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The Stewart article in my opinion was fascinating. As a child who grew up in a very traditional school system, I was always taught to avoid "I" and perspective in general in writing like the plague. I had an tall, elderly, hawkish teacher who used to loom over us as we wrote to make sure that we were being as objective as possible, taking our perspective out of it and being as nonbiased in our writing as we can. It always felt a bit robotic to me, to be honest, but the impression left by Cheryl Frarck and other teachers of writing stuck with me in the long-term, and it took a long while for me to change how I write to incorporate a unique, personal flair.

Then, when I was a junior in my undergraduate degree, I began to make connections between various YA Novels and texts being studied in the various courses I was taking at the time - a John Green novel, Looking for Alaska, and its theme of universal suffering and selfishness; connected with Shakespearean texts such as Titus Andronicus and its own themes of suffering and remorse. As I made these comparisons, writing actually came easier to me - it worked for my brain to be able to compare one text to another, to a personal event to a topic I was writing on.

This ties in perfectly with what Marjorie Stewart seems to be arguing in her article: there is a certain way of constructing, if done correctly, a framework of writing which weaves narrative experience and message together. Stewart gives three different frameworks for doing so through students she seems to have encountered herself, guiding the reader through the ways they set up their writing while using narrative storytelling amongst their analysis. In doing so, Stewart argues that we become more human in this way, more individual, rather than a robotic voice spewing out many of the same ideas as others.

Don't get me wrong: I still remember Cheryl Frarck's eyes with vivid detail, and Stewart warns us of Frarck's demands in very specific terms: ultimately, if a professor wants you to keep narrative out of your writing, just do it. However, by taking this different approach to writing, it becomes a more natural - and more enjoyable - experience overall.

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Race, Retention, Language, and LiteracyThe Hidden Curriculum of the Writing Center Wonderful Faison and Anna K. (Willow) Treviño - Diggins

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Race, Retention, Language, and LiteracyThe Hidden Curriculum of the Writing Center Wonderful Faison and Anna K. (Willow) Treviño - Diggins

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This article looks at experiences at writing centers through the lens of race.   The two authors write about their experiences as writing centers in different schools.  One of the writers is Latina and the other is Black lesbian with the intention "to critique the discord between WC literature that positions the WC as anti-institutional and comfortable, and its practical application of that ideal, not only can better refine how WCs desire to position themselves but also may bring more pedagogical and practical ways writing centers can better align with that ideal".

The focus on "otherness" and the disconnect as a person of color in a predominately white college where they started to work in the Writing Center hoping to connect but rather losing some of their identity working in the center, and finding the work in the center focusing around penalizing writers rather than supporting them.  The lack of diversity  and the lack of support for them are highlighted in the excerpts.

They conclude with: "we need to
shift the way we orient to writing centers, so that WC research may begin to undo the hidden
curriculum of the WC by (1) conducting research that focuses on the experiences of
historically marginalized bodies working and receiving assistance/services in the WC, (2)
valuing those experiences of POC within a cultural context, and (3) considering the
experiences of POC both valid and measurable (Lindsay-Dennis 2015, 2). By placing these
experiences at the forefront of WC research, theory, pedagogy, praxis, and design, we do not
necessarily disrupt common educational and WC practices, but we expand and alter those
practices by making the experiences of marginalized bodies operating in the writing center
the standard by which we theorize, critique, research, and re-envision the writing center as a
truly brave-er space."

I appreciated the honesty and vulnerability of the writers and the call to make spaces "braver".  My experience with writing centers is through the eyes of my daughter who was a writing center coach both in high school and throughout college.  I know that her experiences as a white person was entirely different from these writers.  I agree that the focus of centers should be on providing a wide variety of experiences and support writers of all types.

