mean girls

Yesterday I commanded a homeless man to admire my fabulous legs in silence because it was my "quiet time".

hypercubical memo

Hilary picked up a cube of post-its and folded one of them to represent the dawning realization that she acutually kind of had a crush on um. m. It did not take a molecular biologist to realize that this was not a good time for a crush. Hilary, for example, had too many molecules. For some time now, friends and family had been overfeeding her. Or maybe it was the oversized clothes, which she was expanding to fit into like a goldfish. Now, I admit that Hilary's struggle with obesity is a bit of a straw man, designed to mask more complex concerns such as her intrinsic dislike of new people. But whatever. The important thing is that, at that moment, Hilary realized that the post its in contemplation belonged to Kim Lacey.

Update: Hypercubical memo is a googlewhack.

A Christmas Miracle

And so the pretty girl in Ferndale added sea monster green to genetically modified orange, and Hilary's hair was magically restored back to its natural color of dark chocolate brown. And so, the end.

Waiiit a second, said Hilary, walking out of the door. I just paid fifty dollars to make my hair boring.

The end.

I mean, Fuck!

And then the first person omniscient narrator whacked Hilary over the head with a mallet, and the rest was silence.

to: L'Oreal Marketing, c/o blogger.

Dear L'Oreal,
Holiday greetings and shit. I am writing to let you know that "Light ash brown" is a misleading name for your product L'oreal Preference b 71. After carefully viewing my resulting haircolor, I'd like to suggest a like to suggest a potential, but not exhaustive, list of more accurate names for the product:

Vomited yam.
Chemo treatment.
Dennis Rodman.
Tetanus shot.
Loch Ness Monster.

I promise to suggest more names as they occur to me.

Hilary

threat

I am going to put Neal Robert Klomp into my scanner, close the lid and compress him into a .jpeg.

Happieness is the pursuit of attainable goals.

Practicum: A
8050 (Writing in the discipline): B+

The B+ (my first one in graduate school) made me hug my knees in the corner for like twelve hours. Then I got my Dr. Phil on and was like, okay, from now on it is a core value for me to never again get a B+ in a graduate level course. This should be a very easy goal to fulfill considering that I will never again be enrolled in a graduate level course, or receive any form of grade.

The Reassuring Hum of Celibacy

Note to parents everywhere: This holiday season, if your twentysomething single daughter is visiting your home for an extended frame of time because her house in Soutwest Detroit caught on fire, and then:

a) she disappears, and
b) you hear an inexplicable humming noise,

this is NOT a cause for alarm that requires investigation. The hum is simply a normal sound made by a celibate sleeping daughter. It is the sound of her not bringing into your home a man of varying national origin, a range of married faculty or, god willing, a Really Nice Girl.

transparent

And you know that if I write that I plan to adopt a "mixed methods approach" for qualitative design (Cresswell), Ellen will take one look at it and say: you can't just put TBA in the methods section.

methods

I want to just write TBA in the methods section and call it finished, but it's not like this is English 1020 or something.

I think we all know the answer to that.

This dissertation project, then, is designed to broaden the scope of technical writingresearch (Dobrin, 1985) by describing the underlife of technical writing in a software development organization. While Geisler’s analysis describes the ways in which information technologies facilitates “the migration of the documentary reality of the workplace” into social life (2001, p.1), my research investigates how information technologies facilitate the complimentary migration of social life into the organization. A pre-existing tradition of social science research has already explored the underlife of writing in complex organizations (Goffman, 1961; Brooke, 1988; Turnow, 1999; Larson and Gatto, 2004). My research extends that line of inquiry by describing the transfer of writing about technology across social networks to address the overarching research question “What happens when technical writing becomes unprofessional”?

you know you work in a research discipline when:

you start counting the paragraphs till Christmas.

reporting the findings

It's that time of year: your project starts making "multidisciplinary contributions" to the related fields of baa, baa, and that one discipline you never even heard of until you had to cite an article from their journal.

meeting notes

f: With PhD students in the field of Composition, if you want to write a last minute MA essay, you have to sign this form agreeing that you understand what is entailed in order to get the degree.

h: But I do not want to sign that form.

f: I know. And I do not want to make you sign the form. How about if we put it this way: Hilary, I just created this new form! And I would like to have your feedback on the form as a usability test: Does the form make sense? Is it readable? Is it clear? Now, in order to provide me with informed feedback, you are going to have to actually read the form--

h (excitedly): --and then sign it in order to get the full experience as a user!

f: If you say so. Seriously now. I really do just want feedback.

h: Where is this form? Can I read it and sign it now?

....

h {reflectively}: Wow. Thank you for reasoning with me on my level.

jealousy

So I log on to Hillary's livejournal to discover that she finished school forever six full days before I do. She's probably drinking/sleeping/drinking while I sit here formatting my references. Whatever. Just don't tell me that you _lost_ weight during finals. :>

Question 4: "How did your group members respond to your participation?"

Well, we responded to Hilary the way we usually do, said Sharon: by laughing. Then she turned off her phone.

smarter than the average bear

While I am drafting my QE preface, Sharon calls me, drunk. "Beer helped me see that my project is just fine the way it is", she says:

Also, I know why they make it shaped like a bear: so you can talk about it in public.

make it stop

On Ipod: Paganini, "24 caprices for violin".

I mean, okay, a) I'm so mad at this recording that I couldn't even type my password into blogger. and b) Paganini was smart enough to have written "24 caprices for violin and piano accompaniment" if that was what he had in mind, which it clearly wasn't and, c) the piano drags down their unbearable lightness.

HorsePigCow

"Finally", said anonymous mean boy, "now we can all watch Fried Green Tomatoes in peace".

from confronting my inevitable mortality.

Despite a disciplinary history of progressively expanding definitions of work, from Miller’s “humanistic” perspective (Miller, 1979) to Johnson-Eilola’s (1996) post-industrial “relocation” of the value of work to symbolic-analytic tasks (p. 263) and Spinnuzzi’s (2000) recent investigation of the technology-work relationship, it is, in the last analysis, the “situational exigencies” of the workplace that infuses technical writing with social and disciplinary value (cite).

writing this preface kept me

In his widely cited essay “What’s technical about technical writing?” Dobrin (1983), drawing on the language theories of Wittgenstein and Searle, extends the definition of technical writing beyond the simple transfer of technical information to encompass all “writing that accommodates technology to the user” (p. 54). As Dobrin suggests, this redefinition should broaden the scope of research in technical writing from the immediate workplace context to the wider context “of groups the writer is writing to, writing for, and writing from” (p. 58).

the function of the preface:

More specifically, early claims for the “legitimacy” of technical writing focus almost exclusively on the cultural, social and professional centrality of technical writing in the workplace: technical writing organizes “the operations of modern institutions” and determines both the corporate identity of the organization (Miller, 1979; Fennell and Miller, 1991) and the differing professional identities of “people within” the organization (Longo, p. 1). In fact, given the “documentary” nature of reality in post-industrial organizations, technical writing constitutes the practice and record of work (Dobrin, 1987).

love is a stupid dumb gift

Staring at her computer screen, Hilary realized that she had been given an enormous heart but a very, very small brain.

the legendary preface: the early sentences

Caught between the conflicting demands of the workplace practices and the humanities approach of the English departments in which technical writing programs are housed, technical communication has struggled for “legitimacy” as a mature academic discipline since the early development of technical communication research in the 1970s (Staples, 1999). Although technical communication has attained “disciplinary maturity” (p. 153), the recurring themes that emerged during the struggle for legitimacy continues to motivate the direction of research in the field.

notice of cancellation

Hilary holds up a cardboard sign for her friends:

Traditionally, the week before Christmas is a time for hanging out with friends. I send you all my warmest greetings as you hang out, drink and tell stories. However, my plan is to politely but unapologetically decline every invitation I receive until a) my grades are in and b) my preface is finished. Both of these tasks might occupy me until Thursday morning. Tonight, I plan to send specific cancellations, with apologies, for any engagements that I have made for M-W. Thank you in advance for appreciating my desire to turn in my grades on time and not fail either of my classes.

long-term outlook: what to expect

Job placements that may be appropriate for an individual with high functioning autism include: hacker.

more on god

An interrelated reason I am not a Christian is that the Christian god never changes. So what's the point of talking to um? I kind of hope that god can evolve in response to the friendship s/he forms with all creation, the same way my own mind frequently changes after reading something that I have just written.

god

One reason that I am not a Christian is that every Christian seems to have the same dysfunctional relationship with god. Don't you think that god gets tired of that?

God: Hilary, lately I feel like you want me to be your father. It's starting to creep me out.

Total number of days left of being a student: 2 (from 7,300 on first day of kindergarten).

within the range of normal

My pet peeve: people who express skepticism at high functioning autism as a diagnostic construct (like they know it all) and then take it upon themselves to get super pissed off at every autistic by definition thing I do:

Hilary, personally I don't buy the autism diagnosis: you're no different from anyone else. But stop doing that. It's so fucking bizarre.

the Holiday party: highlights

1. After few glasses of wine, I looked for the letter f to tell her that I think she is one of the best people ever created. Fortunately she was gone. So I think that I said it to Ellen instead.
2. Then I got totally shitfaced and wandered around for fully fifteen minutes looking for my office before realizing that I was on the wrong floor.
3. It's like, raise your hand if you did a sex act in my office last night. Raise your hand if you walked in on me doing a (much less risque) sex act in someone elses' office.

that explains a lot

Here, I explain set II: what's going on in research now: HCI, open-source, the technology-work relationship (cite Spinnuzzi). These projects are a reaction both to the thoretical underpinnings in technology studies and an increasingly technology-saturated workplace. However:

This is the part where I explain why

Nardi and O'Day are so important, but the problem is that they don't foreground their own relevance to tech comm (Note: this is where I had my brief citational encounter with the letter f).

cite um that one article

The mature discipline of technical and professional communication is increasingly informed by research and theory, especially technology and science studies. Explain Latour, Collon, Nardi and O'Day.

