Yes, there is. I was unsure myself what I was going to do with my English major after I switched from Biology. I thought I needed a major that would lead to a good job, one that would always be in need: doctors. As I continued my education I found myself unhappy and unfulfilled. I switched to English (after much contemplation) and found my niche. I was fulfilled, I had relationships with professors who encouraged me, but most importantly of all, I was fulfilled and I was happy. I enjoyed learning and pushing myself to see the deeper meaning in literature.
I knew I did not want to teach, "NEVER," I said. How wrong I was about that. While I want to teach and am fulfilled by this profession, there is more than only teaching available to English majors. A new website by the MLA promoting alt-academy careers (alternate to the academy) is new and exciting. Many graduate programs do not list where their students who are not pursuing academy jobs get placed. If one is trying to get a Ph.d but has no interest in the academy or has fears about its job prospects and wants other options, there was nothing. Now #alt-academy provides information on alternate academy jobs. Check it out to find out the successful future that an English major/graduate/Ph.d student can have outside the academy.
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A new semester and a new year. New classes and new teachers. What are students to do with all this newness? When December finishes and Christmas is over, we all look forward to fireworks on New Years and watching the ball drop, but what comes after? Resolutions? The drudgery of school? Perhaps, but what if this was the year you decided to publish, to write an academic article for Alpha Tau, or write creatively for the “Dazed Starling?” Maybe this year should be the year you commit to writing new and inventive essays for class and really commit to researching outside of class. How many years left do you have at CBU, anyway? Not many, and where else can you use the resources CBU offers for free? No where. Those databases and researching hours you’ve spent in previous classes can be found nowhere else, at least not for free. You’d have to pay $50 or so for a few hours. Learn all you can now, take advantage of the resources available. Read a kid’s book in the library just because it is there.
Pop into office hours just to get to know your professors. They were undergrads too, gain their knowledge about the subject they are teaching, but also ask them life advice. Everyone on campus is older than you (most likely), so use their years of navigating school, the job market, and their life experiences in missions and charity work to mold decisions about your future. Don’t know what to do after graduation? Ask a handful of professors what they did, most times their answers will surprise you, for life gets in the way and almost no one continues on the path they set out for themselves. And that’s ok. In this new year, take the time to get to know yourself and what you want. Get to know your peers and professors, research deeper than you ever have before, and push yourself to publish now. Why is it every time an assignment is due, people do something else? I had five papers due once back from Thanksgiving break and instead, I rearranged my living room, organized my closet, de-cluttered my room, decorated the walls with vinyl stickers (thank you Amazon), and now I’m writing this blog post. How can it be that when the pressure to finish an assignment before the due date makes some want to put it off even more and do other things? It sometimes feels like if one writes something else, like a blog post, it will put one in the mood to write for real. That if I can get this done, I will be able to check something else off my list and feel progress. Maybe it is the progress we need as students to feel like we have accomplished something. Ever notice the discussions in the caf about how much people got done in a certain period of time? “I read the novel for English, wrote my American Government paper, submitted the blackboard discussion, emailed my professor that pending question, and I worked out.” It seems to be the little things, the small goals and simple assignments is what constitutes progress for the college student. When the assignments get too big and the deadline nears, the small bits of progress snowball into the fifteen page research papers and final drafts of essay. Then the semester is over and it’s back to Netflix and sleeping in.
Do you have an academic writing goals list? I’m sure you have a reading list, all those books you want to read from the best-sellers list and literary classics. You probably even have recommended readings from your syllabus or from professors, but where is your writing list? Students are emerging scholars, even if one plans not to teach or not continue with education after graduation. What students are doing right now in those hour-long lectures is learning how to be a scholar, to write critically, and say something new. So what is it you are dying to say but do not have enough time to say it? Maybe it is a creative piece, a novella, a set of short stories, or maybe a book of poems. Write out those ideas and save that paper in a sock drawer. Put it someplace you will return to and be able to find. Maybe it is a file on your computer or Google drive, but do not lose it.
