Dr. Abigail RayAlexander, PhD in French Literature | Associate Professor of French at Kennesaw State University

In this episode, we discuss the unexpected ways that Edgar Allen Poe inspired Abby to pursue her PhD in nineteenth-century French literature, her advice for embracing uncertainty and having an open mind when it comes to finding your first post-graduate job, and the ways her personal and professional priorities have evolved since her first experience on the academic job market to landing her current tenure track position at Kennesaw State University.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

To connect with Abby and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi! I'm co-host Lois Dankwa and this is the 100 alumni voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today, we're joined by Abigail RayAlexander PhD in German and romance, languages and literatures and Current Assistant Professor of French at Kennesaw State University. Hi Abby. 

Abigail RayAlexander 

Hi, Lois! Thanks so much for having me. 

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. How are you doing today?

Abigail RayAlexander 

I'm doing well. How are you?

Lois Dankwa

I'm good. I'm excited to dive in, and looking forward to our chat.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Me too! Me too!

Lois Dankwa

So, I wanna start by hearing a little bit about what made you interested in pursuing a degree in German and romance languages and literature, and just learn more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely. So, it's a mouthful that degree, and that that is what I understand the former name of the department now. I think that they have renamed the department, so my degree was in French literature, nineteenth-century French poetry and literature was the concentration and what brought me to French it started early. So, I was fortunate to be taking French courses at the age of 8 that's when I started learning French, and it was required for all students at that time, and I fell in love with French from the beginning, and you know I wanted some other career possibilities that I've gotten to kind of incorporate into my current career. So, I thought about maybe being an editor for a while, and I thought about maybe going into comp-lit once I started taking the courses that were getting me a little bit closer to my area of specialization in undergrad. But then I met with an advisor in undergrad, who recommended going for French. And so that's what I wound up going for.

Lois Dankwa

That's so cool, so it's so cool for a lot of reasons. One I've been trying and failing to teach myself French for like 12 years at this point, and I say failing, not because I've actively been putting the effort in, but it's more so that I like buy a book, or I download an app and I just don't commit to commit.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Well, if you'd ever like to audit a class, you are welcome.

Lois Dankwa

Wonderful. But I definitely wanna dig more into that then. So, you started learning French from a young age. But then I'm struggling to connect the dots between what made you really excited about French literature? Did it stem from being interested in language and literature in general? And how did that influence how you thought about your degree when you were pursuing it?

Abigail RayAlexander 

So, what inspired the love for French literature was definitely an initial initial interest and passion for languages and language learning. I took a lot of French, and I took a lot of Latin, and I was in an academic environment from a young age where, being very committed to your academics, possibly being a nerd, was encouraged. So that was a little bit of a nice experience that I understand not everyone gets to enjoy from such a young age. So, so I fell in love with the language. I always loved literary studies, too. When I went to undergrad at Dartmouth College I took a freshman seminar on Edgar Allen Poe, and it was such an awesome experience. It was at like 4 o'clock in the afternoon but in New Hampshire, in the winter that's dark already at 4 o'clock. There were also a lot of birds that looked like ravens, in Hanover at that time, and so we, you know, do this creepy post seminar, and then step outside, and it's dark and there are ravens overhead and I fell head over heels in love with Poe. Poe was, you know, a nineteenth-century American writer. But he would have been forgotten amongst American audiences today, were it not for nineteenth century French writers who translated him into French, and then nineteenth century French readers fell in love with Poe, and then the United States sort of perked back up and were like oh, wait we have a good one here. Let's start reincorporating him into the classroom and making him more known in the States. So, I really got to nineteenth century French literature through Poe and I started to work on the translations that Charles Baudelaire had made of Poe’s works, and that brought me into the French nineteenth century.

Lois Dankwa

I love the I love the little history lesson that you just provided as someone who has both really enjoyed, like from my own just creative writing and poetry, I think, enjoyed just Edgar Allan Poe. And I'm curious then, when you were pursuing your degree, like what does or what did, what direction did you see yourself going in, I guess?

Abigail RayAlexander 

The PhD, right? This degree? Yes. So, when I was getting a PhD, what I really wanted was to get a job very similar to the job that I have now, which is a it is the job I have now, a tenure track job in French. And I say that with a lot of gratitude to the program for helping me get here and with the recognition that I did not fully understand the reality of the academic job market when I first set foot into it. And I was very, very fortunate to get a first job out of grad school in a very small school in Indiana. That was really difficult. It was very, it was just an overload every semester, you know, which I think is something that a lot of people face in that first job, if they're going the academic route. I'm sure some people sail straight into R1 tenure track jobs. But you know mine was not an R1 immediate experience. So, I worked in that job for a few years, and then I came to the job that I have now, which is at Kennesaw State. It's coming home for me. I'm from Georgia originally, and so I got to be close to my grandmother in some family members here, and I am currently up for tenure right now, and so I just got through the provost level of tenure review and now we're going up to the President level as the final step. So, you know, it's I feel a little bit guilty about the career that I got, because I love it so much, but it is so difficult to get these tenure track jobs in the languages in particular, and I have so many wonderful friends from my PhD program who wound up going different directions. And they're all very happy now, you know. But this was kind of the goal for a lot of us, I think, at that time, and they're not just friends. My husband is someone that I met in the department, and he was in Spanish, and he's pivoted pretty dramatically in his career path, and he's very, very happy, and he's in the right place now. But you know it was, we both kind of wanted the thing that I have been fortunate enough to get.