Screeching halt

Where has my line of inquiry wandered off to? Nardi and O'Day are not writing in the discipline of tech comm.

Missing link: Information ecologies

In Information Ecologies, Nardi and O'Day more fully address the relationship between writing, technology and organizational culture.

relevance and centrality

In "A Humanistic rationale for technical writing", Miller (1979) firmly argues for relevance of the discipline of technical communication to the arts and humanties, as well as the sciences. (Describe). Dobrin (1987) claims centrality for the profession of technical communication to the everday practice of work: in organizations, the document cycle constitutes work.

what it is

Since (the beginning of time), both the discipline and the profession of technical communication have struggled for "legitimacy" (cite basically anyone on this: probably even Hillary, who first noticed the problem while saving otters).

blank screen

Anyway: this is a project in the field of technical communication.

blink. blink. blink.

update

It looks as though everything that sucked about my life went away in the fire.

Response to Brookfield (English 8050).

In her post on Brookfield's first few chapters, Mary Karcher evaluates Brookfield's claim that it's normal for good teachers to worry that their practices are fraudulent. Brookfield offers a path out of this sense of self-mistrust: teachers should "make students feel safe" by consistengly modeling "a public, critical scrutiny of your actions" (p. 36). In her discussion of Brookfield, Mary points out an apparent contradiction in Brookfield's thinking that most readers (ie me) would miss: If we as teachers feel like frauds, should we spend so much time trying to convince students to trust us?

Although I missed that contradiction in my own reading of Brookfield, I agree with Mary that self-mistrust is an inauspicious and problematic start towards gaining the trust of others.

Furthermore, elements of benevolent disingenuity seem implicitly woven into the act of teaching. Anyone can recall the elementary school shock of realizing that teachers go to the bathroom, eat dinner, and get married: the cloak of "professional distance" enacted by teachers is strangely akin to purdah, a sacred form of deception. Like traditionally Islamic women, teachers "conceal their form" to command respect and deflect harm.

The form of concealment is less modest in a college writing environment than on the Indian Subcontent; here, sweat pants will attract more disrespect than form-fitting clothing, and writing teacher work hard to "demystefy" processes such as writing, revising, formatting and grading college papers. But the insurgencies of fraud are there.
Student: Did you read my paper that I sent you?
Hilary: (in her mind) No.
Student: Will you read it tonight and send me my comments?
Hilary: (in her mind): Not tonight. Tomorrow is not looking promising either.
Hilary: (aloud) Since you're here, why don't you sit down and I'll give you your grade and comments verbally? That way, you can ask me questions and we can have a productive dialogue about your writing.

Similarly, Erik The Friend notes in a comment below that he co-constructs assignment sheets with his students--this practice is not inspired by Erik's enthusiasm for translating open-source code back to print media, but rather, by his deep psychological need not to spend time outside of class making up an assignment sheet (an assignment sheet that students would actively misunderstand and would therefore require a few explanatory emails or subsheets, anyway). In both of these cases, the mild form of deception (which typically stems from lack of time or instructor lazieness) actually leads to more satisfying and functional teaching practices: verbal face to face feedback, open-source assignment sheets. If kept in check, these forms of "fraudulence" can provide a functional heuristic: the fundamental differences between teachers and students are illusory, so, if a teaching task seems too hard to execute, it probably won't work from the students' perspective either. A moiety of critically informed lazieness goes as far as other forms of critical inquiry.

Besides, one thing about English 1020: students are already programmed to resent the college writing requirment, and absolutely love discovering ways of seeing their writing teacher as a fraud. She can't teach. He's sweaty. He always wears the same pants. She gives you a higher grade if you're sexy. He doesn't really read your papers. She gives you a higher grade on your revision when you just change words around. Everything she knows comes from the instructor copy fo that book. I could of just read the book. She smells like formaldehyde.

Therefore, in light of the critique that Brookfield's regime of "public and critical scrutiny" takes too much time: Rather than aspiring to be a non-fraud, I would argue that teachers of writing should actively model mild forms of instructor-based fraudulence, give extra points to students for uncovering them throughout the course, then assign a paper in which students must recognize and uncover a powerful deception beyond the classroom. That's an assignment that students and teachers can get into. It would help to keep them searching, and us honest.

Oh no,

I think that I might be a Sikh.

Response to Richardson (English 8050)

Lauren: "If I hadn't distributed the written text, no one would have thought I made a 'slip'". Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life, "The Case of the Skipped Line, p. 153

In her one-act play "The Case of the Skipped Line", Richardson literally creates an academic production about an an apparent nonevent: Lauren, a dramatization of Richardson's professional persona, "misreads" one line of a poem that she has written. A progression of hostile audience members, all male, harshly critique Lauren's "mistake"; Lauren maintains that her "performance" of her own poem is not accountable to the text that she has distributed, and that the critique unfairly priveleges written language over the spoken word.

In this response to Richardson, I shift my focus from research to teaching to illuminate one of the most exasperating and under-talked-about "moments" in the teaching of writing: Students compose general responses to the readings listed in the syllabus, but they read the syllabus and assignment sheets line-by-line, with no tolerance for critical framing or variation in the structure.

Hilary: As stated in the assignment sheet, your academic essay must have one MLA-style in-text citation per paragraph--
Student: But I THOUGHT we had to have one citation per PAGE.
Hilary: Hmmm....interesting.
Student: So which is it?
Hilary: I don't know. What do you think?
Student (scanning the assignment sheet in panic): It doesn't SAY.
Student sub 1: What's a "citation"?
Hilary: We spent two days on that in class.
Student sub 2: But I wasn't here.
Hilary: Oh.
Student sub 2: And if I'm not HERE every day, the assignment sheet makes no sense.

I suspect that this moment of frustration happens in worldwide Freshman Composition classrooms every time an assignment sheet is handed out: you discuss the assignment sheet with the students, who spend the next three weeks telling you that they do not "get" it. Before reading Richardson's drama of the "skipped line", I assumed that the problem was with either 1) me or 2) my students. Now, it has occurred to me that yet a third problem might be at play: the tradition of writing up an assignment sheet before discussing that assignment is problematic. By pre-creating an assignment sheet and then holding students responsible for that assignment, teachers of writing priveledge written language over the spoken, living word. A more constructive tradition might be to discuss the present the basic concept of the assignment (a verbal prototype) in class before discussion, then compose the assignment sheet after the class has met--incorporating students' language, confusions and suggestions into the assignment description and timetable. If the assignment description mirrors (while challenging) students' internal model of how writing works, the disconnect between the writing teachers' language and students' understanding might become less formidable.

Royanne: Hilary, it's just hard to take you seriously--
Male: All this happened, Laurel--
Royanne: with that hat on--
Male: because you were wearing orange--.

Response to Brookfield (English 8050): worst practices

Lauren: "If I hadn't distributed the written text, no one would have thought I made a 'slip'" (Richardson, p.158).

I think that I failed my own English 1020 course. Specifically, while my first section was fairly bucolic, my second or "evil" section (Section 22) made me want to harm my fellow creatures. This morning after distributing the departmental evals, I engaged in a CBT-style chart and graph making session designed to prove to myself that I am not a slobbering moron:
Why My Section Failed
1. Statistics: My previous sections have been consistent: 10 percent.
2. Social Dynamics: Psychologically intimidated by older, bigger student: 70 percent.
3. Eventual failure to adequately plan around disruptions above (see #2): 5 percent.
4. My actual inadequacy as a teacher: 15 percent.

Like most TAs, I envison a perfect world in which every section is both spontaneous and overplanned, the questions that arise are totally on-topic and all of my students are grammatically housebroken. However, while failure is often assumed to be universally bad, teaching-related failures actually serves a functional role in shaping the teaching of writing. In fact, the function of failure eerily corresponds to the funciton of theory--the all-time "hero" in graduate school. To illustrate this point, I've consistently replaced the word theory with the word failure in Brookfield's text below.

1. Failure "lets us name our practices" (p. 186).
Failure "can assist us in naming aspects of our experience that elude or puzzle us"; as a result of failure, "we feel that the world is...more open to our influence" (p. 186).

2. Failure "breaks the cycle of familiarity" (p. 186).
Failure can "free us from falling victim to the traps of relativism and isolationism"; failure helps us gain insight into "which functions of our work are context-specific and which are mere generalizations" (ibid).

3. Failure "can be a substitute for absent colleagues" (p. 187).
For academics who are not richly immerse in critical scholarship, failure "may be the only source of alternate viewpoints avaliable" (ibid). When a conventional approach to writing fails, new approaches to written texts open up. In fact, like theory, failure is relentlessly written: the primary consequence of failure consists of "comments scribbled in the margins, pages turned down and peppered with yellow slips" (ibid).

4. Failures "prevent groupthink and improve conversations with colleagues" (p. 187).
Failure supplies "provocative elements of dissonants" that can shake up "comfortably settled frameworks and assumptions" (p. 187). Academic communities need to critique views of "pedagogical correctness" and listen to "inconvient points of view" (ie, students' points of view) to remain intellectually "alive".

5. Failure "locates our practice in a social context" ().
Without the regular and serious study" of failure, we "agonize" about apparently private, isolated struggles with the teaching of writing: how can we "catch teachable moments" and "be spontantious", "while staying faithful to the syllabus".

Failure inspires us to "reframe what we consider to be the problems in our practice: the problematic focus shifts from the individual to:
the refusal of the curriculum committee or accreditating organization to let us
develop materials suited to particular ends, or the educational institution's intolerable burdens when we are expected to take on more and needier students without additional help (p. 188).

Letter to Suresh Caganaraja, part V.

