Advice for finding one's niche/specialization in grad school?

Parent Cafe
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Hi everyone,

I know that this may be better suited for the graduate school board, but since I know a lot of the regular posters went to grad school/have kids who went to grad school and this issue doubles as a sort of identity crisis, I figured it’d be useful for me to post it here.

To start, I just finished my first semester of an MA program in composition and rhetoric at a school with a very good program. My professors said all kinds of good things about my work and potential (even though the one was really critical of me and hounded me with A- scores, for which I’m thankful). I truly learned a lot from all of my experiences. I received relatively good teaching evaluations as well and have a good sense of how to improve for next semester. I also presented at a national conference and was accepted to present at a really huge conference next semester, which is exciting!

However, I really don’t feel like… I’ve done anything important. I know, imposter syndrome, but when thinking about all of the current conversations happening in my field, I can’t really think of how my work fits in. People like the ideas I’m working with for next semester’s conference, but I feel overwhelmed and like I won’t be making as meaningful contributions/connections as they think I’ll be making.

I think this really comes down to me not really knowing what I want. I really, really like teaching and tutoring. I tutored at the writing center all throughout undergrad and picked up a few hours/week at my current institution, too. I like helping students work through their writing and learn from it (and learn about themselves). Likewise, conference week with my students was my favorite week last semester because I could sit down with them one-on-one and walk through their thinking and writing processes with them. In all truthfulness, nothing makes me feel more accomplished than seeing that light bulb moment in a student’s eyes and knowing that I somehow helped them realize their potential. One student told me how I did just that for them last semester, and I was overwhelmed because I felt so happy and so fulfilled in a way I never had before I started teaching.

So, this makes me feel like I’d probably be better suited to teach at a LAC or community college as opposed to a research university (so, with more of a teaching focus). With that said, though, I still have to have a research speciality, but to what extent? And would it need to focus on student writing? I think it’d be cool and valuable to do research on composition process and see why students make the decisions that they do when writing, but I can’t even begin to think about how to actually do that. It’s most likely also due to my lower level of study and Iack of experience, I’m sure, but I also don’t even feel like I could ever say anything new and helpful for my field. It’s all very daunting since so many others are doing great work!

I feel like I’m rambling now, but do you all have any advice on how I can flesh out my exact interests and get moving on them? I know I have some time before I apply for PhD programs and before I complete the PhD and go on the academic job market, but I’m trying to figure this out sooner rather than later in case I realize I’m not cut out for academe and that I should pursue another path. I really, really like teaching and working with college students, though, so I hope that I can figure this stuff out and continue on this path for a while.

Thanks in advance!

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Oh, also, the work I’ve done thus far in my coursework has been on the rhetoric side as opposed to the composition side (and even though I really like teaching, I thoroughly enjoy the more theoretical aspects of rhetoric). So, I kind of have a lot of broad interests at the moment, which I need to eventually hone.

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“So, this makes me feel like I’d probably be better suited to teach at a LAC or community college as opposed to a research university (so, with more of a teaching focus).”

@harvestmoon Not so fast. It pays to take a close look at the so-called “research universities” when it comes to English and the humanities. If you take a mid-sized research university, peel away the professional schools, the hard sciences, and the social sciences, what you will likely find is a boutique humanities LAC hiding in there. Hiding in plain sight, as it were. Take Duke University, just to pick a mid sized research university out of the hat. Most of the students are pre-professional something (even though there are no majors beginning with the prefix “pre-”). English accounted for 2.6% of the undergraduate majors, according to the most recent CDS. Students do not often choose disciplines like Philosophy (1.2%) or Medieval and Renaissance Studies.(lost in the noise). The situation is compounded by all of the noise, commotion, and research dollars being generated by the hard sciences and professional schools at places like Duke.

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Hi @harvestmoon, congratulations on finishing out your first semester of graduate school strongly.

Comp/rhetoric, as fields go, is more employable than many others. Most colleges in America (except for elite privates which have no first-year writing requirement because incoming students are already assumed to know how to write from their prep schools or elite suburban AP factories), needs people who are really good at teaching academic writing. This field is more employable than any other within the discipline of English (broadly defined). People who want to teach 17th-century British poetry or Modernist literature are the ones who are really rowing upstream in terms of market employability. You don’t need to decide what kind of institution to work at because they will all need people like you.

I am on a search committee right now, and we are looking to hire lecturers on renewable four-year contracts to teach first-year composition within our program. We have gotten all kinds of applications from across the country from newly minted literature PhDs and creative writers (MFAs) but what we are really looking for is people who have a taste for, and commitment to, teaching college freshmen how to write, not just anyone looking for a full-time job in academe. We want to hire the person who will be happy a) teaching 4 sections per semester of first-year writing, b) running service learning workshops, and c) and won’t be complaining about not being able to finish that novel or write that book on intersectionality in Anglo-Saxon literature. We are prioritizing applications from people who have spent time teaching comp as instructors at community colleges over those who have had academic fellowships at Ivy League universities.

If you specialize in composition pedagogy and show passion and commitment for that endeavor, you will be more desirable as a candidate than someone who is a novelist or Shakespeare scholar, even if out of an elite PhD or MFA program.

