composition

I started my doctoral program at the ripe age of 22. I was only 2 years out of college. Because of my writing center experience, I was fast-tracked to act as a senior consultant and to teach an English class immediately. Needless to say, I was nervous. The only picture from teaching ever, and it's awful, but I loved this class. I was especially nervous about being respected by my students. They were not that much younger than me, and I knew I would have to earn their trust. I was worried about being labeled a "novice" and being excluded from professional conversations and opportunities. I also had some skeletons in my closet. Facebook came out my freshman year of college for college students only. I was a freshman learning to use a new technology, and the ramifications of this technology were still years away from really being considered. Not to say that I ever really did anything that bad during my college years, but I didn't want my students or colleagues to see my ...

Yesterday, I did something I never thought I would do. I formally gave up my teaching position. This Fall, no one will call me Professor Papaioannou. I won't get to enjoy the shocked looks when someone asks me what I do for a living, and I tell them I teach at a university. I won't meet a new classroom full of new students who rely on me for guidance and support. I won't get to have the wonderful exchanges with colleagues during meetings and project building sessions. It's really a very bittersweet moment for me. I love teaching. I do. I love students and collaboration and leadership and everything that comes with it-- except the system of adjuncting itself, which leaves you in a constant survival loop all for the chance of finding a job someday maybe. Leaving teaching behind really had to do with stability. I became anxious all the time, wondering how I would pay my bills or how I would find time to squeeze in writing my dissertation (which is costing me over $1300 a s...

Right now, I'm at the beginning phases of my dissertation study . It's been quite a journey getting to this point. One I'm not sure that I was prepared for. One that has taken much longer than I thought it would. I'm writing this blog post because I'm sure there are others out there, like me, who will be totally surprised by the path their graduate work takes them, who will be a bit shaken when things don't go quite according to plan, but who probably also need to know that that's ok. In May 2012, I passed my comprehensive exams. I was so excited! I figured, "it's go time!" In my Virgo over-planning mind, I figured I'd have my prospectus done in the middle of the fall semester, I'd write my first chapter by the middle of Spring, knock out the rest by the following year and defend soon after that. I figured it would take just a little longer than my lengthy thesis for my masters program. I couldn't wait to be Dr. P! It's been a...

image from techwhirl.com For the past few weeks, I've been working part-time at an IT consulting & network integration firm in downtown Manhattan as part of the technical writing team (which is really just me & the existing technical writer). The thing is, even though I’m (somewhat) proficient at writing for academic purposes, technical writing is a whole new ball game. While my writing is clean and easy to read, I don’t always have the knowledge to write what needs to be written. It’s a bit confidence-shaking. I’m feeling like an intern rather than someone whose specialty is writing. Feeling like a beginner isn't easy, especially when you've devoted your entire adult life thus far to studying English and Communications, and even more so when as a writing instructor and writing consultant, I’m supposed to be an expert writer. It’s true that I can write for many contexts. Heck, I can even teach writing in the disciplines! But writing in the professional domain about ...

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my very first National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention (#NCTE12) at the MGM Grand Conference Center in beautiful Las Vegas, NV. There were many interesting and exciting panels to choose from. My program is about an inch and half thick. My favorite panel, however, was "Connecting Lived Experiences and Literacies with Urban High Schools: Lessons for Pedagogy." Here is the program entry: B.41 CONNECTING LIVED EXPERIENCES  AND LITERACIES WITH URBAN HIGH  SCHOOLS: LESSONS FOR PEDAGOGY (S) Room 107, Level One Teachers experience pedagogical struggles while students interact in academic spaces that challenge their multiple lived experiences through the narrowing of curricula. In this session, presenters will critically analyze their educational research contexts, which often miss rich opportunities to consider students’ multiple identities, positionings, and languages. Chair: Timothy San Pedro, Arizona State Universi...

from www.cartoonstock.com For class this week, my students read Bonnie Morris's "When I Was a Teenage E.R.A. Activist." Morris's article talks about her experiences as an 18-year-old activist-intern, going door to door in a wealthy middle-class suburb in the South, campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment. The article is chock-full of thought-provoking narrative, including whether or not women's rights have been fully realized, how those campaigning adopted the very strategies of dominance they were rallying against, and how education seems to play little part in curing people of ignorance. The one question, however, that stirred up conversation in my classroom had little do with Feminism and much more to do with liminality. Despite Morris's overt Feminist critique, her definition of womanhood was the one thing that caused blatant disagreement among my students. Morris writes, "At eighteen years old, I was old enough to vote, have sex, and get married--...