Current mood:

good

How I Responded
As promised, here were my answers:


1. What are one or two of your proudest professional accomplishments?
I'm proud of a lot of the things I've done, I've worked hard at them. Though I suppose if I had to pick a moment, my proudest was maybe also my weirdest. I was at a poetry reading and afterwards I went up to the poet to say how much I had enjoyed her work. When I introduced myself, she immediately said the title of my book and asked if I was the author. It is a very small book put out by a very small publisher, so I was surprised anyone would know about it. "I love your work," she said, "I have your book sitting on my shelf next to Allen Ginsberg!" He's a big name in poetry. It sounds weird, but I was kind of embarrassed. Here was a poet I liked telling me I was a poet she liked--it was like an episode of the Twilight Zone, though also in a weird way flattering.

I should say also teaching has afforded me many accomplishments of which I'm proud, maybe more even than writing. Whenever a student comes to some idea or finds in herself a skill she didn't know she had before, that's a great feeling. I really like teaching English 101 because I think it's the kind of course that can really have an impact on your whole college career. I was the first person in my family to go to college, so things like that matter to me--helping people figure it all out who maybe start out feeling unsure about what is expected of them and what they can do in college. Whenever someone leaves my class feeling more confident then when they came in, or feeling more skilled, I'm proud of that. It makes me feel like I'm giving back to all the people who helped me out.

2. Why did you choose the profession/field that you are currently in?
When I went to college I actually was torn between a degree in physics or a degree in English. I had a strong math background so in many ways physics made sense. And then one day I sat down and tried to think out what kind of work I would do with both jobs. I realized if I got a degree in physics I would most likely work for the military designing bombs or do research at a university that would be used by the military to make bombs. That pretty much decided it for me. Of course, that thinking is a little oversimplified--there are other things you can do with physics, like go into engineering and design bridges--but the truth is I just loved my English classes. The first day we got to discuss a book in my freshman English class, I knew I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.

3. What is your favorite part of your current job and why is it your favorite part?
Well, I actually have a number of jobs but two take up most of my attention: I teach at this university and I do freelance writing for magazines and journals. My favorite thing about these jobs happens to be the same, though. I'm learning something new all the time. This month my magazine assignments have me talking to a man who runs a cadaver lab, a woman who designs eco-friendly buildings, and a woman who studied massage in India. It is so interesting to get to see these glimpses of other people's lives and interests. And then we have classes here, where I can teach an essay four times to four classes and have four different conversations about it. Each student brings a unique perspective to the conversation, which is really exciting to me. I love the way things you all say allow me to see an essay I've read a dozen times all over again, almost as though I'm reading it for the first time. Also, every so often I can see the light go on for a student, and I know they are having the same experience--seeing something in themselves or in a piece of writing that they hadn't thought about before--and that's really cool.

4. What do you dislike most about your current job?
The thing that makes an English degree great--how many different jobs you can apply it towards--also can be its biggest frustration. The career path is not very clear, and each time I've moved I've had to reinvent myself a little. Some days I think it would be so much simpler if I had just become an accountant and gotten a job where every day I knew what I was going to be doing and every day that job ended at 5. The paychecks would come in the same amount each time and I'd have a 401K. Especially early on in my days doing freelance work, most of the "work" was just drumming up jobs that would literally pay a few cents per word. That turns out to be true of the start in most jobs, though. You just have to do your time in the trenches, and then eventually the work gets steadier and the paychecks less lean. I've always been able to pay my bills, so I really can't complain. And now I make much more per word, so things are easier. In the end, I love the flexibility of my work, the way I get to do something different every day. I find the teaching I do too very rewarding in a way I'm not sure I would find doing someone else's taxes. I wouldn't trade my career for another.

