Stormy Seas

If nothing else, my life as a graduate student has been characterized by a series of tradeoffs. Some I expected. Neither the heavy reading nor writing loads surprised me. I anticipated having to function in an environment characterized by fierce competition and occasional subterfuge, and I was prepared to bid farewell to the creature comforts I had once enjoyed, including sleep. At the same time, there are several aspects of my life in graduate school that I did not anticipate.

I still recall my final moments as a high school teacher. For nearly a month I had spent my Saturday mornings in my classroom packing boxes and sorting through the materials I had acquired over the course of my career. My goal was to have everything packed prior to the end of the school year so that I would be able to avoid the good-byes at which I am so bad. When the last day of the school year came, I was able to pick up the remaining boxes, close the door on my classroom, and pass through the twin metal doors out of the school and into the sunlight. I remember that, as I walked toward my parked car, I looked forward to my new life. I recall that I was particularly attracted to the notion of being accountable for only myself, a luxury I had not enjoyed since I had begun to teach. Looking back on that moment, I can’t help but laugh.

As a graduate student, it often seems as if I am accountable to everyone but myself. To some extent I am accountable to the professors with whom I study. Their syllabi set the agenda I follow from week to week, and they influence the time I spend in class and at home. Given my desire to succeed, I am obligated to meet the deadlines they set, and I feel a need to live up to their expectations of me. Still, if this were the extent of my responsibilities, I am certain that I would feel quite comfortable. It was a desire to grow and learn that drove me to resume my life as a student. Unfortunately, it sometimes seems as if addressing my studies is the least of my concerns.

In addition to keeping up with my studies, I am accountable for teaching an introductory education class. I am responsible for planning and conducting the class, grading the students’ papers, and addressing the various problems they face. Again, if this were the extent of my responsibilities, there would be no problems. I made my living as a teacher, and these tasks are familiar to me. Because the students are interested in pursuing a career in the classroom, they are expected to complete a total of twenty hours of observation time in the field. I am responsible for placing them with local teachers, and for overseeing their experiences in the classroom. I am expected to establish contacts with teachers in school districts unfamiliar to me, work with individuals to arrange placements that involve large numbers of people, ensure that the cooperating teachers receive the appropriate paperwork, navigate the political struggles that arise in departments and that affect me and my students, and troubleshoot problems that arise when undergraduates leave the university behind and enter the professional world.

In addition to taking classes and teaching, I am responsible for supervising the English education program’s M.Ed. (Master of Education) interns. I meet with these students on a biweekly basis for instruction in issues related to pedagogy, supervise them throughout their teaching experiences in the field, help them to address the many problems they encounter in the classroom, and troubleshoot the problems that arise when graduate students leave the university behind and enter the professional world.

In addition to taking classes, teaching, and supervising teacher-candidates, I work on two projects with different professors. As a result, I spend a great deal of my “free” time helping them to gather data, transcribe interviews, code transcripts, write papers, and attend conferences. Though these partnerships allow me to advance my own scholarship, they also require a serious time commitment. Unfortunately, it occasionally seems like I am the only one who recognizes this fact. On top of all of this, I try to find time to spend with my wife, help her (when I can) to maintain a home, exercise my dogs, and wonder when (or if) I will ever again exercise myself.

As I compose this entry, I am sitting opposite a window that looks out on to the street that runs in front of the home I rent. The leaves on the trees have begun to change, and the air is remarkably cool. In fact, the expected high for the day is only 61 degrees. Fall has come to the Midwest. With the exception of a barking dog, the neighborhood is unusually calm, a mood that reflects my own (at the moment). It seems as if the storm that I call my life has subsided for the first time in the last forty-eight hours, though I haven’t checked my email account yet. Reading through what I have written, I sense it constitutes a “rant,” the first of my blogging career. I certainly realize that my situation is mirrored by those of thousands of other graduate students. Still, it does help to put my thought and feelings on paper (or into cyberspace as the case may be). Hmm… blogging as a cathartic exercise… there’s a twist. I think that I am finally figuring out why people maintain their weblogs so fastidiously. What other needs might blogging fulfill? I leave this question to my readers. As for myself, it is time to enter the exciting world of qualitative research. I have several hundred pages to read before Monday, and I have yet to grade the memoirs my students turned in to me earlier this week. Until then...

