Write about Anything––It Still Hurts

It was November 21, 2013.
It still hurts.

It was 11:30pm when I heard the news.
It still hurts.

I had tried twice before, but it never worked out.
My professor was too busy.
I wasn't good enough.
My professor couldn't find the the time.
I need to write more.
I wasn't good enough.

I had scheduled my Master's thesis defense for the third time for November 22, 2013.
On November 21, 2013 at 11:30 pm, I received the following email: 

"I'm afraid I have bad news. The response from you committee is that the thesis is not passable. This became very clear only late today, which is why I am writing you now.

I think it would be a mistake to go ahead with your defense tomorrow when we already know the outcome. For this reason, I am canceling the defense.

I will talk to --------, and see what our options are, and then you and I can talk about what to do going forward.

Sincerely,

---------------
English Professor
UT Arlington"

I cried.
For weeks.
A committee member decided, without telling me, s/he no longer wanted to be a part of my committee.
S/He quit. S/He left me with out a full committee.
And s/he never told me why.
S/He told Dr. -------, that s/he did not have the time to deal with students work who are not even at the most basic graduate level.


I was hurt.
I didn't think I was going to make it out––alive.
I was crushed.
My hopes, my dreams, the only life goal I've ever had––to be called Dr. Self after my grandfather––suffocated, obliterated, ruined, turned into a smoldering pile of crap in an instant by three people.

But, I didn't quit.
I wanted to quit.
I couldn't let myself quit.
I persevered.

On May 1, 2014 I submitted the 180 page document to my committee, scared, fearful, feeling like a failure, but hopeful.

On May 9, 2014 I passed my Master's thesis defense, unconditionally.

On May 14, 2014 I graduated with a Master's degree in English Literature.

On June 2, 2014 I asked two of my committee professors to write me letters of recommendation for Texas Tech's PhD program. This is what I received:

From Dr. ----------:
"Agreeing to write a letter of recommendation implicitly means agreeing to write a really strong letter, and I can't promise to give you my highest recommendation for doctoral study. I'm really sorry to be so blunt. You were a valuable student in class and have a fantastic work ethic, but the quality of written work just doesn't hit the mark at which I can give an unreserved and enthusiastic endorsement. I don't want to undercut your chances with a tepid letter. Perhaps there are others who would be better?"

From Dr. ----------:
"I think it's great that you have such a passion for intellectual work. But you really struggled at times through the MA. Successfully completing a PhD will be much more challenging. Based on your work here, and the feedback from your professors, I think you should give more thought to this decision. I'm sorry, but I do not believe that you are doctoral material. You seem to enjoy teaching High School, perhaps that is a better fit for you."

I was crushed.
I cried.
It still hurts.

On February 10, 2015 I received the following letter from Dr. ------:  

"I am delighted to offer you admissions to the Ph.D. program in English at Texas Tech University. This offer of admission includes the offer on an assistantship to support you financially during your studies and a partial fee waiver, contingent upon your acceptance and approval by the Graduate School. We hope that you will join the outstanding class of graduate students that will begin study with us in Fall 2015. Congratulations and welcome to the Graduate Program in the Department of English at Texas Tech!"

To whomever was on the Texas Tech PhD admissions committee:

Thank you. 

From the deepest, most sincere place in my heart, Thank You. 

When I look back at where I came from, it still hurts. 

When I think about the professors who did not have faith in me, it still hurts.

When I remember the struggle, the pain, the anguish, and the severe depression, it still hurts. 

But when I think about where I am right now at TTU, it hurts a little less each day.  

Thank You Texas Tech English faculty for believing in me, for giving me a chance, for seeing something in me that others did not, Thank You.

What is the thesis to your article for this course? What support will you cite to help you make your case?

What is the thesis to your article for this course? What support will you cite to help you make your case? 

'Every Day is [Not] Exactly the Same': Using Popular Music in the Classroom to Encourage Resistant Readers

Using music in the high school English classroom seems like it might lead to some disgruntled students, or might cause a serious distraction. As a ninth grade English teacher, I have met quite a few resistant readers. During a unit on the Dystopian novel, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, I used popular music to compare and contrast themes and motifs between songs and the novel. I used Nine Inch Nails' song "Every day is exactly the same," and Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" to encourage my students to engage with The Maze Runner novel. While all of my students responded quite positively to this assignment, my resistant readers responded more positively and engage more with the reading after doing this analysis than my regular readers.

