Hello From Your New Blogger and Fellow Dissertator!

by Tiffany Messick

Tiffany at work

I’m a transplant from Austin, TX. This month I’m beginning my fifth year as a PhD student in the English Department. I put my committee together in February and recently defended my proposal at the end of June. I’m currently half way through a first draft of my first chapter. I’ve taught FYCOMP for four years and absolutely loved it but now I am here to help other dissertation writers make progress. I can answer big existential content questions but am also great with MS Word formatting. My concentration is 20th Century American Literature, specifically Southern authors (Walker Percy, Zora Neale Hurston, Carson McCullers, and Richard Wright). I like to complicate matters for myself by choosing topics which are interdisciplinary, which is how I landed on Cartesian dualism and the American South. I’m often in libraries or coffee shops dissertating.

Bowie at work

When I’m not twisting my brain into a pretzel, I love to watch classic movies like my favorite, A Streetcar Named Desire, and listen to music. I’m a bit of a rock music encyclopedia. Test me sometime! I have two wiener dogs, Vienna (Sausage) and Bowie, who are very cute and very spoiled. I also like to read (obviously) philosophy. Camus, Nietzsche, Sartre… are a few of my favorites. Eventually I hope to become a professor of literature at a university somewhere. I earned my Bachelor’s in English at the University of Texas. Hook ‘Em! For my MA I studied at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. I love to write and I’m sure my enthusiasm for writing will rub off on you to make the seemingly endless dissertation process easier. I’m addicted to watching history programs on PBS and National Geographic and true crime on Investigation Discovery.

The biggest struggle I’ve encountered writing the dissertation has been being away from my support group back in Texas. Graduate School, especially the dissertation process, can be very isolating. Come talk to me about any obstacles you might be facing and how to tackle them.