I often joke that I will close out my career teaching freshman composition at my institution (where I am tenured) because no one will be taking literature courses in 15 years.

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Harvard still requires freshman writing, so does Princeton. Yale requires taking a writing heavy course, but doesn’t require it to be freshman year. Swarthmore requires three writing courses and suggests you take them the first two years. Middlebury requires a writing seminar. Amherst has required writing intensive freshman seminars… well you get the picture.

As to the OP, I know you are inclined to be a worrywart, and that can be a good thing. But it seems to me you are jumping the gun here. Why would you expect to have done “something important” as a first semester grad student? It sounds like you are getting great grades, are learning a lot and have even presented at a conference. I think the differences between LACs and research universities are exaggerated and it’s far too early for you to know what sort of institution will suit you best.

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What elite private doesn’t have a first-year writing requirement?

You should think about putting yourself in a position to teach high school. Those are stable jobs that don’t require you to pretend to do research or produce scholarship, or to spend 6-7 years getting a PhD. Teaching is really valued. Someone who loves to do what you are doing, and who produces the kind of reaction in students that you have, would be a great fit with a district that has high-quality high schools, or an academically rigorous private school.

If you do want to get involved in research, and are willing to skew to the education side rather than rhetoric or literary theory, the pedagogy of writing is an important field.

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At my D’s superb leafy suburban public high school, the teachers also get something called a pension. This is a very, very large part of teacher compensation and should not be casually overlooked.

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I took a seminar while in college that dealt with issues in tutoring, including being non-directive, the use of dialects in writing (there was discussion back then of BEV or Black English Vernacular which might not happen today). the use of personal voice and natural language in academic writing, feminist composition, composition for working class students (some interesting journal articles on this) and others. It was a long time ago, but it was really interesting. It seems there are a lot of areas for research and I am sure you will find something.

Does teaching at a community college appeal to you? The people I know who teach writing at community college tend to have master’s, not PhD’s, and, I believe, their degrees were in English. That may have changed. Or, as Rusty Trowel said, teaching in a high school might be rewarding. We had a teacher in our local school who would invite individual students “to tea” to work on writing. She had a big impact on everyone.

Of course there is a huge need for good writers in so many fields, and you will have access to many types of jobs when you finish your master’s. Are you in a program with a terminal master’s?

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Thank you so much for your advice, everyone! I appreciate it. And special thanks to @NJSue and @compmom for the specific field-related help.

I’m in a program that also offers a PhD in comp/rhet. I’ll have to reapply for admission next fall and it’s not guaranteed that I’ll get in, but a few of my professors have left some strong hints that they want to keep me. So, that’s encouraging, because I really would like to stay here since it’s a great program with great people and an impressive placement rate for PhD students (among the highest in my the field, I think).

I have thought about teaching high school English, but the thing is, I really don’t want to teach literature. I have nothing against literature, but my interest and passion lies in composition and rhetoric. I come from an undergrad institution with an excellent writing and rhetoric major, so I’ve been exposed to this field from when I first began college and I really admire the work my undergrad professors did to get our program approved and running. My dream job would be to work at such an institution myself one day with undergrad comp/rhet majors since I believe in the field and the work that we do.

I agree that I’m perhaps jumping the gun and being too hard on myself here. I hang around mostly PhD students who are expected to do more important work and make actual contributions, so maybe that’s rubbing off on me and making me feel like I’m behind? I love how I feel pushed and challenged around them, but maybe I need to readjust my mindset?

Like I said before, I really love teaching, and I guess I just haven’t found my research niche to match it. Right now research may not appeal to me as much since I’ve been researching things I’m only somewhat interested in, so maybe it’ll get better when I find my thing, whenever that is?

Also ETA: yes, teaching at a community college is something that I could see myself doing. Basically, I just don’t want to be in abject poverty like I was when I was a kid. If I can do something I love, have affordable health insurance, and afford to live, then I will be happy. I know you don’t make a fortune teaching and that’s okay because I don’t want to.

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@harvestmoon , there are some other options in academia. If you look around you’ll see that many large universities have “residential colleges” and/or “honors colleges,” which in effect are liberal arts colleges within the megaversity. These colleges have their own faculty – not mainly adjunct instructors. Some of these are focused on the humanities, some on the sciences, and some are general. One example is Michigan State University. It has three residential colleges, one in social sciences (James Madison College), one in sciences (Lyman Briggs) with a major focus on biological sciences (also read: premed), and one in the humanities (general name – until they get a major donor! – Residential College in the Arts and Humanities).

Residential colleges can be intense but provide a sense of community and close relationships between faculty and students, include career guidance. Look around (as a starter, do a Google search on “residential colleges”) and you’ll find more such arrangements.

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One of my kids hung out with PhD students while an undergrad and it does put a funny kind of pressure on you if you are not yet in a PhD program, whether undergrad or grad. So do try to remember they are a few years ahead : )

My impression of the field you are in that it has a theoretical component (research, writing, publishing) and a practical component (teaching, tutoring). Would you say you prefer the latter?

Writing teachers are needed everywhere, and good writers are needed in so many jobs. I think things will work out for you. I think it’s great you put energy into thinking about these things, clarifying as you go, just don’t overplan and let things happen a little bit (while you work hard, a tricky balance).