How did you get here?

[mimmoore]

On Tuesday, January 14, 2025, I walked into a composition classroom to start what is my 67th full semester of college teaching (there are more than 80 if I count summer terms). As part of my first-day introductions, I told them how excited I was to start the semester with them; after all, I love what I do. I told them a little bit about the first project we would be working on—a literacy narrative—which would give them a chance to tell their stories about language, reading, and writing. Some of them looked skeptical, but I know they have stories to tell. There is always a story to tell—even though students don’t always recognize their stories at first. They have to sift through memories and experiences, building narratives that will make sense of them. 

Through this class, they will learn that we don’t always know the thesis or the ending when we start writing, but we keep writing. The narratives and reports and essays and blogs and reflections will come. . . eventually.

Later that afternoon, I walked into the Writing Fellows seminar, and I asked the six advanced students in the group what brought them to that particular moment, to the work of the writing fellows. As they shared their stories, they expressed some surprise at how they moved from their first semester in college to a paid internship as a writing fellow. Most had not planned for it, but they found the fellows as they “kept writing”–and finding their story.

One had started at the local technical school, in an HVAC program, but discovered during his first-year comp class the exhilaration of having his writing taken seriously. He transferred to our university and became an English major. One of our fellows said she had changed majors five times before she found her home in English. Another had actually applied for the fellows’ job during his first year, despite not having the qualifications, because he needed on-campus employment. A year later, he applied again and is now a senior fellow. Others talked about meetings with advisors (often because of scheduling conflicts or classes that were needed but unavailable) that made them aware of unexpected opportunities, including the writing fellows option. Some had met peers who were writing fellows or supplemental instructors on campus, and they recognized the power of listening, helping, encouraging—skills they could develop through our program. 

Like the first-year writers composing literacy narratives, the fellows are finding narrative threads in their own experiences—using language to make sense of the various pieces, discovering who they are in the process. 

During the fellows’ seminar session, I shared some of my own story—from graduate school in linguistics to positions teaching composition, English, and applied linguistics (in a university, in an intensive English program, in community colleges, in a church, and even in a chicken processing plant). As a graduate student, I could not have foreseen what my teaching journey would look like, but I have been blessed by hundreds of colleagues, editors, friends, and students, each of whom contributed to my story. While it wasn’t the story I intended to tell back in the early 1990s, to be sure, it is a story that makes sense to me now. 

And after 35 years, I still love what I do. 

So I am encouraging my students in this moment, whether they are starting college or working as writing fellows: they don’t need to have mapped out their entire story yet. If they remain awake and aware, looking at where they have been, building new relationships, stepping into new opportunities, finding and doing what they love (and letting go of what they don’t), the story will come together eventually. It will make sense. 

How do you tell your story in your teaching?