Bent But Not Broken

It will come as no surprise to anyone that this spring has not turned out at all like we believed or hoped that it would. As my blog would be the millionth-and-oneish published source about coronavirus disease (COVID-19), I will not attempt to detail any past frustrations, current fears, or future predictions, as they are all so fluid they could change by the time I have finished this post anyway. Instead, I will give an update on what life has looked like within our walls and refer any reader to the World Health Organization's website for the most current, reputable information.

As I was on maternity leave for one third of the fall semester, I was looking forward to a more normal spring semester; however, that has not been the case. Academically, the first eight weeks went by pretty smoothly before the virus roadblocked the second half of the semester. Olivet has moved all classes online for the remainder of the semester. I feel lucky that the impact for me was minimal, but it has been a big adjustment for both my students and my colleagues. My students have had to leave campus, travel home, and then try to figure out a new normal from there. I do feel for each of them as they have been thrown into these sudden changes, but my heart breaks for my senior students who will not be able to finish their college careers on campus with their friends. That being said, I know my students have shown great resilience, and there are many sweet and inspiring stories emerging from around the world as we collectively grapple with our current human condition.

I have been continuously impressed with the work ethic, communication, and dedication of my students in their course work this semester. I am currently teaching a ENGL 210: College Writing II with 54 students and ENGL 329: Writing Fiction and Poetry with 12 students. The work that my students have composed and produced this semester is really on the next level. My 210 students just submitted plans for conducting primary research, and I am excited by their ideas to do personal observations, interview family members, survey their friends, or analyze existing interviews or data sets. My 329 students are submitting very original and compelling fiction and poetry work. I've been impressed by their ability to dive into their created worlds and bring the reader along with them. My students have really taken these changes in stride, and I'm proud of the work they have done.

In addition to my teaching work, I have been working to prepare for the full launch of the new writing major! I'm really excited for this opportunity for our current English students, as well as a way to draw other majors to our department through a double major. Through a set up of new course and internship offerings, I think our students will have access to a lot of great material and experiences. Happy to have been able to work towards this end. Wade, Coco, and I were able to make the trip down to Olivet at the beginning of the semester. I met with my 210 students in large groups, I met individually with my 329 students, and I was able to touch base in person with my department chair on the work we are doing this semester as I continue to help create materials and plans for the writing program.

Though I totally agree with the decision, I was very disappointed that CCCC 2020 in Milwaukee, WI was canceled for this year. I would have been traveling down to Milwaukee today, and I'm sad to not be able to see my friends or grow from the knowledge sharing and energy production that each conference brings. I also will not be traveling down to Olivet for our departmental workshop dates in April, as the workshops have also been canceled. One bright spot of the semester, though, was that my article "Food Memoirs: Agency in Public and Private Domains" was published in the fall 2019/ winter 2020 edition of Peitho. It was really rewarding to see my work finally in print, and I'm glad to be counted among the authors published in Peitho. Would love for you to check out the article!

Looking ahead, the landscape is somewhat foggy. I don't know what this spring or summer will bring, so we are just trying to enjoy our days at home. Wade and I are both working fully remotely, and we have the cutest six-month old baby and two sweetest doggos as co-workers. We take fun lunch breaks, walk outside, and drive through the country together. We have dance parties in the kitchen, listen to episodes of Armchair Expert, and bake a lot of treats. We cuddle up in bed on Saturday mornings, grill out on the deck, and watch episodes of Schitt's Creek on our laptop. Life is very, very complicated outside for many, including some of our close friends and family members, but we are counting our blessings that we are safe and can spend simple and sweet days together.

Keep calm, friends, and carry on. 

A Very Full Fall

And here we are, just like that, at the end of another semester. This semester has required more discipline and focus than in years past because with a little baby around every moment is precious! I want to be sure to not waste time that I could be spending with him, but I also want to do my work well and be totally focused on that when I'm working. This balance is tricky to strike and some days are better than others. I am glad to have made it to the end of the semester! I have about three more days worth of grading to do, and I plan to have my students' final grades submitted by the end of the week.

