’s. The difference is exactly what you’d expect, but it’s still overwhelming and disheartening when you see the numbers. At any rate, before we even began putting out videos, we spent some time thinking about all the dynamics, and we blogged about that sort of thing over several posts.

Do you have a daily writing regimen? Are you an early riser or do you burn the midnight oil?

I should have a [sailing <–somehow, I wrote “sailing” instead of “daily,” and now I’m thinking how lovely it would be to have a sailing writing regimen!] daily writing regimen, but I don’t.

I’m an early riser. At different times in my life, I had different habits, but now my entire household is moving between 5:00 and 6:00am. I found out that my brain tends to work better in the morning than at night when I was playing Words with Friends and Scramble. I was almost unbeatable when playing in the morning! At night, I was terrible.

But I still write at night at times anyhow, because sometimes that’s the only way to get the job done.

What is your favorite genre to read? To write? What are you reading now?

I like to read in a lot of genres, but fiction is probably #1. I recently finished The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I also reread The Joy Luck Club for my book club, and I was so glad I did. The writing is awesome, the stories are awesome. I read a lot of light fiction (mysteries, chick lit, young adult fiction, whatever). I’m not a snob in any way when it comes to reading.

This may seem nerdy, but I like to write serious research because it makes my brain work really hard. The whole process of analyzing material to really show something appeals to me, and it takes unbelievable effort to organize ideas and spell things out in a way that will make sense to readers (without them falling asleep). I learn a lot every time I do that kind of writing.

I love poetry, too–both reading it and writing it. But it’s less of an everyday habit except when it intersects with my teaching.

Recent studies have shown that as adults play helps us manage chronic pain, reduce stress, build memory, and encourage creativity. Have you found this to be true for you and for those around you?

I think these studies are right on, but I regularly turn into a big ball of stress, so I’m not at the point of fully modeling this ideal. That being said, even moments of goofiness help bring me perspective, and I certain kinds of play can be meditative. I recently started doing zentangles (a meditative practice that involves drawing patterns on small squares of paper), and that kind of play feels completely different from the shenanigans that make me laugh when working on videos. While the zentangles give me space from the rest of the world in some ways, the videos are always about engaging the world (or at least a tiny segment of it!). Both types of play make things better!