I was drawn to this article as I am lead of our DEIB committee and spend time working with marginalized students who feel "safe but not supported" at times in our majority white communityl

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From Avoidance to Action Helping Dissertation Writers Manage Procrastination-Lisa Russell-Pinson and Haadi Jaffarian   Diggins

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From Avoidance to Action Helping Dissertation Writers Manage Procrastination-Lisa Russell-Pinson and Haadi Jaffarian   Diggins

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This article examines the issue of procrastination during the writing of dissertations.  The combination of other stressors lead to the larger issue of putting off of writing from anxiety and stress to financial and relationship issues.  The article provides two vignettes following Diana and Jakob and theirs stories of procrastination.  One of the key components to preventing procrastination lies within the relationship of the advisor and the dissertation candidate.  These advisors can help students who are paralyzed by perfectionism to modify their work to ameliorate that behavior by providing examples of other dissertations to the student and spending time exploring topics similar to the work they will be completing to give them the confidence to continue to work.  Advisors can also help redirect the stress of completing the work as they reframe expectations and redirect work and normalize the process of writing.

The author concludes, "Because emotional issues can negatively impact writers’ abilities to produce text, it is
important for all stakeholders in the dissertation process to help doctoral-level writers manage these issues in productive and healthy ways. Below we present several ideas writing specialists can consider incorporating in their own practice to assist dissertation writers and
the faculty who work with them."

The relationship with the students and advisors is the key component to helping with procrastination.

I was draw to this article as I am the mother of a procrastinator extraordinaire and I also have so many students who procrastinate constantly. While I am not a procrastinator and find the behavior mind boggling, I agree that cultivating a relationship with students to understand and support them helps alleviate the issue. I tend to set benchmark dates and do not give students a due date until the very end of the writing process because as I tell them, they would not even start the paper until the night before the paper was due :(

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Throughout Marjorie Stewart’s article there were many paragraphs/sentences that were relatable to me.  Any article, whether academic or not needs to be relatable for me in someway to make it interesting and something I want to continue to read. As Stewart states, “the rhetorical situation—the writer, the audience, and the purpose of the writing—affects the way the message is presented.” Absolutely. Even reading academic writing, connectedness on a personal level brings me more understanding of the topic the author worked hard to produce. If an academic article is filled with good content and no personality, I feel bored reading it, thus making the reading feel like a chore. Avoidance behavior takes over and my mind wanders. I waste time re-reading such an article searching for something to connect with to understand and make sense of the research.

Stewart, M. (2020). Weaving Personal Experience into Academic Writing. In Writing spaces: Readings on writing (Vol. 3, pp. 162–173). essay, Parlor Press.

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Chapter 8 -“I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers” The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in the U.S. Doctoral Programs by Jasmine Kar Tang and Noro Andriamanalina 

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Chapter 8 -“I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers” The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in the U.S. Doctoral Programs by Jasmine Kar Tang and Noro Andriamanalina 

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The article discusses the process Indigenous students and students of color went through while writing their dissertations within a doctoral program. I was connected with the article because my family is Indigenous. The authors asked the question, “What does it mean to be an Indigenous person and/or a person of color who is writing a dissertation in the U.S. nation-state?” (Madden et al 2020) interviewing thirty-two doctoral students at different stages of their program from Native communities and students of color, representing several disciplines from engineering to social sciences. Through the student reflective feedback, the researchers discovered students received a harsh “form of disciplinary gatekeeping” from committee members. The feedback was made up of either, “shame or praise” along with “lack of support for doctoral writers of color” for these students. The researchers also discovered a nation-wide systematic problem “that cannot be resolved by individual acts of resilience” (Madden et al 2020).

The authors discovered the feedback a doctoral student of color received suggested, “changing their story” or “change the language they use in the writing” along with “writers should sever their racial, ethnic, and, at times, language backgrounds from their writing.” I was shocked to read those sentences. Always believing institutes of higher education were welcoming places for all, learning environments that supported all students. Researchers also were surprised to uncover feedback to students of color in peer review groups questioning the relevance of the student’s personal narrative and experiences suggesting it be eliminated, “so their work would be seen as more legitimate and legible by their peers and by their professor.” This is shameful in my opinion. I was shocked an institute of higher education would try to cover up a student’s truthfulness. Calling such occurrences as ‘intellectual violence” (Madden et al 2020) causing one study participant to turn away from her own community during her research site and choose one unrelated to her family history.
Selecting topics to research, students were pressured to study their country of birth because of “presumed familiarity with its history”. The suggestion, offered by a Doctoral committee chairperson left the student feeling defensive.  Although students are told not take critiques and suggestions personally, how can they avoid these feelings?

The title of the paper is taken from a quote from one their subjects. Before I read it, I felt excited, believing I would learn something positive I could share with my college aged son, however, it left me disappointed and somewhat shocked and saddened.