A Bit About Me

Until this point, my postings have been relatively formal, a result of a decision I made to use my initial posts to outline the general direction I wanted my weblog to follow. Tonight I'd like to do something different. Rather than continuing to explore my ideas about blogging, I would like to use this entry to say a few words about myself. I’m not sure why I feel the need to do so. It’s not as if my story is particularly interesting. In fact, were I to be honest, I would have to admit that I feel a bit uncomfortable sharing it with strangers. At the same time, I can't help but feel as if maintaining this blog has led me to enter into a conversation of sorts. As such, I suppose that introducing myself is only natural.

Let's see... where to begin? At the current time, I am a graduate student attending a large research university situated in the American Midwest. I am happily married, and the proud parent of two dogs, Montana and Dakota. I am not originally from the city in which I now reside, but I have come to like it considerably. If nothing else, my experiences have led me to realize that the stereotypes attributed to life in the Midwest are quite unfair. There is far more to do her than I had expected, the people are remarkably friendly, and the weather, outside of the long, gray winter months, has been surprisingly nice.

Before relocating to the Midwest my wife and I lived in a small city (I emphasize the word small) in northern Arizona, a land of mountains, deserts, and canyons. As I have noted elsewhere, I made my living as a high school English teacher, a job I enjoyed considerably. Despite its challenges, working with young people can be quite fulfilling. The twelve-years that I spent in the classroom allowed me to meet a number of truly amazing people, many of whom had a profound influence on me. Additionally, teaching, unlike my current position, did not consume my every waking minute. Don’t’ get me wrong. There is no question that teaching is a difficult job. Those who suggest it isn't are either lying, or failing to put much effort into it. Still, I found that the job left me with time to pursue my own interests, and I did so gladly.

I love to spend my time in the outdoors, and, as anyone familiar with the Southwest knows, the region provides ample opportunities for doing so. My wife and I spent a great deal of time backpacking, climbing, fishing, and hiking. I had the good fortune to scale peaks in Colorado, and undertook multi-day treks through the Canyonlands of southern Utah. Unfortunately, the ability to participate in activities of this sort have not presented themselves as readily in the Midwest. At the same time, my position as a graduate assistant hasn't exactly allowed me to pursue my own interests either, the result being that the tradeoff hasn't been as painful as I expected.

As a graduate student pursuing a degree in English education, I am responsible for teaching an introductory education class, overseeing student teachers, and assisting professors with their research. In my remaining time I am responsible for keeping up with my own coursework. Returning to school at the age of thirty-five has been a challenge. The schedule I keep can be grueling, I make relatively little money, and I have been forced to resume the life of a tenant. This isn't meant to suggest, however, that my life is all that bad. In fact, my journey thus far has been a good one. I’ve learned a great deal about myself, met some interesting people, and had the opportunity to publish my own writing. In short, I’ve enjoyed the experience considerably.

The Power of Publication

“What motivates people to blog?” I found myself facing that question shortly after being introduced to the art of blogging, a genre of writing with which I had been relatively unfamiliar. As a former high school English teacher, I had worked with a number of students who spent considerable time and energy posting their written work to their weblogs. They posted creative short stories and poems, shared aspects of their lives in journal form, and carried on conversations with strangers. Why? What could possibly have compelled them to spend so much of their time on an activity (writing) they otherwise seemed to detest? Though these questions intrigued me, I never thought to take them up with my students. Last night, I began to have them answered.

Prior to going to bed I logged onto my computer in order to re-read, for the umpteenth time, what had been my initial post. What can I say? It had represented my initial foray into the world of blogging. To know that my words, my ideas, had been made accessible to others somehow seemed exciting. As I scrolled down to the bottom of the page I was surprised to see that my post had received two comments, a possibility I had not anticipated. My heart skipped a beat. Who had responded? I couldn't help but feel a sense of nervousness. Would their feedback be critical or complimentary? Somewhere in cyberspace someone had noticed my musings, had interacted with them, and had taken the time to respond to them. I was thrilled. I hurriedly dragged my mouse to the word “Comments,” held my breath, and double clicked.

