Assessment of Goals, May 31


I accomplished all my goals today. I sent the documents I worked on all week to my research partners.  I looked up the paired essays and found only 6 pairs, 2 of which the after essay was just the before essay with a few changes. 


My goal for Monday should be to revise my CDA application so that this time it gets accepted.  I need to highlight what I accomplished in the last CDA IN the actual application according to Dean Armstrong.  I can also update my discussion in light of what happened this year.

Goals for Friday, May 31


1) Read the revision letter carefully and make sure it corresponds with the revisions I made.


2) Go through the article and cut and edit it.  If you make substantial changes, make sure they are in the letter.


3) In preparation for revising the CDA application, look at the essays and surveys that have come in and count the pairs.  If time, read some pairs to see what your impressions are.

Assessment of May 30 Goals.


I accomplished my goals.  I've got a decent draft of both the revised article and the revision letter to the editors and reviewers.  Tomorrow I will revisit the entire article and do some more editing, but also cutting.

Assessment of Goals, May 29


I did the forecasting, worked on the Limitations, and worked up a draft of our revision letter to the editor. So far, we haven't gotten a response from the editors about whether this next version still needs to be anonymous.  What still needs to be done:


1) Make conclusion less abrupt.
2) Read over the entire 10,000 + word article and make it flow better. Leave queries for my research partners.
3) Check Deirdre's and Sidney's responses to the feedback and make sure I've incorporated them.

As I wrote yesterday, in my article revision, I have to announce/predict that we're going to draw speculative implications from these survey results for tutors and the writing center. I also have yet to read and revise the conclusion.  Next goals consist of writing a revision letter.  This morning, I wrote to the editors about whether we can now identify ourselves or if in this next version we have to maintain anonymity.  I'm not sure when we'll get a response.

Scholarly Writing Inventory Response

I like writing, so I don't feel bad about doing it or about reading it after I've done it.  I'm not, however, always crazy about revising according to journal editors' feedback.  I feel OK as a researcher, about the responses I get in the field, and about my abilities to organize an article, especially after teaching my grad students about how to structure each section of their proposal.  I'm fine in Mechanics, Citation, and Accessing Help, too.

My most problematic responses though reflect that I don't write on a regular basis, as this past semester, my main function has been to get my two dissertation students to finish.  Thank goodness they don't have writer's block but because they DO write frequently, I was always responding to chapters and job materials.  When my last student finishes this summer,  I should have more time next semester for my own work.  And since my grandkids are in Ecuador for the summer, I'll have more time to work at home as well.

Assessment of Goals

I was anxious and even overwhelmed for a while as I was trying to figure out what, if anything, I had changed in the article until I realized I had not changed much at all except the title and the abstract.  I hate the "Where Was I?" search, which always involves cursing myself for losing the thread of the project and for being away from it for so long.

 I started revising, responding to some of the criticisms to tone down our claims about the writing center and its impact (it's easy for academics to hedge!) and also to ground the advice to tutors in some of the literature, some of which I wrote myself and of course can't cite because we're not supposed to identify ourselves. 

Tomorrow, I have to announce/predict that we're going to draw speculative implications from these results for tutors and the writing center. I also have yet to read and revise the conclusion. 

I've been away from this writing center research project for almost 5 months.  I thought I could finish the revise and resubmit over winter break, then spring break, but then an editor invited me to write a book chapter, an offer I couldn't refuse.  Then the semester started, a whirlwind of teaching, administrative, and service responsibilities + three conferences + two dissertation to direct and I never got back to the revise and resubmit

All this is to say that my goal for today is to re-familiarize myself with this project and what has to be done on it. To break it down, I would need to read the reviews again and see what I and my research partners have done so far to respond to those feedback points/criticism, and then see what still needs to be done.

Welcome to Summer 2019 Dissertation Camp! I'm looking forward to working with you.   I've been a prof. in the Rhetoric Dept and a Writing Center director for 29 (!) years.  In my recent research I've been using writing center data, as well as my own second language learning experiences to illustrate and explore concepts in second language writing and more recently second language acquisition.  I also write creatively, especially about travel, and teach a travel writing course every fall as a first-year seminar.


In this Dissertation Camp, I'll be working on a combination of academic and creative projects.


1) Revising for resubmission an article that Deirdre, another writing center researcher, and I wrote that analyzes survey results about second language writers' perceptions of their second language writing development.


2) Preparing a draft of an essay about health issues for a Summer Writing Festival Class.


3) Probably working with Deirdre to revise our IRB proposal for more writing center research.