Madden, S., Eodice, M., Edwards, K. T., Lockett, A., Kar Tang, J., & Andriamanalina, N. (2020). Chapter 8 "I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It To You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers" The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in U.S. Doctoral Programs". In Learning from the lived experiences of graduate student writers (pp. 139–155). essay, Utah State University Press.

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Chapter 10 Madden “From Avoidance to Action Helping Dissertation Writers Manage Procrastination” by Lisa Russell-Pinson and Haadi Jafarian

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Chapter 10 Madden “From Avoidance to Action Helping Dissertation Writers Manage Procrastination” by Lisa Russell-Pinson and Haadi Jafarian

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This chapter spoke to me. I am a self-admitted master procrastinator. I need to complete an assignment—SQUIRREL—the kitchen floor needs to be scrubbed. I need to complete an assignment—SQUIRREL—(opens fridge) I need to make a grocery run. You get the idea. Along with my self-diagnosed attention deficit, my procrastination runs high. I always state, “I need my brain on” or “my head is too foggy to think”,  “I had a very hard day with kids at school” before I can complete something. Thus, I was curious to see if the article would give me tips on truly managing my procrastination not only for classes but other areas of my life.
The authors studied PhD candidates who were at the beginning of their dissertations and the “numerous emotional and developmental conflicts” that students feel and experience through the dissertation process to completion. The authors discovered numerous ABD (all but dissertation) doctoral students suffer some form of procrastination. Even though procrastination is “popularly attributed to laziness, a lack of willpower, or an inability to manage one’s time effectively.” The researchers noted procrastination is more complex, generally from “cognitive, social-cultural, and/or emotional roots” (Madden 2020).
Psychological issues arise, affecting students along with personal challenges the students face including “anxiety, stress, isolation, shifts in identity, tensions between student and advisor, financial problems, perfectionism, difficult relationships, and work/life balance” stating “procrastination often results from one or more of these challenges”. Students also fear leaving others “behind,” experiencing emotions rooted in their past life experiences. (Madden et al 2020).
The authors began by reviewing articles relating to advanced academic writers discovering the “demanding backdrop of personal responsibility, commitment, time, cognitive effort, and motivation” (Madden et al 2020) before engaging with a highly stressful academic writing. Reviewing the literature, the authors also found procrastination is “due to a need to protect writers from critical feedback or negative outcomes” fearing harsh peer and committee reviews.
Through interviews, doctoral student writers shared their writing experiences with students of differing academic success. One advisor labeled her advisee, “a superstar” because of her promising studies, passing the comprehensive exams with “distinction”, receiving multiple awards for teaching and scholarship, even defending her dissertation proposal with ease, allowing her to collect data sooner. After collecting the data, the student was stuck on writing the dissertation—instead “spending hours online planning vacations she cannot afford to take and other “obsessions” that she found interesting. The author’s noted “for advanced academic writers, perfectionism seems to develop” (Madden et al 2020). Not wanting to fail procrastination takes hold.
Disagreements with advisors, feeling like their ideas are disrespected, and interpersonal conflicts are the main causes the researchers discovered that stop the continuation and finalizing of the academic process for doctoral students.
Madden, S., Eodice, M., Edwards, K. T., Lockett, A., Russell-Pinson, L., & Jafarian, H. (2020). Chapter 10 From Avoidance to Action Helping Dissertation Writers Manage Procrastination. In Learning from the lived experiences of graduate student writers (pp. 174–197). essay, Utah State University Press.

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“The Trauma of Graduate Education: Graduate Writers Countering Epistemic Injustice and Reclaiming Epistemic Rights” by Beth Godbee

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“The Trauma of Graduate Education: Graduate Writers Countering Epistemic Injustice and Reclaiming Epistemic Rights” by Beth Godbee

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I really enjoy reading essays with personal experience. It goes back to what Stewart says about the “filing cabinets of stories.” If writing is a conversation, the way we engage in writing is to connect it to our lives with a tory from story from our filing cabinet.  However, sometimes our stories don’t fit or are left out of the conversation, so what happens then?

