Incomplete Transcript: Profile of Keralia Stetz-Waters

Here is a incomplete transcript of my interview for my profile. I am still trancribing it, and working on a few more interviews for the peice:

Question and Answer - Karelia Stetz-Waters - November 7th, 2011

Cory Warren: What classes do you teach here at Linn-Benton Community College?

Karelia Stetz-Waters: I teach writing 121, I teach technical writing 227, primarily online. I have also taught intro to poetry, intro to fiction, African literature, business communication and I will be teaching writing 115 for the first time.

CW: So, with all those papers to grade, how do you find time to write, yourself?

KSW: I write in the mornings, and on/in the evenings and the weekends, and I try to be very organized and disciplined about my work at work so that I can get my grading done in a 40-hour workweek, as opposed to bringing it home. I also tell my students that that works out well for me and well for them because I'm here, grading, and happy to be doing it. I know myself; if I was grading papers at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night, I would resent it, and no one wants their work read by someone who is resenting doing it. It works out well this way.

CW: What opportunities outside of classrooms does LBCC offer for students to explore writing?

KSW: we have the poetry club. We have the 'fooling around with words' conference, which takes place in April, which is just a writer's conference. Course, we have the creative writing classes, credit and non-credit. Then, hopefully our students are connected with all the neat things that go on in our community; there are always readings at the libraries… all sorts of stuff going on in Albany and Corvallis. Therefore, those are all available to our students.

CW: What is it like as a Professor to be writing a book during school?

KSW: I think it’s a great way to share my student's pain. Their writing a lot, they are pressed for time… they are struggling with the different parts of the writing process… writers block… revisions…. Praise and rejection, and it’s good for their instructors to be going through the same process. Admittedly, my word count is larger, and higher, but the experience is the same, and the five-page paper to a first-year student is just as big as a 50,000 words manuscript feels to me; I have just been doing it longer. And when a student who has been doing it as long as I have been writing, they too will be able to tackle a giant project, so I think it really keeps me honest about what it feels like to be a writer, which is good because it helps me sympathize.

CW: I have always felt self-conciouse about people who are grumbling about a two page paper, and I turned into a five page paper that I wrote the night before. So, basically it's keeping up with what the students are doing.

KSW: And I really believe that writing is like long distance running: a lot of doing it well is just putting in the time, and a lot of being able to write a long document comes from writing many shorter documents, and practicing on the ability to run a marathon comes from running many shorter races.