Concept 4

This TC sounds simple enough. Sure, we all have more to learn. But consider who we include here when we say "writers." We're including here the Shakespeares, the Tolkiens, the Stephen Kings of the world, but also we're including the Gen Z kid who's texting their mom and updating their social media accounts. If we conceptualize "writing" in light of Activity Systems theory, then we know writing is a malleable tool used in activity, and that "writers" really should include any user of writing to achieve a purpose. And it's not simply craft alone, in the creative writing sense, that is what we have yet to learn; it also includes novel situations, relations, experiences, and being. For example, had I never been exposed to the Threshold Concepts and the writing studies program here at TAMUCC, I might have continued with a static, universal theory of writing that could not account for change and would falter in light of new situations, or at very least not best understand the changes that needed to be made nor why. I might've learned different conventions, different writing-as-tool skills, but without understanding the tools in their previous activity, the knowledge practices which engaged them for specific reasons, these "skills" would not very useful, and really I wouldn't have "learned" anything. As Rose (2015) points out, "writing is not just transcribing preformed ideas but also developing new ones; thus a writer never becomes a perfect writer who already knows how to write anything and everything," and the notion of a "perfect writer," a value judgment, arises out of discourse itself and is really "perfect as compared to an idealized X" in achieving some purpose in a certain situation (p. 59).

Many of my classes, while providing me with new writing situations, also pushed me to become a more humble scholar and careful user of writing, paying closer attention to the ephemeral components of situation and that indeed my limited experiences in using writing would very often result in failure. Bazerman and Tinberg (2015) further add that "working on a text now external to the writer allows a more technical examination, distancing the writer from an idealized sense of meaning and what they feel internally in order to see what the words actually convey. The writer potentially can take the part of the reader" (p. 61). "What the words actually convey," in one sense, could be misconstrued as what I. A. Richards called "the proper meaning superstition," but more likely what the authors mean here is that it's difficult to understand the effects of writing in complex activity, and that to get closer to realizing the wide-ranging, materially felt effects of a rhetorical act, it's usually necessary to defer meaning imposition as the subject-position "writer," to be open and hospitable enough to enter alternative ways of viewing. In the Bakhtinian sense, the mind of the user of writing is filled with the voices of writing-users past, and listening to them is important, but no one has all of the voices and all of the possible situations for using writing lodged in their head.

It'd be easy to list all of my failures in using writing during the MA English program; I've revised a lot of assignments before submitting them to my instructors. But what do we mean by "revision"? Yancey suggests that revision is an ongoing activity that results from the interaction between projection, retrospection or review, and revision. To revise is to "re-vision," as I've mentioned above, and asks that a user of writing refocus, recalibrate their viewing of situation. One example is this website. My first attempt at a WS Portfolio came in my first semester in Summer 2018, when I took Dr. Blalock's practicum course. At the end of the course, we submitted something we were to call a portfolio, but because I assumed a portfolio was simply a collection of work, I did little selecting, and minimal focused reflecting; I made few choices and resorted to including all my work. Later on, during the Spring 2019 semester in Blalock's Writing Studies: Theory and Practice course, I constructed a website using WIX that, unfortunately, fell short of what a portfolio is supposed to do. I wanted the website to look great and act as a kind of professional profile of myself, but I was confused about audience, and so I made ill-informed choices in arrangement and design that truncated or ignored usability and accessibility. At the end of the Spring 2019 semester and through the Summer and Fall 2019 semester I began to create a website here on Google Sites, in similar design to my previous sites for the Capstone Project, which have so far proved user-friendly and accessible to most readers. I'm open to feedback about the work I've done here, including my skepticism about the effectiveness of these intimidating walls of text, which I think are only suitable for my graduate committee audience.

Brooke and Carr (2015) reiterate the importance of recognizing and embracing failure in the writing classroom, something I hope to incorporate as well as I look to teach in the future. They write, "when assessment is tied too completely to final products, students are more likely to avoid risking failure for fear of damaging their grades, and this fear works against the learning process. They focus instead on what the teacher wants and simply hope to be able to get it right on the first try" (p. 63). As an undergraduate and even as a graduate student, I know this problem too well. Yet the inclusion of low-stakes writing assignments and exercises helps, as well as the use of a portfolio curriculum in which students do the work of assessing their various uses of writing and reflect on their learning and the choices they made in writing situations. In the CBWP SI, I revised a single "Facilitating" activity at least ten times before presenting it with our class, filled with teachers, administrators, and other professionals. Each time I revised, I thought of realignment in the classroom: axiologically (what're best practices?), procedurally (what're students doing?), pedagogically (what're teachers doing?), and epistemologically (what counts for knowledge?). I would find myself continually needing to defer meaning and attempt to inhabit the views of my audience. Why am I doing this part of the activity, and as this person, will I really find it valuable and a learning experience that will change my modus operandi in the writing classroom? Of course, I failed many times, and I found myself asking more questions to fine-tune the activity.

Another instance in which this TC was highly relevant was in my Summer 2018 course with Dr. Garza, in which I interviewed two Mexican-American men who spoke Spanish primarily, and in which I learned about Dr. Enrique Morones's activism on the southern US border. As Matsuda (2015) argues, "it is important for all writers and readers to develop the awareness that we are all participating in the process of negotiating language differences. In any writing context, the audience will likely include translingual individuals" (p. 69). In light of the current racism and xenophobia engendering American culture and politics, it is crucial that we recognize our uses of writing-as-tool, and that we take responsibility for the various effects our choices have in employing those tools. As I interviewed, respectively, a Mexican classmate as well as an undergraduate professor who is a native of El Paso, I noticed that these individuals had Spanish phrases to describe locations and ideas involving the southern US border, which I found shaped their views and how they made meaning in the world. This class assignment certainly helped me to see that all writers have more to learn, and that learning writing involves deferring meaning and being humble enough to be willing to view the world differently, at the level of the word. Dr. Enrique Morones suggested the power of a simple act, a simple word, in changing the material conditions and problems around us, and I couldn't agree more.

Along with all writers having more to learn, I also learned through the MA English graduate program that writing is more than the action of putting pen to paper, but a dialogue with our world and those in it that is internalized and influences how we deliberate and in turn decide to act. TC 5, "Writing is (also always) a cognitive activity," captures this complex concept, and you'll see by clicking here, or accessing the drop-down menu above, how this TC has informed my learning in my coursework.