one word for 2010

I’ve been wanting to write more on this space, but writing hasn’t really been appealing to me recently. I want to get back into the habit of wanting to write, rather than only writing when I have to, and I think forcing myself to develop a habit is a good idea. And one way of doing this is joining in on reverb10, an initiative to get people to reflect on the year in writing. I’ve noticed some of my favorite peeps, like Julie and Nels responding to the prompts and thought it was a cool idea. Some of the prompts don’t excite me much, but it’ll get me writing. Especially since I’m a full 8 days behind (1 prompt a day for the month of December!). I’ll start with Dec 1:

Prompt: December 1 – One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? (Author: Gwen Bell)

One word: technological

I’m really bad at summarizing, and asking me to summarize in one word is asking a lot of me. So I chose a word that’s apt for just about any year, and doesn’t really make 2010 special or different, despite the fact that this has been a good year overall: I’ve come to see State College as more of a home than I used to, I passed my comprehensive exams in June, I wrote my dissertation prospectus and will defend it next week, I’ve had a wonderful time performing in drag more than any other previous year.

But I think the word “technological” encapsulates this year well enough. I’d say I’ve been “technological” always (since as a human, it’s impossible not to be)—and in regards to advanced technologies, for the majority of grad school. But this year was marked especially by technology-related moments and experiences in graduate school and teaching:

• In the spring, I taught a unit on digital multimedia presentations in a rhetoric course for the first time.
• Stuart Selber, Rebecca Wilson Lundin, and I presented at CCCC on using the Sony ebook Reader in first-year composition courses and a graduate seminar.
• One of the sections on my comps was on technology studies, and so I read a lot from rhetoric and other fields about technology.
• I purchased an iPad and absolutely adore it.
• My dissertation will concern social media and privacy, and I’m excited about it.
• I just finished teaching technical writing as part of a study incorporating the iPad in the class.
• My students blogged this term and created e-portfolios, and while I’ve incorporated both of these in classes before, this was the first time I felt it was largely successful.
• I’m probably more addicted to my iPhone than ever before. It was broken for a few days in May, which drove me nuts, but then I actually didn’t use it for 2 weeks over the summer, and it was liberating.

What word do I want to best capture 2011? I’m not sure, but the part of me with anxieties about the job market wants to say marketable, since, well, I’ll be on the job market next fall. Which means that the next year needs to be me working my butt off on my dissertation.