Write your writing goals down. Do not simply write ideas, write goals of how to improve your writing. Do you struggle with commas or perhaps incorporating quotes into a paragraph? Make a goal of getting help with those areas. As a scholar, one cannot continue to misuse grammar or misuse a quote. By the time a student is in graduate school, the focus is maturing the writing one does. Everyone has to be published nowadays, no one will publish a poor writer. Graduate students are in school to learn and to write, to read and to succeed. One can only hope to leave grad school a better writer than they came into it, at least that is the hope. Structure becomes a point of emphasis. Grad students should no longer have problems with grammar (although most do, work on it), creating better writing means to structure arguments in a sophisticated way. Vary the use of quotes, expand explication, do not use the same sentence structure in preceding sentences. Part of sophisticated writing is elevated language, although there are many articles for and against this “academiese,” or jargon that excludes readers, and sometimes colleagues, out of a specific subject. Most times those jargon writers put the reader to sleep. Big words do not equal heft or maturity in writing, instead focus on passing on information in a readable, approachable way. Be aware that writing is something all students have to work on, and this only comes with patience, practice, and application of the skill. Undergrads have worked at least four years growing their writing. Add two more years to that and aim for Ph.D quality writing especially if you want to further your education and teach at the university level. Not only does the structure of one’s writing count in grad school, the ideas one chooses to explore count just as much. The goal in the M.A. program is to prepare you for the thesis and then the Ph.D. Students know the purpose of the thesis is to add something new to academia, so how does one accomplish that if the ideas are undergraduate level in nature? It is our job to find what is new to uncover the unseen angle and explore it in writing. Ideas count just as much as how we write about them. If you do not know by now, writing is a skill everyone can cultivate and it is a lifelong journey. It does not stop because you graduated with your B.A., your M.A., or your Ph.D. So make that academic writing goals list, work on grammar, quotation use, conclusions, transition, and structuring arguments. Be the best writer you can be and aim to elevate your writing. My writing goal list is the following: 1. Identify comma splices in own work (I can identify them in others' works but sadly not my own) 2. Expand vocabulary 3. Publish an article before 2016 (in scholarly journal) 4. Write a seminar paper without any comma splices by end of Summer '15 classes Tip: be specific about your goals. Give dates and deadlines, assign accountability partners and seek out help for finishing goals. Maybe talk to professors at CBU about the publishing process, read articles online, and learn to do the research necessary to make those goals come true. I have been in graduate school at CBU for a year now and scholarship has become an "adult" thing for me. What I mean by this is everyone in the graduate program is at least 20, most of us have at least one job, and all but a few are married. The majority are parents. There is no more "pretending" to be an adult. In my undergrad years, professors would say we are a classroom of adults, and to an extent, we were. Not everyone in undergrad had jobs, not everyone paid bills, had a family to worry about, and tried to make ends meet. Some did, but the majority did not. In graduate school, it is the minority that do not have responsibilities.
Even researching, reading, and homework have become serious. I was always serious about schoolwork, but all the homework grad students do is up to them. The requirements are much harder than undergraduate work, researching is required for each book, author, topic, etc. so that one can come to class prepared and to enter the discussion of the class. One can even choose not to do any work, but going to class will prove difficult and one might even feel inexperienced, insecure, and out of their depth. I would not suggest showing up for class unprepared. Homework is completed on one's own, much like undergrad, but the sheer number of assignments and required reading is vast. I would say twice as much as undergrad, if not more. A novel a week is normal, plus the journal articles associated with it for discussions (research on your own time of your own accord), research for writing assignments such as the seminar paper or a manifesto, and then writing the seminar paper, conference paper, manifesto, and a presentation. All of this happens at the same time. Much of graduate school is about time management, not being the smartest person in the room. The students who make up the graduate program are all bright, determined, and filled with dreams of teaching and further education. Everyone in grad school is an overachiever. We were all the students in undergrad who talked in class, asserted outside research into the discussion, and received high marks. It is hard adjusting to an environment where everyone has something to say and must compete to get one's voice heard. At first, it is a bit unnerving, but once one adjusts to it, it becomes easier to find something to say and express views on a subject. Everyone is trying to add to their resume teaching experience, tutoring, publishing opportunities, conferences, and researching. It is expected that grad students publish before they get to the Ph.D. There are so many students in programs, those hoping to venture in have more to prove. They have to do more sooner. This puts enormous pressure on each student. We are all trying to be the best for a Ph.D program while figuring out what one likes to study. Is it