6 September 2016 by Lisa Meloncon<\/p>\n
<\/a>As job market season approaches, annual review time is here for us or you\u2019re just trying to figure out the next stage of your career (whatever that may be), I want to repeat a refrain that I say a lot: You have the right to describe yourself as a scholar and teacher in any way that you want. But you also have to figure out who you want to be.<\/p>\n I say this a lot because it\u2019s important that you understand who you want to be and\/or who you are as a scholar and teacher. So because I was thinking about it and it came up in a couple of conversations recently, I thought I\u2019d expand it out a bit. It intersects with the recent writing here about how to talk about service by Michele and Pat<\/a>.<\/p>\n At most institutions, the documents that govern reappointment, tenure, and promotion all say in some form or another that you need to have a research agenda or some way that people know you. So for example, I am firmly a member of the field of technical and professional communication (TPC). Within that field, I am known for programmatic scholarship. Also within TPC, I do the rhetoric of health and medicine (which, for me, includes disability and accessibility issues). Now the rhetoric of health and medicine also moves outward to others areas like rhetoric, composition, communication, disability studies, and linguistics. Others can and should identify and describe themselves in other ways, if you do the rhetoric of health and medicine from those other views<\/a>. But for me and how I identify and talk about myself, I do the rhetoric of health and medicine as it is associated with TPC. But that\u2019s me.<\/p>\n The over arching point is that you have to be able to describe yourself and demonstrate through your published scholarship, or your dissertation and research trajectory, who you are as a scholar (and teacher). And I cannot stress enough that your institutional documents and your mentors should help guide you in the ways that you define and describe yourself. Because the sooner you can start to articulate it, the easier it is on you every time you need to write a version of it. (And throughout your career, you write this a lot. Did I say a lot.)<\/p>\n But, once you have that figured out, you are in control of that identity. I gave an example recently that I am a terrible record keeper in some ways. By that I mean, I don\u2019t list every single thing that I do in my annual reports (which my institution requires at the end of the academic year as a way to review faculty and to make decisions on merit raises when those are available during our contract cycles) or even on my CV. One I find it tedious and time consuming and not the best use of my time, and second, some of it doesn\u2019t fit the way that I describe myself as a scholar and teacher. That\u2019s my own choice. Others choose to put in their annual report every time they answered a student email. And that\u2019s their choice. The key is to make choices based on your institutional culture and how you want to describe yourself.<\/p>\n