Baby Cohen Matthew was born on September 27th, 2019, but he was due on September 18th. I had things ready to go for my online classes until week eight of the semester by the 18th, but when he took his time making his appearance, I used that last week to work ahead and get my classes fully set up until week twelve of the semester. I took my maternity leave from Monday, September 23rd to Wednesday, October 23rd. During that time I answered some emails and calls, but I primarily let my wonderful TA and colleagues take the majority of the questions, student help, and grading responsibilities. I'm so grateful to them for doing so and to my students for understanding the circumstances. I'm also very grateful to my mom who watches the baby for four hours every morning so that I can have uninterrupted work time, and I'm grateful for a baby who likes to take naps in the afternoon... except right now, apparently. We have had some fun this fall including Wade running a half-marathon for World Vision in the Madison Marathon, hosting visiting friends and then family for Thanksgiving, and taking Cohen on his first mini road trip down to Chicago to see my family who were visiting from Colorado and New Mexico. 

I think things have really gone as smoothly as possible this semester. I've communicated with my students via email, phone, Canvas chat, Canvas announcements, and video announcements, and I've joined department meetings vis Skype. I haven't made it down to Olivet this semester with the baby arriving about a fourth of the way into the semester and then not getting his first immunization shots until the last full week. I have already planned three visits down to Olivet in the spring, and I'm looking forward to connecting to my colleagues and students in person. 

I taught two sections of College Writing II this semester and one section of Advanced Writing. In both courses the students work toward one major written composition for the majority of the semester. They all turned in their work just before Thanksgiving break, and I was honestly so impressed. Overall, the students were creative in their topics, articulate in their expression, thorough in their secondary research, creative in their primary research, and expressive in their investment in the ideas. I think that large composition projects can be overwhelming no matter when they begin, but I was glad to see that the students tried their best to use the time given to them to compose strong, original academic texts. My Advanced Writing students were expected to submit their work for consideration for publication, and I would be so excited to see some of these thoughtful, well-researched compositions be published and read by a wider audience.


In addition to my teaching work, I have also been a part of proposing a writing major for the English department. Based on input and feedback from my department chair and colleagues, I composed a rationale for the importance of implementing a writing major. That, along with a proposal drafted by our department last spring, was presented and distributed to various stakeholders, and the proposal was accepted in October! The Department of English at Olivet will now having a writing major offered starting in the fall of 2020. I'm so excited about the possibilities and opportunities that this major will offer to current and future Olivet students.

I also participated in an online course development module in the student role, alongside teaching online classes, this semester. I had the opportunity to develop two online course modules for the department, and this six-week course development training helped me in my preparation for creating ENGL 329: Writing Fiction and Poetry, which I will be teaching starting in January. I'm looking forward to working with upper division creative writing students again this spring, and I am curious as to how the online setup will affect the course experience. I will be teaching two more sections of College Writing II in the spring, as well as continuing to develop course descriptions and outcomes for our writing major.

I wasn't able to attend Feminisms & Rhetorics 2019 in Harrisonburg, VA this year, nor the Bloom Women's Retreat in Green Lake, WI. Those are two fall staples that I am disappointed to have missed out on, but I look forward to future attendance. I did get to attend our Bloom move night closer to home, and I was glad to get some time with that community of women. I am looking forward to attending the Conference on College Composition and Communication 2020 in Milwaukee, WI this spring, as well as for my article manuscript, "Food Memoir: Agency in Public and Private Rhetorical Domains" to be published in Peitho this fall. That article has been through several iterations over the past few years, and I am very glad to have it finally be finished and published.

In addition to my scholarly work, I was proud to have completed my reading goal of reading 19 books in 2019. In line with the year itself, there is quite a bit of variety represented here. I really enjoyed most of the books, and I have recommended several of them to others. My favorite fiction book of the year was The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan. It had just the right amount of intrigue, romance, whimsy, and literary references to be so satisfying. My favorite nonfiction book was Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, which I listened to on Audible. I included an overview of that book in my "Baby Blog" post. All but two of the books that I read this year were written by women, and I think overall it was a great year of reading. Looking forward to reading 20 books in 2020.

I started this year with a trip to Thailand over my 30th birthday and am ending it at home with a three month old baby. There was lots of questioning, excitement, work, and planning in between, but we've made it! I realized the other day that this decade has been my first one as an adult, and it really has been one for the books! In this decade, I've: taught English at the college level for nine years at five different institutions, gotten six tattoos, traveled to four continents, lost three close family members, earned three post-secondary degrees, lived in three different states, bought two houses, owned two dogs, gotten married, and had a baby boy. I'm ready, though, for what the next decade will bring.

The Ide[a]s of March

March is here, and it brought some sunshine and warmer weather along with it!