Lois Dankwa

Well as again love so many parts of what you just mentioned. But as someone that loves a meet cute, I love that you met your husband through your program, but then I also love that you mentioned that kind of in your first role it was unexpected kind of what that role would be like, but then, also the application process and now you're in a moment where things are more familiar. One, because you've done Professor-ing for a bit, but also, you're back in Georgia. But I'd love to hear more about the experience of the unknown, like the unknown and kind of how you navigated that, and lessons learned, and things like that.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Sure, sure, and I think that it's telling that there are so many ways that I could take that the unknown here, because in a PhD I think it's kind of surprising to family members and surprising to people who aren't pursuing PhDs how unknown your future might be, and how there are a lot of different career paths open to us with these degrees, and you know, on a very just sort of basic level, like when I was on the job market, both before getting my first job and while I was getting my second job, too, there are just so many different places that you can wind up. So, I'd be calling my parents like well, it could be California or Maine or Nevada, you know, it's just all these different possibilities. And that's really, I think, exciting and invigorating, and also totally terrifying when you're just not sure what it's gonna look like at first. So that's one big unknown, and I think that a way that I grew following the first time on the job market was, I became increasingly discerning about the jobs that I applied for in academic jobs, you know. So especially after getting the first job and recognizing geographic preferences and the fact that I you know, didn't really love Southern Indiana and it was a little bit of a shock to the system after Baltimore, for sure, which I've loved. So yeah, I think that I became a little bit wiser about the jobs that were going to actually work for me. And a little pickier too. I needed to be a fit for both of us.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious then I can see some parallels in terms of how there is kind of that uncertainty and feelings of the unknown throughout pursuing a doctorate as well, and I'm curious if slash how parts or lessons that you learned from being in your program kind of prepared you for that moment where you were tested, or those same things were tested again.

Abigail RayAlexander 

I think that the PhD did a really wonderful job preparing me to work hard and manage my time on my own. I had an awesome PhD Advisor, who is Jacques Neefs. He's retired now, and he was amazing. And he was really, really open to a lot of different ideas that we brought to him. We had a lot of nineteenth century French-lit kids in the program and vastly different ideas of what we wanted to do with our dissertations, and he was really open and supportive of them. And so, I learned from him, and a lot of other teachers, Bill Egginton is another, one who comes to mind about the kind of teacher that I wanted to be when I became a teacher, and those were my research-oriented influences. But then there's the whole teaching-oriented realm, and that kind of stark divide between the 2 personalities that we can sometimes feel in the 2 roles. I don't think that it, you know, I think that it continued. I think I still feel like there's a pretty significant gap between my research persona and my teaching persona, or the the fields of work. But I was also very lucky to have some amazing models for language teaching while I was at Hopkins. So, in the languages we teach quite a bit, and we teach language courses on our own to students. At least we did when I was there, and so we really learned quickly how to handle the classroom environment. And I had a great guide for that who kind of molded me into who I am today. And the message across the board with the language teachers and with the research teachers that I was learning from was just kindness and openness and support, and that’s something that I think has really helped me with some of the challenges of working with groups of undergraduate students who aren't always quite as academically motivated and prepared as the Hopkins students.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's such a good point. Just to kind of remember the perspective of the especially in your role, the students and the people that you’re talking with and talking to, and a big thing that was coming up in what you were just talking about, was the role of mentors. But then also the importance of having a diverse set of mentors, and I remember when I was first starting my program, someone sent to me or sent to a group of me and people kind of this mentor chart, and it highlighted that all of your mentors fill different roles so they don't like like one person doesn't need to do everything, and I love that you highlighted that because it's so important.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely. I think that's so wonderful that you were given that chart. That's awesome. What a great tool! And absolutely yes, they can't. One person can't do it all for us. 

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I would love to hear I'd love to hear kind of really exciting advice or advice that you've held on to from one of your mentors or a couple of your mentors.

Abigail RayAlexander 

One is, I think, a little bit funny, and it is something that I've held onto. So, I wrote my PhD on Victor Hugo, a nineteenth century French Writer. And he is very well known for being extremely prolific and just has tomes and tomes of work. I think his complete works is over 20 volumes in the library at Hopkins, and so it's a lot to take on. And my adviser, I was having a meeting with Jacques Neefs one time, and we were talking about a play like probably the best-known play of Victor Hugo’s, and I was writing about it, and I was writing on the preface, but I hadn't read the play yet, and I told him that and he sort of smiled at me, and then he said, it is a very important thing to be able to write about things that we haven't read sometimes. Yes, it is. Yes, indeed it is. 

Lois Dankwa

That's true.

