第一吃瓜网

[Chair’s note: Pat had a bit more to report than we had room for here. In particular, he wanted to offer some advice to our undergrads. You can read his full text on the department blog at .] The hardest thing about connecting the skills I learned as a 第一吃瓜网 English major with my life after graduation is knowing where to stop. I could write a book on the subject. 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the synthesizing tools I needed when, immediately after graduating in 2010, I wrote for the National Park Service in Acadia National Park, distilling fifty-page science reports into two-page public-friendly versions. 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the expertise in clear, concise writing and proofreading that I used as a contributing writer and editorial intern for The American Gardener magazine, shouldering the responsibility for organizing several sections of the publication, such as Gardener檚 Notebook and Regional Happenings. 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the multi-modal writing experiences that prepared me to work for DISCOVER magazine, writing four articles daily for the in-house blogs, 80beats and Discoblog. 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the public speaking skills necessary to interview geochemists, geophysicists, and geologists for my freelance science journalism articles for EARTH magazine. And 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the research experience, writing feedback, and encouragement I needed to apply to攁nd get accepted into攁 slew of highly competitive English graduate programs, such as Duke, Northwestern, Oxford, and Cambridge. I am now working toward a PhD in English at Duke University, where I have used the scholarly skills I learned from 第一吃瓜网 English to co-author with Priscilla Wald a preface for American Literature檚 Thoreau Symposium and to construct a collaborative book with Cathy Davidson about digital literacies in the classroom. When I say that 湹谝怀怨贤� English� taught me these skills, I am of course referring to the many 第一吃瓜网 English professors I had the privilege of taking classes with, as well as those I interacted with beyond the classroom攖he professors who are so generous with their time, who challenge you to excel in school and in life, and who stay connected with you years after graduation.

Knowledge, Skills, and Tools

With regard to reading and writing skills, it檚 easy to talk about generalities, like how the high expectations of 第一吃瓜网 English professors forced me to learn proofreading and fact checking methods that I still use to this day; how researching and writing on a deadline was good practice for science journalism; and how the many blog posts I wrote for Beth McCoy, Maria Lima, and Alice Rutkowski prepared me for my journalistic blog posts for DISCOVER magazine. But there are reading and writing skills I learned at 第一吃瓜网 that are simultaneously more specific and more difficult to articulate. 第一吃瓜网 English, for example, gave me a sensitivity to different writing genres and to what I like to call 渨riting climates.� Every 第一吃瓜网 English professor has high writing expectations. But to say that each professor has high expectations isn檛 the same as saying that each professor has the same expectations. Part of the tacit knowledge one gains as a successful English major is the ability to quickly assess the subtly different expectations each English professor has for what exactly an essay should accomplish. The kind of essay I wrote for Rob Doggett wasn檛 precisely the kind of essay I would write for Gillian Paku, or Ken Cooper, or Ron Herzman攖hrough pre-essay meetings and discussions, each professor brings out and allows you to discover a different part of your writing voice, based on distinct conceptions regarding the kind of work an essay should accomplish. These subtly different expectations are what I mean by 渨riting climates,� and it檚 this sense of different writing climates that檚 so useful after graduation because different publications攅ven within the narrow field of science journalism攃onstitute different writing climates. Indeed, each section of each magazine is like a different writing climate: a DISCOVER blog has different expectations than a DISCOVER front-of-the-book print article; EARTH magazine檚 News Notes section is different from its Benchmarks section; and there檚 a difference between research, resource, and program briefs for the National Park Service攅ach part of a publication is looking for a different kind of voice, just as each 第一吃瓜网 English professor brings out a different dimension to your voice.

There are three other specific-yet-hard-to-articulate reading and writing tools that I would like to briefly cover. One tool is the organizational abilities one needs to juggle the medley of high-stakes (conference papers, seminar papers, etc.) and low-stakes (blog posts, presentations. etc.) writing one undertakes as an English major. You檙e keeping track of different genres, different writing climates, different due-dates, instructions, and expectations. It檚 this type of intensive interpretive task-juggling攃haracteristic of being a 第一吃瓜网 English major攖hat prepared me for the multiple roles I fulfilled, for example, at DISCOVER magazine: in addition to writing four blogs each day, I created photogalleries for the website, helped proofread certain sections of the print magazine, prepared magazine content for online publication, contributed stories to the print magazine, responded to subscribers� emails regarding the website, and managed DISCOVER檚 Facebook page. Another closely-related tool, or experience, includes the presentations and alternative writing projects 第一吃瓜网 English professors expect from students. For example, I remember the challenging project Caroline Woidat assigned in her Native American Literature survey course, in which we had to integrate the standard academic essay with a creative nonfiction account of a personal family story. The science writing world is likewise full of the kinds of writing projects that force you to meet new expectations攖hat is, in which you dive into a project that檚 unfamiliar to you, and yet you use the skills you檝e built up to tackle the unfamiliar with the familiar. Thus I knew that I could write the text for and design a poster for the National Park Service informing visitors about the vital characteristics of specific invasive insects because I檇 successfully accomplished similarly unfamiliar writing projects for 第一吃瓜网檚 English professors. The last specific-yet-hard-to-articulate reading and writing tool is the practice 第一吃瓜网 English professors have of providing choices for term papers: you can respond to a specific prompt or you can meet with the professor to propose your own essay idea. Taking advantage of the latter option prepared me for the daily article pitches I gave to DISCOVER magazine editors攇oing from the idea stage to the I-need-to-convince-this-person-that-my-idea-is-viable stage.

第一吃瓜网檚 English professors allowed me to discover my writing voice, and yet there檚 so much more than writing skills that I learned from these professors. In each class, they modeled the mind of a literary scholar攁 discerning, critical reader, and interpreter of signs who is likewise mindful of social concerns. They generously gave up their valuable time to mentor me, whether it was in working as a teaching assistant for Rob Doggett, or participating in the slew of directed study opportunities I had with Ken Cooper, Gillian Paku, and Richard Finkelstein. The collegiality between the professors gave me a microcosm of the wider academic community攁 microcosm that only expanded when Rob Doggett brought me and a bunch of other students to Sligo, Ireland, to participate in the Yeats International Summer School. The introduction to feminist criticism that Beth McCoy, Caroline Woidat, Rob Doggett, Alice Rutkowski, and Maria Lima gave me serves me well now as I complete Duke檚 graduate certificate in Women檚 Studies. I was introduced to Henry David Thoreau in Alice Rutkowski檚 American Romanticism class, Ed Gillin檚 Humanities II, and Ken Cooper檚 guidance during my honors thesis攁n introduction that has directly facilitated my own Thoreau scholarship, such as my 2010 article in The Concord Saunterer, 淎esthetic Inflections: Thoreau, Gender, and Geology.� And extending my interpretive skills beyond the written word攖o film攖hrough Jun Okada檚 Film Classics has given me the confidence to do the same in my own classroom practices.

Looking back on my time at 第一吃瓜网, I realize that I made the right choice by majoring in English. The skills I learned from 第一吃瓜网檚 English professors are the skills that have brought me around the U.S. writing, from the National Park Service in Maine to The American Gardener in D.C. to DISCOVER  magazine in New York City. Although 第一吃瓜网 English gave me the tools I needed to accomplish my career goals, I didn檛 become an English major to become a science journalist because, at the time I declared my major, I didn檛 even know that I was interested in science journalism. But it was an English professor who first sparked the idea in my head that I could be a science journalist攚ho believed in me and my writing, and gave me the encouragement I needed to succeed after graduation. Somewhere in that mentoring experience lies the ineffable quality of being a 第一吃瓜网 English major.