Being Scholarly/Being Me

It's a difficult thing, I think, to be a young academic. I'm still enjoying life in the "real world" and I find it demanding sometimes to live up to the expectations of being "scholarly." So generally speaking, I don't--I'm just me. Sometimes silly, sometimes cool, sometimes poetic, always still me. Fortunately, I'm a nerd so it's not too hard to be scholarly sometimes too.

But lately, I've needed an extra push to be scholarly. Today's push came from Dr. John, a generous soul and my kindred academic spirit. He asked me to look over some work he has in progress for a pub., and I found myself quite engaged in his writing. Completely different field, completely different style (manual) and approach, but absolutely riveting. And arguably, Dr. J's work has a lot more real world application than my own, and I'm always inspired by scholarship that does something. Editing was a good scholarly activity and gave me a good filter through which to internalize the advice I was giving out as well as the advice I've been getting lately. So I've been building on this scholarly momentum, courtesy of Dr. John's very exciting and forthcoming article, and I'm back to the grind of my cover letters. I'm still perfecting the research letter. My advisors near and far have weighed in, and again comes the tension--to be scholarly while still being me.

I am admittedly a storyteller, especially when I write. My undergraduate advisor once described my writing style as paratactical (or some similar Greek word I cannot define or spell with any confidence), and told me that my writing tended to pull my reader from the beginning of the story to the end. Not necessarily linear, but more circular in nature (even though a circle is a line too). She warned me that some scholars would be suspicious of the seductive nature of my writing, and that the dominant (patriarchal!) desire for a more linear style might lead to some future criticisms and rejections. And this is true, people generally love the way I write, but often there is a curmudgeon who won't flow with me. So whenever I write for "scholarly" outlets, I always find myself checking to make sure I am writing in my own voice, and I'm always resisting in some way the push to change. Usually this process occurs quietly in my brain, but today the battle has been noisy.

Most of the scholars I invited to critique my most recent letter gave me the same advice. Express your ideas with more confidence, reduce the touchy-feeling language, clean up the grammar, etc. But one categorically eliminated the story-telling nature of my letter. This reviewer completely cut out my voice, and recommended that I subscribe to a more conventional form of letter-writing which boiled down to introduction, dissertation paragraph, additional scholarship/pubs., teaching, conclusion. I read, re-read, and I'm still reading the comments. This is a person whom I admire GREATLY, and who has supported me from Jump. So there has been a very vocal discussion in my brain all day--do I go the scholarly route or do I work to keep what is mine?? On a previous letter, this reviewer had said that my "anecdotes were colorful, but the letter was too long." Here again, the push is to cut, compress, and conform. And I'm resisting.

At the end of the day, I've decided to keep my letter as is. For better or worse, the writing style in my letter is a very strong representation of my scholarship. It's clear. It's colorful. It's personal. It's powerful. It's me.