When twenty-nine years of one’s life have been spent serving the world as an educator, and being not-so-helpful as an academic, it can be reduced to a three or four page document called a curriculum vitae. Despite this, I am a happy, relatively sane person, and I wouldn’t trade my years in the classroom for anything. I also love writing academic papers because I have a way of making them exciting while following the conventions of the Modern Language Association.

Part of my secret is that I never wrote a paper about a subject I hated. I chose my areas of scholarship carefully, and, even as an undergrad, I took topics and made them my own. I love just about everything I’ve ever written—the topic, the style, and the use of language appropriate to the situation. I even love my original teaching materials.

For this reason, I considered using my blog to sell my teaching units, including assigned paper topics. The lectures I’ve given and the instructions I’ve distributed are riveting. My first lecture of composition 2, a research course, is about literacy in one’s field of expertise. I convince the students that they are experts in something. And I tell them stories, including one concerning my grandfather—Doc Bruner—who taught me what colostrum was when I was twelve years old.

Later, I explain a research narrative as a quest narrative, complete with a hero, an antagonist, tests, obstacles, and friends made along the way. I wrote the assignment out in analogies to that great quest narrative we all know and love—The Wizard of Oz. 

But, as all my students know from having read my manifesto, I hate two things—lies and boredom. Salesmanship involves a little of one and a lot of the other. I have a low tolerance for boredom so I nixed that idea early on. 

The upshot of all this is twofold. First, do not be afraid of my professional history, and second, if you see anything in my CV that you believe would fill your need for a keynote speaker or a workshop leader, drop me a line and offer me travel funding and meals. No honorarium; travel and accommodations are all I request.

Do what you love.