Therefore, I am writing to request a universal extension on writing assignments on behalf of every member of my community. We would need the extension from today, December 9, until:
1. The guy hovering around my mailbox dies of anthrax,
2. Plastics engineers create an extension chord that runs from West Bloomfield to the far South Side.
3. Periphery scholars take over the means of Center/Periphery communication and post the MLA style sheet on every windshield.
4. Due to the globalization of hip hop, African American English becomes the language of wider communication for use in academic and professional writing.

Peace up,
Hilary

Letter to Suresh Caganaraja, part IV.

Yo, Suresh:

Do you feel me? Holla at your girl if you're reading this.

Note: this is a strictly academic blog. Please confine any "holla"-ing to the comment box provided below.

Letter to Suresh Caganaraja, part III.

Dear Dr. Caganaraja, c/o Suresh at Detroit Edison:

In Geopolitics, you note that periphery scholars frequently lack access to the materials and processes of Center scholarship such as paper (p. 164), a secure postal system(p. 171), telecommunication lines for phone, cable and internet access(p. 176) and copies of recent publications in peer reviewed journals (p. 183-233). Therefore, information from Center institution has a hard time "contacting" spheres of work in periphery scholarship. In at least this respect, scholarly life in my neighborhood differs from the stark material conditions of scholarship in periphery communities such as Sri Lanka: the Center has absolutely no trouble contacting me.

For example, each day I receive valuable peices of paper from the Center containing notices of traffic violation, 7 day notices and notices to quit. These peices of paper are made out of flame retardant material and conveniently delivered to my residential mailbox: I can "write back" to these institutions free of charge. In fact, I argue that DTE should be contracted to rewire the postal system in my neighborhood: no matter how insecure our mail becomes, I always receive my shutoff notice in a timely fashion. Even the guy who is hovering around my mailbox will is not tempted to steal these valuable papers. Throughout the day, additional papers are posted directly to the windshield of my car. Furthermore, I receive telephone calls at varying times from powerful Center authorities who always pick up when I call back. Since these phone calls frequently are routed through Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, this infrastructure could be transformed into a tremendous resource for academic communication between Center and periphery institutions. The advent of online bill payment only widens the possibilities for international collaboration in the "electronic age" of academic culture.

I am confident that the infrastructure for radical change is in place. Please find pre-stamped, electronically tagged and flame retardant DTE envelope, encl. Suresh knows where I live.

Hilary
c/o Suresh at Detroit Edison

Letter to Suresh Caganaraja, part II.

Dear Dr. Caganaraja or that one guy who was looking at my mailbox:

As you note several times throughout Geopolitics, the very act of writing presupposes cretain conditions: a clean, non-sticky surface, light and adequate warmth. In the developing nations that constitute the "periphery" of scholarly work, access to these utilities is frequently interrupted by conflict or natural disaster (see p. 187). While my community potentially enjoys full access to these utilities, we usually pay for them on alternate months. Frequently I am able to wipe off my desktop in September, read in October and pull my hands away from the space heater long enough to write something by mid-December, when papers are due. Which brings me to the topic of electrical fires caused by circuit overload: in the unlikely event that I were able to have all of the utilities running at once, 5660 Cabot would burn to the ground due to a short circuit and whatever I had written would be irreplacably lost. Not "my file crashed" lost, but "my file liquefied and ate through the floor", lost.

Letter to Suresh Caganarajah, part I.

Dear Dr. Caganarajah,

My name is Hilary Anne Ward; I usually sit next to Sharon Schnurr in Ruth Ray's 8050 seminar on writing in the profession. You might not recognize me as a periphery scholar because I am employed at a Research I institution, am white (which employers love) and have no diseases which can be seen crawling across the surface of the eye. However, because I live in an impoverished urban environment, or ghetto, I am constantly subject to the material conditions of periphery scholarship such as living conditions that do not support writing(p. 233), lack of access to the materials and processses of publication (p.184) and socialization in a discourse community with differing conventions from those of center scholarship (p. 58). I am writing as a service learning project for my community in Southwest Detroit; specifically, I am requesting an unlimited extension on all writing assignments for all students who live in the Michigan Ave corridor, bounded by (insert boundaries) and Warren Ave. to the North.

Gotta go for now. That one guy is looking at my mailbox again.

falling apart

I just want everything to stop.

the fire made me fat

pre exploding house: 114.5
post exploding house: 117.5

Describe to me how the fire started:

said the fire marshall.

Okay. I said. It all started in February of 2004, when the notebook computers disappeared from 029 State Hall. I was living in Ferndale with my cat named Naja at the time.

The firemen rushed in:

It's okay, I said breathlessly. I have the squid.

the fire

Hilary holds up a cardboard sign for her friends and family:

Girl: Free to good home. It (the home) can have fires in certain places: stove, candles, fireplace, but not in random places: the ceiling, the floor, this wall, or that wall, the bookshelf, that spot over there, those books, that dresser.

She zipped up her coat. Her work was done.

Now the squid could take it from here. I'm going home, she whispered. It's been a long long night.

what if

then you would storm into CCS and say excuse me, your student sold me a defective squid. This squid is broken.

sudden doubt

And what if it fails? I said, arms drawn, sleeves flapping.

the way home

My hands are curled up in the coat sleeves. The horses breathe on Ferry St.

And even finding someone to make the squid. Can you imagine the people who are in pysch wards right now cause they are convinced they got a direct message from the lord god telling them to make a small cloth squid?

And

said the letter E, you'd be looking for that fucking squid everywhere: in the sky, under the passenger seat, in the snow, on TV: squid? squid? You'd set your Tivo....

yes, my child:

look for the squid.

pause.

"squid?"

Now I realize why prayers are not answered verbally, said Hilary, smoothing the crinkled brown bag. Can you imagine getting an answer like:

Fear not: I am going to make you a real nice squid.

Hilary gingerly approached the table

wreathed in shadows:

"I have waited for this day".

"Good", said the girl. "Five dollars".

conference

"Maybe that's not the answer", said Hilary doubtfully. "And if we stand here and wait, another answer will come".

slide transition

Hilary ran her hands along the lockers.

...

Hilary knew that she had gone a little crazy with her new IP tracker when she consulted her log to determine which buildings to stay away from during Noel night.

syllabus design

Plan of work: Re-prepare syllabus for Jeff's course so that I "magically" end up getting to write a parody of Mary Louise Pratt's essay "Arts of the contact zone".

Title of parody: Zoned out.

Theme: Contact-zone envy in suburban life.

Feature sentence: "Then for awhile, I told people that my mother is Chinese".

"Oh",

said Google Scholar breezily, you must be studying the technology-work relationship. The line of inquiry is Nardi and O'Day, Zachry, Spinnuzi et. al (18 citations). Scholars who cited Nardi and O'Day also cited--

Shut up: no one likes a know-it all, I said, quietly downloading the files into my doc folder.

I have a dream:

That research databases such as JSTOR and FIRST SEARCH will one day be as searchable as Yahoo!.

That time of year:

Man, that problem with computers crashing really goes around at the end of the term, said a wide-eyed Sharon: That girl on Sex and the City? She's a writer, and her file crashed on the same day mine did.

Tree of reasoning:

Branch A: While grounded in theoretical work by Nardi and O'Day, my project is distinct from and complementary to Selfe and Hawisher's study.

Branch B: The ethnographic studies that Nardi and O'Day present in Information Ecologies are, in fact, workplace studies. My project is distinct from and complementary to Nardi and O'Day's foundational text.

Branch C: People out there in ResearchLand have already adapted/translated/modified the information ecologies framework for workplace research. My project is grounded in Nardi and O'Day's theory but counterclaims against the emphasis of the empirical work that has been done.

Waaait a second:

Can anyone out there tell me whether I am now counterclaiming against Nardi and O'Day, or Selfe and Hawisher?

However:

Where are all of the stoners, slackers, spammers and scammers in Selfe and Hawisher's study?

Which brings me:

to a funny story about how I once had a crush on my eight grade math teacher. Actually, it's not so much funny as it is long.

congruent

Throughout the project, Nardi and O’Day present six ethnographic studies that describe how new information technologies either strike a delicate balance of "congruence” with their wider cultural ecologies or fail to thrive{cite Selfe and Hawisher}; this research method has been taken up by researchers in the fields of technical and communication, computers and writing, education and new media {cite nauseating amount of studies}.

the social life of information

Hilary> the preface>mythical silent scream.

Nardi and O’Day posit a new term—ecology—to provide new ways of thinking about the social life of information in “computerized technology contexts” (cite Johnson). Specifically, the ecological metaphor suggests that “tools, people and their practices” are inextricably intertwined and bound to local contexts: information ecologies are diverse, complex and continuously evolving “systems”(p. 51) of god HELP me,I just had a brief citational encounter with the letter F.

...

During that elapsing time, Latour, Woolgar and Collon blurred the boundaries between texts, technologies and human beings. Technical comm grew as a research discipline. Science and Action got published. Science communication became increasingly computer-mediated and I tried to vaccuum my cat, Shady. All of these events culminated in the publication of my next foundational text, Information Ecologies.

{Note: for handy reference, I've italicized the phrases that do not require drastic revision}.

m'kay?

Then, a considerable period of time elapsed. {Note: the committee will want me to revise this sentence}.

preface so far

Since Miller’s (1979) foundational essay “A humanistic rationale for technical writing”, scholars within the field of technical and professional communication have acknowledged that technical writing always happens in an institutional context, and therefore embodies “tacit commitments to bureaucratic hierarchies, corporate capitalism and high technology” (p. 616). This “humanistic” rationale for technical writing emphasizes that writing about technology is not an “objective” enterprise but a “communal” one: in Miller’s “reconceptualization” the field, scientific knowledge then becomes “the correspondence of ideas, not to the material world, but to other peoples’ ideas” (ibid).

my professional

My assigned counselor at Educational Accessibility Services is a
blind African-American woman with a PhD in a technical field.

