Making Taking Care of My Body a Priority in the Craziness that is Grad School

This semester has been SO crazy. I am loving it, doing all the things I love most (reading, writing, reading about writing, writing about reading, you know the super fun stuff), but I am busier than I have ever been with Livy and Aaron and ATLOS to think of on top of school and work.

Somehow in all the insanity, my healthy habits have gone away. I am never home during the week, so I don't cook. Instead, I've been eating fast food in the car and bar food at school WAY too often.

Instead of my long walks of last semester, I have been sitting on my behind, writing and writing and writing. When I have a break, instead of getting outside, I find myself frantically checking things off my to-do list. I'm getting about the same amount of sunlight as Aaron, for god's sake, and he's a computer programmer.

I've gained weight, and I feel yucky. I am pushing myself harder than ever before, and I am not fueling my body properly or exercising to relieve stress or sleeping enough.

So, I am making a change. I am unable to make a big change because I have way too much to do. But I am making small changes to get back on a healthier track.

I started a yoga class, which is active and also gives me some much needed stress relief (thanks, Tori!). I've been going one day a week for 3 weeks and like it so much that I am thinking of adding an extra day a week. As soon as Aaron sets up the DVD player in the new introvert-proof living room, I will add some weekend yoga with Livy.

I am going to start taking some shorter walks during my school breaks. Walks that I can do in 30 minutes. Walks that I can do in nice slacks or a dress. I do not have to walk for hours to make it worthwhile to do it. The perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to walks (as  in so much else).

I am going to start packing food for the day. Today I brought a cooler with lunch and dinner in it, simple stuff that doesn't require cooking. I may have to live with less variety if I am not willing to cook, but at least it will be healthy food that can fuel the pace of this semester. Today, I have ham, cheese, veggies and hummus, a frozen hamburger patty, and a salad. Not perfectly paleo, but a lot better than Taco Bell.

I am going to try to get more sleep by going to bed earlier on Mondays and Wednesdays (the days before my earliest days). It's hard to do that and still see Aaron much, but even an hour would help.

I'm trying not to focus on the weight I've gained or how I want to look or how I want my clothes to fit. Those things are fine, but not the most important. In a semester this busy, I only have time to think about the things that I value most and ruthlessly cut out the other. So body image issues have to go. Instead, my focus will be on giving my body the food, exercise, and sleep it needs to make me the brainiest, most energetic teacher and scholar that composition theory and writing center studies has ever seen.

The Suspension of Judgment

I have a professor this semester who is very concerned with the class suspending our judgment. I get his main point; he wants us to thoroughly understand an argument before we go agreeing or disagreeing with it. He doesn't want us to make snap judgments or to refuse to open our minds and consider new arguments.

However, I am irritated with his presentation of it. I cannot suspend my judgment while understanding an academic argument. I have to judge each piece of the evidence, each logical step, each implication, in order to move on to the next step of the argument with any real kind of understanding. How can I clearly understand what a writer means without judging his evidence and logic as I go? Following an argument without judging it as you go seems like a gigantic waste of time, at the very best. "Now that I have completely understood what John Q. Academic means, I will start again and decide if his argument makes sense."

I feel a little insulted that he thinks that we won't have open minds, consider evidence and ideas that are contrary to the ones we hold now, and change our opinions if warranted. I also don't like to be told that I haven't considered long enough to have an opinion (just to be clear, I was not personally told this. It's a whole class kind of thing.) I know when I understand something; no one else can have that information about me. The only thing he can really do is point out to me if he thinks I have misjudged or not considered something relevant.

And no, I have not read the entire body of work by the author or even the entire book under discussion. Just consider that whatever I say is preceded by "At my present level of understanding, considering the information I currently have (including the assigned reading), taking into account the context of my knowledge, ...."

I think this actually says more about the state of graduate students that it does about this particular professor. He has said this so many times that I can't help but think he must encounter closed-minded students who don't think things through or understand their own level of understanding pretty often.

