An end of an era of AERA, for tonight, I believe

What is the punishment for spending a summer writing with youth and teachers in a variety of genres? Returning to the fall semester with the request of rating 11 academic papers for the American Educational Research Association conference to be held in San Francisco next spring. I was invited by Dr. Kevin Roxas to join the session he is chairing and, as luck would have it, he, Laura Roy and I also submitted a potential paper. We shall see.

What does this mean? Well, I'm cross eyed. Academic prose is not reader-friendly and, I'm afraid, it becomes somewhat stagnant. The content is so thick that when you read a paper that is poorly composed, it is easy to lose what the purpose of the research is. This is a shame, because a lot of the papers were very interesting studies, but they were organized horrifically. I became lost and had to work to hard to figure out what it is they were doing and why it was significant to anyone.

Then I get scared. What if it is significant to others and I'm just spoiled by reading really good writers all summer who have something to say beyond the academic discourse.

Ah, when in Rome (or Connecticut) do as the Romans do. This is the profession I entered.