Wake-up call

The first paragraph of Ann and Kathy’s book provides an apt anecdote for my own perspective at this time in my academic career. In thinking about terms to describe the various hats I wear in life, “researcher” is not one that comes readily to mind. Throughout my time in college, the process of researching a subject has always been a mix of persistence, dumb luck, intuition, and a kind of innate ability to string ideas and source material together in a simulacrum of linear, coherent purposefulness. To be perfectly honest, I know for any serious scholar, many of my previous research efforts would rightfully be considered “faking it.” This brings me to the present time where a threshold needs to be crossed – where the deft writer and spin doctor within my process needs a serious wake-up call.

In the past year of my graduate studies, I’ve begun to be exposed to the kinds of research methodologies necessary to plan and execute a Master’s thesis or project. Within the curriculum of my grad classes so far I’ve developed topic presentations, critical analyses, practicum observations, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and case studies. Despite a short attention span and low boredom threshold, I’ve been fairly successful in my efforts. Reading Ann and Kathy’s work has been an inspiration and a comfort to me. It makes me feel a little less alienated from the research process, realizing that I’ve been evolving my skills throughout my academic and professional life.

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As I stated in class earlier, I have quite a few interesting possibilities for a research project/thesis. One of my primary stumbling blocks is the fact that I'm sort of vascilating between the two key interests of my master's program: professional writing and teaching of writing. It seems, based on instructor responses to my coursework thus far in my program, that using the changing nature of "literacy" as a foundation for something more specific would be a good place to start. I am hoping to compile some of my most promising and exciting ideas and present them to an academic advisor very soon.

During my first semester as a 120 instructor, I became interested the disconnect between high school and college reading habits, and how that translates to student writing. Somehow, I'd like to introduce issues of technology into the discussion, but that is further down the road.

Greetings English 621

This is my first posting for Steve K's class at EMU. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to write yet, but I just wanted to be here - la la la, la la, la la...

Here goes

First post. Gotta start somewhere.