There is a nerf elephant on her desk that you can throw and
hit. She says that mostly administrators, not students, "use" (i.e, assault) the elephant when they come in.

She strongly recommended that I get my own stuffed animal to oppress.

...

A careful exploration of the books around you will dispel the myth that the genre of the preface was invented five minutes before your QE exam.

Look:

Even Nardi and O'Day and {insert the author of your foundational text} wrote a preface for their books, Information Ecologies and {insert the title of your foundation text}. Watch the preface social and disciplinary centrality for the book, aligining the author's research with key issues and questions in the field.

A widely underexplored way to

write your QE preface is to read some prefaces. Not "prefaces", prefaces. You know: People put them at the beginning of books.

homegrown microfiche

There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.
"Message to the Grass Roots," speech, Nov. 1963, Detroit (published in Malcolm X Speaks, ch. 1, 1965

Stuck in commuter traffic on I-94, Hilary had the disturbing realization that, no matter what cool things god wanted to do for her right now, he/she/it/they could accomplish nothing without the cooperation of the people to her immediate right and left.

Spawn of Blogger

All parents of Hilary de-lurk here.

Dad, I study this stuff for my dissertation.

love, Hilary

the vanishing horizon of invisible work

Thought experiment: "Invisible work" (Nardi, 1998) reaches the horizon and falls off the edge of the earth.

The monsters that eat it are my object of study.

Look:

what the Liquid Narrative Research Group has made.

warning: appended table

The table in Hoff and Groot et. al is scanned on a bizarre axis, forcing the reader to risk spinal injury to get to the findings.

Specifically, this is a project about:

organizational socialization "in light of recent developments in communication and information technologies" (Flanagan and Waldek, 2005, p. 137).

This is the project in the field of:

Technical communication.

special information systems

After 4 grueling hours of searching out and resolving missing bits of information, Hilary got out her research notebook and drew three columns:

K. W. L.

She hoped to god that nobody saw, such as Sarah or Matt.

coding the data

Look ouuuut: the dimensions are going to collapse.

This is a project in the field of:

So far, that's all I've got.

Hilary>the dissertation project> stuck points.

blogging "underlife"

If you read this blog without posting comments, please post here. Self-identification is unnecessary: this is a pure mouse count (an anonymous "me" is fine).

Rationale: this is a 48-hour pilot experiment for the methods section of my dissertation project prospectus: if I can't prompt lurkers to anonymously self-identify, then I need to emphasize observational rather than interview data.

Hilary>dissertation project>methods>averting potential problems.

and the title of the blog would be

"Extreme parking".

tied up

Scenario for a fantasy research article: the free parking blog grows in popularity and impacts the shelf life of the parking spaces, which get consumed, roped off or fetishized in Beudrillard's next book.

textual fantasy

If I had a digital camera, a new anonymous blog would mysteriously start. The blog would be dedicated to the quest for "free" parking in the Cass Corridor.

that's ri-ight,

I said and sat straight up, eyes animated. We stopped talking before my bookbag got found: She doesn't even know that I have it.

The letter E smacked his face with his own hand.

"and"

that if you even glanced at that stuffed sheep, you were going to start talking.

transition words

"But as soon as you used the word statistically, I knew for sure that I was not going to get laid".

infuriating by design

The shower sprayer at my parents' house was designed by like, Trent Lott or something.

country roads

At the intersection of Commerce and Commerce, Hilary wondered how many people would die each day if for example McDougall ran both paralell and perpendicular to itself.

"In Callon's study of a research project involving scallops, for instance, the scallops take their place next to fishermen and the scientific community as stakeholders with which researchers must negotiate" (Spinuzzi, "Lost in translation", p.4) .

Holiday.

And now the office is virtually deserted.

dangerous intersection

Today in 9306:

Name deleted met name deleted and name deleted and
Then name deleted came up and met name deleted and name deleted, but I was in the elevator with name deleted's friend and the security guard looked at me.

critical self-framing

When and how did my intellectual life become so "submerged" (Dobrin, 1987)?

replication with a twist

Idea for a research article: replicate Spinuzzi's analysis in"the Migration of a Research Technique", only replacing "the prototyping technique" with "the International Multiliteracies Project", or no, wait, with "Design".

how you gonna pa-ay?

This morning as I was leaving for work, my downstairs neighbor CAME out onto the porch in her pyjamas, LOOKED at my windshield and started signing:

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred ti-ckets.

Quiz: Are you Kim, Hilary or Shashi?

Time to drop out of grad school and:

Start a brand of snack foods called Never Again, designed especially for girls: Never Again snack cakes, Never Again potato chips, Never Again twizzlers, Never Again chocolate covered pretzels.

And I wish

that he and I could just sit down and have a rational conversation comprised entirely of PowerPoint slides.

Every two months

I want to shake name deleted out, fold him up and put him back into the friend pile.

Quiz: Are you Kim, Hilary or Shashi?

Meet Kim, Hilary and Shashi: three urban youths fighting over a very small pita.

Question 1:

When you wake up, your first activity is to:
1) Narcicistically read your own blog.
2) Look in the mirror and think "My naked body is noticeably cool. In fact, I think that more people should see it..."
3) Torment fellow creatures with the coffee you have made.

Now

Current location: My office (9306 Maccabees)
On ipod: "I left my wallet in El Segundo".
Current state: Grading, an unacknowledged mode of consciousness.
Weather: Draft from window reminds me of movie "ice storm".
Next action:
(1) Film myself entering my grades.
(2) Create e quiz about vanity titled "Are you Hilary or Shashi?" .

Last night while going between floors 9 and 10 to recopy my students' papers for the kajillionth time, I accidentally locked myself in the stairwell. After a search for an exit that lasted approximately as long as the fifth grade, I drew in my breath and triggered the alarm.

When I got down to the loading dock, the cadets were waiting with radios and handcuffs, demanding to know how a homeless girl had gotten up to floor 10 to photocopying paper comments.

Sharon is smart

Referring to bell hooks, Sharon neutralizes the haircut as a transgressive act:

>Peach fuzz is very radical and therefore (paradoxically) popular.

Waiting in line at the

Mini-Mart, Hilary suddenly realized that she has never been attracted to anyone who did not bear some resemblance to a frog.

boring operator

From a recent e-conversation with Sharon:

Maybe silence is a social strategy for getting the upper hand--but why would you WANT the upper hand if you can't strut around your office chanting: Whose the girl? I'm the girl! Whose the girl! I'm the girl. Go, go, go girl...

Which obsolete skill are you?

You are 'programming in QBASIC'. This programming
language (of which the acronym stands for
'Quick Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic
Instruction Code'), which is so primitive that
it cannot easily be used for any purpose
involving the Internet nor even sound, was
current more than a decade ago.

You are independent, in a good way. When something
which you need cannot be found, you make it
yourself. In writing and in talking with
people, you value clarity and precision; your
friends may not realize how important that is.
When necessary, you are prepared to be a
mediator in conflicts between your friends.
You are very rational, and you think of things
in terms of logic and common sense.
Unfortunately, your emotionally unstable
friends may be put off by your devotion to
logic; they may even accuse you of pedantry and
insensitivity. Your problem is that
programming in QBASIC has been obsolete for a
long time.


What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

freshly fallen snow dissolves

on sidewalk mortar
like the smooth aftertaste of porter.

"School is not a fashion show".

What I'm wearing today:
Abercrombie "Fair Isle" sweater from Salvation Army.

As:
1) legwarmers (cut-off sleeves)
2) matching cutoff under jean jacket (missing sleeves=full range of arm motion)

With:
Actual schoolgirl skirt from Mercy high (also found at S. Army).

Point of fashion:
Implied use of scizzors.

irony in tech comm

This is how you insert a link, Sarah.

Documentary

I also want to take seasonal pictures of Yard Pile: Yard Pile in Summer, Yard Pile in Fall, Yard Pile in Winter, Yard Pile in Spring.

Beaujolais.

Last night while frowning meditatively at Yard Pile, I was briefly inspired to invite my best friend from elementary school to drink Beaujolais on the abandoned sofa on top of the abandoned car.

back to normal

11:32 a.m. Stare at office wall in breathless awe.
11:33 a.m. Eat celebratory lunch from Epicurus (Calories eaten: n/a).
11:40 a.m. Put "So good" on ipod (track 2 from "The Writing On the Wall").
11:41 a.m. Grade paper #11 (from infinite stack of papers to grade).

Yeah.

11:31 a.m. poverty ends.

anguish of waiting

Listen to Destiny's child CD "The Writing On The Wall".
Read the writing on the wall (of liquor store near house).
Count change in bookbag.
Look up contract guidelines.
Plea with program director.
Pray.
Beg.
Make cereal.
Listen.
Wait.

study hall

Graduate students date each other for a continuuum of reasons: sex, vanity, boredom and free food. For example, said Hilary to Grad Boy, I'm here because I failed Analysis and Interpretation of Girls.

attack thoughts

Next to fleeting "attack thoughts" like my QE comittee is disbanding and where did these sweat pants come from?, what worried Hilary most was her potential of being the underdeveloped dweebazoid who still drinks regular cola.

Bisexuality:

Because both parts are equally funny.

...

Weighing the experience of getting run over by a car and shot at against the bomb threat, giant worms, multiple accusations of boyfriend-stealing and loss of electrical power, Hilary sincerely believed that the most dangerous thing that had happened to her was her brief tenancy in the boondocks east of I-75 (i.e., St. Clair Shores).

no exit

Your hair is cute. It's kinda ghetto.
I realize that: I have an appointment to cut it off next Tuesday.
News flash: cutting off your hair extensions and walking around with the peach fuzz look is also ghetto.
Hmm...A realization dawned. Wait! I know! I know! I'll get a REALLY nice winter hat by Tommy of Fubu and wear it on my head until my hair grows out!
Yes, Hilary. Yes. That would definitely take care of the problem.

out of office auto-reply

Last night while buying tickets to Pride and Prejudice at the art theatre, I was hypervigilant in ensuring that a tractor beam could not locate and warp me back to the office.

news flash: I'm over it.

dear Fox 2 news,
Notice that, despite being autistic, I somehow worked through my anger at you without going on a murderous rampage. Maybe you should put THAT on the news.
Hilary

memo 2:" the system is down".