At Olivet, we celebrated moving into the second half the semester the first week of March, and then we had our spring break the second week. All four of my classes were ready to have a little time off, as they have all been working hard on various writing projects. My College Writing I students completed a critical review of an episode of a food show on Netflix just before the break. My Fiction and Poetry students have been working through drafts of chapters, short stories, and poems as we examine the five rhetorical canons of composition. My Business Communication and Technical Writing students had a busy first half of the semester jumping into writing practicums, writing documentation for an online process, and starting a group proposal project. As always, there have been some ups and downs, but the students have been working hard towards these projects goals.

My Fiction and Poetry class have had a special treat of having two guest authors come speak to them during class time to share about drafting, invention, and the composing process as a whole. The first is my friend, Thomas Hunt, who I studied with in Oxford almost ten years ago now. Quite a bit of time has passed, but Tom was so kindly willing and quick to schedule a time to chat with my class from a quiet corner at Cambridge University where he is currently earning his second master's degree! Tom and I lived in the same house and were in the food group together during our time in Oxford, which means we're forever bonded. He shared about his writing and publishing of his two published books: Winter With God, which I love and read at the beginning of every class this semester, as well as The Way of Faith, which I am excited to get my hands on! My students were enamored and learned so much.

As a second guest, my friend Ian Matthews also came to speak to our class. Ian and I were English majors at the same time at Olivet, and we actually took Fiction and Poetry together about nine years ago. Since then, he actually taught the class for a few years after completing his MFA. He recently took a new position at the university in instructional development, but he was kind enough to come back to speak to our class about his process specifically composing, editing, and publishing poetry, including his poem "Glad" published in The Badlands. He shared quite a bit of his own poetry, as well as the poetry from poets he is inspired by. It was a wonderful glimpse into this specific type of composing, and as the previous professor of the course, Ian had a lot of great advice to share with these six creative writing students.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent my spring break in Pittsburgh, PA at CCCC 2019. Wade traveled with me this time, and it was nice to be able to see him in the morning and hang out together at night. As we live apart during the work week, it was especially great to be able to have dinner together and just chat about our day in person instead of over the phone or FaceTime. At the conference, I served as a co-chair of the feminist workshop, which this year was titled "Living Feminist Lives: Materialities, Methodologies, and Practices." In this 9:00 AM- 5:00 PM workshop we got to hear from a variety of wonderful speakers, including both graduate students and foundational scholars in the field. My very favorite feminist theorists, Jaqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch, spoke as the keynote speakers. I am always so excited and so inspired when I get to hear them speak. My dissertation and the majority of my subsequent scholarly work has been based off of their 2012 text, Feminist Rhetorical Practices, which is sometimes referred to affectionately as "the feminist Bible." Their work emphasizes the importance of ethical communication and research practices, particularly with members of the community outside of the academy.

I attended some other panels on the two main days of the conference. This year I attended panels exclusively focused on feminist teaching and scholarship, and I loved it. I don't know if I will be able to attend my very favorite conference in the fall-- Feminisms & Rhetorics-- so I had to soak up all the feminist research and discussion I could now! I also presented my own work on the Saturday morning of the conference. My two co-panelists and I talked about food scholarship. My presentation (surprise surprise) was based on two of Royster and Kirsch's feminist rhetorical practices. We even had eight attendees who contributed to discussions and questions following our panel. Wade and I flew out a few hours after my presentation, so it was a great end to my CCCC 2019 experience!

I got to spend time with my wonderful friend and writing group colleague, Dr. Casie Moreland, as well as other graduate school and conference friends, which is one of the best parts of attending these conferences every year. We were also lucky enough to get to see our college friend Jerry Scheller and get a personalized tour of Pittsburgh!

Since returning home we've been hanging out with our dogs, working on buying a house, and I've of course, been back in IL at work. This week is ending with a two day departmental workshop focusing on adjusting our major offerings, outcomes, and course structure. It's a lot to work on, but we have a solid group of nine, dedicated, hard working English professors and instructors coming together to discuss these changes and work towards a, hopefully, better program for our students. It is a lot of hard work, but I am energized by the sharing of these ideas, proposals of changes, and overall shifts in some of the ways we've been working and thinking.