Yuck.

Blog Carnival as a Collaborative Archive

I had an interesting idea in the car on the way home.

I've been reading about archives--how they are formed and how they are used. Are blog carnivals archives that are formed collaboratively? The are a collection of documents, kept in one place, but instead of being shaped by one or two archivists, they are shaped by many people. It's a collection of documents whose authors thought they were worth collecting and sharing under a common heading.

Kinda neat.

New Birth Stories Project

I haven't written much since I've been back to school, mostly because I have plenty of writing to do elsewhere, but also because my mind is all filled up with thoughts about rhetoric, writing, teaching, and the like. Today, I was doing some thinking about a new research project I am contemplating, and it occurred to me, "Why not do some of my thinking out loud on my blog?" So here goes.

I am interested in birth stories (as well as birth preparation manuals, but that will have to wait). Right now, I am just beginning to form some questions about them. I've done a little research, and there is very little academic work done on birth stories. What there is, I don't have access to, but I'm getting it.

Why do women tell birth stories? They certainly do it a lot, as any baby shower or mom's night out participant can tell you. It's amazing how much women talk about this. Who else tells personal narratives with this kind of fervor? Soldiers telling war stories? Religious testimony?

Why do some women choose to write these stories down? What is different about writing the story and telling it? Why do some women make these stories public on the internet? Who is actually reading these stories? Other moms, pregnant women? Who is the audience that these women are writing for?

Are there archives of birth stories I can find and use? Do I want to look only at written birth stories or include oral storytelling as well? Can I find birth stories by men? What are they like? Birth stories by birth attendants? Birth stories by family members or friends?

What will I find in these stories? Some things to look for:

1. agency - Who is in control in the stories? Do birth attendants appear as the subject of the sentence more often or less often than the mothers? Look for explicit references to choices, to deliberation, to the process by which decisions are made (both before the birth and in emergency situations). Are the stories themselves an act of control?

2. language about the body - How do women talk about their bodies? Will I find everyday or technical body descriptions? How do birth attendants in the stories talk about or treat women's bodies?

3. isolation - How isolated is the mother in the story? Birth stories strike me as a way of making our inner lives open to the outside during a very important life event. Is this correct? Are the stories showing women who are alone in their heads? Or are the women connected, during the birth, to the people around them? Are the birth stories themselves an attempt at connection?

4. community - How do the writers of the stories talk about other women, their partners and families, their birth attendants, their babies? Are these birth stories communal stories or very individual stories?

I'd love to hear any feedback you have about these questions, or anything else about birth stories that you find interesting. Also, if you have a birth story that you would like to be included in my research, email it to me at kellyelmore79 at gmail.com.

Why I am Taking Anthropology in the Fall

No, I haven't changed my degree program. I am still booking along toward my master's degree in rhetoric and composition. My schedule for fall includes Enlightenment Rhetoric and Writing and Research Methodology. I am hoping to present on using positive discipline in college pedagogy at a conference, and I am planning a paper on classical rhetoric in Ender's Game. I am right on track with all that English department goodness.

But, I am also signed up for Intro to Anthropology. It doesn't have one bit to do with my degree. It has nothing to do with my academic background. It's just fun.

Every semester, I try to take a class just for fun, a class that I am interested in for it's own sake, a class that is new and exciting. I like to take languages; my last semester fun class was Latin. This semester, I also considered a math class and Ancient Hebrew.

I consider learning different and exciting subjects as one of the great benefits of being in a university setting for most of my week. Everywhere I go, there are professors and students who are engrossed in studying subjects I know nothing about. The library is full of books about things I never imagined. The schedule is packed with courses I would love to take, majors I would love to have, if only I had all the time in the world.

The cool thing is that right now I do have a lot of time. I definitely have time for the workload of one undergraduate course. And for that little bit of extra time I put in, I get the feeling of branching out, of integrating far flung subjects into my mental picture of the world. I get the excitement of learning the basics of a new subject. I get the chance to be a wanderer in the university, not a provincial citizen of one department, but a globe-trotter.