Dear Fox 2 News,
I've noticed that you enjoy presenting autistic people in a sensational and negative light such as: Axe murderer. Many high functioning autistic people grow up to work in relatively less sensational positions involving C&IT research, information systems and design. I'd be doing my work right now, in fact, except that your dumb honking commerical ate all of my bandwidth.

Hilary

memo

Dear Fox 2 news,
Thank you for undoing approximately 10 years of relentless social activism.
Hilary Anne

Criminal.

hip hop>what not to listen to>Eminem>The Slim Shady LP>"criminal".

MASH went to commerical and the Fox 2 voiceover followed me to the fridge for some pita:

SUFFERING from a form of AUUUUTISM, he killed his neigbhors IN COLD BLOOD!!!! Did his DISEASE cause his MURDEROUS KILLING SPREE?

"Now that's not right", Wally said. "You should contact like the NAACP or some shit".

"Look", Wally said impatiently, "what I just said was really funny".

"logic" problem

Hilary>social problems>name deleted>deletion of>solutions>unlikely.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Shash said cryptically. What? I replied. Then I punched um in the arm.

Title of talk: How PowerPoint kept me from giving this talk.

Academic tasks>difficult or obnoxious>giving a talk>prefacing a talk>Caganarajah.

The overarching theme of this talk was inspired by an event that I normally regard as an interruption.

Thursday night found me up preparing for this presentation by pasting the main points of this talk onto PowerPoint slides. I had to huddle next to the space heater because our furnace has pulmonary edema or something. Erykah Badu's WorldWide underground was playing on the stereo (which fit nicely with the theme of Geopolitics). The coffee maker hypnotically percolatd.

Then I clicked to upload an image into my slide: Suddenly, all the lights in the house went out. 5660 Cabot was off the grid. I never knew that visual explanations drew so much amperage.

the leaves

the leaves just be
the leaves be in obnoxious bags on McGraw, and the cars can go
around them. the leaves do not justify
the way that they hold back the gate in the morning. The contract of the leaves is automatically renewed. The leaves can not hear the regulation container. The leaves cover the unmowed lawn.

blog dreams

semi-daily thoughts about pedagogy>digital literacy initiative>technology and culture>technology and the interpretation of dreams

>hilary,I had a dream, not really about you, but about your blog last night. had
>something to do with Vicki Name Deleted reading it and commenting on the
>formatting. Name Deleted was also there. It's pretty vague, but enough to be
weird.
anonymous

My personal first blog dream happened in April: True to form, someone posted on my blog to tell me that name deleted had died. More recent blog dreams include one where I got trapped in a three dimensional comments box on Typepad and ran into Trish Name Changed on the stairs to the next box down.

Note: Blog dreams have tremendous potential as the weekly icebreaker in a tech writing course in which students are blogging their projects. You could celebrate their first blog dream with a commemorative song.

observation assignment. Note: under construction.

Assignment 3 (100 pts)
Students will write a source-based academic essay that incorporates visual information about the occluded genre. The assignment will begin with readings on the ethnography of writing. Then , students will conduct a naturalistic observation of writers working within the occluded genre. Finally, each student will produce a critical essay about the social and material conditions that influence the conventions (ie patters) of writing within the genre.

pedagogy>semi-daily thoughts>making assignments I want to read.

Anne with an e

My impression is that you get sometimes get into trouble because of the disability. In quotes, Sharon added hastily.

professional development

My Progress Chart

1:47 Email to name deleted about the observation assignment.
1:49 Email to name deleted retracting the email about the observation assignment.
1:51 Email to name deleted apologizing for the initial email and the retraction.

join my reading group

(me to gay boy at departmental mailboxes): Queer theory? No thank you, I'm already a fucking EXPERT on queer theory. Man, I'm only queer in theory.

developmental milestones

Why does folk psychology pretend that human development is complete at age four? We commemorate peoples' first words and sentences but tend not to follow-up with the rest of the story:

age at first multiauthored grant proposal
age at which first smoked down
age of first sexual encounter with married person
age at first impulse to drop out of graduate school and {insert auspicious-sounding idea here:set up fruitstand, write underground for cheapessays.com... }
age at which first stuck entire arm up horses' rectum during vet school

I see the light:

and, from now on, it is going to have to be one at a time.

Dethrone the Mushroom King

Super Mario Bros. Directory for the Maccabees bldg.
Floor 1. Caution: The floor is molten lava
Floor 2. You beat the game by collecting your paycheck without "dying".
Floor 3. Player A and Player B can not both fit into this elevator.
Floor 4. Hint: Margaret freezes when you look at her.
Floor 5. There are 35000 coints in my account. Ie, two dollars.
Floor 6. I still have 4 lives left. We can schedule that meeting for today.
Floor 7. Blow in caridge, whack against box and press "reset".
Floor 8. Gaa-h! Forward B! Forward B! Forward B! (Mario command for "duck).
Floor 9. BAby! You check your departmental mailbox--
Floor 10. I think that I have given up on saving the princess.

four prayers

1. Dear god: Let all things be as they are. Except the following: ....
2. Relatedly: May all creatures be happy and well. Except the following:...
3. God: Very funny! Now put it back.
4. p.s. the leaves are a nice touch. your handmaiden.

the radiating hum of sleep after a

sleepless night.

lecture notes

My tongue in
English chains, I
return, after a generation, to you. I am at the end of my Dravidian tether, hunger for you
unassuaged, I falter, stumble.
(Parthasarathy, “rough passage”, l. 61-70)}.

intelligent design

Last night I "engineered" the perfect morning for today, down to the last detail of a plush towel on the floor to absorb shower moisture. I hate unexplained moisture.

Johnathan of Troy

Hilary: do you live here in the city?
Johnathan: I live and work in Troy.
Hilary: Sounds great: Living the dream...
Johnathan: Actually I have been kind of depressed lately.
Hilary (empathetically): Yeah. You live in the center of nowhere. Plus, you have the spiritual malaise because you know you are a tool of the man.
Johnathan: Acutally I'm pretty much in a good place with that. The problem is that I just got diagnosed with hypoglycemia.

borderline

Have started addressing myself as "Hilary"

and making encouraging follow-up remarks such as

"let's get it together here".

amnesty

My mom finally put her foot down about the clothes, and not a moment too soon.

nothing to see here

just an average girl brushing her teeth and hair, praying, sleeping, breathing and trying to stay out of oncoming traffic.

my family

Sean. Said my mom. That sounds like a nice irish name. Is he irish?
pause. Um mom? I said. I think he's Black.
There are black irish, welsh, scottish. she matter of factly said.
Mostly Catholic, too, she added with a note of approval.
pause. Seriously though, said my mom. He is irish, right?

for example

Last night when I dreamed, I dreamed about cauliflower. It was part of a stir fry. No one died.

inner peace

is kind of disturbing

out of practice

Stop! You're unhooking my back muscles from my spine.

Dave blogging

....

..

..............................?

.

bad form

I crossed my arms, slank down in the fuzzy chair and scowled.

"You're not going to make me sign one of those humiliating behavioral contracts", I said.

No, she said. I'll tell you what I want to do, though. I want to make you sign a behavioral contract not to cross your arms, slink down in your chair and scowl. It is not conducive to productive dialogue.

getting dressed for school

This morning I caught a glance of my naked reflection prancing by the hallway mirror.

The shimmering eyes in the reflection glanced back.

Yes, I said patiently, yes, I see you. I haven't forgotten about you. I know that you are there.

You are young, I said flatly, lacing up my shoes. My eyes squinted into half-moons, and for a second the inside of me appeared in the mirror, old, grey, gentle and tired.

My palm touched the palm of the reflection. I wish I could send you off without me, I sighed and screwed my mouth into a scold: If I were young and had your figure.

The slender reflection laughed and tugged at its camisole. Frowning carefully, I matched the laces of my boots to the eyelets.

reasons to teach comp. at a catholic college

Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 05:57:36 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Hilary W." Add to Address Book
Subject: reasons to teach comp. at a Catholic college.
To: jrhall@tir.com


Jim,
You could say this about the danger of "sleepwalking" through spelling and grammar-check:

What if John Paul II accidentally declared the bl. Virgin Mary the "dominatrix" of the Catholic Church because autocorrect does not recognize "mediatrix"?

Realize--it is doctrinally infallible once he clicks 'ok'".
-Hilary

the process of aging

Have grown out of:

going out two nights in a row

dating more than 2 people at 1 time

teaching the MWF 8:30-10:30 section

showering with dish soap when my paycheck runs out

wiping my runny nose on my sleeve

alternately paying my electric, heat and water bills

elevator poem

Press no more buttons until we get to floor 1.

former tenants

I walked gingerly up to the washing machine

looked inside

but did not scream.

Okay, I said. Not a problem. Not a problem. Not a problem. Not a problem.

Then I threw up.

sponge

If I were to form a band this moment, the band would be named individual plate of greens.

best of science (and) writing award

two words: internal tomagochi.

grass stain

Sharon, I asked, pulling up a clump of grass and dirt and worms from the CCS lawn, um, do you, you know,like being human?

