Interview with Iswari Pandey, January 18, 2021

Talmadge Ian Hays: At which university do you teach at again?

Iswari Pandey: I'm at California State University Northridge.

TI: Very cool, have you enjoyed it?

IP: Oh, it's great, it's great; it's outside of Los Angeles, downtown. You know, Northridge was northern Los Angeles originally. Then it became a city of its own, kind of.

TI: If I could if I could teach anywhere I would definitely prefer to teach in California.

IP: It's great. I love it here and that you get, you know, all kind of stuff--types of students and focuses. So yeah, definitely.

TI: So, um, I guess my first question would be how is it that you found your way to to the writing program at UofL? What was the course of events that led you to from where you were born/where ever you grew up to working through the Writing Center and then eventually deciding that that's what you wanted to do.

IP: Absolutely. Absolutely. Actually when I got to the University of Louisville I had no idea about the Writing Center because I did my undergrad and my first MA in Nepal, which is a very far away place, of course. So as a teaching 2:00assistant I was assigned to work in The University Writing Center, which was actually brand new at UofL, and also a brand new setup; it had just been moved to the University Library. So in that space, then, we also had a new director: Professor Carol Mattingly. She was the founding director of the Writing Center in that new setup. So everything was new then, but it was especially new for me, because I'd never been around one before. So as a first semester-- well, I arrived in summer, so it was the second semester, technically, in the fall. So second semester, but still a first year MA student, I was working in the Writing Center not fully aware of how things work. Right? So I was taking that practicum 3:00class, learning the tricks of the trade if you will, and then working with students. Initially, I was working primarily with second language writers, but not because I was assigned to them one day, it just happened by chance; I also worked with native English speakers as well. Well, and I didn't know how things were going, but after one fine practicum discussion the director comes and then says that she heard all the praise about one particular Writing Center consultant is doing really well and it's Iswari. I didn't know what to expect, I'd never seen a university writing center before that point. So, you know, I only have very happy memories. You know who it was about and then she said oh everybody's worried. Okay. Oh, I know what to expect. You know, as I personally 4:00never done anything of that kind, never even seen a Writing Center University Writing Center before coming to Louisville. Yeah, so I have only very happy memories of working there.

TI: For me, when I was applying to MA programs. I feel like I'm kind of in a bit of a period of flux with regard to my identity. I don't really know I played baseball for a long time and that was kind of who I am who I thought of myself as a now I'm not doing it anymore. And obviously I'm much more focused on scholarship and Academia. Was the moment when Dr. Mattingly complimented you, and was like you actually you've don a great job, the moment when the switch kind of flipped in your head that you envisioned that this could be your career, or was there a different moment when working in the Writing Center when the work 5:00clicked and you thought WC work would be fulfilling in life?

IP: I just talked about was certainly a gratifying one. I think it was just a series of moments like that and the kind of work I was doing primarily with students, and then the satisfaction I was drawing out of it, and I think that ultimately led to rhet/comp and then I took a few other classes in rhetoric. Initially, I was more a Literature Theory kind of guy because the MA at Louisville is just in English, and I was not at the time sure of my concentration or anything. We did pretty standard MA English which was the case with my first university in Nepal as well primarily, I did British-lit. I digress, really it was a series of, you know, events like that and a class I 6:00took in second year of my Masters in rhetoric that kind of convinced me that I wanted to go into rhet/comp, yeah, that's what definitely got me interested.

TI: yeah, and so are you initially from Nepal?

IP: Yes.

TI: Would you would you say that your background as an immigrant has helped you 7:00work with people to develop their writing style?

IP: Well, I would like to think that it's been helpful. Although sometimes you know, there are awkward moments because I learned English as a fourth language so my encounter with it was as a class subject; I came late to English, if you will, although I do most of my reading and writing, now, in English because it's how I earn my living. That said, there are times when definitely, you know, your multilingual background helps you develop a certain kind of patience; a certain 8:00kind of nuance to look for ways of connecting what people might be trying to say; a greater patience for ambiguity, for a multiplicity of interpretations.