Ramblings on Memory, Sleep, Snatches, and Scallops

Good morning, and welcome to today's episode of "Random Stuff I Want to Tell You."

1. I cooked scallops yesterday, and they were awesome. I am kind of scared of cooking seafood, probably because I am new to it and it seems so complicated, but I am on a mission to add more seafood into my diet. Now is a good time because I can't cook Aaron anything he both likes and can eat, so I may as well please myself. So, I rinsed the scallops; put them in a pan; poured melted bacon grease over them; sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and garlic powder; and broiled them for 8 minutes. They rocked. I ate them all.

2. This morning in my Roman rhetoric class, we discussed memory, one of the 5 canons that Roman rhetoricians considered necessary for the art. It is less necessary for us with widespread literacy and internet access, and we talked about whether it is necessary at all. Clearly we have to be able to remember things to carry out daily tasks, but we were talking more specifically about memorizing texts, lists, poems, rules for composition, etc.

My main reason for defending memorization is fun; I think it's good and useful to have a store of knowledge with which to entertain ourselves in the absence of more passive forms of entertainment. Many a car trip has been filled by trying to remember state capitols, songs about specific rivers, or naming cities along a certain interstate route. Poems are friends I can visit in my head on the bus or when I hike.

But, I am not sure how important memorization is outside of this reason, which is a purely optional value. It can certainly give you street cred as an expert, as one of my classmates pointed out. Are there any non-optional uses for memorization that I am not coming up with?

3. Last night, I snatched 55#. For those of you who know how to do snatches, that probably sounds light. For those of you who don't, you have no idea what I am talking about. So my audience for this comment may be only 4 people. But those 4 people should know that I SNATCHED 55#!!

4. I am so sleep deprived. I have to get up at 5:50 am, but I cannot seem to get to bed by 8:30 or 9! It's so hard to be done with my day that early. I go to Crossfit at either 6:30 or 7:30, depending on the day, and that isn't changeable. I got to class at 8 am down in Atlanta, and that isn't changeable. I would like to sometimes see Aaron in the evening, and that isn't changeable. Does anyone else manage with naps? I might see how working naps into my days would change my sleep schedule and my feeling of being not-so-well-rested.

First Day of School, Yippee!!

After a month long break and a week of snow days that started on the day I expected classes to start, I was REALLY ready to get back to school. I am a huge nerd who loves school anyway, but when I got all my anticipation built up and then was disappointed, it was a hard blow. Thank goodness, I am finally back. Today was my first day of school for this semester.

I had to get up at 5:30 am, a time I have seen in my life about 4 times, and even worse, last night was the rockin' good, but very late, Cake concert. So, at 7 am, I was at the bus stop with my cooler packed with Whole30ish food and a backpack full of crisp new notebooks and exciting textbooks full of magic knowledge.

My new bus ride is amazing. It's a commuter bus, so it's clean and filled with the sort of folks who live in Marietta and go to work downtown wearing heels and wool dress coats. There was a little less local color to be found on this bus, but much more comfort, leg room, and pleasant smells. I will have a fine time reading during the ride to and from school; most days I try to reserve that time for pleasure reading.

My 8 o'clock class was great, but I never had any doubts about it. The professor is the male, very knowledgable version of me: really laid back, dressed slightly slovenly, and very excited about the history of rhetoric. The class is very small, only 7 people, and it's almost all discussion and what the prof calls "thinking through writing."

My 11 o'clock was also good. The professor was suspicious of me at first; he hasn't taught me Latin (and this is an upper level class), and I came unprepared. Turns out I should check my email during snow days and do the first assignment before class. Woops. By the end, though, he was begging me to audit his Greek class. No one on earth is as desperate as a classics professor; their programs are always on the verge of being cancelled, and any interested person will be hunted down and chained to a chair. I wish I could do the Greek class, but it doesn't fit into my schedule. I think now that he knows I am competent and well educated in classics, he and I will get along fine and dance our way through some hilarious Petronius excerpts.

