The Plan

Tomorrow I have my annual review and I have spent a lot of time planning and thinking about my future in academia.

Where do I want to be in five years?

What do I want to do with my life?

How do I want to define myself as an academic?

Where do I want my research to take me?

Those are big questions and I don't need all the answers tomorrow but I need to think about them as they shape the future of my experience in this program and my professional life.

Scrutinizing the required course work it appears I could be done with classes by next summer or fall. Then I'll need another 1 to 1-1/2 years to wrap up my comps and dissertation (theoretically) so I could be Dr. Mascle within the next 3 years. Wow.

But maybe tomorrow my committee will shoot my plan out of the water...

How do I define myself?

I'm definitely interested in writing studies. Not sure the term composition studies really defines who I am.

I'm interested in three areas beneath the larger umbrella:

* What do students need to know to succeed in academic and professional writing
* What do teachers need to know to be more effective writing teachers
* What is the impact of technology (computers, internet, etc.) on writing and the teaching of writing