Rationale of the Title/Welcome

Believe it or not, I spent awhile agonizing over the title of this blog. I wanted something less cliched than the ever popular expression "piled higher and deeper," yet something more complex than "doctor, doctor, give me the news" or another catchy song lyric. I finally selected the professing student after looking up the definition of the term "professing." It means:

1. To affirm openly; declare or claim: "a physics major [who] professes to be a stickler when it comes to data" (Gina Maranto).
2. To make a pretense of; pretend: "top officials who were deeply involved with the arms sales but later professed ignorance of them" (David Johnston).
3.
a. To practice as a profession or claim knowledge of: profess medicine.
b. To teach (a subject) as a professor: profess literature.
4. To affirm belief in: profess Catholicism.
5. To receive into a religious order or congregation.
v.intr.
1. To make an open affirmation.
2. To take the vows of a religious order or congregation.
(according to dictionary.com)

I particularly like "belief"--I am the believing student. I believe in possibility. I am not yet at the declaration state yet, but hoping to be there someday. Which brings me to the next point....


I decided to start this blog as a pseudo-testiment to my entry this fall (okay, in merely a few weeks) as a student in a PhD program in the humanities. My field in particular blends communication, composition, rhetoric, and writing, and I hope to emerge as a professor. **Fingers crossed of course*** I figure though that the skill of communication--whether it be in person, on paper, or in this new technological era, is and always will be a necessary skill not only to flourish, but to survive.

This blog offers my reader a glimpse into my life as a PhD student--particularly the challenges and excitements of PhD study, but also a blend of the real--including my own life. Welcome and enjoy!

ALSO, the photo is from my trip to Italy in 2004--the spiral staircase inside the Vatican museum.