. Part One: A Perspective from March 2010, Finding Myself in Words As I work on my dissertation I’ve been reading essays by some of my favorite authors. Most of them are women. One of them is Alice Walker. For…
Author: Cat
For the past months I have not only taken a hiatus from blogging but also, to some extent, life. It’s been a difficult time for me, both in body and in mind. I’ve experienced a host of problems in all…
A little over a year ago I designed a new project to use in my technical and business writing courses. The first iteration of this project was used in my Fall 2009 Technical Writing class at Purdue. The Rhetorical Analysis…
Pride and sadness fill my heart. After reading BlogHer blogger Liz Henry‘s post, Domestic Violence: I called the cops. Where were my neighbors?, I couldn’t help but feel a strange combination of pride and sadness. Pride for the blogger and…
…but I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth. I don’t have much time to post semi-polished blog entries, so I thought I’d just go with a little personal update. I’ve been insanely busy and stressed. For some reason…
Working on a dissertation is difficult, regardless of the topic. A dissertation about psychological trauma takes an extra toll on the psyche and ultimately, on the body. So, to deal with the stress I take breaks–and yes, sometimes those breaks…
The PowerPoint slide meant to demonstrate military strategy in Afghanistan wins my award for worst PowerPoint slide ever. And I’ve seen some pretty bad PowerPoint slides. This NY Times article provides an interesting discussion of it and contains the following,…
A challenge when writing is always finding the right words to express oneself. When writing about the experiences of others, this becomes even more of a challenge. Add to those challenges the word choices made when writing scholarship that anlayzes…
I haven’t had much time to blog lately because of all of my dissertation work. For a while I found that the blogging was helping my writing process, but then I got a little freaked out about the possibility that…
A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Bad Writing and Bad Thinking – Do Your Job Better” provides much-needed commentary on the quality of writing in academic scholarship. I have often argued that scholarly writing tends to be…