About Erin

I wear a lot of hats in my life, as you may have guessed. But I'm also a word person (sometimes), so here's a little bit more about me.

I was supposed to be born on Halloween of 1976 but missed the mark, arriving on All Saint's Day instead. I grew up in wild and scenic upstate New York with my parents and three younger brothers. I graduated from Cazenovia high school in 1994, and set off for college at Loyola College in Maryland, which is where my life took an interesting turn from my straightforward goal of becoming an academic.

Computer Person

I started hanging out in computer labs when I was a freshman at Loyola College in Maryland because I was bored. I ended up making some really neat friends, discovering MOO, learning a tiny bit of HTML, and getting employed by the college helpdesk.

Since then I've spent way too much time in front of computers (including my home machine, a Power Macintosh G4 Cube named the Brave Little Toaster) reading, writing, learning, and bending my brain into new and interesting shapes. People now call me a "computer person." Apparently this means that I have psychic powers and ominpotence with regard to anything related to the electronic beasties.

Perpetual Student

Upon my graduation from Loyola, I had a choice; become a full time computer person or go to graduate school. I have been in school since I was three years old, which means that I've now spent over twenty years of my life sitting behind a desk and taking careful notes. Being a student has defined my life, and I believe that it always will. (Recently, they allowed me to be on the other side of the desk and I was absolutely dumbfounded when people started taking notes on what I was saying.)

Twenty years of student won out over four years of "computer person," and I now attend Purdue University, where I have completed a Master of Arts and am currently working on a Ph.D in rhetoric and composition with specializations in rhetoric, technology, and digital writing and professional writing.

When I got to Purdue, it took me about a year to discover that "hey, rhetoricians do neat stuff with computers, too!" and decide that I could integrate being a computer person with being a writer and a teacher. Well, actually, it was more that people in my department noticed that I was a computer person, which lead to interesting offers of employment that included more time playing with machines and less time teaching freshman composition.

Technology Maven

And so I came part-circle, and I'm now a "technology maven," which is apparently a computer person crossed with a rhetorician. I've taught sections of freshman composition in computer labs, and currently I am the technical coordinator for the Purdue University Online Writing Lab, and I am the technology coordinator for the Professional Writing Program at Purdue. I also am the official Technology Maven (no, really!) for The Writing Instructor, a virtual journal that is hosted by my department. I was also the Technology Maven for the Computers and Writing 2003 conference, and enjoyed that quite a bit.

My fascination with technology and my interest in working with those new to using technology have combined in my dissertation, which looks at how people learn to design web pages and how software, documentation, and other resources complicate the rhetorical choices they make. I spend a lot of time watching people change their background colors over and over, and taking careful notes.

I spend a lot of time swearing at recalcitrant machines, working with some really fabulous people, and crawling under desks (which always happens the one day that I wear a dress). I also get to correspond with users from all over the world who visit the Online Writing Lab that I run, teach new TAs how to make their first online syllabus, and have a good time doing it.

So who am I, really?

The short answer: all of the above.

The long answer: oh, heck, I don't have one. Here's some more links to distract you with, if the rest of the site isn't enough.

• My curriculum vita (for the professional version of my life)
• Links to stuff I find interesting, which is probably as good of a self-definition as any

send me some email