My flash drive is missing, and I find myself unable to focus.  (I know some people call this device a “thumb drive” or a “memory stick.”  Please insert the term you prefer.  Thank you.)  In an effort to clear my head, I am writing this. I put everything on that drive — class notes, quizzes, exams, manuscripts…
Moments after I finished my the oral portion of comprehensive exams, Professor Michael Kreyling (a member of my committee) turned to me and said, “You’re going to want to relax. But you can’t.” He then listed many reasons for not relaxing: I needed to write a dissertation proposal, start working on the dissertation itself, send…
I teach children’s literature, write books about children’s literature, and direct a graduate program in children’s literature. But I’ve never taken a single course in children’s literature, neither as a graduate student nor as an undergraduate student. I have no formal training in the field of my alleged expertise. So, in the words of David…
How I learned to be an extrovert.
Starting last Saturday, I began chronicling just what I do every day – in an effort to make visible the (usually invisible) work that academics do.  Now that this week-long experiment has concluded, I am glad to take your questions. Q: 62 hours! Was that more or less than you expected? A: I honestly had…
In yesterday’s post, I skipped past the actual getting of the job. (Oops.) Today, I’ll talk about that. Oh, but enough about me. What do you think of me? – old joke 4. To Market, to Market, to Get Me a Job In 1999, I had three interviews. The first was pleasant enough. The second was…
MLA’s coming up later this week. Can you bear to read yet another advice column? If not, then you may want to skip the following personal narrative that, yep, includes some advice (well, inasmuch as my personal example may be instructive… which it may not be). You may ask yourself: well, how did I get…
These days, I don’t talk much about my first book. Â I wrote it when I was 7 years old, in collaboration with Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie. Â As you can see, I improved upon their artwork with the aid of stickers from the United Fruit Company (of whose bananas I was then an avid consumer)…
When I was about 9 years old, watching television one weekend afternoon, I saw a black-and-white film of a bespectacled man climbing the side of a building. He ascends a floor, narrowly misses falling, is about to enter the building through the window – then, another man emerges, with a policeman in pursuit, and tells…
Different kinds of scholars, different kinds of scholarship. But many paths to success in academia.