On a personal note, about seven days after arriving home from Thailand we found out that I am pregnant! We are expecting a little bundle in mid to late September. This little one already been on ten airline rides with us on our trip to and from Asia, as well as back and forth from PA. I didn't feel great on the trips to and from Pittsburgh, so I'm thinking we might stay grounded for the next six months or so. We were shocked, to say the least, but we are getting very excited to welcome this new little life. Our family, friends, and coworkers have been the MOST excited and loving, and it's made me appreciate our strong support system more than ever. We believe the best is yet to come!

Here We Go, 2019!

January and February are always transition months-- into the new year as well as a new semester, schedule, and group of students. Lots of both personal and professional updates all mixed together. Here we go!

This spring semester I have 74 students between four classes. I am teaching two sections of College Writing I. One section meets twice a week, and the other meets just on Monday nights. I like the diversity between the courses, and both sets of students are attentive and strong. I am also teaching Business Communication and Technical Writing, which I taught in the fall as well. I really enjoy that class. There is a lot of hands on work time, group work, and live audiences responding to the student's work. I think especially for professional writing classes that last element is really important. I am also teaching Writing Fiction and Poetry for the first time. With a class of six students I am working towards a discussion based class where students can share, work, ideas, and misgivings. We've had a strange start to the semester with snow, ice, and wind days, but as we wrap up the fifth week of the semester I feel like we are going to move into the latter two thirds strong.

We had an eventful end to last year, including winning the baking contest I mentioned in my December post. Out of a friendly, intense competition of four, we came out on top. And our bake was gluten free! Got to spend good time with cousins and friends, though my lovely 88 year old Nana ended up in the hospital after all the Christmas excitement. Glad to report that she is finally back home and starting to heal.

The beginning of the year was also one for the record books! I helped host a women's event to celebrate the new year with our Ridgeway Bloom Women's Group. We had a great turn out, delicious breakfast food, and really fun activities. A week or so later Wade told me he was taking me out for dinner one night to celebrate my birthday, but it turns out he had a whole surprise party planned! It was a wonderful night of feeling so celebrated by my friends, eating lovely snacks my sister put out, and playing games together. It was a "Black and White" theme, and I loved it. 

I started the semester here at Olivet in mid-January. I taught my first week of classes, packed up and boarded a plane headed to Bangkok, Thailand! My husband and I spent ten days in Thailand to start out 2019. We spent about three days in Bangkok total, exploring the markets, getting foot massages, and looking over the river. The majority of the trip we spent in Sukhothai, Thailand at Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary. Hung out with the two employees, six kiddos, one volunteer, other three guests, 12 elephants, at least six dogs, multiple mahouts, and a host of other rescued animals including a horse named Teddy. We spent our days walking with the elephants, helping take care of dogs, eating delicious Thai food, cutting down corn or banana trees, and watching the sun set over a bonfire or water reservoir. I celebrated my 30th birthday there, and I fell in love with sweet old elephant Pang Fai. It was truly a magical, once in a lifetime experience. 

This semester a few exciting things are coming up. One is the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication. It is being hosted in Pittsburgh this year, and I am excited to host help host a workshop and present on a panel. I also received news of an article publication acceptance, and I submitted a proposal for a food symposium this summer and for a panel proposal for Fem/Rhet 2019 with my writing group for the fall. I enjoy these professional development opportunities and chances to connect with people.

Octobering

Here we are finishing up the sixth week of the semester moving into fall break! I am excited about this fall break for a couple reasons:

1) I get two extra nights at home that I wouldn't usually get with my commute.
2) A week from today I will be helping to host our 2018 Bloom Women's Retreat. Our theme this year is "Change Begins With Her," and I'm so excited about what the weekend will look like.

Burke Administration Building

I will talk about the retreat in November, but I want to cover my first six weeks as an Assistant Professor in the Fall 2018 semester at Olivet. The first six weeks have been, in turns, a total blur, a dumpster fire, a smooth sea, a confusing maze, and an unexpected surprise. That is, to say, it has been an adjustment for sure, but it's gone well. My commute from Madison is definitely one reality that I've had to adjust to. I generally leave my house in the wee early morning hours on a Monday, and then I do the reverse drive on late Thursday evening. I work from home (and get appointments done, etc.) on Fridays. I am staying less than a half mile from my office. I have walked a few times, and it takes me  about 10 minutes from the door of my house to the door of my office, and that includes a walk across a busy intersection and walking up four steep flights of stairs. I have one long commute and then literally no commute after, so it works out.

