[From Elizabeth. The article focuses on possibilities with Second Life in a classroom.]

Day 0

• People with a controlling personality often hurt other people's feelings without thinking about it.

• Driving through stormy weather adds stress to fatigue.

• Planning solves many problems, but cannot account for everything, such as being delayed by Interstate accidents.

Day 1

• Adjusting to weather down south is more difficult for some than others.

• People with a controlling personality make bad team players.

• I caught up with Dr. Jan Swearingen (a graduate mentor of mine) at a Hayden-McNeil publisher party.

Day 2

• I met Dr. Cynthia Selfe at a newcomer's breakfast and we talked about my current research on Second Life, which led to a request for a copy of a paper I am revising about avatar creation, and encouraged submission to the academic journal Computers and Composition.

• I requested many examination copies from publishers that the "Book Fairy" will leave for me later.

• I missed many interesting panels due to grading student papers and working on my own seminar papers.

Day 3

• I listened to presentations about Second Life in the composition classroom and understandably noticed minimal attention being given to theory and application.

• Elizabeth and I caught up with Dr. Dennis G. Jerz (an undergrad mentor of mine) and we snapped a picture of us in front of Preservation Hall to send to our mutual friend Dr. Joel Pace (another undergrad mentor of mine).

After spending a total of 30 hours in a van on a road trip with five other personalities, I admit the trip is definitely a learning experience, but with all due respect toward my colleagues - I prefer traveling with Elizabeth or alone. BK]

[From Elizabeth. Comics and graphic novels transition easily from page to screen using storyboards, but a storyboard is different from a comic panel, which Scott McCloud explains in Understanding Comics and Making Comics. I remember strongly disagreeing with associating comics and film in a portfolio paper for my MA degree, but Mark C. Rogers presented a similar argument at last year's National PCA with "Wile E. Coyote Still Died for Your Sins: Intertextuality and Continuity in Sandman and Animal Man". BK]

Day 0

• Our friends David McClure and Suzan Aiken provided a ride to the airport despite learning about us flying out of Cleveland two days beforehand

• Continental Airlines kindly served a small breakfast with cereal, milk, and fresh fruit along with a snack

Day 1

• Elizabeth and I caught up with my comic scholar colleagues Area Chair Nicole Freim, her husband Jason Tondro, and Amy Nyberg at dinner

• I attended and supported fellow BGSU PhD student Jeff Geers as he panel chaired for the first time

• I caught up with other comic scholar colleagues such as Gene Kannenberg, Jr. and his wife K.A. Laity (author of Jane Quiet)

Day 4

• Elizabeth and I attended each other's presentations and believe we did well

• My keyring with laminated sheets using "15 min.," "10 min.," "5 min.," and a giant "STOP" sign received good praise as a timekeeping device

• I briefly caught up with Rey Valdez, a PhD student colleague from Texas A&M, who presented on Saturday

• I caught up with John Shelton Lawrence and he asked me to comment on an article he is submitting to a magazine about comics

• I also caught up with Erica Benson, an English professor from UW-Eau Claire, who knows Patrick Day (a professor-mentor of mine from undergraduate work)

• I won "The Korvie" from The Institute for Korvac Studies (a parody panel poking fun at academia and comic scholarship by comic scholars)

One conference down and one more to go. Elizabeth and some of our colleagues are presenting at the 4 C's conference and facilitating a half-day workshop for college writing programs next week. I am going with them as moral and tech support since videotaping is involved with the workshop. I look forward to it because the 4 C's is a major conference in the field of Rhetoric and Composition and being there will also give me a chance to catch up with professor-mentors I have not seen in years such as Dennis G. Jerz. I do remember, though, that techies dress in black! BK]

Friday, March 21, 2008, 8:00am - 9:30am
Golden Gate Hall Salon C2
406 Gender Studies VI: The Monstrous Feminine in Popular Fictions
Chair: Kirsten T. Saxton, Mills College

“Mommie’s Bloodlusting and Vamping: Dracula as the Autogamous Mother in Bram Stoker’s Dracula”
Joe McDermott, Mills College

I feel bad about setbacks Elizabeth experienced due to her Area Chair because I plug National PCA hard since I always have a great time with it. I know things happen without warning, but like bad customers in retail, people talk and negative feedback makes everyone working on popular culture suffer. Unfortunately, most presenters do not return after having a bad experience with PCA. BK]

In 2005, at the height of the controversy over the site's accuracy, Mr Wales told the BBC that students who copied information from Wikipedia "deserved to get an F grade". -Alistair Coleman

[Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's take on citing Wikipedia now and then. An important distinction is made here in that college attempts teaching students how to conduct research in an academic environment toward producing a new or overlooked argument. The constantly changing accuracy or possibility of inaccuracy robs students from finding niches and innovating older ideas. I continue banning my students from citing Wikipedia and I know I am NOT a bad educator. BK]

[Amen! I honestly love teaching English in college, particularly composition, but bad students ruin everything for everybody. BK]

[Here at BGSU, freshman students are required to take two composition courses, Eng 111: Introduction to Composition and then Eng 112: Varieties of Writing. I am currently teaching Eng 112 and students gain exposure to reading academic articles while learning to argue in writing, but they often complain that articles are not entertaining enough. I wonder if students might be more interested in composition and English as a subject if a textbook presented material in graphic novel format like Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics. BK]

[I also consider having my collection donated to a university library when its time comes, but I imagine that will span more than one and a half five-shelf bookcases then. I believe a great retirement plan for me in the future is owning and running a comics shop after spending most of my life as a college English professor. I am currently 27. BK]