TI: Wha, would you say, is the difference between the process of writing and developing writing and the process of solving an equation from your point of 9:00view? Because I feel like the way writing works is the idea of this sort of mess of information in your head being transmitted into something coherent on the page. I've always felt like that's a much more all-encompassing process than maybe like solving a just an equation. What do you think? What is your perspective on the writing process from head to page?

IP: Oh, absolutely. Writing is much more complicated than people sometimes think it is, because writing is not just putting words on the paper or screen, these days. It's a lot of thinking, rethinking--a ton of reading--and then, as 10:00students of rhetoric, we know there are also things, exigencies which make us write. Sometimes these are as mundane as an assignment in a writing class, right? Or sometimes there may be very profound moments where we feel inspired. There are also moments where you just want to write because you feel like writing; moments when you feel compelled to record something because we live in a documentary society; which is why we hear about what people are doing in the White House everyday; you know, writing as proof of witness in hopes of avoiding expensive lawsuits later; I guess nowadays every read counts as evidence. With 11:00that said, in academic writing it's more than just our record of thought, it's also the way to develop our thoughts and arguments and to find constraints or contradictions. Within them; and that's you know, if you ask me personally, the best way I find contradictions in my own thoughts and in some sense instantly after I write something down; I read and then I begin to see oh, that's okay, but now what? So when I start reading my own writing that's when I start discovering contradictions in my thoughts or assumptions and you know, then, revising and rethinking helps me make sure that I had a more coherent thought 12:00pattern. So it's a lot more complicated than people tend to think, where literacy is just alphabetical literacy. We always have, you know, all these different kinds of things in mind. Sometimes very consciously; sometimes we may not be thinking about them at the moment, but they are working there, things like exigence, or rhetorical situations, or the audience's purpose, or why are we writing? You know, even if nobody else is asking us to write we are writing for a reason, right? So it's a very complex and very human activity as well. And so very important. I would say.

TI: So it seems you're describing writing is kind of like a feedback loop, almost as if you have the information in your head then you put it down and when 13:00it's on the page it's no longer in your head so there can be a sort of interchange or negotiation between your own reaction to what's written and then the more you read that in turn feeds your own perspective on the argument you're making which thus allows you to kind of refine it. I've always felt, especially listening to Bronwyn as he would talk to us and our in our Writing Center class, that writing is a very psychological act; to what degree would you say. Psychological insight feeds into Writing Center research?

IP: Well, in the 70s and there was some research called the cognitive approach to writing research, where they were trying to connect the thought process to 14:00writing process and studying how students actually think and then write and that kind of thing and these days with the invention of new technologies and also new developments in Neuroscience, for example, people are looking at it differently; what neurons are actually activated when write different kind of things? It's an exciting area, I think. But it's not just thinking, you know, because we also know that we don't think in vacuum; there are all these other things--social, cultural, political and historical forces that set us in certain ways. So, while 15:00it's very important to think about the thought patterns and thought processes behind writing, you want to phrase them and then our understanding of the act of writing as it's equally important to look at what forces influence our thoughts about those topics and even the act of writing. So in Writing Center research, also, these are some of the important things I think about.

IP: In the latter part of my work at Louisville as a doctoral student--actually in the last year or second to last year there--I was also involved in the National Writing Center Research Project, so we actually conducted/developed surveys to, you know, accumulate data on Writing Centers and actually we also had our survey results published in the writing center journal. We didn't 16:00necessarily focus on anything specific; our goal in that piece and in that survey was just to understand how writing centers operationalized ideas about their broader function, Writing Center consultants and also, you know, the physical infrastructure resources available to WCs elsewhere. So our goal was to produce something that new and upcoming writing centers could also use it as a kind of benchmark in order to advocate for more resources and all kinds of 17:00things. So, I don't know if that answered a question.

TI: For sure, absolutely. I read that piece and what struck me is your at least initial focus on how the way that writing centers think of themselves in relation to parts of the institution. Like I got the notion of affiliation and a Writing Center Program, like how, you know, there is or isn't a fluctuation of students depending on whether or not the Writing Center is perceived as being only a product of The English Department versus being connected to other parts of the University, which I found that interesting, at least in the initial conceptualization of the terms, and the way that you all kind of explained where you felt that whether there was or was not enough information available to situate Writing Centers in University.