I was excited to jump into teaching at Olivet. As I've recounted a few times now, I feel like a totally different person, and I'm for sure a totally different teacher than I was when I adjuncted two ENGL 109: College Writing I classes in the fall 2011 and spring 2012 school year. Life was very different. I had just graduated with my BA in English, Wade was finishing school, we'd just gotten married, we adopted our puppy, Finley, and we were living in a 600 sq. ft. guest house. One thing that is the same is that on the first day of school this year I wore the exact same red shoes I wore on the first day in 2011. I got those red shoes in college, I think, and I still love them. They're my first day shoes!

First Day Teaching at ONU 2011

First Day Teaching at ONU 2018

One of my favorite parts of the new gig is my office. Wade helped me get it all set up, and with a mix of Harry Potter, travel, and elephant themed decor, it feels homey and cozy to me. I like to come in, turn on my lamp, wax melter, and AC fan to get some soft light, smell, and air moving through the office as soon as I get in. It's a sweet little nook that looks out at a lovely Catholic church and over a large tree that is currently turning from green to red as we move into autumn.

I've enjoyed my classes thus far! This semester I have 84 students. That's far more students than I've ever had before. I teach these 84 students in four different courses: ENGL 109: College Writing I (two sections), ENGL 306: Advanced Writing, and ENGL 311: Business Communication & Technical Writing. I do have two teaching assistants through the English department, and they are wonderful. I could not get the grading done that I would need to without them. My students are currently working on academic proposals, documenting online processes, and reviewing food TV shows on Netflix. The variety of audiences, purposes, and genres that we explore in these various classes continues to astound me. The lived realities and experiences that these students bring with them and those that they are preparing for make these classes dynamic and exciting to teach.

To begin the year, there have been several events. After new faculty orientation, Wade came down and attended the President's Dinner with me. We also had a meeting to welcome back the majors, and that was fun to get to meet them. Getting reacquainted with Olivet's campus and culture has been somewhat odd, sometimes disappointing, but mostly exciting. I think administrators and teachers really do try to do the best they can, but I think the most refreshing part about being back at Olivet is the students. They are smart, motivated, and open. They interrogate assignments, issues, and theories with respect and an awareness of the world around them that I don't think was as tangible when I was as student. It makes interacting with them very rewarding and engaging.

The ONU English department this year is focusing on the theme: "Voice: Finding Yours, Celebrating Others." I really like this theme because it takes both individual and communal experience into account. It asks students to reflect on what it is they know, how they know, and what they want to learn in the future. In all the arguments for a liberal arts education, I think the recognition of the value of voice and experience has to be one of the most crucial to recognize. I'm glad to be in a department that values that as well.

Apart from figuring out this new teaching life, there have been a few other special moments to celebrate thus far this semester:

1) My friend, support, and writing group member, Casie Moreland, defended her thesis at Arizona State University on Wednesday, August 29th, 2018 and became DR. CASIE MORELAND. I FaceTimed into just the very first part of her defense, and even what I heard in that short snippet was so, so smart, well put together, and engaging. I'm so proud of her hard work and dedication!

2) On that very same day, also the day I started classes, I got an email with an acceptance for two items for the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication. I've been to several Cs conferences, and I was so glad to be invited back to this one. The conference is in Pittsburgh, PA this year, and I'm really looking forward to presenting my own work on a panel presentation as well as serving as a committee member for a feminist workshop.

3) My yittle sister stick turned 28! We are now only one year apart which means that my thirtieth birthday must be just right around the corner. I was actually pretty sick from catching the ONU Virus of 2018 that ran rampant across campus about week three, but we went out for a delicious dinner of mussels and frites at Sardine in Madison and celebrated her birthday.

4) This summer I was invited to participate in an event at my MA institution, Illinois State University. As a theoretical framework, the ISU WPA, Dr. Joyce Walker, has championed the pedagogical use of Cultural Historical Activity Theory in the Writing Program. The event in November is a CHAT Retrospective on how alumni from the program have used the theory since leaving ISU. I will be presenting and reconnecting with friends, and I'm looking forward to it!

One of my favorite parts of this past week was how I opened class. I know it can be tricky to be just a few days before a break but still at school. Inspired by The Good Place: The Podcast, I asked my students at the beginning of every class: "What's good?" I told them what was good in my life was that my puppy, Finley, turned seven this week. Since we first brought him home to Bourbonnais, I was glad to celebrate his birthday there as well. My students responded with wonderful responses. Things like, good sleep, boxed water, times with missed family and friends, engagements, and live music. Let's all remember to take the time to celebrate what's good. 

