The long-expected culmination of my M.A. program came on Saturday, two years after I finished coursework for the degree. I spent 8 hours writing three essays for the comprehensive competency examinations. On the first, I applied a critical theory (deconstructionism and its extension: postcolonial theory) to the year’s common text, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. I wrote, quite eloquently although probably incoherently, on themes of convergence and liminality in the novel. I’d rank this essay second in the pile.
The second essay I produced dealt with practical/pedagogical issues in the profession–teaching freshmen writing, more specifically. Since I am not in that context (of prostituting myself as part-time adjunct writing instructor at two or three community colleges in the U.S. without money to pay the rent at the end of the month), I wrote on my experience of teaching College English abroad to foreign language learners. I think this was my best essay.
My least favorite essay, the last one I worked on, was actually supposed to be the easiest from the three (hence why I left it for last). It was based on one of three committee/student generated questions. The exam proctor, I guess, chose one question from the three at random and I was expected to use whatever I could from my M.A. reading list. The problem was that the one question chosen asked for an inverse response to the subject of my mentored scholarly paper on the benefits of a digital writing environment on L2 writing. My reading list didn’t contain ANYTHING that pertained to this topic. Without much mental energy left, I wrote this third, and least successful essay, based on my own experiences without any outside material being incorporated into my response.
We’ll see how it turns out.