IP: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We were also looking at what people call Writing 18:00Center consultant so tutors or so--those kinds of things--we were also looking at salary, for example, or about the institutional location, like where the Writing Center is on campus and what was their relationship with other units on campus for sure. So because that still is in a lot of places a very important issue. At my current University for example, I'm still kind of fighting for some of the things that we talked about in that piece.

TI: It's interesting to me because I've always thought that working in the 19:00Writing Center feels like teaching writing is such a sort of incorporeal process. It varies so much person to person; what will and will not help someone articulate what's in their head; so I felt that it was a very interesting and important that you all wanted to codify if, for example, that if we paid our Consultants a little bit more that means that more people might come in; if you know, there are just small modifications that can be made to a Writing Center to sort of radically legitimize the idea that what we do is actually something very important that can be made much much more procedural by the University; if we just do a couple things then made-appointments will exponentially increase. So 20:00what was the situation like in the Writing Center right when you started versus how you saw it develop throughout your tenure at UofL?

IP: When I started it was a very early stage for University Writing Centers and so, you know, initially we didn't even have all the furniture that was necessary for the first few weeks, but we started having all these kind of things where we had students come in, we would go to classes to do a little demonstrations about what we do, right? We talked about the kind of services we were providing and then sometimes we also ran workshops in class on a given topic like 22:00documentation and citation--how to cite sources--or sometimes on such things as topic sentences are how to spot and fix--right, as if it's that easy--run on sentences, comma splices, you know fragments and all those kinds of things though punctuations and stuff. So we did all kinds of those things and we because--initially we also had to advertise and like you said earlier we needed to bring the Writing Center to that attention of people that are working across all those different academic units--so people knew and would then send their students and recognize the value and be supportive of the growth of the Writing Center which was necessary. Right? And then, of course, we also needed support 23:00from the Provost Dean and everybody. So for me personally just being part of that and working in all those different roles, you know as a writing consultant in the center, but also sometimes as an Ambassador, right? In those different kinds of writing classes. Later on, they became a fully functional, fully developed and also fully recognized unit on campus. So by the time I was finishing my PhD we were invited by different departments to do workshops; not only for students, but also for professors like how to teach for example documentation and citation, or how to create assignments. I do remember a few 24:00incidents where you know, the professor in political science, you know, had a lot of problems with his students turning in assignments that he thought he wouldn't have to deal with, and so we took a look at his assignments and it was not an isolated incident--we are looking at other professors assignments also--but his assignment was just one line and then students really didn't know what the expectations were. So we talked about all those kinds of things. And so he developed it into a paragraph form, you know, assignment, and then later on one day he just walked in to the Writing Center and said "oh my goodness you help me teach me so much," and that was really a great moment and there were moments like that; we did that in the Natural Sciences, you know physics and chemistry, and also in social sciences and other Humanities departments and we 25:00and interesting interactions, but it was always good to find your own work validated.

TI: Absolutely that's what I think a lot of people don't really get. One of the things that I've latched onto as I've worked in the Writing Center is- a lot of what we read about in theory and a a lot of the intellectual icebergs I've been exposed to, you know, are about the idea that it's wrong to kind of assume that they is a sort of is a unilateral or one-dimensional reason why someone might fail in accomplishing something within a process. For me, one of the things that I've been good at is sort of explaining the boundaries of assignments or 26:00articulating what a professor actually wants from an assignment because so often professors will write assignments that are ridiculously unclear, and and you and you expect that that won't be a problem and or you expect that if someone doesn't adequately complete an assignment, it's because there's a problem on the end of the writer, when in reality a lot of that could be mitigated if someone were to just more clearly articulate what needs to happen, and so I've been very interested in talking with people, talking to some professors, talking to students, about the ways that they can read an assignment and then sort of extrapolate out the strictures and the boundaries and what's expected that that isn't really articulated. So I think that that's been a very cool part of what 27:00I've done is learning how a question is phrased affects enormously what sorts of answers you get and so I appreciate what you just said. What was the technology situation like when you were working in the Writing Center? Because that's such an enormous part of both school during COVID and you know just in general, so I'd imagine that it has absolutely revolutionized what takes place in a Writing Center. From your perspective, how did that develop throughout your time at UofL?