It's ok, she said. I mean, I don't wish I were a dandelion or anything. My PowerPoint presentation was hard enough as it is.

meanwhile, back on my mattress:

Late last night I dialed 1-800-CALL NEAL and watched the shadows of cockroaches sliding by my bed.

student-teacher-writers

In her review "Tenure and promotion in rhetoric and composition", Levenson (2000) gently critiques the applicability of the Boyer report:
"Several authors, Boyer most notably, make a case for changing institutional values in ways that would benefit compositionists whose professional work includes such things as teaching freshman composition, running writing programs, organizing community service and working with technology. However, few of these authors deal specifically with how to institute such a change, exept to make clear that the burden of proof rests on the untenured candidate to document why her unconventional work deserves to be valued"(p. 144).

Levenson goes on to list the "unconventional" scholarly work in which she engaged "exactly 1 year before I was denied tenure", noting that she has come to view her work with graduate students as "directly tied to my scholarly work, not a diversion from it" (p. 147).

The situation of untenured candidates is somewhat analogous to the thrills and perils of being a graduate TA: while the "work" of being a TA includes teaching freshman composition, running the writing center and developing an area of community involvement/service, "research" done by the TA is the only thing that counts as interesting in the wider institutional culture. I place "research" in quotation marks because the term, when taken alone, represents an abstract and problematic ideal: when does research EVER take place apart from teaching, program administration and community service? However, unlike untenured faculty, graduate students do not have graduate students to turn to for appreciation and relief (for we are graduate students).

Like untenured professors, graduate students need to find ways of teaching that complement, rather than distract from, the intellectual work of research. The task is different for us, though, in that freshman students are not graduate students. They lack "research" interests, or even, in alarming cases, interests:

student: But Miss Hilary, I don't know what my Assignment 2 will be ABOUT!
Hilary: Okay, well, tell me what you're interested in.
Student: I don't know. Stuff. Or nothing. I can't remember.

These "undisciplined" students are quintessntial distractions.

What follows below is a fantasy list of suggestions toward how graduate TAs can conduct research and writing through (rather than in spite of) the freshman composition course:

1. To answer the theoretical koan "what should be the topic and content of my English 1020 course): if you are still doing your coursework, the topic of your course should as closely related as possible to the topic(s) of your graduate seminars--with appropriate conceptual downshifting.

2. If you are finished with your coursework, the topic of your course should correspond with an aspect of your dissertation topic that you want to explore.

3. Similarly, "what should my students read": they should read what you are reading--with appropriate modifications. While anthologies like Text Book do support undergraduates in reading and responding to theoretical material, it is may be more appropriate to have students read and respond to primary texts that have to do with your seminar or dissertation topics.

4. The assignments in the course should closely relate to (or complement) the writing assignments that the graduate TA will encounter during the semester, and

5. Graduate TAs should "do" every writing task they assign along with the students, and

6. Graduate TAs should workshop their writing along with the students in peer review.

7. During the traditional conversation about "Teacher comments in English 1020: understanding, interpreting and responding to your teacher's evaluation", students should have a chance to "produce" teacher comments by commenting on a sample the graduate TAs written work-in-progress.

8. The above will both help students develop fluency in the language of "teacher comments" and learn to evaluate, as well as read and write, academic discourse.

Note: list (continuously) under construction.

spark: a novel about welding safety (post for 8050).

"And that's the problem, particilarly for our graduate students: the discipline thinks its going from literature to culture, and the market tells us we're going from literature to technical writing" (O'Dair, p. 47).

For those of us who have already gone "from literature to technical writing", this is extremely reassuring news: we are going with the flow of the academic job market while the literary scholars, well, deconstruct themselves. However, O'Dair concludes that graduate students should not be prepared to "obtain tenurable positions" by reading Piers Plowman; rather, the academic job market "would likely improve by sticking to technical writing" (47).

This assumption--that literature and technical writing are intrinsically different--makes me cringe: and not with indignance at literary scholars for dogging the gritty industrial/orginizational focus of tech comm. Here, I would rather argue the assumption literature and technical writing are different is responsible for a lot of lame, bad and humanistically shady traditions in technical writing. In contrast, some of the most exemplary--ie, intelligeable, searchable and useable--peices of technical writing are exuberantly literary.

For wildly successful examples of "literary" technical communication, check out:

Angell Daie's "The English Secretorie", a secretarial manual that is written in the form of an epistolary novel. Marginal glosses transform the novel into a searchable textbook on professional writing.

Dyer's "the fleece", a diagnostic poem about diseases of the sheep. The poetic form allows for frighteningly vivid descriptions:
That dire distemper sometimes may the swain,
Though late, discern; when, on the lifted lid,
Or visual orb, the turgid veins are pale;
The swelling liver then her putrid store
Begins to drink: ev'n yet thy skill exert,

280 Nor suffer weak despair to fold thy arms:
Again detersive salt apply, or shed
The hoary med'cine o'er their arid food.

The Kama Sutra, an intricately diagrammed web of process descriptions about how to have sex, employs narrative to annotate and clarify the diagrams:

"Imagine..In his garden there are two swings, one revolving and one ordinary. Now sometimes, alone, he switches from one to the other until his head spins. But his favourite swing has neither ropes, nor wood, nor cushions" ("The Swing).

This narrative draws on the literary figure of analogy to clarify a complex sequence of actions. (Note: The narrative style of the Kama Sutra is brilliantly parodied in Christopher Moore's novel, "Lamb").

Here is a more contemporary example example of creative nonfiction in tech comm: Planned Parenthood's "STD petting zoo", an interactive cartoon about sexually transmitted diseases.

Taking these examples as a starting point, O'Dair's claim that graduate students are not getting anywhere with Langland's Piers Plowman becomes harder to evaluate. Like many technical communicators, Langland realized that people pay attention to abstract concepts when you draw smiley faces on and make up stories about them. Conceptually speaking, the structure and function of the soul (as described by Medieval scholars on the Greek New Testament) is as complex and "technical" as the parts of an amoeba. The anthropomorposized "parts of the soul" in Piers are created to help readers grasp and therefore modify the content of their souls. For example, the anthropomorphosized "Vices" in Piers--
And then came Covetousness · I can him not describe,
So hungry and hollow · Sir Harvey him looked.
He was beetle-browed · and blubber-lipped too,
With two bleared eyes · as a blind hog;
--are an analogous textual ancestor of the lively, anthropomorphosized STDs in Planned Parenthood's STD Petting Zoo.

In summary, Piers Plowman may have more to tell O'Dair's graduate students about technical and professional writing than she realizes. For example, that human readers are better able to grasp abstract concepts when they are presented as "characters" and explanations when they follow the structure of a story.

Those graduate students who can read Piers Plowman and apply Langland's anthropomorphic style of depicting "Vices" on the stage to (say) a better design for "idiot lights" on a dashboard might be the first ones to obtain tenurable positions on the academic job market.

From where we're standing, you look ghetto (post for 8050).

The final page of Scholes' The Rise and Fall Of English turned with an unintentional slap of reality:

“But when professors became philologists, scholars, or literary critics, they deeply resented helping students with a prose that was neither literature nor anything else, but just “composition” –just as students resented and resisted learning a kind of writing that seemed to have no function beyond school” (p. 190).

Like Bonhoeffer, who got so innured to dungeon life that that he forgot about his imprisonment in Flossenburg "for weeks at a time", I blithely forgot about my own confinement:

“This {production} is the part of English that is usually put beyond the pale--as “creative” writing-- or down in the dungeon--as "composition" (p. 159).

Therefore, sentences like this one had to be read and reread for meaning:
“The useful, the practical, and even the intelligeable were relegated to composition” (p. 35).

Waaaaait a second, I thought. We're the ones who do the "relegating" around here! Why just the other day Sharon's student brought in his big dumb deconstruction book, and she calmly said,

"nooow, if you want to use that in your literature courses, that's perfectly fine.

Yeah. She relegated his head straight".

What even well-intentioned and perspicuous literary scholars liek Scholes fail to realize is that, like most indigenous peoples, composition scholars are not pressing our noses against the stained glass waiting to be "discovered":

“What I finally realized was that English departments need composition as the “other” of literature in order to function as they have functioned” (p. 35).

The above sentence is at once heartwarming and insulting. We built this department 1 syllogism at a time so you could have a place to deconstruct stuff (or whatever): You've finally noticed us?

On a second reading, I came to immensely appreciate Scholes' move toward a rapproachement. Still, though, scholars within the fields of composition, rhetoric and technical communication should remain critical of "integrationist" claims such as this one:

“Under this sign, there is no difference between the theory of composition and the theory of literature” (p. 36).

As Malcolm X points out, anyone who has been systematically enslaved should be critical of steps toward "integration", especially of integration initiated by the people who were doing the enslaving:

"Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing "We shall overcome ... Suum Day.. ." while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against ?The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every op pressed people in the world: the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, ... Cuba - yes Cuba too" ("El-Hajj Malik-Shabazz", p. 456).

For composition scholars, the danger of overarching alliances with literary scholars "is not a case of wanting either separation or integration.The use of these words actually clouds the real picture" (Malcolm X, "missing page numbers"). Rather, any initiative from within literary studies to disolve the disciplinary boundary between comp. and literature presents the risk of subsuming composition into a power structure that swears that, with our dedicated help, it can stop being exploitative.

in my entire life

I have never been as happy as I am now.

Note: it took me 3, 316 words to say that.

my textbook review

does not need an "introduction" as much as I need a twix bar.

word count

2, 265 : word count of textbook review
2, 460 : word count of blog posts written while avoiding textbook review.
6, 230 : word count of emails written while avoiding textbook review.

review of dinner at Howe's

Dish eaten: collard greens
Warning label: pork fat may contain greens.

meanwhile: back on my mattress

The South Park dreams where name deleted dies due to my negligence are starting to incorporate elements of dramatic irony.

For example :
In last night's dream, I applied for the job of Angel of Death; my application test was to bring name deleted home to the Lord God.

I knocked self-consciously on Name Deleted's door.

"Hilary?" said name deleted, looking very surpised. "Ok. Where...is...Jesus?"

