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Blog #4: And here's how I get my dream job.

You’re here at SDSU. You’re going to graduate. You’re going to get a job, or you’re going to keep going to school and then get a job. What job? This blog post asks you to do some research on the career that seems most probable at this point. Your blog post should include the following information? •         What is this job? Why do you want this job? •         What duties does this job include? What skills does it require? Is this an inside or an outside job? What tools do you use? What industry is this part of? •         Who might someone with this career work with? Where would someone with this job work? What companies might someone work with? (Is there a favorite you have? Is there a difference?) Write about some of these companies.              What kind of education or training or both is required? Give some details about what that entails. Are internships paid or unpaid? How do you get those internships? •         What kind of career advancement i
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Blog #2: Entering the Conversation: Wait. I get to give my opinion?

I teach more first-year students than anything else here at SDSU. It's kind of nice, really. They're excited to be here, optimistic, idealistic. And then the semester starts and they get to see what college writing is about. In high school, they wrote a lot of argument papers, papers that allowed them to give their opinion, to support it with evidence and, well, other opinions. (Really, that's the kind of evidence they give me at the beginning. You might remember what it was like to be a first-year student.) And then I let them know: This is an analytical paper. You can have an opinion, I want you to have an opinion, but it doesn't belong in this paper. And that's hard. Even when they finally get to create an argument paper, it's not really about their opinions; it's about the conclusions they can draw from the evidence, which may or may not align with their opinion. Amy Devitt says that when we take up a genre, we subconsciously take up the va
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Blog #3: Shhh. Don't tell anyone I'm faking it.

Discourses, according to Gee, are like identity kits that include all kinds of things. He names some of things things in " Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics ," stating, "At any moment we are using language we must say or write the write thing in the right way while playing the right social role and (appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs and attitudes. Thus, what is important is not language, and surely not grammar, but saying ( writing)--doing--being--valuing--believing combinations " (2). In other words, it's everything. The way I sound, the way I walk, the way I dress, the values I hold, the way I interact with machines and people and data. I think that's why people I meet always assume I am a teacher. I SEEM like a teacher. And truth be told, most of those people who assume I am a teacher also assume I am an English teacher. (Most of them don't know there is such a thing as a rhetoric class.) What is it I am doing that tells people
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Blog #1: Six-Word Memoir (Which Identity Do I Want to Share?!)

From fear to self-acceptance and laughter.   The top picture is me when I'm seventeen. That's Duane, my first boyfriend ever, and despite the full beard, he is only 20. I don't know what's happening there, but I do look like a deer in headlights, and I'm holding his hand in a death grip. That's pretty much the story of the first half of my life, fear of failure or rejection and hyper-seriousness in all areas. I suppose I laughed sometimes, but never at myself. I started getting stress migraines when I was six. Ironically, I was at least kind of good at pretty much everything, and I didn't do the things I wasn't good at. I just had anxiety and didn't know it. The second picture is me last spring, and oh, that's Duane, my husband. We are a lot older, but apparently I have learned to laugh--including at myself. I don't get migraines, and in general I am less afraid of rejection and failure. This may be a life-long
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Blog Overview: Goffman, James Paul Gee, Identity Kits, and These Blogs

It may not be fair, but we are making judgments all the time about who people are and what they do and what they are likely to do based on the way they dress, the way they walk, the way they speak, the vocabulary they use, the grammar they use, the way they speak with their hands--or not. That's the way life works. At least that's the way sociologist Irving Goffman describes people's behavior in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . Goffman claims we are all like actors on a stage, playing roles, consciously or unconsciously presenting an image of ourselves to the people we encounter. When I read this, it sounds  a little superficial. Fake. And yet, if you think about it, Goffman is not so far off. Let's say you see a group of people like these individuals here . (I don't know them. I found them on Google Images.) What do you assume about them? Who are they? You can draw all kinds of conclusions about education, income, speech patterns, career, just
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