IP: It developed quite a bit, you know initially, and not just me, but my whole cohort, right, we were not that fluent in technology, except, you know, typing 28:00up stuff and things of that nature. But in my six years there--for my first Masters and then PhD--we were talking about multi-modal technologies and multimodal projects. And so now you can imagine the distance that we had covered right within that period of six years. So that was monumental if you will. It was great. But then we also didn't have smartphones until then, until actually 2007. You know right? So 2006 is like the previous era in a way and we didn't have some of the technology that we do here. Everything was part of the internet as it is now which, you know, luckily, it seems during a pandemic is very 29:00helpful. So we didn't do online consulting at the time. Although later on we were accepting student papers also online and then we also, you know, looked at reading student papers on the screen. Sometimes we didn't we didn't always ask them to bring print out; if they had an issue they could come because we had pretty good computers and the time, you know for the time and so we could just feed them with them and then, yeah, work on their stuff right then and there that was also possible and later on we also had actually a set of video cameras, audio recorders, for students working in multimodal projects so they could create their projects.

TI: It's interesting to me because like in 2020, you know, I'm 25 years old--or 30:00it's 2021 now, not really, 2020 hasn't ended yet--but it's strange because when I was younger, I feel like looking back, when I look at my laptop or phone, and it feels as though when I think back to like 2005-2006 when I had a computer still and it was like--with a flat screen monitor--it feels as though the technology hasn't really changed that much, when the hardware hasn't necessarily, but the software really has, you know, like our Zoom meeting right now, this interview. Did you have any sort of computer to computer video conferencing?

IP: Yes. We did Skype was the only one available at the time, but you know, we 31:00would have all kind of issues; lag and then the quality wouldn't be that good and we would get disconnected a lot. So yeah, I do, you know, it had a lot of things to do with also not just the software part but also the internet speed; we used to have DSL in a lot of places; broadband connection was not easily available everywhere, just, it was very new--it was usable but not as fast and that kind of thing definitely.

TI: [I ask a very long question about where Dr. Pandey sees higher education 32:00going in the future and where he believes the Writing Center will fit into that vision; 37:50-40:10]

IP: Well, you answered some of the question when you said people were writing more, right? Well they're using more media and engaging with writing more. That said, it's not like people are writing more poetry or something like that, but they're writing more and more and more people are writing and more people are reading as well. They may not just be reading the classics, you know, that kind of thing, but they're reading, because they have to; there is no other option. So the Writing Center is, you know, in whatever form it is whether the unit is on canvas or as a resource online, in whatever form, it's going to be very very important because what's really important in this new emerging age is the ability to think about and process/analyze all the information that's out there. So we need that kind of information literacy. So writing is not just about writing academic essays, it's also about, you know, reading processing and analyzing the kinds of information we get, because we need to read and process information before we can write most of the time anyway; and then also of the conventions of different genres, how do you navigate them and also not to get in trouble. So the Writing Center, I think, is going to be all the more important, not less important. It doesn't matter what the form of higher education takes, it's going to be there, of course. Some people were afraid that maybe because of this push to all online classes, maybe there would be very, you know, big layoffs and maybe University presidents and governors would be pushing more and more toward online classes; and it seems like no, they're not, because they know students don't like only online classes; teachers are not happy to teach just online classes; and it appears that even, you know, presidents and, well in our case one president at that time, right, but we just had a transition and we know two presidents right now with both having something to do with the pandemic. So both presidents and governors--really everybody--seems to like the idea of having on campus classes. So you got right the case with students and teachers and everybody. So of course, this is forcing people to re-think I education in some way, and I think there may be some silver lining something positive comes out of it, and not just about it cut but some other things, but yes, of course we're going to need more and more more interactive classes and also online classes. I mean just delivering lectures online is not class, right--it can be close, it's more than just rolling out an assignment and telling the students to just do it, you know, because education is so much more. So the Writing Center is going to be at the center, I would say, because it involves everything we do on campus. If anything, I think it's going to be all the more important. That's my two cents, anyway.

TI: [44:30-46:45 is my response, I then move to my next question] How would students sign up for their appointments?

