Paul Heilker

Today, 15 May 2026, is my last day of working in the Virginia Tech Honors College.

I began in honors 14 years ago as one of the founding faculty members in the VT Presidential Global Scholars Program (PGS), the Honors…

Five years and eleven days ago, at the tail end of my 50s, I committed to writing and performing my own songs.  It was my birthday and the day I launched this website. 
 
https://paulheilker.com/blog/blog/6413496/20-august-2020-here-we-are
 
Yesterday, for the first time ever…

About six times a year, I run a workshop for various student groups on campus about how to write an effective personal statement for use in applying for an internship, a job, a summer research fellowship, admission to a graduate…

Cleaning my office today, I found a journal of mine from 2011 when I went to Paris for a conference. Flipping randomly through it, my thumb and attention stopped on the following.  It's in my handwriting, but I have no…

Two years ago, following a conversation about my music and the rough-hewn recordings on this blog, Michelle Sterling -- an outstanding photographer and architect I met through the study abroad program I work with -- gave me a book to…

This Is What It Sounds Like
What the Music You Love Says About You
Susan Rogers and Ogi Gas
New York: Norton, 2022.

For Christmas this year, my daughter, Madeleine, asked around online for suggestions for "books about music that…

When I was in kindergarten, I got my first gold star. Miss O'Meara put it next to my name on the bulletin board where every student's name was listed, where everyone could see it. As I recall, we got a…

On Super Bowl Sunday, 1988, Aileen Murphy and I went out to where our friend Natalie Costanza was living in a farmhouse on the prairie near Laporte, northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado. It was snowing, and the foothills were beautiful…

As we do every summer, we spent the first two weeks of August out on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina.  Ocracoke is a 12 mile-long sandbar just south of Cape Hatteras, 11 miles of which is a National Wildlife Refuge.  The…

The Architecture and Honors students here at our study abroad center in Switzerland just held the first-ever prom in the facility, and a delightful time was had by all. There were multiple themes to work with, including "Under the Sea,"…

“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .”  

Aileen and I have just returned from a lovely weekend in Verona. The weather was perfect and we fully enjoyed the Roman Amphitheater, the imposing Castelvecchio, the large and…

Tonight is the last night here in Naples for this year’s study abroad program.  I am reminded of what I was thinking and feeling two years ago, the last time I was here, right before COVID blew up.  Here’s what…

We are now five weeks into the spring semester, and I recently asked my students how things were going, how they would describe their current mental/emotional landscape. One student offered, “Oh, the grind. We’re into the grind. The novelty…

If you Google "creative process" and filter for images, you will encounter a seemingly endless parade of visualizations, often bewildering in their intricacy and complexity, and therefore not particularly useful or helpful as a result.

But you will also come…

My wife, Aileen, recently visited my creativity course and asked the students to work with Terry Tempest Williams' short but amazing essay entitled "Why I Write."  That piece begins as follows: 

"I write to make peace with the things I…

I like to think that I am smart person, critically aware, reflective about my assumptions, biases, and motivations. Even so, a few months back I had what I can only call an epiphany about how badly I have been duped…

I never wanted to be the front man in a band. I never wanted to be the lead guitar player either. What I wanted was to be the rhythm guitar player and sing harmony vocals while standing over in the…

Like many people I know, I have had my struggles with imposter syndrome. There are, I suppose, educated and accomplished people who have never suffered with self-doubts and feelings of incompetence, but I have no idea who these people are…

It’s been seven months since I posted anything new here, and I am sorry about that. I have missed you, and I have missed doing the work. I made a really strong start of things, posting daily for quite a…

It was 20 years ago today that my mother, Mary Catherine Wood Heilker, died after a long and difficult decline from COPD.  I wrote a short essay about her passing some years later. It appears below. 

This is, I think…