Shelbie Deatherage

Mesa, Arizona

Elementary Education

Creativity Engagement Track

SWPACA Conference Presentation

 

For my EDGE project I chose to write and present an essay for an academic conference, “I Follow Where You Lead: Positive Female Workplace Relationships in Gilmore Girls.   In this presentation I explained the importance of the strong female workplace relationship of, Lorelai Gilmore and her best friend Sookie St. James, in the television show Gilmore Girls.  The conference I attended was the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was privileged to be able to attend this conference due to UGRASP funding along seven other SUU students, my mentor Dr. Lisa Arter and other faculty members.  The panel I presented in was made up three students with two being English Education majors and me as an Elementary Education major.  Because we all good friends we were able to work together to create our panel theme and write essays that would work well together.

 

This conference is held annually bringing in professionals from all disciples who are interested in pop culture.  Our panel was held the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Albuquerque on February 16, 2017.   Our presentation drew many professionals and other academic leaders in the research fields.  This was intimidating at first but in the end made for a wonderful experience.  The audience members were engaged and informative throughout each presentation. After all the presentations we had a Q&A session where many of the professionals provided support and suggestions for further research.  It was interesting to see how people reacted to our research and discussed their opinions.  Several academics even provided us with opportunities for contact in future endeavors

The inspirations for this project came from a fun conversation with a professor and two of my closest colleagues at a previous SWPACA conference.  They discussed how interesting it would be to look at female comedians in popular television shows.  Shows such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt along with others were the inspiration at the beginning.  After the conference I was filled in on the conversation and was immediately excited to join in on the project.  It took some time before we were able to narrow our focus but what we found was a trend among many of the shows we were researching.  The successful women in these shows were not doing it alone, there were always other women who helped them along the way and provided support rather than envy.  It was in these relationships that the real success was found.  Once we made this discovery we knew exactly what our focus should be and what we were going to write about.

 

One of the biggest challenges I faced through this project was finding the time and determination to write this paper.  In the beginning I was excited and wanted to get started right away but as a started researching I instantly became overwhelmed.  I am not an English major but yet I was doing a project with only English majors.  This made me doubt my abilities as a writer because I was worried I would not meet the standards for an academic conference due to my lack of training.  Although the other students were my friends and encouraged me to do this project with them it was still intimating.  It was also difficult trying to find the time to write my essay.  The conference was held in the middle of my student teaching so trying to balance lesson planning, and everything that comes along with teaching while also finding time to write was nearly impossible.  At one point I just told myself that I had to do it so I sat down wrote out a schedule of how much time I had and what I needed to write and just started typing.  It was hard but ultimately it was the best thing I could have done for myself.

 

            Finishing this project was a personal victory but as I think about it was also beneficial on a larger scale.  Presenting at a conference as an undergrad is something that is uncommon; however, this project shows that it can be done.  The way this group conducted themselves also shows that SUU students are more than qualified to attend conferences of this nature.  Future SUU students can see the success from the students who attended this conference and try for themselves. This project also helped the students who went on this trip and presented their writing, because as a group we were able to support and bounce ideas off each other.  It was a learning experience for all parties involved.

 

My project helped me see myself as more than just an elementary teacher but as a writer.  Before this project presenting at an academic conference was something that I never thought I could do.  This project showed me that I need to believe in my writing more and trust that people will enjoy it.  The confidence I gained in myself, and my writing, by sharing my work with academics, was incredible.  I never thought that I could write something that people would actually be interested in.  I plan to use this learning experience to show my future students that hard things are possible if your try.  I also plan on attending many educational conferences through my years of teaching so SWPACA was only the beginning to many years of professional development.