IP: Oh, yeah, we had something I think it was called "ecutrack" or something, yeah, that was system installed on our computers. And so, you know, they would sign up/sign in basically; later on they could sign up online also, but initially they would stop by the front the desk and then sign up for the time that they wanted to come in and see and yeah, and then the front desk person, whoever it is, could pair a student with a consultant that so they could wait and meet with who they were familiar with, right? So that was one option often available to students and we used to keep a log, also, especially for a frequent visitors, and so we knew issues we worked on with that particular student so the next time they came we could just take a look at it and then I'll okay last time that student came in they particularly focused on this kind of thing, writing an argument or maybe paragraph issues, if there was the case, or even if it's a subject-verb agreement issue that's prominent in their writing. After that, at the end of session, we always wrote a very short summary of what we did as consultants, so next time the student comes we could just quickly browse through the summaries and then that could inform what you can do with that student.

TI: This might be a question that I should know the answer to, but did you just do face to face consultations or was there just written feedback as well?

IP: Primarily consultation. But later on we also started giving some online feedback, but it was very limited for some time, and there was some miscommunication also, especially in the Sciences. I think there was one particular case in Chemistry, a professor told his PhD advisees that they could turn in dissertation chapters and get feedback. And so, I remember having some discussion in the Writing Center about that. And so we recommended that they come with the dissertation chapter, or may be a part of the job, because I know sometimes the chapters would be long and you couldn't, you know, complete working on it in a single sitting. But then sometimes, you know, students and even faculty would expect you to do the editing and that kind of thing. I'm sure you know, even today we see some people who have those kind of expectations, but it was not primarily online the way we think it now. It's like, you know, these day you can share the same document, you can be looking at the same document or you can have Zoom and then share your screen, right? And I definitely like this during some of my student conferences, using Zoom is what we do. We share screens. We took a look at the same draft and sometimes we also write on the same draft together, collaboratively. So none of these things were possible.

TI: so it seems as if by the way you're describing it that--and you you stated that Dr. Mattingly was the one who ran the Writing Center, correct? [yes]--when you talk about making decisions like when you speak about having sort of a collective conversation within the Writing Center of about, for example, whether or not you'd accept full PhD chapters; was the power structure more of a kind of collective where you could bounce ideas off Dr. Mattingly? Or was there more of a stringent hierarchy where, you know, she would just kind of tell you what to do and then you had to do it?

IP: I think we discussed it but, you know, primarily the decision would be Professor Mattingly's for sure, but it was not like she would say like, "this is what you must do or not," you know oftentimes when there were issues we went to her or, you know, sometimes professors from other departments who would defer to her, so she would be the one you'd be dealing with, you know negotiating what was possible or not. But any time we had that kind of issue we also talked about that within assistant directors and director meetings, and we thought of it as a pedagogical because, you know, that taught us a lot about how to deal with expectations and what can we do about it when we talk about Writing Center services during those presentations, for example. So we used our experience to devise plans for what we needed and that was very productive.

TI: [53:00-55:10 I spoke about working with a student on a dissertation chapter, it didn't have to do with the questions] Have you seen that the typical writing style or the typical approach to writing has that evolved at all from your perspective, or have students really always sort of had the same pitfalls and the same issues as you've observed throughout your time in Academia and in WCs?

IP: Well, I don't think we should necessarily think of writing in terms of that kind of evolution because, you know, writing, like we said earlier, responds to a lot of, you could say, stimuli right? It's a response to a lot of those different kinds of exigencies, and so you can't really compare what it was. What we can do is we can look at the way people talk about writing in different times, you know, the very early stages of writing or teaching composition for example at Harvard right in the 1870s, and then these days some of the rhetoric that is used to discover writing is the same; we talk about writing almost the same way, like, "students can write," right. We may mean different things okay, back then it was certain kind of first year students, these days It may be about different kinds of students at different kinds of institutions and sometimes at this University. It's also about high school students or even the general population because the expectation is we have mass literacy so everybody should be able to write something, right? at a certain level. So my short answer is that I don't think we should or that we can necessarily create a kind of linear trajectory or model like, okay, we're here and then we evolve and we got there, but this kind of thing in such a short span of time. So what may be more productive or useful is 1) to maybe think about the rhetoric of writing; how we talk about writing and how writing instruction takes place and 2) the kind of exigencies define different kinds of writing; different genres, or the way newer media, right, influence that is both in the way they facilitate and also in certain way impede certain kinds of writing certain kinds of transmission of writing, or accentuate right or not certain aspects and proliferation of writing. Those kinds of things, I think, are definitely important issues.

