In high school I once said to a group of friends, “I wish I could just get paid to go to school forever.” It felt like a silly statement—no one gets paid to be in school. You get through school so you can go get a job; that’s how it works.

As a first-generation and low-income student, I didn't know you could get a doctorate in a subject other than medicine. I didn't know teachers could teach anything other than K-12 students.  It took a long time and a very windy path for me to discover, in a community college classroom, that professors are teachers, and that some professors have doctorates in fields like English, Gender & Women's Studies, and even Statistics.

I received some of the most rigorous instruction and some of the most helpful and transformative advice from professors at community colleges. I will be forever grateful to two-year colleges because these institutions see value in students like me, students who are under-resourced and lost, but driven. Thanks to the opportunities provided by the community colleges I attended, I earned a full-tuition scholarship to Mount Holyoke College, graduating magna cum laude as a Frances Perkins Scholar.

Today, I am doing things I couldn't have dreamed of in high school. I’m a PhD student in Writing Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I get to take classes that challenge my assumptions, expand my thinking, enrich my life, and feed my spirit. I am an instructor of first-year and advanced composition classes here at UIUC. I get to conduct research on various subjects related to writing, including student writing, the history of networked writing in higher education, digital interfaces, writing across the disciplines, and more.

If you're reading this page, you might be a friend from my travels, an academic colleague, a potential employer in academia, or a current or potential student in one of my classes. Whoever you are—hi! Let’s chat 😄