I guess the title of this post can function at several levels - like what am I doing writing this when I should be working on article revisions, NSF reports, class prep, or (this is radical) more time with the family...
I have been thinking about posting about my recent experience writing, putting together, and submitting my third year review. It was a monumental project - primarily because I spent the time writing about my research agenda and directions that I should have been chipping away at for sometime. My hope is to keep myself more current with this process as I (hopefully) enter my next 2.5 years toward tenure at SU. It's easy to tell grad students to "keep writing" and harder to do it myself; however, writing my 3rd year affirmed my belief in writing yourself to places - I hope to keep that momentum!
I began a "rewrite" of my narrative a couple of days before it was due...
I am writing this late on a Saturday night (2 days before the submission date) on a break from the Global Game Jam. I am the primary faculty sponsor for this event in which Syracuse University is a site of an international game development “jam” weekend. We have over 20 participants - students and faculty from all over campus and community members - working on a 36-hour deadline to conceptualize and develop games. This is an exciting event and I am delighted that the SoE is the place it is happening. The energy, creativity, as well as the connection to a global phenomenon of this event has been inspiring for me, and I have been reflecting on my last few weeks’ work – this review statement.
What started as an effort to present and frame my work has become a series of epiphanies and moments of deeper understanding of myself professionally and personally. I have in essence “written” myself to a place where I understand how deeply I have evolved as a scholar, practitioner, and as a person.
I realize this narrative, much like my work and research agenda, is work in process. I hope that this narrative will do some justice to the journey I have undertaken.
more to follow...
