composition

For the past few weeks, I have been working on my very first article for publication. While I'm super excited about having something in print, I am really struggling through it. I do not typically have a hard time producing papers, but I know that I also care much more about this piece than most things I have written, as it will be put in a collection of essays for other academics to judge. I want it to be well-written, well-researched, and well-argued. The problem is that it took me three weeks to write 14 pages, and I didn't even like the 14 pages I wrote. They seemed disorganized, full of loosely connected ideas. They didn't really seem to focus on anything in particular. I kept trying to rework the piece, to move things around, to add more research, or to rewrite awkward sentences. I was trying to merge narrative with research with other narratives in places where they just didn't mesh. My margins were filled with MS Word comments to myself about answering questions...

photocredit: 1000 Unlucky Days This summer, I'm teaching my first online course. It also happens to be a summer course. It doesn't start until July 9, but I've been trying to figure it out since the middle of the Spring semester. I have created about 4 different syllabi at this point and am not really happy with any of them. I love the idea of teaching writing online, and I think, though different, it's a very feasible thing to do. However, teaching writing online in a time period of just 31 days is beginning to seem borderline impossible. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to include all 8 program learning objectives into such a brief amount of time, especially when I can't explain and interject as I would face-to-face. Most universities offer summer courses these days, and typically, they run more than one "session." At one of the universities I attended, there is a 2 week pre-session, two month-long summer sessions, and a 2 week post-session. I...

image from bettermondays.com It's been a while since I posted a new post, and before that, it was a while before I posted a new post. I am the quintessential summer slacker. Just before summer began, I passed my comprehensive exams, putting me into (what should be) one of the busiest summers of my life, but I'm just find it so hard to get and stay motivated or focused. Living on the Jersey Shore doesn't help. The sun comes out, and all I want to do is be out of doors, doing anything but reading and writing. I'm beginning to feel like an undergrad all over again. I'm supposed to be doing research, reading through my archive of FYW portfolios, studying French, writing an article, and figuring out my dissertation topic. I should be putting together three new syllabi for three new courses I'll be teaching-- one of which begins in July-- but I haven't solidified a single one. I pick a book up, I put it down 10 pages later. I can't remember what I read. I star...