[dog GIF included] Blog prompts #1, #2, & #3

Hi everyone! Sorry I’ve been behind on keeping up with this blog. Here are some belated responses to all three of the first prompts.

Response to #1 (“About Me”): I earned my Bachelors in Psychology and Philosophy at BYU in Provo Utah in 2013, and worked in mental health (specifically in residential treatment centers for troubled adolescents) for several years, as a mentor and a teacher and eventually as a program director, before ultimately getting burned out and feeling like I needed a career change. So I moved to Allston Massachusetts to do a Masters in Film/TV Studies at BU (which I finished in 2019). Now I’m here—a first-year PhD student in UIowa’s Film Studies program.

My academic writing is all over the place. I’ve edited and co-written a book about film’s intersection with religion; I’ve written about queer activist films; I’ve written about experimental animation; I’ve written about Breaking Bad as liberation theology; I’ve written about yakuza masculinity; etc. Most recently I wrote a seminar paper about the use of CGI to “reanimate” the likenesses of dead actors on screen (e.g. Carrie Fisher in Rogue One; Paul Walker in Furious 7; Fred Astaire in 1990s Dirt Devil commercials; etc.). Generally I’m very interested in the relationship between cinema and temporality/death, and lately (relatedly) I’ve been getting into hauntology.

I also like pictures of dogs.

Response to #2 (re: phases of writing): Like Sanjna; my favorite phase of the writing process is also the generative, actual “writing” bit when I get into a state of flow and things are really coming together. My least favorite phase is the grinding that occurs before and after. For me, pre-writing has gotten a little easier over the years, but it still involves a lot of staring at a blank screen and cursing, even after gathering a ton of fruitful sources from which to draw. And the post-writing process of revising and editing and cleaning things up can also feel tedious and difficult (especially when I have to cut a segment that I don’t want to cut). So that’s always hard.

I think the main strength of my writing process is that when I do have the “stars aligned,” so to speak, I can really generate, and I can tie things together really successfully. The main weakness I have is getting those stars to align, and then tidying up afterwards. Ironically, though, I think my strengths/weaknesses in the classroom (or in tutoring) are the opposite: I have a hard time teaching the students to “just generate” (other than giving them time to do so and offering hopefully provocative/generative prompts); but I have an easier time teaching the students to prewrite/organize/outline and to edit/revise/simplify/expand/etc.

Response to #3 (“crossing cultures”): I totally agree with what Mark said in a response comment to someone else’s post—there “two-way street” notion from “Crossing Cultures” is super helpful and important. Like I mentioned in class discussion last week, sometimes I can have a tendency in a tutoring session to get stuck “in the weeds” of an essay, in small fixes, in what Mark describes as “a series of corrections,” rather than looking at big-picture ideas or opening myself up to a more bidirectional exchange of information, ideas, insights, etc. between myself and the student.

Finally, as a sign of goodwill and as an apology for being late on this whole blog scene, here is a wonderful animated GIF of a dog:

See y'all soon,
Chris Wei