In “The Trauma of Graduate Education: Graduate Writers Countering Epistemic Injustice and Reclaiming Epistemic Rights,” Beth Godbee discusses the epistemic injustice that many graduate writers feel. Epistemic injustice refers to the way that graduate writers are “presumed incompetent”, especially when their ways of knowing do not match the traditional white, male norms of academia.

I am a white woman who grew up in a working class/farming community of South Dakota. While my whiteness brings privilege to my place in academia, I certainly related to the “epistemic injustice” and “presumed incompetence” described in Godbee’s article. I am the first in my family to go to college, so I felt the weight of class and gender as I navigated my role as a graduate student many years ago. There was so much I did not know, and I interpreted the not-knowing as a problem with me. Godbee calls for feminist co-mentoring in graduate education to overcome this. This mentoring occurs during writing conferences and is akin to therapy. The act of sharing personal ideas and experiences and having a mentor say “yes, that is exactly right” can affirm that personal experiences are not necessarily wrong, just not well-represented in academia.  It allows graduate students to push back and re-write the narrative of their own experiences as teachers and scholars, and this creates a sense of healing.

Godbee begins her article with a quote from Kimberle Crenshaw on the value of naming a problem in order to solve it and address it. This idea is what Godbee calls “hermeneutical injustice.”

Her point about naming things is important because naming things is the first step to healing. This reminds me of my son’s struggles at school. He struggled learning to read, but his Kindergarten teacher insisted that it would all click. Two years later, he still struggled and his dyslexia and ADHD were finally identified. Naming his struggle helped identify appropriate interventions and gave my son permission to move from blaming himself for “being dumb” because he could not read and write as well as his peers. Seeing others who share his struggles makes him feel less alone and gives him space to acknowledge that his brain works differently than his peers, but that does mean that the way he sees the world is wrong.

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This image is very telling to Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker's message: we have to work together between disciplines to develop a good graduate studies program.

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Not Just Nuts and Bolts: Building a Peer Review Framework for Academic Socialization (Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker, chapter 12)

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Not Just Nuts and Bolts: Building a Peer Review Framework for Academic Socialization (Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker, chapter 12)

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Growing up, all of my friends knew that writing was very much "my thing" at school. Essays that they would toil over would flow from my fingers with ease; extended writing assignments, where the teacher wanted us to write a paragraph with evidence to support our claims, took me but a moment; and grammar and writing technicalities came naturally to me. I don't mean to say this to boast, I mean to make a point of it: my classmates knew it and understood it, and they would ask me to proofread what they wrote for various classes. Some of them even paid me to do it, although I never asked for that. Even today, some of my friends who are in graduate studies courses elsewhere will send me their writing, asking for feedback.

So why am I talking so much about high school Isaac? Why do I sound like that stereotypical, begrudged individual who still wears their letterman's jacket twenty years later? I don't mean to do so to brag about myself; instead, I mentioned these examples to make a point. I helped my classmates because I saw it as the right thing to do, and because I wanted to help them learn to write better - regardless of whether or not they did (and okay, the money was nice, too). I wanted to make our educational experience better overall.

This, interestingly enough, is similar to what Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker argue in their chapter, titled: "Not Just Nuts and Bolts: Building a Peer Review Framework for Academic Socialization." In this article, they argue for the need of different graduate studies programs to work together in the peer review writing process in order to make the school's graduate studies programs better as a whole. Compiling research of students at their institution, Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker conclude that many of the undergraduate courses not explicitly in areas needing much writing - areas such as STEM courses, for instance - did not properly prepare those same students for the academic rigor of writing, peer revising, and publication that is increasingly expected of graduate students and faculty of all areas.

Therefore, Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker argue that all content areas work together, under the direction of a writing specialist, in order to improve their writing as a whole through peer revision. They came to this conclusion by running a trial of both non-credit and credit writing workshops, designed for students across graduate studies. In these workshops, students engaged with genres and writing samples which were often different from their own, and under tutelage and support by the writing specialist, helped each other to improve the samples. The results were intriguing: the graduate students who participated in these workshops, both the credit- and non-credit versions, were far more likely to be accepted for publication further on.

Zanzucchi and Fenstermaker provide their readers with a probable model of success which likely could be replicated without much difficulty at different campuses. Maybe high school Isaac wasn't quite aware of the impact it could be having, but it seems like this was extremely similar to their process.

