Welcome back everyone!
We are now setting off on a challenging journey together. I am happy with this Fall 2024 group in particular, because you will all benefit from a diverse group of fellow writers and peers – a previously established community of support for your MA thesis development. Please remember how invaluable (and rare) having a writing community is. Your time together will be a blessing for all of you.
A couple words of wisdom at the precipice of our journey together:
Writing a thesis is not easy. There are many twists and turns in the road, roadblocks do come up, and there are unforeseen landscapes that cannot be imagined until you cover ground and truly travel. That said, the more time you have on the road, the more of a chance you will have to discover. I have no doubt that each of you will eventually “arrive” at the place of your own design. A place of insight and learning. A place where perhaps the outcomes were not the ones you originally anticipated.
I look forward to working with each of you as you set a course and cover some significant ground on your own terms as you develop your culminating project for your Masters of Arts in Writing Studies degree. I am here to provide suggestions, feedback, resources, and insight; to prompt you to refine your thinking, deepen your research, and take your work to another level. Sometimes you surge forth in the process and cover good distance “on the road” due to insightful feedback during a conversation. And sometimes you surge forth due to extended sessions of engaged independent reading & research. Oftentimes, inspiration hits at the most unlikely times. I hope you will experience all of this.
The MA in Writing Studies @KeanUniversity is inherently a “customizable” degree, and I encourage each of you to follow a course for which you feel a spark of commitment and passion. I also encourage you to take risks in pursuing forms of learning that matter to you personally. In my own experience, this is the place from which meaningful transformation is born. And if you are going to work hard at something, why not make it both meaningful and transformative?
Your peer learning process and our sense of community will continue to be significant, and I hope you will lean on each other for both accountability and self-reflection. That is the inherent design of this seminar class. We will also use our time as a group to enhance and augment the asynchronous/autonomous work that you will shape throughout the two semesters of your work on this project. Our website here will serve to organize some shared resources for supporting your writing process while connecting our learning. It is also a showcase of your (in-progress) work for the year.
Sincerely,
Dr. Zamora