“Jen” in New York was the first to respond. In doing so, she unwittingly described the very emotions I would feel as I read her comments. She wrote:

We all say we blog for ourselves, as a means of self-expression, and we don't care if people comment. But we do. We tell everyone we know about our blog and hope people will leave comments and can't understand why they wouldn't, especially after you've posted a particularly brilliant cyber-essay.

I couldn’t help but be struck by the accuracy of her comments. It was as if Jen had somehow foreseen the feelings I would experience, and described them. She was right. Though writers may claim that their blogs are meant only for themselves, they willingly post them to the web, thereby making them available to others. In doing so, they enter a larger discourse, one that occurs in the public realm.

In my initial posting I had noted the ability of context to shape the act of writing. This is an issue few teachers, myself included, ever seem to address. The genres of writing that teachers assign in school do change. Students write creatively, persuasively, analytically, and descriptively. Yet while the assignments change, the audience for whom they write rarely does. In fact, the audience for whom students write in school remains remarkably consistent. Papers are written for teachers, evaluated by teachers, and undertaken solely to demonstrate one’s knowledge (or mastery) of skills. In short, the context is artificial. In what other situation would a person write in such a manner?

The fact that blogs are publishable does provide a powerful allure. As I found, it can be satisfying to know that one’s thoughts and ideas are available to others, and that the potential for correspondence does exist. Yet while I am tempted to recommend that blogs be used in the classroom to motivate young writers, I am reluctant to do so. In the end, I worry that institutionalizing the genre would render it less attractive. Perhaps the appeal of blogging rests in the fact that it exists outside the mainstream. I leave that question for my readers to consider. Hopefully, one or two will respond.

Let the Blogging Begin

I know nothing about blogging! In fact, each time my computer’s spell checker underscores the word “blog” I feel as if I have committed a grave grammatical error. Blog. Who uses this word? What are its origins? How would one use it in conversation? "I was blogging this afternoon when suddenly I realized..." As a former high school English teacher, I am prone to ask questions of this sort. In a sense, I have been programmed to do so. At the same time, I feel that I should be learning more about blogging. There are a number of reasons for which this is the case, though two come immediately to mind.

First and foremost is the fact that, as a teacher, I worked with students who, despite their supposed disdain for writing, copiously maintained their own blogs. This is not meant to suggest that my motivations for understanding the blog are entirely altruistic. Having left teaching, I am currently enrolled in a course of study designed to examining the blog’s aesthetic merits. Ahh, the college life! As such, future readers might consider The Daily Blog an attempt on my behalf to better understand the art of blogging. In addition to documenting my experiences learning to read and write in a medium previously foreign to me, I hope The Daily Blog will provide a forum in which academics and popular culture are allowed to intermingle. Though such a pairing is seldom pretty, it often proves profitable. Given the blogs I have read thus far, I cannot help but feel as if I have been missing something of value.

An aspect of blogging that immediately caught my attention involved the apparent decision of bloggers to adhere to a particular theme (though I am sure there are exceptions to this rule). In my readings I have encountered blogs that have addressed the war in Iraq, the literary merits of the comic book, the trials and tribulations of Red Sox fans (of which I count myself one), the ideologies of conservative and liberal politicos, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the challenges faced by overworked graduate students, and recipes for ethnic cuisine. Seldom did these blogs stray from their intended themes. Recognizing this fact, I thought it best that I dedicate my own blog, The Daily Blog, to a theme important to me. Doing so, however, proved more difficult than I first thought, a testament, perhaps, to the power of context to influence the act of writing (or blogging, as the case may be).

Clearly, bloggers do not blog simply for the sake of blogging. Or do they? Recognizing that the ability to answer questions of this sort would require my spending considerable time at the computer, I wanted to choose a theme in which I had a vested interest. After much consideration, it occurred to me that my own ignorance regarding the nature of blogging presented the perfect subject matter. What better way to learn about a medium than to fully submerge oneself in it? Out of this moment of inspiration (or tension) was born The Daily Blog, a blog devoted to the study of blogs. In the days and weeks to come, I intend to use this site to chronicle my own experiences as I learn to blog, reflect on the strengths (and shortcomings) of blogs, establish a set of criteria against which the artistic merits of blogs can be judged, and communicate with other, more experience bloggers. Any advice, opinions, or further questions to consider would be greately appreciated. Having said that, I am prepared to embark on my journey!