"Oh. Jesus is resting:", I said perkily, "I will be your shepherd for today".

look at me

i am an innocent textbook and my name is (insert name).
accept me as your personal savoir and your class will structure itself
your papers will grade themselves
and your students will critically frame themselves (not the structure and content of your course).

Le départ de cette réflexion était le plus souvent un sentiment d'impatience devant le `naturel' dont la presse, l'art, le sens commun affublent sans cesse une réalité qui, pour être celle dans laquelle nous vivons, n'en est pas moins parfaitement historique: en un mot, je souffrais de voir à tout moment confondues dans le récit de notre actualité, Nature et Histoire, et je voulais ressaisir dans l'exposition décorative de ce-qui-va-de-soi, l'abus idéologique qui, à mon sens, s'y trouve caché. (Barthes: 1970 p.9)

In “Joining the conversation” (Rhetoric review, 1994, p. 175), an anonymous scholar named TS criticizes the “inaccessible language” of scholarly writing in Rhet/Comp. Granted, all readers in a specialized field should expect to encounter “technical terms” and “specialized language”. However, the author holds scholars in rhetoric and composition to an especially high standard of writing: “I expect (naively) that people who teach composition will write well” (p. 183). The article concludes that the choice to produce crappy writing is "politically motivated".

Taking as a starting point Barthes' claim that "when cultural discourses hide their motivation, they transform “history into nature” (1972, p. 129), my textbook review emhasizes a reciprocal problem: the "nonacademic" pattern of evidence and self-justification in writing textbooks is also politically motivated, in that, by concealing theory (frequently through first-person narrative) writing texbooks naturalize certain theories about reading, writing and community action.

Note:

"Natural" order

Is the information in Writing in a Visual Age as “easy to find” as promised? To answer this question, I attempted to use the text to answer a question about how to approach a writing task for “another college course”. Specifically, I tried to use the text to determine how to develop an overarching theme for my textbook review. Since “reviews” are not included as a form of academic writing, I first had to determine whether my review is more like an “evaluation” (p.262) or a “report” as a form of college writing how do I develop an overarching theme in a review? (p. 103). According to the text, evaluations are evaluative: “Is the thing—a product, for example, or an idea, a movie or a policy—good or bad?” (p.262). Evaluations answer an overarching question of value such as “is the thing as good as it promises” by comparing the thing to a set “source of criteria” (p.263); while positive and negative textbook reviews do exist, most reviews in composition in rhetoric (such as Rader’s review of Composition, Visual Culture and Problems of Class in College English and Prensky’s “Escape from the planet jar-gon” in (cite) are descriptive and exploratory, and tend to reserve judgment. Evaluation section covers questions of value and criteria. If my review is a report, however, it should convey “information that readers will find accurate, credible and reasonable comprehensive” (103): a report writer might identify a number of “themes” (p.160) but this section contains no discussion of how to develop an overarching idea. In practice, the color-coded boxes are difficult to search out of context: the boxes (which occur “throughout” each chapter) are not indexed; I have trouble determining if the task of “developing a controlling idea” is a strategy (green box) or a practical step (yellow box), and even if I could, the yellow and green colors are similar enough that it is hard to visually discriminate between the two categories of boxes. In the evaluative language of an evaluation, the "intuitive" mapping is not always "as good as it promises".

...

Peeled moon
light on my fingers
move under
her clothes.Baraka.

Had To Do It

Everyone else is.....

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

My line:
Time going to go serenely gnaw my pita.

Comments
Ironic in light of newly diagnosed wheat allergy. Pitas: The Silent Killer.

saturday morning

to do:
sleep in
brush teeth
write textbook review

plans for the weekend

write textbook review
edit textbook review
drink

name deleted is

the moral equivalent of broccoli.

and

that is true no matter which side of the door you are on.

about her

one morning, name deleted must have noticed that the open office door makes you more vulnerable than sleep.

afraid

I leaned against the marble wall clutching my toothbrush in fear.

more autistic strippers

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i08/08a01001.htm


Relieved by explanation


Dawn Prince-Hughes took a different approach to her diagnosis of autism five years ago at age 36. The adjunct professor of anthropology at Western Washington University says she was relieved to have a name for her differences. It allowed her to explain to others why she isn't any good at small talk and why, when she
enters a room, she looks at everything, not just the people.

Ms. Prince-Hughes says that despite her difficulties, her colleagues know she has something unique to offer. In fact, she says, having autism makes her a better anthropologist. Social norms that most people take for granted never came naturally for her, so she can see things with a different eye, an advantage in her line of work.

She wasn't always so at ease. As a student, she says, she never fit in, and dropped out of high school when she was a sophomore. She was homeless for five years and worked as an exotic dancer for three. A visit to the zoo changed everything. Ms. Prince-Hughes observed the gorillas, and they taught her how to
connect with others, she says, something she hadn't previously understood. The gorillas became the subject of her college studies and her professional research. Last year she published a memoir.

but I don't WANT

to review these textbooks. I WANT to go outside right now.

my left hand

swayed over the broken chord.

my swollen hands

sliding and sticking clumsily over the piano keyboard, broken and snot nosed.

current affirmations

I will find joy and peace in curly fries.

progress

20 hours of emphasizing non-starchy vegetables.

genre moves of a "generic" book review

1. Contextualization (incl. if and how the text "contextualizes" itself).
2. Rationale
3. Scope of the text.
4. Structure and content of the selections.
5. Paratextual content (preface, minipreviews, in-text commentary).
6. Activities and assignments (blends into 4).
7. Conclusion (freq. includes a statement about new directions for writing textbooks).

cruel fate

I am allergic to bread.

show me on your hands where the pita touched you

doctor: just the patches on your palms and abdomen now?
doctor: I see. do you have abdominal pain and swelling when you have the rash?
doctor: when you noice that the rash gets better, is that connected to any particular changes in eating habits, environment, lifestyle?
doctor: when the rash gets better, does the abdominal pain and swelling subside too, or--

Hilary: what are you getting at?
Hilary: Are you trying to say that imply that I am--
Hilary: WHOA, let's not jump to any conclusions here.

shout out

to floor 9: Is there anything on my desk that I should know about?

best line in another blog

directed at me:
"drawers will get you, you dresser".

best inscription for a book review

from "clear night" :
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say "What?" to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

best opening line

"Guns, knives, chainsaws, syringes, rope and blunt objects serve many diverse legitimate purposes" (Gates, p. 65).

and I can remember being

the impossible object of mercy, exactly five minutes too late and just when I had settled into the reassuring inequity that comes with human life.

last night

at 1:43 am, pacing across the quiet floor.

start of a poem

Look for tea birds, dexterous starlings
I am
dying dying dying dying dying.

for Shashi

"But there was a dramatic shift in my street relationships when Howard, the boys, and I were finishing renovations on the apartment. That whole week, no body hit on us for money. Instead, panhandlers grinned and nodded when they passed them during errands and lunch breaks, as though we were old comrades. Maybe they only solicit suburban communters, I thought, and now recognize us as neighbors. Then I realized how we were dressed: paint-splattered t shirts, sweaty kercheifs, shoes covered with sawdust and spakle. Crash's work outfit was truly special--Howard had grabbed a pair of old sweats from the Goodwill pile in Connecticut and didn't discover the cord was missing till he put them on in NY. We searched the vacant apartment for a peice of string or elastic, but all we came up with from work supplies was a roll of duct tape. Even the crazies panhandlers weren't tempted to solicit change for a guy wearing a cumberbund of silver duct tape" (Random essay in City Life, p.35).

So there. Now give me five dollars.

"mercy"

"is the antidote for the crushing pain that invariably follows the loss of innocence". Blakely.

note

stressfully high level of crush turnover this year.

meet: my crushes

Meet:

crush #1.
A graduate student (boy).

crush #2.
A graduate student (girl).

crush #3.
A graduate student (boy).

Crush #4.
Girl wearing a hat.

Crush #5.
Man in blue slacks.

Crush #6.
Cheryl.

wish list

Today I want:

my soft 3/4 sweater from age 16

20 minutes of face to face attention (note: will play role of "listener" in exchange for attention).

my kitchen

The New Yasmeen pita bread and peanut butter cups smell very good next to each other.

everything is illuminated:

The bright side of being in jail is that you finally have time to call DTE.

current status

car: out of impound
electricity: on

at the end of the paycheck

when 1 whole dollar looks like an enormous amount of money.

forms of life

a pita withering in the heat/
people taking on the characteristics of the buildings they lean against.

AI

half the time I can't even read the word verication.

jaded

if I am responsible for my students' professional development as writers, maybe I should be teaching them how to write good comment spam.

eczema

my hands are peeling so bad that if you listen closely, they make a noise.

grounds and hot water

you can't even afford a reasonably blended cup of coffee.

pathetic

Ironically: if you had stayed on task, you would be at home watching movies right now.

empathetic

This morning, your sweater feels slightly wrong.

and no,

I still don't see the point in sexual fidelity.

landlord

this is not a good day to call me out for my housekeeping

art of indirection

>excerpted from timetable for Friday, October 7

5-7 pm.
Finish "embodying tec--" tekn-- ok, fine, Datacloud.

drab

today's shirt is so dull that it has blotted out my will to live.

getting it from both sides

last night my two best friends got really mad at me and yelled. One of was them mad at me for being too smart and the other one was mad at me for being too dumb.

dumbest advice ever

"Avoid sudden changes in temperature or humidity". National Eczema Foundation, tips for avoiding flare-ups.

patches of eczema: 1 (note: "patch" covers entire body)

the end of my day

Doheny-Farina's The Wired Neighborhood is waiting for me in my bed at home.

science fair project: findings

Total time spent "responding to student writing":
175 minutes

Time spent on task ("extreme grading"):
75 minutes

Average time spent responding to 1 draft: 6.9 min.