mythology, theory, Narratology, creative writing, British literature, TESOL, or something else? Graduate students are all trying to become better adults, to learn more than we know now, and figure out the system we hope to get into. A lot is happening in grad school, more than just scholarship because one has to have experience in their field to know if they like it or not. Graduate school, for those of us who wish to teach at the university level, must learn to navigate “the system.” It is easier to understand the minutia of the academe the further into education one goes. Graduates are tuned into what the working environment is like, what are the relationships between the current professors, are they cordial or truly friends? How does politics affect what classes get taught, who teaches them, and how much money a department gets affects every student. These are things grad students have to keep in mind, even if they never verbalize it. I’ll say it again, a lot happens in grad school and your job is to keep up. A pivotal point to grad school is making connections. Most of the time, adjunct and other jobs are through who you know, not what you know. It is imperative to make connections with professors, students at conferences, and to know who is out there speaking. Who are the voices in the field you wish to enter? Have you read their works? Are you familiar with their style, could you pick it out from one line? You should be able to. You need to know everyone to that degree, to make connections, network, and keep those relationships active. They will come in handy in a few years. The professors are leaders in their field. They know so much and have so much experience it is a crime not to explore it. One learns so much from them because they push their students to read more than they thought they could, to write more than possible (or so it seems), to research and be the next leader with something important to say. Through this, one will learn more about themselves and their capacity to learn and will appreciate what the professor has done for them. Like I said, grad school is an “adult” thing because it opens your eyes to the world that academia is: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The small prospects of a job, of getting into a Ph.D program, and getting benefits. The knowledge one acquires, the possibilities of scholarship one can achieve, and the connections that are possible await the persistent. Before I end this blog post, the last thing you should know is that the first semester is the hardest. It is filled with dread, insecurity, doubt, and feelings of being out of the depth of the field you devoted at least four years to in undergrad. The key to the grad program is to stick with it. You are going to want to quit. You will think, "hey, I what if I don’t write this paper. I don’t really need to." Think about what you would do if you weren’t in grad school. Chances are you don’t have money lying around to travel, so a job really is your only option and it won't be in a field you love. So stick with that paper, stick out that first semester, and don’t quit. Have you taken the required course ENG 401, yet? Literary Theory and Criticism is one of the most important classes you will ever take as an English major or minor. One might think this course is just another requirement for the major and one can breeze through it with minor work in the class. This is not so. Literary Criticism is the essence the English major. All the learning one does in survey courses is based in literary criticism and theory. The professors teach students how to analyze literature through the many lenses of criticism. The papers one writes, the research one commences, is all steeped in Literary Criticism.
Literary Criticism is confusing at times, but with practice and study, one can easily come to understand the nuances and rules of each theory. Psychological, Feminism, Marxist theory, Eco-criticism, Postcolonialism, Formalism, Structuralism, and Narratology are just a few ways to approach a text. One can use psychological criticism to read a text and understand why characters act the way they do and what their innermost secrets are, not only because authors write their characters so completely it is conceivable to do this, but because psychological criticism allows readers to understand more about the human condition. Each theory is a way to unlock a text, to view it's innermost ideas, structures, and to find a path into the author's mind when creating the text. A book about ordinary people--a common theme in American literature--can not only show us the mindset of people at the time and the world's maturity, but the forces from the world that are forced on characters living such ordinary lives. Modern readers are allowed to see how ordinary they are and how generations before us thought the same thoughts, felt the same feelings, and pined over a lost love or a past age (the "Golden Age" perhaps). Literary theory and criticism will keep coming up for the continuing academic. Graduate school is based on it, Ph.D. schools are steeped in it. One will likely study under the brilliant modern minds of a specific literary theory as a Ph.D student. Do not take for granted this class, and the theory one learns from it. There will come weeks when some theories will bore everyone to droopy eyes and sleepy stares, but the theories are all important. The discussions students have in class like American Lit survey, World Lit Survey, and British Lit Survey, aware or not, are based in literary theory. There are so many theories with so many rules and many ways to apply them, find the one that intrigues you the most. One you won't get tired of after a 15-20 page paper. Push yourself to delve into more than one theory throughout your undergraduate and graduate careers, become an expert in a few of them, and you will never be without something to say. |
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