What’s all this about?

Hi, I’m Yaa, the owner of this website.

I created this platform to share my thoughts and to encourage others to explore their own. As you’ll see here, a core theme is what I call Floating in Our Humanity–a simple, but often avoided, idea of embracing every part of being human. In my time, especially in my beloved field of engineering, I’ve noticed a tendency to avoid the very things that define us: our complex emotions, thoughts, and experiences.

My hope for this space is that it serves as a safe place for anyone to embrace their full humanity. This includes the parts of ourselves that feel a bit “much” at times, alongside the parts that make us feel proud and joyful–and everything in between. However long you stay, I hope you enjoy your time here.

Want to learn more about yaa?

Yaa is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was drawn to this field after her experiences as a chemical engineering student at Lehigh University.

Her research focuses on understanding how “little t” trauma and Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) influence the types of individuals who pursue engineering. She is interested in how a student’s past, personality, and coping styles affect their retention and success across different engineering disciplines.

Yaa hopes to use her insights to become a faculty development coach for engineering professors. She hopes to help them create psychologically effective classrooms in a way that feels authentic to them.