Synthesis Essay
What Will Your Verse Be?
Four years ago this month, I applied to Michigan State University. I was in my second year of serving in the Army, living in Colorado, newly married, and with a brand new rescued black lab. I had found a soccer team to play on and began traveling and taking pictures of all the National Parks in Colorado. It was a time of discovery, of change. And it was a time in which I wanted to get back to learning. At that point, I was split on whether or not I was going to go to graduate school for education, or if I was going to live out my Aaron Sorkin-fueled dreams of changing the world and getting a law degree. One thing I knew for certain was that the Army was not my forever career.
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A through and through introvert, I stepped away from the ideas of law school and political science and invested my time into researching education programs. If the Army wasn’t my calling, maybe teaching would be. I was seeking a current within the river I was swimming to take me along a new path, a guiding star by which to navigate an uncertain future. All seemed to fall into place when I found MSU’s Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program.
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I took my first course in the spring of 2020 and knew immediately I had made the right decision. School was always enjoyable for me, so returning to classes and homework felt natural. Dare I say fun? I’ll admit it here, I found every reading, every essay, every discussion post fun. Most importantly, though, I had a vision for my future, a new career I could jump into once my service obligation was complete. In just two short years, I was going to graduate, and the year after that I would finally become a teacher.
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But there is this famous saying about best laid plans. And just like Robert Burns said, my plans went awry.
But they really went awry in the best of ways.
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As I wrote about in my Goals essay, my initial goal of becoming a teacher currently is on the backburner, and may not be revisited for some time. Several factors influenced this decision, namely the COVID-19 Pandemic, current political climate, and having my first child.
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“Today, I am a mother and a veteran. I have hung up my military uniform for good and am choosing to take a break from working to stay home and raise my toddler. I am not the same person I was when I applied to this program—but that is a strength for me, something I am proud of. Even more than the changes in my identity, the COVID-19 Pandemic shattered my rose-colored view of education. I witnessed first-hand the detrimental impact the pandemic had on education and the mental health of teachers, and it made me question my calling to teach.”
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“I am not the same person I was when I applied to this program.” How fitting a statement to return to, now, in this synthesis reflection essay at the culmination of my graduate studies. The roles I occupy, the hats I wear, the titles I go by are wildly different today than they were four short years ago. This is not a conventional analysis of how MSU’s MAED program influenced my job as a teacher or educator, or even as a business professional, because I hold none of those positions. However, I can discuss, dive into, and reflect on how this program has changed the way I approach life. Has changed who I am as a human being. And, ultimately, how it has played a large part in helping me grow and transform into the person I am now.
Cinephile
If I am a self-professed introvert, I am also a self-professed film nerd. I cannot get enough of in-depth analyses, symbolism, visual poetry, cinematography, scores, character arcs, and exquisite screenplays. So, when I found two courses that occupied the intersection of two of my passions, film and literature, I dove right in.
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These courses were a gentle wind fanning the flames of fervencies within me, the glasses I donned to look at the world I thought I knew with a fresh perspective. It is quite detached—quite academic, perhaps—to say that these courses made me engage more critically with the media I consume. Which is an accurate statement. But in reality, these courses made me fall more in love with film and with literature. They let me lean into this love, this wondrous method of storytelling, and gave me the language and the knowledge with which to achieve a more complex understanding of the art form.
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My first semester I took a course titled Awards and Classics of Children’s Literature. In it, I was introduced to the history of various children’s awards, the multifaceted relationship awards have with diversity and representation, classics and contemporary remakes or retellings, and classics in film. This last topic was what I spent the final module mulling over and writing my final paper on. That very next semester I took a course called Children’s Literature in Film. This was my moment. Each week, we read a new children’s classic and watched the accompanying film adaptation, discussing similarities, differences, artistic choices, and cultural impacts.
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Both of these courses taught me how to read the classic book and how to “read” the film. They were my first two graduate courses, my wading back into academia. I was given tools and a tool kit, verbiage and source material and analytical scaffolding to use. And I loved every minute. These two courses changed me; changed the way I think about and engage with written and visual media. I learned how to dissect a film and all its parts, lending a greater enjoyment and a richer experience to every film I watch. I learned about the complexities of film adaptations, especially adaptations of children’s classics, and how the debate about fidelity and evolution (as they pertain to the spirit of an adaption) has been going on for over a century. They made me a better cinephile, a better media consumer. But they also instilled in me a profundity of enjoyment and fulfillment from visual media that I had not experienced prior.
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I emerge now from this program more passionate about film and more in love with the art form. I have the terminology needed for deep analysis, various lenses through which to study, and an appreciation for the translation of text to screen. My passion is more profound, my delight more enriched and substantial.
