New Blog

I finished my second year, and now I guess I need to update everything, as I am now a third year PhD student. It was a difficult ride, and as I indicated in previous posts, I hope to blog more about it. However, it felt weird blogging about my research ideas and my personal life on one blog. I have thought about over the past year. When I began this blog, my intention was to simply provide my thought processes as I work toward a dissertation topic.

But it doesn't leave much room for fun stuff, and many of those who read my MySpace blog felt my research blog is a little out there for them. After struggling with it, and talking to people, I decided I would begin another blog. Staying true to my intention for this blog, I hope to continue to update my progress as a scholar. I think many are thrown by the name of this blog; I can't blame them. If you're from the United States, I could see how one would experience cognitive dissonance upon seeing the name. If you are from elsewhere, you might simply think that I am a "stupid American" and read no further. But I have noticed over the past few months that many do stop and read, at least for a little bit.

My new blog will deal with my "other life", as I indicated in my most recent post. I named the blog "A Creation of my Own" for many reasons. As in my academic life, I am encouraged by some and discouraged by others about being who I am. And I must be truthful. Many aspects of my identity had not received a great amount of attention. For example, I have been out for several years but have never given it much serious thought until the last few years.

Most recently, I began devoting a great deal of thought to the idea of imaginative space, an idea used by some globalization theorists borrowed from Foucault as well as others to explain this cognitive area that allows us to dream of ourselves as something other than what we are. I designed my class for the Temple Writing Academy solely around this idea. Although the class will deal primarily with argumentation and persuasion, I constructed it with the idea that through language and visuals, my students could manipulate ideas, imagine themselves in different ways. Like my Tae Kwon Do master once said, "If you can see it, you can do it." I want to help them obtain the tools to empower themselves. There is no saving going on here - I have social capital that I can give to them. They have the choice, now or later, to use these tools in the best way that they see fit.

I would not have thought so much about this class if I didn't also see this empowerment as a need that I also had. It has been a long road to get where I am, and I have often wasted time thinking about where I could have been if I had been empowered to think in the ways that I know think. Again, though, as I pointed out in my recent post on the other blog, I am exactly where I need to be, doing exactly what I need to be doing.

I took some time off from the academics, to get my bearings and think about the next year. I will resume work soon, so I will be back out here blogging about my ideas. I hope in the next couple of years to travel to Africa as well as Europe. I am interested in understanding different press models that exist, not just the American model. I am interested in journalistic practices, not just the American practices. I will get there, and it will take time. In the end, I will look back at these entries as milestones in my career, my life, and my perspectives.