Just Brainstorming

As I continue to work on this article--THE article I should have written from the work in my dissertation--I find myself wondering, what's next?

I am in year 2 on the tenure-track. I have three years to go. There is time, if I start now, to get another project (or two) going. But there is also the question about whether to take this current project to the stage of book proposal--and the question of what that book would look like.

By the time I finish this article, I think I will feel as though I have milked the project for a good deal of what it is worth. What next?

Ideas:

• Adult learners in the comp classroom (a one semester ethnographic project)
• College writers transitioning into workplace writers (a 2-3 year project)
• Adult learners writing in the academy (a longitudinal, multi-year project)
• WID project, writing in accounting (a one semester or more project)
• A project which involves writing teachers at the post-secondary level, engages them in discussion about the public nature of what they do, publicly invented new classes.

Perhaps I should begin drafting the next project this semester, so I can get something new up in the air for A) next year's CCCC's proposal and/or B) the International Conference on Writing proposal. But what? Who should I talk to about this? Who can I talk to?

And then, of course, there is the issue of study design and getting IRB approval, which would be necessary for any/all of these ideas.

I'm thinking that one way of doing this could be:

1. Finish the "Carry" article this fall--send out for publication.
2. Initiate the conversation with Jane this week about working together next term (depending on her course schedule) on writing with accounting students.
3. Begin drafting an IRB proposal to find perhaps a dozen graduating seniors from various discplines to follow as they transition from college to work in 2010. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Anne Beaufort's work with "Tim" in College Writing and Beyond. But just focusing on the last semester and the transition to work--a series of interviews, the first one coming just before the graduate and then perhaps quarterly after that?