Abigail RayAlexander 

That's right. And I think that you know, especially as technology advances, we are in a place to be able to do research in a different way, and we should still very much read everything as much as we can. But also, it just kind of gave me the confidence that I needed at that time to feel like I could speak with some level of authority on Victor Hugo, even if I hadn't read every single one of his works.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that's such a good point, remembering that sometimes it's drawing on other other skills that you have and recognizing, okay, well, what are the patterns that are similar or different from the things I'm aware of and applying that.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely absolutely. Yup and now that we're talking about it, it was a question that came up in the interview that I had for the job that I have right now.  It makes me think of a question along those linkes, which was how would you teach a certain French course and it's a course that they wanted to know about an area of francophone studies that I am not at all an expert in. I know very little about, but most of my colleagues in my current department are experts, and they're really loaded in this one area and so I floundered pretty hard for a minute, trying desperately to just think of titles and authors and anything I could say, and after a little embarrassing moment of that I just kind of stopped and said you know what I would just ask my colleagues here, what would you advise I incorporate into a class like this, right? And so, I think that we're able to speak authoritatively on things that we haven't we don't feel like we've mastered maybe, and we're also able to say when we don't know things. And I didn't always do a great job of that as a grad student. I think sometimes I would try to pretend I knew things that I didn't know.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, well, we've we've all certainly been there before, so I can I can understand that. I did hear the other day someone was saying that your strength is recognizing your weakness. So sometimes, recognizing that you can't do a thing, and knowing the right person to do that thing, that's your strength. And sometimes it's the framing how you look at look at the situation, right. 

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely. I love that. 

Lois Dankwa

So, I'm curious then what advice would you give to someone who is kind of maybe in their doctorate program, or thinking about a post-doc moment afterwards, where they're looking for their next moment and they're in transition and they're concerned about the uncertainty and they don't know how to navigate that?

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely. I think that the advice that I would give is to be open minded about those first opportunities right out of grad school. So, you know, like the first job that I had was very, very challenging. But when I look back on it now, I like to play video games, too, and so, you know, it was kind of like I got so much XP, so many experience points, from being a little bit overworked for a few years in a place that I really never imagined myself being but I'm really glad I did it now, because not only did I get all that XP and coming into this job now felt kind of easy after that first one, even though it's a little bit of a step up in terms of a career. I just trained so hard in that first one that it became really easy. But I also had an impact on students’ lives in that first job in a way that I don't think I'm probably ever gonna have again. And I think being open minded, and being ready to find unexpected, surprising gifts, and also delights in this area of work that maybe we don't really think is going to happen for us that's something that I'm grateful for from that first experience out of the PhD.

Lois Dankwa

I love that. Staying open to open to the unknown, but then also just open, because you don't really know what wonderful things will come from the experience if you get too caught up in the scary parts of it.

Abigail RayAlexander 

That's exactly right. And you know, this is something I talk about with a lot of friends who are, you know, still on the market, still finding a place where they're gonna wind up and retrospectively, I think that all the doors that have been closed to me were closed so that other doors could be opened, and that I feel really happy with where I wound up now, and like this is where I'm supposed to be, and it had to be the way that it was to get me here.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, no, I'm a believer of things happen for a reason. So that’s definitely something I'll remember and carry from this conversation, and it's the chat so far has inspired me. And I'm curious as my last question, what inspires you right now?

Abigail RayAlexander 

A lot of things. Yeah, thank you for saying that first of all. That's really kind. And I think my primary source of inspiration right now is probably my family, my, you know my husband and my our new son, that we just had a few months ago has been, you know we were warned by some professors from the department at Hopkins, that this is going to take up a lot of your time. But you also get this sort of super power of being able to do your work really quickly. And I kind of doubted when they said that. I was like I do pretty hard work already. I think I'm already using my time well. But no, they were right. It's like you have 20 min. Do everything you can in those 20 min. And so that's that's a big motivator. And I think that I'm in a place of transition for motivation, too, in my career, because I am up for tenure, and so preparing the tenure packet isn't the motivator anymore. You know, there, there's another step up after that. There's moving from associate to full. So, I do plan to do that in the future. But that's not even a requirement, you know. You don't have to do that. So, it's kind of a matter of internalizing the motivation at this point, and it's a nice part, and I shift, I think, because now, rather than worrying about all the boxes that I need to be checking off all the time, I’m looking with even more of an eye towards what is it exactly that I want to do right now? And how do I want to spend my time? 

Lois Dankwa

Right. It's going back to the being selective about what you're picking, knowing that you like did the thing that you'd been working years or decades for. And it's like, oh, okay, well.

Abigail RayAlexander 

What now, yeah.

Lois Dankwa

Right, right. It's which is not a bad place to be in, but it's definitely requires some thinking, because you have so many options. And that can be overwhelming, so just taking a moment is sometimes necessary. 

Abigail RayAlexander 

Absolutely. Yes, and I took a nice little moment right after Theo was born. So, yes.

Lois Dankwa

Well, I'm glad to hear. Abby, it's been so wonderful to chat with you today. I've loved hearing a little bit about your experience, and what got you to this moment now.

Abigail RayAlexander 

Thank you so much Lois. Best of luck to you and anyone else who’s listening.