Conference

Today I had my conference with Kathryn Miles, the teacher for the Seminar: Writing for Publication course. She was a great help and gave me tons of awesome advice. I have been struggling with this project because of the many elements I want to include in the essay, and I also have been having trouble trying to decide what to do for a presentation to teach the class about my topic.

Kate suggested several good books for reading Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams and Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup. I definitely look forward to reading these two books especially because Refuge is going to be a great example for the kind of paper I want to write. I stressed to Kate that the really hard part of this paper is going to be writing the braid on religion. I am not entirely sure how I am going to do that or what my focus will be, whether it is a general focus or more specific to one or two aspects of religion.

First Kate advised me to bust out only the personal narrative part of the paper almost like a reflection piece, and then later we will meet again and figure out where to put the other braids. So I am going to take her advice and try to write something on this blog either every day or every other day until our meeting next Wednesday the tenth. These posts will most likely be memories or something that I can copy and paste directly into my paper or may not use at all.

Second Kate gave me an idea for the facilitation (or presentation) of my project. Because I understand the concept of the braided personal narrative, I could easily lead the class in a discussion on this type of writing. It is suggested that after I write the personal narrative part of my paper, I write the other braids separately and bring them to class. First I will probably teach the class how a braided essay works, and then breaking the class up into groups I might have them put the braids together. That way I can choose to use some of the classes suggestions or not. I think its a very sneaky idea......