Time transcripts of Kevin

[00:00:00.00]	Hello my name is Kevin De Pew, 

[00:00:03.50]	I am a assistant Professor at Old Dominion University, 

[00:00:07.10]	and I'm here to tell you a story about my writing development over the years. 

[00:00:15.13]	I guess I was, I'll start with an analogy.

[00:00:20.08]	When I was running track and field in High School, one of my,

[00:00:24.09]	my coach, the head coach, who was a coach of distance runners,

[00:00:32.17]	he said one of the reasons that he coached the distance runners 

[00:00:35.15]	was because he was a sprinter, and it would really really frustrate him 

[00:00:43.11]	to coach sprinters, because he was so good at it. 

[00:00:48.21]	And I kind of brought that into writing, 

[00:00:52.60]	because during High School and even during some of my College careers, 

[00:00:56.33]	I was not considered to be a good writer.

[00:01:00.00]	And so that helps me as a writing teacher, 

[00:01:05.55]	to have a little bit of empathy for my students. 

[00:01:10.10]	So let me take this back to Honors English in 10th grade,

[00:01:16.30]	I remember writing a Hamlet essay,

[00:01:20.31]	an essay on Hamlet that scored a 52 out of 100.

[00:01:26.06]	And my teacher proceeded to put 7 sentences up on the board, 

[00:01:33.88]	there were 3 boards in the classroom, and she put 7 sentences up,

[00:01:40.38]	sentences that were stylistically problematic.

[00:01:44.40]	And there were 2 classes, 2 classes, and out of those two classes, 

[00:01:50.40]	those seven sentences are, four of them were mine, came out of my essays.

[00:01:56.45]	And looking back on that, 

[00:02:00.46]	I see that I was doing what David Bartholomew talked about,

[00:02:07.15]	with trying to invent the University to a degree,

[00:02:11.55]	trying to be stylistic in ways that were above and beyond my capabilities.

[00:02:16.56]	But it started this kind of reinforcement that I wasn't a good writer. 

[00:02:22.65]	And then also as I was writing my Master's thesis... 

[00:02:27.70]	The person who I was working with also helped to reinforce those ideas.

[00:02:32.60]	It wasn't until I got into my PHD program that it became more of a non issue. 

[00:02:43.69]	You know I wasn't a good writer and no one said I was a bad writer,

[00:02:45.50]	People just said "bear with it." I sometimes...

[00:02:48.72]	I'm not going to say that I'm a good writer now, 

[00:02:51.67]	but sometimes I'll go back and read stuff that I have written, 

[00:02:55.48]	and wow, it's actually kind of good. 

[00:02:59.70]	So it's kind of been this long journey for me.

[00:03:04.78]	I think some of my earlier experiences have been very valuable

[00:03:08.79]	in the sense that I can take that into the classroom, and I have more empathy 

[00:03:16.30]	for my students who often struggle at that point, and I can give them better strategies 

[00:03:24.50]	on how to build their confidence in what they are doing.

[00:03:30.25]