My 2:30 was wonderful, too. Are you tired of hearing that? Too bad. This professor is possibly my favorite ever. She is the sweetest, kindest little old Southern lady, and she is the smartest, most knowledgable scholar I know. She loves eighteenth century literature, Sacred Harp singing, gardening, and old books. She has a refreshingly positive outlook, both on her students and on the beautiful world we live in. She's teaching me Practical Grammar this semester, and I know it will be fun. It's like Sudoku for English nerds.

So, I have been translating my Latin homework (and it's going well, so thank you, Sex Vultures), reading Rhetorica ad Herennium (a Roman rhetoric textbook from the first century B.C.), and contemplating how wonderful my life is.

My Teaching Philosophy

For my composition pedagogy class, I wrote the following teaching philosophy. It is my earliest draft of the teaching philosophy I will submit to community colleges in my job application packet next year. I'd love to hear any comments, especially from other teachers. What do you agree with? What do you do differently?

My freshman composition teacher returned our first essays with comments, a grade, and an appointment for a one-on-one consultation about my writing. The conversation at that appointment, about content, style, and grammar, was the single best experience I ever had with a writing teacher. We talked one-on-one, discussing my specific writing challenges and how I could improve; I shared my general academic goals and goals for my writing; and he showed me that I had an ally, a mentor I could rely on to help me learn academic writing. That conference exemplified individual and student-centered teaching and shaped my own teaching philosophy.

My vision of a student-centered class begins with my vision of the student. Just as John Holt saw himself as playing the cello, rather than learning to play the cello, I see each student as a writer, working on his writing, rather than someone who will only do “real writing” when he is finished learning. The students and I are peers, all adult writers, and we all bring knowledge to the classroom. I probably have more knowledge and experience about academic writing, but the students have other kinds of knowledge and experiences, equally valid and important. Vygotsky theorized that students can learn most effectively when teachers provide scaffolding to bridge the gap between the things they already know and do well and the things they are trying to learn. I use scaffolding in the form of encouragement, examples of excellent student writing, feedback on papers, and collaboration with more advanced peers, and I tailor the amount of support to each student’s individual needs and goals, strengths and weaknesses. I attempt to provide just the right amount of scaffolding for each student, aiming to keep them in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, not underestimating them and not pushing them beyond their current limits.

I envision my role in the classroom as a mentor and a guide. I have some expert knowledge about college writing from which they may benefit, and I have facilitation skills that can help them get the most out of class discussions and group activities. Depending on what the student needs, I am an active listener, a moderator of discussions, a coach, a resource, a critical reader, or a devil’s advocate. I agree with David Bartolomae that a part of my job is to initiate the students into “the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our [academic] community." I teach my students to translate their own thoughts into academic language and to read academic writing with understanding. I break down writing tasks into manageable pieces so that students experience success in this new discourse and learn to think of themselves as capable writers.

To keep the focus of the class on each student’s writing goals, I try to individualize assignments as often as possible, allowing students to do writing that is applicable to their interests, including writing for their churches, jobs, or social groups, writing for their chosen discipline, and writing about themselves and their experiences. Like Piaget, I am a constructivist and believe that students must build knowledge for themselves through research, conversation, and challenging the ideas of authority figures, including the teacher and the academy. They must learn writing, not by listening to me talk about writing or by reading about writing, but by actually writing. The focus of my classroom is on student learning, not on my teaching, so the majority of the class time is spent on discussions, in-class writing activities, individual writing conferences with me (especially early in the semester), and peer editing of at-home writing assignments. Because the individual student knows better than anyone what is relevant to him and what is or is not working for him, I take student feedback about class time and assignments very seriously. I have found that some of the best ideas for improving my teaching and for engaging the students more effectively have come from student suggestions. In one course, feedback from students allowed me to restructure my evaluation system in a more effective way.

