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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}[ interviewer ]Can you maybe talk a little bit about um
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}then grad school, and sort of literacy and grad school, so they type of 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}reading and writing and that whole process, um
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}including like, you know, the writing of the dissertation, right? 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}Um since you are a PhD, so can you maybe talk a little about that?
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}[ Tayo ] Grad school's a whole different kind of like reading and writing than I was accustomed to
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}even though, it wasn't like, I was reading books that I was unfamiliar with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know, I was still reading--you know, I read, you know 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}"Great Gatsby" in undergrad and in high school, and I was reading it again in graduate school, so that wasn't
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}new, but it was just the depth that was new. And
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}um, so there was sort of doors that I think were locked to me
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}when I was in high school, you know, I could re-read that same text when I was in an undergrad and more
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}doors were opened to me, and then I could re-read that same text in graduate school and it's like a whole world was open to me
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}because I had a different vocabulary, um, and I was thinking a lot more expansively
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know 'cause when we take English 700, it's like literary theory bootcamp, as soon as we get there
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}and you know, you just realize how many perspective and approaches there are
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}uh to literature. And not that you end up following one or another, but that
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}it just when you, I think theory is great insofar as you apply it as a lens to
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}view something else, um, I know there are some people who have done these narrative who will probably disagree with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}that. There are theory for theory's sake people, that's great, but I'm more of an application person.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}Um, but yeah when you apply a theory to a text, it just you know, new
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}things start to emerge and some things fade to the background and some things come up
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}so it's, it was a, that was a big thing that I learned in graduate school, is like a new kind of reading.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}A more expansive reading, reading with a lot more depth. And then also, I feel like you learn so much
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}being in conversation with other people who are thinking about these same texts, um, so the best part
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}for me about graduate school and probably a huge part of my learning was being
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}in conversation in course work, uh, with other graduate students, you know people who were 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}the uber-nerds from their schools too, you know, and then we all get together and you're having these conversations
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}and there's so much to be learned from their perspectives and what they bring to a text. I thought that was really, really
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}fascinating. I learned a lot that way because when i went to a classroom and
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}most of the people were not, at Ohio State, oddly enough, Ohio State grad classes are not filled with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}African-American students from historically black colleges and universities, just sayin.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}Um, and so I was really learning from people whose experiences, whose life experiences were just vastly
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}different than my own, um, and so it really just expanded my way of thinking about 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}things in a lot of positive ways. There were some not-so-positive moments but there were a lot of positive
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}ways. So and then, you know, the more I was reading and the more I was
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}was in these conversations, the more I was writing. You know, it's just part of being
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}a graduate student in English, is that process. And you know, you make these big jumps,
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know, when you're going from high school to undergraduate, you know, people don't want you
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}writing high school papers in your undergrad classes, you know, so you make this jump.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}You know, your skill level. And the same thing going from you know undergrad to
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}Master's student was making that jump. Um, which I had
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}amazing professors my first year, I felt so fortunate to have
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}Chad Allen, was actually my, my first professor, uh, and he was so amazing
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}when it came to just providing feedback on my writing, on my work that
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}I felt like throughout that class that I just grew in like leaps and bounds. You know it was just kind of
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}amazing, the amount of time he would actually put into helping you make
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}that leap. And so I felt very prepared, you know, for the other classes I was going to encounter
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}after I left 700. And uh yeah, then uh
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know your writing gets better and better and more complex because I think what you ultimately learn is how to
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}instead of writing about one strand, how to really look
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}'cause sometimes you'll read a book or-or a text in a very complex way but you can't articulate that,
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}in, in you know, your written product, and so you feel like, oh I was thinking about these five interrelated 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}strands and at the other end of this paper there's only two left, you know, and it's like, where did those other three strands
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}go? And so I think that gradually you just learn um to write with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}the same complexity that you think. And uh, I think the dissertation really taught 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}me that. You know, and what also taught me that was
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}being comfortable, I learned to be comfortable with the
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}revision as a re-envisioning process, like that I had to be comfortable with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know writing 20 pages, and then at the end of editing that only four of those pages are the same as they
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}were, you know, and that's a tough process. You feel like you're banging you head against the wall, but at the same time it's just
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know you have to be open to revision being
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}a more than just sentence-level sort of process, and
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}um, yeah, I feel like my writing grew as I became more comfortable 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}with like letting go of things, like but this paragraph sounds so good, but it doesn't fit or have any meaning
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}at all in this context. you know and then being comfortable with then taking that out, you know and say oh my gosh
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}what am I gonna do with--you know. So that's something that I didn't comfortable with
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}though until I like was towards the middle to the end of my dissertation process.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know, and that's what I was like, I have to let go and be willing to really
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}see this document transform. Because I was like, I don't want to do any new writing. I never wanted to do any new writing
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}but uh, you had to be willing to, or I had to be willing to in order to get through
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}the process. On the other end of it, now I can read my dissertation, and I feel like, oh well that's interesting.
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}You know, it's not a document that I despise, you know?
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}[   interviewer   ] you thought you were going to despise it? [ Tayo ] Oh yeah. Oh yeah, when I read early draft of my
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}stuff, it was like. It was like, no, there's, I'm trying to say so much 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}more than this, or I'm thinking about so many more things than this. How do I get
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}what's up there into this document that seems resistant
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}to being as complex as I understand, you know, these things to be. And so yeah I thought
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}that at the other end of it, I though, ugh, I just gotta get through this process. This is just gonna be--I, I don't 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}have to look at it anymore, or at least not for a while, you know? But then once I became
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}open to the process, and there was a lot that went into that. I think a lot of the work that I was
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}doing professionally led to my being more open to the revision process. I was working
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}with a program with undergraduate students, and we were encouraging them to open to this revision process
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}and I'm like, well I'm sitting here and telling them this everyday, and I'm not open to doing myself, so
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}I really had to then say, okay, let me practice what I preach
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}you know, and also, I mean, there were these, we were working undergraduate students from underrepresented
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}groups all across the country, and being in conversation with them
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}about their work is really inspiring to see and hear some of the things that they're doing, and so that
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}always rejuvenated me and it was invigorating
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}and really led to sort of my even thinking more, in more complex ways about what I was 
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}studying, just being in conversation with them, because they're just brilliant kids. Um so yeah
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}yeah ultimately I just really had to be open to writing, the writing process
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{font:Arial}{size:14}{Plain}{textColor:65535, 65535, 65535}actually being a process and not juts me hammering something out and being done with it.
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