Total "negative" or off-task time:
100 minutes

Findings:
Teachers of writing frequently express concern about spending a "normal" amount of time responding to student writing. Most trequently, that time is measured in number of minutes/draft.

However, these findings show that more than half of the overall grading time is spent on off-task activities such as checking email, getting coffee and updating a blog. Therefore, to effectively limit time spent on student writing, teacher should focus on limiting the number of minutes between drafts rather than the number of limits spent responding to each draft.

science fair project: data collection

Research question: what's a normal time frame for responding to students' written work?

In the interest of science, here is my response time log for 10 drafts of Assignment 1:

Draft 1:
1:26 pm-1:37 pm (10 min).
Note: Talked to K. Lacey about exhibitionist nature of blogging while calculating draft grade.

Draft 2
1:40-1:47.4 (7.5 min)
Note: Kim made me a champion bracelet for beating above response time record. How she made the bracelet is, telling me I could take the sleeve off her coffee and wear it. Am blinging.

Draft 3
1:52-2:00 (8 min)
Note: appended files contribute to slow response time.

Draft 4
2:05-2:12 (7 min)
Note: Nicole's story about 2 girls washing their feet in the Writing Center bathroom sink looped surreally over my written comments.

Draft 5
2:17-2:23.5 (6.5 min)
Note: Have effectively turned task of responding to student writing into a computer game

Draft 6
2:29-2:36 (7 min)
Note: Faint background noise
"milkshake"
"feet!"
"DIA"
Am lost in super mario comment land.

got dizzy and lay down
2:36 pm to 3:23 pm
(normal for me with hypnotic experiences)

Drafts 7 and 8 (back to back)
3:27pm -3:43pm (15 min)

4:02
Exquisitely beautiful girl enters Writing Center: grading stops
Hilary finds inner strenght for peer tutoring

Draft 9
4:04-4:12 (8 min)
He thought that if he just kept looking at you, an appointment on Friday would open up.

Draft 10
4:15-4:21 (6 min)
computers+writing=Bad News

thinness

is boring.

having 5 lbs to lose is far more interesting, like trying to save the earth from a giant asteroid.

tree of reasoning

Name deleted breathed a sigh of relief and said, "I see: name deleted is like a giant redwood tree, the largest collective organism on earth. Yeah. You can quote me on that on your blog. Tell them name deleted said that".

according to my task timetable

it is now
still
technically
Friday afternoon.

empathizing

With my sense of academic disconnectedness, Johndan replies: “this divide is part of why I’ve moved out of both tech comm and rhet/comp; my experiences were similar to yours”.

On a brighter note, he welcomes the “recent move in rhet/comp to begin working on a lot of the issues that tech comm has been dealing with for decades—service learning, usability, media, etc”. However, rhet/comp has made this move “without acknowledging the fact that their colleagues in tech comm have been studying this work for some time (or, in some cases, simply using that work but not acknowledging it)”.

For now, Johndan encourages me to continue to approach the discipline of rhet/comp through the sub-discipline of Computers and Writing: “since much of the work in C&W could be characterized as also tech comm work, it’s become sort of a back door into rhet/comp for people who are primarily in tech comm.”. More informally, he advises me to stick around and “hope things change”:

I’m not really involved in either field in a substantial way any longer, so it’s possible that there’s been some progress since I dropped out.

After all, Johndan is my kind of academic and professional hero: an incredibly successful dropout.

on a brighter note

that slime is what is holding my QE committee together.

office hours

From friend's email (appended to picture):
hilary,
does the lopsided office hour card signify something about you? Do you
feel like a misfit in the department? Or is it a statement of defiance?
Slightly off kilter these days?

spark: a novel about electron transport

"And that's the problem, particilarly for our graduate students: the discipline thinks its going from literature to culture, and the market tells us we're going from literature to technical writing" (O'Dair, p. 47).

For those of us who have already gone "from literature to technical writing", this is extremely reassuring news: we are going with the flow of the academic job market while the literary scholars, well, deconstruct themselves. However, O'Dair concludes that graduate students should not be prepared to "obtain tenurable positions" by reading Piers Plowman; rather, the academic job market "would likely improve by sticking to technical writing" (47).

This assumption--that literature and technical writing are intrinsically different--makes me cringe: and not with indignance at literary scholars for dogging the gritty industrial/orginizational focus of tech comm. Here, I would rather argue the assumption literature and technical writing are different is responsible for a lot of lame, bad and humanistically shady traditions in technical writing. In contrast, some of the most exemplary--ie, intelligeable, searchable and useable--peices of technical writing are exuberantly literary.

For wildly successful examples of "literary" technical communication, check out:

Angell Daie's "The English Secretorie", a secretarial manual that is written in the form of an epistolary novel. Marginal glosses transform the novel into a searchable textbook on professional writing.

Dyer's "the fleece", a diagnostic poem about diseases of the sheep. The poetic form allows for frighteningly vivid descriptions:
That dire distemper sometimes may the swain,
Though late, discern; when, on the lifted lid,
Or visual orb, the turgid veins are pale;
The swelling liver then her putrid store
Begins to drink: ev'n yet thy skill exert,

280 Nor suffer weak despair to fold thy arms:
Again detersive salt apply, or shed
The hoary med'cine o'er their arid food.

The Kama Sutra, an intricately diagrammed web of process descriptions about how to have sex, employs narrative to annotate and clarify the diagrams:

"Imagine..In his garden there are two swings, one revolving and one ordinary. Now sometimes, alone, he switches from one to the other until his head spins. But his favourite swing has neither ropes, nor wood, nor cushions" ("The Swing).

This narrative draws on the literary figure of analogy to clarify a complex sequence of actions. (Note: The narrative style of the Kama Sutra is brilliantly parodied in Christopher Moore's novel, "Lamb").

Here is a more contemporary example example of creative nonfiction in tech comm: Planned Parenthood's "STD petting zoo", an interactive cartoon about sexually transmitted diseases.

Taking these examples as a starting point, O'Dair's claim that graduate students are not getting anywhere with Langland's Piers Plowman becomes harder to evaluate. Like many technical communicators, Langland realized that people pay attention to abstract concepts when you draw smiley faces on and make up stories about them. Conceptually speaking, the structure and function of the soul (as described by Medieval scholars on the Greek New Testament) is as complex and "technical" as the parts of an amoeba. The anthropomorposized "parts of the soul" in Piers are created to help readers grasp and therefore modify the content of their souls. For example, the anthropomorphosized "Vices" in Piers--
And then came Covetousness · I can him not describe,
So hungry and hollow · Sir Harvey him looked.
He was beetle-browed · and blubber-lipped too,
With two bleared eyes · as a blind hog;
--are an analogous textual ancestor of the lively, anthropomorphosized STDs in Planned Parenthood's STD Petting Zoo.

In summary, Piers Plowman may have more to tell O'Dair's graduate students about technical and professional writing than she realizes. For example, that human readers are better able to grasp abstract concepts when they are presented as "characters" and explanations when they follow the structure of a story.

Those graduate students who can read Piers Plowman and apply Langland's anthropomorphic style of depicting "Vices" on the stage to (say) a better design for "idiot lights" on a dashboard might be the first ones to obtain tenurable positions on the academic job market.

a renewed slap in the face

every time I think about name deleted. If the form of harm had been less abstract, it could have faded over time.

found

it.

from where we're standing, you look ghetto

The final page of Scholes' The Rise and Fall Of English turned with an unintentional slap of reality:

“But when professors became philologists, scholars, or literary critics, they deeply resented helping students with a prose that was neither literature nor anything else, but just “composition” –just as students resented and resisted learning a kind of writing that seemed to have no function beyond school” (p. 190).

Like Bonhoeffer, who got so innured to dungeon life that that he forgot about his imprisonment in Flossenburg "for weeks at a time", I blithely forgot about my own confinement:

“This {production} is the part of English that is usually put beyond the pale--as “creative” writing-- or down in the dungeon--as "composition" (p. 159).

Therefore, sentences like this one had to be read and reread for meaning:
“The useful, the practical, and even the intelligeable were relegated to composition” (p. 35).

Waaaaait a second, I thought. We're the ones who do the "relegating" around here! Why just the other day Sharon's student brought in his big dumb deconstruction book, and she calmly said,

"nooow, if you want to use that in your literature courses, that's perfectly fine.

Yeah. She relegated his head straight".

What even well-intentioned and perspicuous literary scholars liek Scholes fail to realize is that, like most indigenous peoples, composition scholars are not pressing our noses against the stained glass waiting to be "discovered":

“What I finally realized was that English departments need composition as the “other” of literature in order to function as they have functioned” (p. 35).

The above sentence is at once heartwarming and insulting. We built this department 1 syllogism at a time so you could have a place to deconstruct stuff (or whatever): You've finally noticed us?

On a second reading, I came to immensely appreciate Scholes' move toward a rapproachement. Still, though, scholars within the fields of composition, rhetoric and technical communication should remain critical of "integrationist" claims such as this one:

“Under this sign, there is no difference between the theory of composition and the theory of literature” (p. 36).

As Malcolm X points out, anyone who has been systematically enslaved should be critical of steps toward "integration", especially of integration initiated by the people who were doing the enslaving:

"Who ever heard of angry revolutionists all harmonizing "We shall overcome ... Suum Day.. ." while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against ?The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every op pressed people in the world: the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, ... Cuba - yes Cuba too" ("El-Hajj Malik-Shabazz", p. 456).

For composition scholars, the danger of overarching alliances with literary scholars "is not a case of wanting either separation or integration.The use of these words actually clouds the real picture" (Malcolm X, "missing page numbers"). Rather, any initiative from within literary studies to disolve the disciplinary boundary between comp. and literature presents the risk of subsuming composition into a power structure that swears that, with our dedicated help, it can stop being exploitative.