WRD alumna Alex Gonzalez graduated in June 2019 with an MA in WRD and a Concentration in Teaching Writing & Language. She is now a doctoral student at Northwestern University pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication Studies with a Concentration in Rhetoric and Public Culture. We recently spoke with Alex to learn about how her experiences in the WRD program helped prepare her for doctoral studies.
What in your academic and professional background led you to pursue an MA in WRD?
I graduated from the University of Florida in 2013 with a major in journalism and a minor in Spanish literature. When I joined the WRD program in 2017, I was leaving a corporate job in advertising sales where I had been for the past four years. I came into the program with the goal of deepening my understanding and experience with writing. I wanted to give myself two years to explore what I loved and see where it led.
Describe your career and research interests as you went through the MA in WRD. How did your interests evolve during your time in the program?
Throughout my first year in the program, I thought I wanted to be a speechwriter. Even though I took teaching classes, I was still saying I wanted to be a speechwriter in my head. I got a speechwriting internship, which is where I figured out that it wasn’t the right job for me. After that, I went into my second year knowing I was going to do the Teaching Apprenticeship Program (TAP), and it turned out that I really loved TAP.
What’s great about WRD is that we get a lot of opportunities in class to think about the theory behind teaching writing. I was exposed to research on teaching that, when combined with TAP, got my mind turning. Through my classes, I knew that I really liked research, so that’s really when the PhD idea struck. I knew I would really enjoy being a college professor and researching and teaching the rest of my life.
After deciding you wanted to pursue a PhD, what was the application process like?
I would treat the application process as an opportunity to interrogate who you are as a scholar and what your research interests are. For me, I had absolutely no idea where to start. Pete, who was Department Chair at the time, sent me a list of PhD programs in Rhetoric around the country. That was sort of a starting point for me.
One thing I was really picky about was the location. I didn’t want to move to the middle of nowhere to a tiny college town, so that guided my decision. There were three schools from the list Pete gave me that I applied to: The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Michigan. Then, I did some Googling on my own and I stumbled across Northwestern’s program.
I found Northwestern’s Communication Studies program by chance. But during the visiting process when I visited the schools, I realized that I’m actually way more interested in communication and I should have applied to the communication programs at each school because the questions they asked were a little more in my wheelhouse.
So you just started a PhD program at Northwestern University. Congratulations! Tell us about the program you are in, the PhD in Communication Studies with a Concentration in Rhetoric and Public Culture.
Our department chair likes to describe it as a general communication degree with a focus in rhetoric and cultural studies. DePaul is a little bit more on the composition and rhetoric side, and because this is in a communication department, there’s really no focus on composition, but a focus on how rhetoric is happening in public spaces.
After visiting, I immediately knew that this was the program for me. The best way I can describe it is that it felt like the right intellectual home. It was the place where I would be challenged in the way that mattered to me over the next five years.
How did the MA in WRD prepare you for the PhD program and the academic world?
TAP is great if you are interested in teaching or becoming a professor. TAP gives you hands-on experience in the classroom, which most Master’s programs don’t give you. Not only does it look good on the resume, but it puts you a little bit ahead of everyone else. When everyone else is stressing out about creating a syllabus, you’ve already made one. You’ve already led a whole quarter of a class.
The variety of classes offered in WRD was really helpful. Looking back, I took everything from Document Design to Feminist Histories of Rhetoric to Semiotics to The Essay. At the time, I don’t think I understood the value of that. DePaul prepared me to have a diverse set of classes and readings every week and taught me how to create connections between classes.
How can students best prepare to apply for PhD programs?
Try to follow your interests in class. If you have the opportunity to write final papers, take that opportunity to explore something that you really like because it could turn into a writing sample. In my writing sample, I tried to stay really authentic to what piqued my interest and curiosity as opposed to writing a sample that I thought the schools would like. You want your writing sample to be a representation of who you are, what you’re interested in, and what you’re good at.
Another piece of advice is to have a clear idea of who you are as a scholar and what sort of research you are interested in. Having a clear idea of your research interests is helpful for you and it’s helpful for the school. Different programs have different areas where they are really successful based on who’s on their faculty and what kind of students are already in the program. It helps you personally because it can help guide you. And this is another piece of advice I would give people in general for PhDs but also specifically in Rhetoric: Think beyond the advice you have been given.
Do you have any advice for current and future WRD students?
It’s okay to let yourself be guided by your curiosity. I came into the program thinking that I didn’t want to take any teaching classes, but that’s what I was drawn to every quarter and it was really beneficial.
Another piece of advice is that the faculty in the department are such wonderful resources. The faculty in WRD really treat you as an equal and really care about your growth. I found it so easy to create mentorship relationships with them. Everyone who I took a class with taught me something different and had a different, but useful piece of advice for my PhD application process. Try to take a class with every member of the faculty at least once if you can. They have so much to teach you and they all have such different backgrounds. That’s one of the things I value most about the program.