My favored way to teach and to learn is in large group discussion. I love to talk and to listen to others and to argue about ideas, and I know many of my students do as well. However, because each of my students is important to me as an individual, I try to vary my classroom activities. Along with large group discussion, I include small group activities like peer editing, collaborative writing, and pre-writing conversations, which might appeal to more introverted students. For students who prefer to work alone and only share a finished product, I include individual in-class writing assignments and lectures with thought problems to be considered in class. I try to include some practical application in every class, whether it is a conversation applying the principles we learn to our own lives or a writing assignment practicing a new skill. I want the students to constantly apply their new knowledge, since I believe that only knowledge which is relevant to our lives is remembered and transferred to other settings.

Lisa Delpit has heavily influenced my ideas about students whose home language is not English or not the standard dialect of English. I see teaching Standard English as my duty as a writing teacher, but I am open with my students about the fact that non-standard dialects and other languages are not wrong. I use the home language of my students as a scaffold on which to build knowledge of Standard English, pointing out the similarities and differences. I want my students to be able to code-switch and to use Standard English in settings where it is appropriate, without losing the dialect or language that links them to their communities and families.

When I remember the effect that the conference with my freshman writing teacher had on me, how motivated I felt to improve my writing, how much better I understood my own strengths and weaknesses as a writer, how much support I felt in my struggle to learn academic discourse, I am inspired to make my own teaching as student-centered and individual as I possibly can. I hope to have the kind of profound effect on my students, their writing, and their entire academic experience as that professor had on me.

Short Piece Written in a Park

For my composition pedagogy class, I had to visit a downtown park very near the university and write about it. The teacher gave no other criteria because the point of the assignment was to see how personality affects writing style. I liked what I came up with, so I thought I'd post it here. Keep in mind this was the product of about an hour with very little editing, not my usual turn-in-able academic writing.


Kelly Elmore
Composition Pedagogy
Park Assignment

I follow the stream of students moving away from campus. Our line cuts through the park on the diagonal. We walk like a line of ants, looking neither right nor left but only forward to our destination or down at our moving feet. This pathway might as well be walled in with concrete, windowless, with thick insulation to keep out sound. It’s as if the campus moves outward with the students, passing through the surrounding city, borders lying near to each other, but never touching.

Where the diagonal path crosses the circle that rings the park, I turn right, away from the students and into the park. Suddenly, when I cross through the wall that separates campus and city, I am conspicuous. I suddenly realize how white and suburban I am. I imagine that my education, which, in this moment, seems ridiculously prolonged, is visible all over me, Greek rhetoric and Middle English hanging around my neck like gaudy costume jewelry.

As I walk along the loop, people turn to look at me and then return to what they were doing before I walked by.

A man sleeps on the grass in the field enclosed by the loop. He has removed his boots, and I can see his large brown feet.

A woman, pushing a baby girl in a stroller, has stopped to talk to a group. She stands with her hands on her hips, talking loudly, pointing at the listening people with her finger. The child doesn’t look up from
the stroller but plays with her fingers.

A group of old men play cards at a table. They laugh loudly, while one of them deals, and a very fat man, leaning back in his chair, rests his cards on his belly.

A young man asks me about my shoes. He laughs at them in a friendly way and wants to know where I got them.

I wish that I could disguise myself and move among these people like a spy. I’d like to sit down on a bench and hear what the woman is telling her group. I’d like to lean in over the shoulder of the fat man and find out what game the old men are playing and hear the joke they laugh at. I’d like to be able to talk like them and look like them and feel invisible among them.

I finish the loop and fall in with the stream of students walking back toward the university. Suddenly, when I cross back into the flow of moving campus, I can’t feel the color of my skin or the place where I live.
My education seems to shrink back to a normal size and fit down inside of me again, hidden. I am camouflaged, invisible in front of the background that looks and sounds and moves just like me.