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A group of heroes unite to save their campus...and its writers.

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Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating a Campus-Wide Writing Initiative at an Urban Midwestern University (Friend, Salvo, Paquette, and Brown, chapter 14)

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Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating a Campus-Wide Writing Initiative at an Urban Midwestern University (Friend, Salvo, Paquette, and Brown, chapter 14)

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This article was pretty straightforward, and yet incredibly interesting: the University of Missouri-Kansas City wanted to implement supports which would help its students feel more supported and successful within the writing found in their graduate areas. In order to do this, staff members from the School of Graduate Studies, representatives from the University Libraries, and the director of the Writing Studio on campus formed an ad hoc committee dedicated to developing a two-year planning process for a campus-wide writing initiative. They went through the various stages of development within the article here, including what worked best and worst, and then finished by gaining perspective on the process by interviewing a faculty member, and librarian, a graduate student, and an administrator. While each of these individuals had unique takes on the process and result, the result was (generally speaking) the same: this process worked! The students felt much more supported by this process, and the faculty felt like their graduate students were much better prepared for publication and writing within their chosen fields. Certainly, there were some messes to iron out at times - what format for writing workshops worked best? How should we structure the online tutorials website? How are we going to structure the in-person drop-in peer tutoring? - but overall, the writing initiative greatly helped writing at UMKC in general.

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“I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers: The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in U.S. Doctoral Programs” by Jasmine Kar Tang and Noro Andriamanalina 

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“I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers: The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in U.S. Doctoral Programs” by Jasmine Kar Tang and Noro Andriamanalina 

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Jasmine Kar Tang and Noro Andriamanalina begin this article by describing the challenges (drop out rates, emotional labor, exhaustion) of graduate school education.

They say that too often, the response to these challenges comes in the form of singular self-care: individuals who show resilience, “boot-strappiness,” and mindfulness should be able to overcome these challenges on their own.  However, Tang and Andriamanalina critique this approach and call on institutions as a whole to address these challenges. They discuss how graduate advisors can express praise and shame that is problematic. Advisor feedback can (un)intentionally erase the individual experiences of underrepresented voices in academia. Advisor feedback can also create pressure for graduate writers to change their voice or represent their communities in a certain way.

This article is based on research done in a focus group of thirty-two doctoral students from BIPOC communities. These graduate writers share their personal stories of coping in academia. I like the way the authors collect this data because a quote about a personal experience can often reflect or add to the scientific data but in a more eloquent or poetic way.

I find that personal stories complement the understanding that comes from objective research, and can be even more powerful. Objective, scientific reports allow me to know something in my mind, but personal stories allow me to know something in my heart. They allow me to “get the point” in a more profound way. For example, the title of this article, “I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers” is a quote from a graduate writer in the focus group. This quote speaks to me much more powerfully than a bunch of statistics or objective data.

I also connect to what Tang and Andriamanalina say about singular self-care and institutional support to my professional life. At my institution, there has been a lot of recent focus on self-care, but it can feel performative. We all do a breathing exercise together, and that is supposed to be sufficient to address the challenging working conditions educators face. However, when faculty advocate for structural or curriculum changes to really address the challenges of teaching or share concerns about what we see in the classroom, they are dismissed as ‘anecdotal.’ Data is a useful tool, but personal stories are also a kind of data, and I fear that the personal too often gets lost in our bureaucratic and ‘objective’ institutions.

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Amy, I agree that a well-told story affects the body-heart-mind in a way that pure data alone, which perhaps lives mostly in the mind, does not.

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Dierdre, I appreciate highlighting this aspect of the article: that centering BIPOC experiences doesn't "disrupt" but rather "expands" common educational practices. I think this is an idea that needs to be returned to often when requesting/pursuing/making these kinds of changes. Any kind of change is hard, and change addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion is laden with historic and cultural baggage so stating and restating intentions in this space in particular seems especially important.

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I appreciate your focus on this aspect of the article: that students in STEM courses perhaps end up being less prepared for the writing ahead of them than their peers in other areas. This point seems particularly helpful in teaching ENG 101 at MNSU Mankato. Why is this required class important? It may be one of the only writing classes students take and they may be doing more writing in their future than they initially realize. Thank you for sharing.