Prompt: Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

This week’s prompt draws from the learning objectives in the syllabus: audience awareness, critical thinking, diversity and multiculturalism, grammatical information presentation, stylistic information presentation, and communication skills. Although I think – hope – that I could speak to each of these learning objectives in relation to my own knowledge and the assignments completed, I’m struggling with my response this week. One thing I’ve learned? But I’ve learned so much! (And yet still feel entirely self conscious speaking to that knowledge.) My future job? Uh…well I…I thought I knew. Perhaps the reason I’m struggling to connect an objective to my knowledge and a future job is that the things I’ve learned have left me questioning my next step.

Since undergrad – perhaps earlier – I’ve had my eyes set on The Job. The Job shifts with my understanding of work (who even knew technical writers existed as a freshman?) but a practical component has always remained. I always go by Aubrey – not Dr., not Ms., not Madam – and Aubrey sits in a cutesy office typing up communication documents or editing manuscripts and goes home to her one (maybe two) miniature dachshunds. This idea of The Job hasn’t completely dissipated; I’m only in school for my MA. I haven’t locked in to anything! Nothing has changed! Right?

But if that’s so: Why did I have an hour-long conversation about authentic voice(s) yesterday? (On a Saturday, no less!) Why do I stress over the feedback that students receive (from me and others), forever searching for that perfect balance that allows them to express their own authentic voices, while ensuring they know they haven’t yet “mastered” the grammar of Standard English, while providing enough commentary not to overwhelm them? Why do I initiate (or at least engage) potentially controversial and complex issues of cultural appropriation and academic expertise?

Perhaps the answer is: Aubrey, you’re in grad school. These conversations happen (and besides, you were never good at keeping your mouth shut).

Whatever the explanation, I find the things I’m learning in this course and others – the critical discussions I’m engaged in – to be contradicting my knowledge of self. I laugh off a PhD remark and go home to research Writing Centers. I spend a few hours on a brief report and an entire day on ten student papers. Is this what grad school does to you? (PhD students unanimously respond, “Yes” – or so I suspect.)

To wrap it up: I’m struggling to identify one thing I’ve learned because everything I’ve learned is tied into knots. (Have you ever traveled with necklaces and tried to untangle the knots that result? It’s a struggle. Trust me.) I’m struggling to connect my learning to a future job because my idea of The Job has changed more in the last two months than the last four years. This is where I haphazardly connect these ideas to a learning objective: critical thinking. According to the syllabus, “Students will become more conscious of their processes for planning, drafting, revising, and editing of writing.” I’m not entirely sure that I’ve become more conscious of my own processes – but I’m certainly considering them in new ways.