About Me

Hey everyone! My name is Maddi Smith. To start, I'm a first-year MA student studying Literature and Rhetoric/Composition (a surprise, I'm sure!). I recently switched over from British and American Literature after one semester of my master's. The choice came from feeling really pigeon-holed in my studies. I love literature and reading, but also love real-world application, and I wasn't getting enough of that only reading novels and articles about the novels.

In my undergrad, I also studied at NIU. I double-majored in English (writing) and journalism (print). So writing has always been my thing. I loved the combination of English and journalism because while they both involve writing, they're complete opposite styles. In journalism, I was able to have that real-world aspect and English let me dive deep into books from different genres and eras.

In my freshman year at NIU, I began working at the University Writing Center. I became a tutor shortly after my first two semesters at the UWC, and found that I absolutely loved it more than expected I would. In my four years at the UWC working with students from all over the university, I learned so much about writing and people. Being a writing tutor really helped me narrow my career goals. I went from wanting to be a full-time journalist and author, to wanting to be an author and editor (hopefully for a publishing house of some sort).

Outside of the UWC, my editing experience is relegated to helping run an online creative magazine, a freelance (and free) editing shop for creative stories, and I'm currently working with a journalism professor on a book he's writing.

I had all intensions of coming back to NIU for graduate school and returning to my place at the UWC with a graduate assistantship. It was offered to me way back when I was a junior, and it was the plan all along. What no one expected was that the English department offered me a graduate assistantship as well. They gave me two days to decide whether I was going to stay or leave the UWC. When it came down to it, I stopped tutoring writing and started teaching it.

While I feel like I've learned a lot about rhetoric through my four years at the Writing Center, I don't have names for the concepts I've learned. When it comes to capital "Rhetoric and Composition," I really don't know all that much. But when I felt trapped in British and American Literature, I found that Rhetoric and Composition also encompasses Writing Studies, which is something that I am very passionate about and am looking forward to learning more about.

Learning more about Rhetoric and Composition will help me with my career goals (more than isolating myself in literature could), and I'm looking forward to learning about the topic and applying it to the career I'm working toward. As we continue through this semester, I'm also looking forward to being able to tailor these blogs more specifically to Rhetoric and Composition and what we're reading as part of the class. As someone who loves blogging and has done it both for fun and for journalism purposes, I'm really excited to be able to add a thoughtful rhetoric blog to my repertoire.

As Neil Gaiman said, "The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before."