How I became an academic: My brief postdoc with the Mìgmaq and Danielle Cyr

In the last four blog posts, I described how my experiences in elementary school all the way to my PhD thesis defense influenced how I became an academic. In this post, I will describe my brief post-doctoral fellowship under the supervision of Danielle Cyr, during her time as interim Vice-Rector of the Université du Québec …

How I became an academic: thesis writing and defense

In the last three blog posts, I have recounted how my elementary, high school, undergrad, early grad and year in France led me to become an academic. In this blog post, I take the story to the end of graduate school, and the introspective journey that was my PhD thesis writing and defense. I returned …

How I became an academic: my year in Paris at the ENS

As I mentioned in my last blog post,the last thing I did in the second year of my PhD was to apply to spend a year as a guest of the French state. I applied to become a pensionnaire étranger at the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d’Ulm in Paris. I wasn’t sure why …

How I became an academic: First part of grad school (1995-1997)

In my two previous posts, I gave an impressionistic account of how my experiences in elementary and high school, and undergraduate studies influenced my eventual journal to academia. In this post I will discuss my grad school experiences and how they contributed to who I am now. I finished my B.A. with the idea that …

How I became an academic: My undergrad years

In my last blog post, I talked about how my elementary and high school years influenced me to become an academic. In this post I will talk about university. For a synopsis of my undergrad experience, you can read the first part of this post on why I am a university professor. I had an …

How I became an academic: Part 1: My Elementary and High School Years.

Sometimes committing to something years in advance is a tricky thing. Your life can change significantly in the intervening time and you can find yourself feeling a little anachronistic when the moment of fulfilling your commitment arrives. That’s what it felt like for me to organise and host the LACUS linguistics conference a week ago. …

New editorial and research assistant: Natalie St. Clair.

I am very pleased to welcome Ms. Natalie St. Clair to COMM-Lab, where she will work with me as Editorial and Research Assistant this year. Natalie’s primary role will be to serve as Assistant Editor of the Journal of Professional Communication. Her responsibilities in this role will include assisting me, the Editor-in-Chief, with subscription management, bookkeeping, promotions, …

Co-organised LACUS Conference.

Last week I organised a conference called LACUS – Linguistics Association of Canada and the United States. I love event planning. I love hosting people. I love throwing parties and cooking for people. So, last year, I agreed, with my colleague Dr Michael Kliffer from the Department of French, to host the Annual Meeting of …