I'm Published!

Happy holidays!

Hope the holiday season is treating you well and you're not dealing with too much snow. In Wisconsin, we were fortunate enough to have a white Christmas. The cold temperatures and accumulating snow have made the weather perfect for ice skating and lots of shoveling.

But the point of this post is not to describe the weather in Mt. Horeb. Instead, my good news is that I was published on an online blog.

Woot!

The blog is called the Silver Tongue Times, Rhetorical criticism for the engaged citizen. Basically, it's a blog run by rhetoric scholars committed to explaining cultural messages in today's world through the lens of rhetoric. The blog aims to explain rhetoric in layman terms, so that anyone, no matter their knowledge of the "great rhetors" (think Plato, Aristotle, Gorgias, etc), they can understand what the author is doing in their message.

I found this blog through my Rhetorical Theory and Practice class. Taught by Jane Nesmith, a professor who I've had before, we examined what rhetoric is and how we use it today. It was an excellent class and I definitely learned a lot. One of the overarching messages from this class was that rhetoric allows you to be a spectator of a message. It allows you to step back and see how the moving parts are working together. So think of watching a sporting event, like baseball, football, soccer, etc. For most of those events, you are sitting above the field, looking down on the game. You can see each individual player and watching their singular movements and then the movements of the team as a whole.

Our final project of the semester was to write a post that fit the submission guidelines for the Silver Tongue Times. We had to take an article/speech or video and write about what the rhetor was doing and if they were doing it effectively. I chose an article I found at one of my favorite online websites, The Slate. It was an article that was pro-selfie (you know, the popular thing to do on social media now a days. It's also an official word, thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary). So I wrote the piece and thought, "Why not submit?"

I emailed the piece to the blog and heard back fairly quickly. Matt, the founding editor, said they would love to publish the piece. We emailed back and forth with some revisions and submitting a brief bio and they published it on Monday.

My article is "The Selfie Culture: Where A Picture Is Worth A Million Likes" (yeah, you should definitely click on this). I'm really proud with how it turned out and so far, my family and friends have really enjoyed it. Let me know what you think!

I really enjoyed writing this and analyzing current culture is something I like doing in my spare time (when I can find it). I hope to write some more articles for the Silver Tongue Times and Winter Break is the perfect time to do that!

Firoozeh Dumas Comes to Campus

Okay, so if you remember back to my summer posts, I had a post about Firoozeh Dumas -- she is and was the first speaker in the Marquis Series this year.  I got the opportunity to talk to her several times while she was on campus and her being here was definitely a great way to start off the week!  (Picture from Firoozeh's website.) 


Monday:

She came to campus and spoke to the freshman in the morning.  Her presentation to them was on the history of Iran which she tied into Persepolis (the first-year common book).  I met her for the first time shortly after she spoke to the first-years.  Professor Eichhorn, my FYS professor from last year, called me and informed me Kayla, my Writing Fellow from last year, and some first-years were talking Firoozeh to the PUB for lunch and I should join them.  I did and we had a grand old time.  This only pumped me up for her presentation (the formal Marquis Series' presentation) I was going to later that night.  

Her presentation was fantastic that night.  Firoozeh is very funny and this speech was more about how she ended up publishing two books: Funny in Farsi and Laughing Without an Accent.  (Side note: She's currently working on a third tween fiction book!)  Both books are memoirs about her life adventures.  Funny in Farsi deals with her and her family moving to America from Iran and the various things they run into, such as the language barrier.  This book is also filled with anecdotes about her family members.  The message I really got out of her speech was to never give up.  She started writing her stories down when she was in her 30s and it took many years and a few rejections before she found a literary agent who wanted to help her publish her books.  As someone who hopes to be published someday, that was inspiring and encouraging to hear.  

I of course bought her book after her presentation and had her sign it for me.  We briefly discussed my name and the abundance of "l"s.  

Tuesday:

I woke up early, as usual, and went to Topics in Composition (the Writing Center development/staff training class) which I'm not actually enrolled in this semester but Firoozeh was going to be there so I wasn't going to miss it.  This was an open question and answer session where we hit on a lot of different topics.  Firoozeh was extremely personable and friendly; we learned a lot about her and I'm sure she learned a lot about us.  I think my favorite moment during this session was when Firoozeh was talking about her love of libraries (I'm sure some of my readers are saying, "Of course Hailley loves this section."  You know me too well).  She was telling us about this one book she read about a girl who dives with horses (part of a circus like show) and then the girl became blind but she still continued this stunt.  This true story takes place during the Great Depression.  As Firoozeh was telling us this, I remembered I had seen the movie version of this story which is called Wild Hearts Can't be Broken.  I raised my hand and said, "You know that's a movie, right?"  Firoozeh didn't know a movie (made in 1991) existed and was quite excited to see it.

 I went to class, worked in Admissions, and then went to the Writing Center to have tea with Firoozeh.  There were about 10 girls, Dr. Bob, and Firoozeh.  This time we went around, introduced ourselves and talked about our life dreams and goals.  It was a casual yet exciting conversation.  We laughed a lot and shared a lot of stories.  It was decided that I'm the unofficial mayor of Coe because apparently I know a lot of things on campus.  Which is good because then I can let you know on this blog and keep my friends on campus in the loop.  An hour went by and unfortunately, tea was over and Nicki (freshman Writing Center consultant and also my 6th floor neighbor) had to take Firoozeh back to her hotel.  We said our goodbyes (I even got a hug!). 

In my opinion, Firoozeh is so inspirational.  As a writer and as a person, I felt rejuvenated Tuesday afternoon as I walked back to Murray; I was ready for anything (which to me last night meant a lot of reading for my classes).  I think my favorite part of the whole experience was just getting to know her in a short span of 24 hours.  She called me by name Tuesday morning and gave me a hug when she was leaving.  She was just so great and personable, I’ve come to admire her a lot.