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 …
Continue reading "How I became an academic: thesis writing and defense"
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 …
Continue reading "How I became an academic: my year in Paris at the ENS"
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 …
Continue reading "How I became an academic: First part of grad school (1995-1997)"
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 …
Continue reading "How I became an academic: My undergrad 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. …
Continue reading "How I became an academic: Part 1: My Elementary and High School Years."
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, …
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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 …
Communicating effectively with those around you requires empathy and sympathy. Does this mean that you, as an effective communicator, must be a touchy-feely person or ascribe to new age values? Not at all (unless you want to, of course!). Rather, empathy and sympathy can be learned. But before you can be empathic and sympathetic, you …
Continue reading "Want to be a good communicator? Learn to know yourself."
Today started off with a funny feeling. I felt off. When I went to do my morning push-ups regimen, I was weaker than normal. Something wasn't right. I got into Mac very well dressed with a neatly pressed polo and fine woolen black slacks, ready for an important meeting. However, when I checked my messages, …
Continue reading "A beautiful conversation followed by terribly sad news"
Tonight I led my first on-line tutorial with my class of professional communicators in the Communication Theory course I teach for the Master of Communications Management program (joint between McMaster U's DeGroote Business School and Syracuse U's Newhouse School of Public Communication). We had an excellent session. The students in the class, whom I have …
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