Using multimodality in the classroom often encourages students to engage more fully with the tasks they are presented. I will explore how the use of popular music encourages resistant readers to engage more fully with a novel. Integrating multimodality mediums in the classroom can and will change how our 21^st century students learn. 

Bibliography

Archer, A. “Multimodal Pedagogies and Access to Higher Education.” South African Journal of Higher Education 28.3 (2014): 1123-1131.

Archer, Arlene. “Multimodal texts in Higher Education and the Implications for Writing Pedagogy.” English in Education 44.3 (2010): 201-213.

Baur, John, Jeffrey Kenton. “Toward Technology Integration in the Schools: Why It Isn’t Happening.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 13.4 (2005): 519-546.

Bourelle, Andrew, Tiffany Bourelle, and Natasha Jones. “Multimodality in the Technical Communications Classroom: Viewing Classical Rhetoric Through a 21^st Century Lens.” Technical Communications Quarterly 24.4 (2015): 306-327.

Durant, Cal, Alyson Simpson, and Maureen Walsh. “Moving into a Multimodal Landscape: Examining 21^st Century Pedagogy for Multicultural and Multilingual Students.” English in Australia 50.1 (2015): 67-76.

Epelde, Maria, Julia Bernel, Miguel Gallardo-Vigil, and Africa Rodriguez. “Music in the Teaching and Learning of English.” The International Journal of the Humanities 9.11 (2012): 143-152.

Koutsoupidou, Theano. “Improvisations in the English Primary Music Classroom: Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices.” Music Education Research 7.3 (2005): 363-381.

Lems, Kristin. “Music Works: Music for Adult English Language Learners.” New Directions for Adults and Continuing Education 107 (2005): 13-21.

Moore, David Cooper. “Learning Tunes: Pop Music in the Classroom.” Library Media Connection (2011): 13- 14.

Palmeri, Jason. Remixing Composition:  A History of Multi-Modal Writing Pedagogy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2012. Print.

Paquette, Kelli, Sue Reig. “Using Music to Support the Literacy Development of Young English Language Learners.” Early Childhood Education Journal 36 (2008): 227-232.

Reid, Alex. “Portable Composition: ITunes University and Networked Pedagogies.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 61-78.

Scanlon, Molly. “The Works of Comics Collaborations: Considerations of Multimodal Composition for Writing Scholarship and Pedagogy.” Composition Studies 43.1 (2015): 105-130.

Stein, Pipa. “Rethinking Resources: Multimodal Pedagogies in the ESL Classroom” TESOL Quarterly 34.2 (2000): 333-336.

Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

One of the course objectives that I am naturally drawn to is the communication skills objective: 

Communication skills. Understand how to present a proposal orally, using appropriate visuals. Measurement: successfully create, manage, produce, and report on artifacts through collaboration, including active participation in classroom discussion and blogs.


During this course, I have learned how to appropriately begin discussions, engage in discussions and respond to others both as a student and as a teacher. I think the term "communication skills" is a bit too broad though, and that is something that I've learned from this course. 

Obviously, I knew there was formal and informal communication, but I've learned and developed more steadily my knowledge and use of different types of informal and formal communication. While I learned many years ago that I cannot speak to my professors as I speak to my sisters, and I cannot speak to my students as I speak to my peers; this course has helped further develop my conscious awareness of these different types of communication. 

This will help in my future job because it teaches me to think more fully about what I want to say before speaking or writing. It also will help me communicate more effectively with my students, my peers, and my employers, and do so in different situations. For example, if I and a peer are casually sitting in one of our offices just chatting, I can communicate more informally with them, but I must also keep in mind of where I am, and that I still need to be aware of who might overhear our conversation. The same goes for communicating in my classroom as the authority figure versus communicating as a student. Moreover, it is interesting to see the different types of communication that occurs in different classrooms. For instance, in one of my classes, I feel it is critical to be genteel and professional, but in our composition classroom I feel it I can speak more freely and not fear retribution. 

I think the most important part about our learning objective for communication skills that will help me in a future job, is becoming consciously aware of how I am communicating.