CCCC 2018, A Reflection

I'm putting a brief pause of my series of three job market posts, as the timing overlapped with my time spent at the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Kansas City, MO this year. I want to reflect on my time and conference experience here, and then my next post will continue the job market discussion. In addition to this post, I did document part of my conference time on my Instagram page.

This was my fifth CCCC conference, but it was a unique year. Even before the conference was held, the site of the meeting was highly contested due to the Travel Advisory for the State of Missouri put out by the NAACP-- the first ever of its kind. Despite the travel risks and concerns for many who would be traveling to the conference, the decision was made for the conference to be held in KC. With that foregrounding, there were a lot of conversations and expectations for this conference even before arriving. While the Program Chair, Asao Inoue, and the local arrangements committee did seem to put forth an effort to acknowledge these realities by having local activists come to speak and organizing a "cultural event" in the Marriott ballroom, the entire conference felt like it missed the mark on the kind of acknowledgement of social realities and activist work that it claims to do.

One effort that I was a part of was the NCTE CCCC Social Justice Task Force donation table for local organizations, spearheaded by my friend Casie Moreland. There were four of us on this particular extension of the task force, and we spent many days meeting over Skype and planning for the table prior to Cs, and then we helped staff the donation table throughout three of the four days at the conference. We were set up in the Action Hub of the conference, and we met and interacted with a lot of people walking by and at the tables around us. We raised money on laptops at the table for these six organizations:

• AdHoc Group Against Crime
• Black Archives of Mid-America
• Black Lives Matter Nat'l Organization
• Center for American Indian Community Health
• Literacy KC
• One Struggle KC

I enjoyed working on this task force, and one of the highlights of the conference was hearing some of the activists from these organizations speak. On Thursday afternoon there was an All-Convention Event held in the Kansas City Convention Center, where three community leaders spoke to the attendees. We heard from Gillian Helm, the Executive Director of Literacy KC, Alvin Brooks, the founder of the AdHoc Group Against Crime, and Glenn North, the Director of Education and Community at the Black Archives of Mid-America. Mr. North recited his poem "Lynch Family Blues." It was poignant, heartbreaking, and beautiful. Tears rolled down my cheeks. This was the kind of thing we needed to be hearing and discussing. 

I did enjoy my time at other parts of the conference as well. I stayed in the conference hotel this time, which allowed for easy access to panels and other events. I got to see a lot of wonderful friends from Arizona State and other schools, and I attended some really engaging panels. I attended a panel on Friday morning called "Feminist Rhetorics and Digital Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities." At this panel, I heard both Jaqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch, the authors of the book Feminist Rhetorical Practices, speak about their current projects and research. I based the majority of theoretical discussion in my dissertation on this book, so it is always really neat to see them in person and hear their ideas. I also attended panels on food literacies and food justice. 

I presented my own work based on my dissertation. This presentation was called "Student Language and Identity Pathways: Genre Choice in a Feminist Writing Classroom." I presented this as a poster presentation on Thursday, March 15th. I had several people stop by and ask me about my poster and dissertation work, and I got to chat with other women who were presenting posters near me. I presented a poster once before at Cs, and I enjoyed presenting my dissertation data visually in this format again. Here are some photos from my poster presentation:

Ready to present!

Friends "reading" my poster

My session in the program

My poster board setup

I attended Cs over my spring break, but now I am back home and back in the classroom. I've enjoyed getting to know my students this semester, both in Technical Reporting and English 2. I think my students are enjoying their semester as well, as even my 7:00AM class voted to meet when I told them they could have the day off! My in-person Writing Center tutoring has also been going very well. I met with a student yesterday who pushed back on some language I was suggesting in a personal narrative, and I loved our discussion that followed about how we represent ourselves in written work and how our writing needs to feel true to our experience. 

International Women's Day was on the 8th of this month, and I celebrated by expressing gratitude and appreciation to the women in my life, as well as by getting a cupcake at a local bakery co-owned by a woman. But, let's be real, I'll take any excuse to eat a cupcake! I posted this quote on my Instagram that day, as it is one of my very favorite quotes. Time with my wonderful academic community of women at the conference also reminded me how essential the support of women is in my life!