5. Have you ever had a great idea but been told that you could not implement it? How did you react? What did you do?
Yes, actually. Many times. My first year out of college I joined Americorps and trained to be a conflict resolution instructor. After I finished my training I was placed in an at-risk school. Teachers there had seen a lot of programs come and go and they greeted me with a great deal of skepticism. I'd stand up in staff meetings and talk about programs we could implement to help reduce fights in school and keep more students in the classroom. People would laugh at me as I was talking or worse, ignore me. It was embarrassing and frustrating. But I stuck with it. I found the teachers who weren't totally opposed to trying something new and partnered with them. When I couldn't get support in the school, I looked for it outside the school, recruiting volunteers from neighborhood churches and agencies to come in after school and work with our students. One of my biggest projects involved a courtyard in the middle of the school that had been abandoned. It had gotten overgrown with weeds and full of garbage students threw into it from their classroom windows. I decided I wanted to build a garden there--actually, I wanted the students to build it. Of course, many people laughed at the idea and said I'd never find students to help with it. So I started with the students in detention, and I explained to them that rather than sit and stare at the walls, they could help me in the garden. Once we got the weeds cleared out, I got garden centers to donate flower bulbs and bushes and paving stones. I still laugh to think about my students who, never having planted anything before, held up those bulbs and asked what we were supposed to do with "all these onions." We worked all fall. By spring, things had started to bloom. Teachers were coming to me to see if they could teach classes out in the garden. And the thing everyone predicted would happen--we'd get a nice garden and students would trash it the way they always had--proved untrue. In fact, one day I went out to pick some of the flowers to take to the principal to thank him for his support of the project, and one of the students leaned out a window and yelled at me. "Hey!" he said, "Those are our flowers! That's our garden! You have to respect this space!" I was so happy. Here was this really crappy, run-down school where there weren't enough desks and all the things falling apart helped the students feel like they were disposable too, and suddenly at the heart of the school was something a student could take pride in. He was right--that space, the hard work put into it, deserved respect. Which meant that he did too. I felt really good that day about toughing it out for something as frilly as a garden.

6. What new skills have you learned over the past year?
Let's see. I got certified to teach yoga, which was very interesting. I usually spend my summers living in various artists communities, and this year at the colony I learned the "secret" to holding still when someone is painting your portrait. I also learned there how to make baked brie, very yummy. My partner and I built a compost bin in our backyard so I got to learn all about the composting process and also how to construct something with a gate. I knit a sweater for the first time for the birth of my nephew. I learned to change the gears on my bike. And I learned how to calculate an ideal mortgage payment based on my income. You know, a lot of this stuff I started learning by reading books, which is maybe one of the greatest perks of the English degree. When you are a lifelong reader, nothing feels totally impossible. I know whatever I want to do, I'll be able to find the good information on it to get myself started--and, whenever I have to hire someone to do something, I can read enough to know the right questions to ask.

7. Think about a coworker from the past or present whom you admire. Why?
That's tough, I've had so many coworkers that I've really loved and admired. I guess she's more of a boss than a true co-worker, but in high school I worked at a library and I will always be grateful for the opportunities the head librarian gave me. She let me work on projects that I think a lot of other professionals might not have turned over to a kid, like letting me organize all the holdings in the historical room or plan the summer reading program. Plus, she was completely interesting. She had lived all over the country, had traveled the world, had had a string of interesting jobs. I didn't know anyone else like her, and knowing her made my world much bigger. She was the first person I knew who had a computer of her own, and (it sounds funny now) she encouraged me to use this new thing called the Internet. You know, I grew up in a very small town in rural Indiana. I was probably too smart and too weird for a lot of people's tastes there, and I struggled with the sense that no matter how hard I tried I was never going to fit in. It was miserable because all I could imagine or comprehend was living in a small town forever. And then here was this person who showed me many other kinds of lives were possible, and all the things about me that felt like a liability then were going to really take me places in the future. I'll always be grateful for the time I spent working with her. I suppose that library job and that librarian are as big a reason as any other that I ended up getting such a bookish degree.