It Must be Conference Season....

Conferences seem to have taken over much of my February. Last week, I attended the Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference at Eastern Kentucky University. I have been helping coordinate personnel for the upcoming Regional Graduate Liberal Studies Conference that the MALS program will host here at ETSU. And, several MALS students and faculty are submitting proposals or making plans to attend conferences around the nation and abroad.

If I am this busy with conference-related tasks, I can imagine that many of you will soon be writing abstracts, submitting proposals, and possibly even looking for travel funds to present your research at a conference. If you've never thought about attending an academic conference, must less presenting, I encourage you to change your mind. Presenting your research is a wonderful experience. Not only do you get to share your scholarly interests with like-minded students and professionals, but you get a prime opportunity to network with potential research partners, future employers, and new friends.

If you haven't submitted a proposal to present at a conference because you're not sure where to begin, here are a few links to some of my favorite resources about all-things conference. These will give you ideas on how to prepare a proposal, where to find travel funds, and what to expect before, during, and after your presentation. Enjoy!

(And P.S.> Make sure you submit your proposal to present at the Regional Graduate Liberal Studies Conference by midnight on March 15, 2012!)

Academic Conferences: an FAQ This is a great online presentation by Dr. Inger Mewbern from RMIT University in Australia. She walks you through the proposal process, the networking aspect of conferences, and the presentation event itself. Some of her advice (such as that about travel funds) is specific to Australia, but she gives a good overview of the conference experience from start to finish.

Writing the Academic Conference Proposal from the blog GradHacker. This post discusses the first step to presenting at a conference - submitting a proposal. While the author mentions the importance of your proposal fitting into a larger disciplinary picture, much of the advice in this post can apply to liberal studies graduate students as well, as it's just important for us to emphasize how our research contributes to a scholarly, interdisciplinary conversation.

Writing for a Presentation, from the Explorations of Style blog. This post highlights the need to tailor your paper to a "read-aloud" format, as you will need to vary your presentation paper to best connect to a listening audience as opposed to a reading audience. The author provides some more links on the conference presentation at the end of her post.

Travel Funds from ETSU's School of Graduate Studies Did you know that you can be eligible to receive travel stipends from our own university? You must be a member of the Graduate & Professional Student Association (GPSA) for these funds, but any ETSU graduate student can join this organization. You've got nothing to lose by trying!

Good luck, and I hope to hear some of you present your interdisciplinary research soon!

Eschew Perfectionism; Make Improvement Quotidian

Every now and then, I employ the wonders of social media in an effort to find insights and perspectives on writing that I think may be useful to MALS students. Today I found a shared link to the New York Times blog After Deadline in my Facebook news feed. Today's post, "Words We Love Too Much" by Philip B. Corbett, highlights some of the words that Times' writers have been guilty of overusing in an effort to eschew sounding too plain. The result is that the once punchy words flatten into expected (and slightly obnoxious), um, quotidian prose.

While I feel oddly vindicated as a scholarly writer when I read about these writers' overindulgence in "fancy" words, I also see two important, if unintended, lessons to take from this post.

1. Even the pros make mistakes in their writing. The folks who commit these errors write for a living, and their work is published by one of the most well-known newspapers in the country. Even after proofreading, imperfect writing occasionally makes its way into the final copy. 
2. The pros review their work and learn from their mistakes. The very existence of this blog indicates that someone at the Times is seeking out constructive criticism from colleagues and readers and is presumably using that criticism to improve their writing skills. 

So, lighten up on yourself as a writer. Perfection is impossible; you will make mistakes. Do yourself a favor and make a ton of mistakes in the early stages of writing. If you're diligent in your efforts to improve, you will learn to recognize mistakes and trust yourself to clarify, revise, proofread, and edit your work. This self-assuredness leaves you free to get your inspired but messy and grammatically horrendous thoughts out on paper in the early stages in the writing process. As a result, your final draft will be stronger, clearer, and more compelling than it would be had you aimed for perfection in the first place.