TI: Do you think that there's any relationship between always writing in that sort of abbreviated shorthand you see on social media and writing longer, sort of more intricate pieces?

IP: I would think about it slightly differently because, you know, people who complain about writing just by looking at social media posts are not really paying attention to these two issues, 1) genre; so to the media, right? "Oh, where are they writing?" Okay, or 2) platform. So it's really important to pay attention to that because you know, you can't say like, oh someone's tweet or Facebook post or Instagram post isn't as elegant as Hamlet's dialogue-- of course, it can't be because they're not supposed to be competitors, right? So I think it's really important to pay attention to the genre and then the platform from the audience, the purpose, you know, comes to basic rhetorical concepts of writing basically, right? So I think there is a lot to be said about those kinds of things and and we should not be rushing to judgment or writing or writers based on what they write on a given platform for a given audience or purpose because the same person can write something else, in another place. At the same time, too, there is something good to be said about these different platforms also, you know; Twitter, for example, if you have to compose your Tweet in hundred forty or fewer characters it puts a certain kind of constraint on you, so you go to the resources in terms of treating the word right kind of words and effect and sometimes means and all kinds of things to accentuate what do you want to say right in a way that's possible and also in a way that people are going to read because you know research is already showing that even if you write a long Facebook post people are not reading it. All they're doing is maybe getting the first one or two lines--as opposed to short tweets--and so it's really important that you know, because they come to your Facebook or Twitter feed not looking for an essay but looking for a very short, clear kind of comment; and so I think we can't generalize it just that we have all the different kind of platforms where writing is proliferating.

TI: [more dialogue about social media and its affect on writing, Dr. Pandey also mentioned his time at UofL was from 2000-2006; 1:04:30-1:06:40] So you I don't know if you said this or if this was part of Bronwyn's notes, but when you were working at the Writing Center it was on the third floor of the library. Is that correct?

IP: Yes.

TI: Throughout your time, how did the-- and you said you did your ma and PhD, so would that have meant that you were there for about five years?

IP: Yes.

TI: How did the how did the space develop and what exactly would you do during your time period or during the time in between consultations?

IP: Um, in 2000 they had just moved the Writing Center to the third floor, and that was the first time we had the Writing Center there and a University Writing Center with the full-time faculty professor as its director. So that was all new for Louisville's at the time. And later on the space was added so there was space added for an assistant director--associate director actually--and then a little staff room where consultants would sit and chat and then this long hall where we would have all these different tables for consulting stations with computers. So yeah, it developed slowly but then I can't remember the exact year when all that happened. But you know, it was maybe in the second year or so. Then we started having those computers and then that was it.

IP: Where is the Writing Center these days?

TI: We are on the first floor. We're actually in such an awesome place. It's so cool. It makes me really really sad that I'm doing this during COVID because I can't really experience it. If you're facing the entrance to the Writing Center the wall to the right is entirely glass window panes that look out to the library. And then in the front room there are I think about six tables that are just sitting in this big area that's kind of like a triangular room, and then at the front is Amber, our office administrator. Then we also have three rooms that are kind of sequestered computer rooms where you can consult via computer, and then in the then there's Bronwyn's office, and then to the left is another office where Cassie works; she's the assistant director of the Writing Center. There's also, you know, an area for all of us plus another room with a bunch of computers. So it's pretty cool and then, obviously, all the walls are covered with sort of like psychedelic art work, you know, like books folding into rainbows and highly drawn pictures of people writing which is cool. It's a you know, zen is a weird word, but it feels like the room has great Feng shui. I don't know if that's a weird term, but that would be how I would describe it.

IP: Yeah, sounds great. Last time I think they were talking about moving it there.

TI: It's beautiful, you know, and like I said, it's very sad that the context is what it is. [The last bit from 1:10-1:17 is me asking Dr. Pandey what he thinks about American culture, he's an "eternal optimist," I then profusely thanked him and parted ways].