Reader
My chosen specialty is Literacy Education, so it should come as no surprise that this program impacted the way in which I live out this part of my identity. As an avid reader, what I read and why I read has changed much over the course of my life. My time in this graduate program has been no exception. But the greatest gift of this graduate work has been the diverse and unique books I have had the pleasure of reading over the last three years. Many were texts I never would have selected for myself. I now have lists and lists of books that I want to have in my future classroom, and ones already compiled for my daughter, that I might not have discovered otherwise.
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One course in particular helped foster my love for reading and opened my eyes to all the books I had been missing out on. This past spring, I took Methods and Materials for Teaching Children’s and Young Adult Literature with Dr. Laura Apol. Hands down, it was my favorite, most enriching, and most challenging course. And the most rewarding.
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This course began with us having to tease out an answer to the question, Why Read? Each module was accompanied by a similar query, relating to the definition of “normal,” mental and emotional health, dis/ability, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality. Each question pushed us out of our comfort zones, had us interrogate our assumptions and critical lenses, and gave us the opportunity to grow. No other course I took in the program afforded me the same level of introspection and uncomfortable challenge.
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“They reposition the center, the lens, with which we interrogate literature. It asks—especially of the white, straight, male readers—to consider that their way of life is not the default, and maybe should not be the default. This challenge, this inversion of the traditional power dichotomy (gender, sexuality, racial, economic, etc.), is crucial to educating an increasingly interconnected and diverse student body.”
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I wrote this in one of the essay responses for this course as I reflected on my definition of “normal.” We had just read three books centered around queer love, as well as three articles analyzing LGBTQIA+ representation in young adult books. I was able to freely explore my changing definition of how I saw “normal” protagonists, what I defined as “normal” literature, and who that might be leaving out. For the first time, I put the above thought into words. My concluding thoughts were these:
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“I think what I’m left with after all the readings this week is my musings about the definition of 'normal.' Those who fall in the category of 'normal,' or closer to 'normal' on the spectrum that we have intentionally created, need to be proactive in creating space for those traditionally left out. We, for better or worse, are gatekeepers and power-holders. How we choose to use that power is ultimately up to us. Will we continue to perpetuate the comfortable 'normal' we’ve lived with for decades? Or will we choose to relish in discomfort and invite diverse voices to speak and finally be heard? We have to be intentional. We have to be inclusive. I guess we have to be brave, too.”
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I left this course with a changed perspective of reading, and all that reading entails. The importance of diverse voices, diverse authors and protagonists, the creation of inclusive spaces, the exposure to the various facets of identity within the pages of challenging stories. As a reader now, I have a completely different understanding of teaching children’s and young adult literature. I know there are stories that have not been told, books that have been actively pushed aside or ignored, because they rupture the fragile existence the power-holders in society have created. Thanks to this program, my eyes, my mind, and my heart have been opened.
Writer
The act of writing itself is practice. It is testing and reworking and proofing and refinement. I enjoyed writing as I entered this program three years ago, but I walk away from it now with that spark reignited, that love rediscovered.
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Every course gave me the opportunity to grow as a writer because a majority of the work was, well, writing. But two specifically pushed me as both a creative writer and the use of writing as introspection.
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The course mentioned above, Methods and Materials with Dr. Apol, was my complete submersion into introspective, reflective, and deep writing. I was giving challenging topics and questions and allowed to formulate a personal and thoughtful response. But the course I took in the spring of 2021, Writing Assessment and Instruction, taught me the stepping stones of creative writing and the writing process.
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I wrote a book review of What a Writer Needs for this course. It gave me fantastic material about setting, plot, character development, theme, and style that I had never read about before. It reintroduced me to my long-simmering dream of writing professionally. And, as part of my final, I got to write something new. I got to pen anything creative I wanted—whether that be a part of a future novel, an essay on a TV show or book, or a compilation of poems. I elected to write the opening chapter for a book idea I had been considering for several months. What a gift it was to have that freedom and that opportunity for creativity within an academic setting.
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This is probably the one area in which I have learned and grown the most. These courses changed the act of writing for me, by providing both structure and creativity, and augmented my passion for writing. I know that if I ever can hold the title of “writer” in my life, as a job or profession, as an integral part of my identity, it will be in large part because of this wonderful program.
Lover of film, of reading, and of writing. These are huge parts of my identity, things that make me “me.” They are everywhere in my portfolio; in the categories I selected for my Showcase, in my About Me page, in my reflective essays. I do not say that “I am not the same person I was when I applied to this program” lightly. It is true. The MAED program, and the courses I took, changed the way I approach life. They showed me new details of the things I’d always loved, rekindled my passions, made me better. This program helped me grow. And for that, I am ever grateful.
Pictured here with General Milley at Memorial Day event, 2017.
Pictured with my twin sister at Halloween, 1998.
