I was a high school senior in 2005 when I attended “Fantastic Friday” at USF, a day for prospective applicants to tour the campus, ask questions, and learn why they should choose the University of South Florida. During the first session, the speaker emphasized how many undergraduates return to USF for additional degrees; he joked that USF means U Stay Forever. Little did I know, three graduations later, that I would serve as living proof of this motto.

I began as an education major, hoping to teach high school English. I quickly found myself uninspired by the education courses but absolutely engrossed in the literature ones. I switched my major to English in a decision that made my professional future less certain while allowing me to thrive in the present. I developed an unhealthy obsession with the novel Grendel by John Gardner and wrote my honors thesis on it. Throughout that project, my thesis director introduced me to the concept of precision in writing, which she believed distinguished undergraduate essays from scholarly composition, aka the cerebral and esoteric prose of “the big boys.”

My time in English Honors also prepared me for postgraduate work in other ways. Alongside a small group of students and our faculty sponsor, I helped resurrect the USF chapter of Sigma Tau Delta (Omega Mu). Our meetings acquainted me with professional networking, fellowship, and the dynamic responsibilities of running an organization.

The warnings against pursuing a Master’s degree in English were ubiquitous, even in conversations with my professors. But that’s what I did next. I had taken an extra summer semester to finish my thesis, so barely two weeks elapsed between crossing the stage and returning to Cooper Hall as a graduate teaching assistant. I joined a diverse and vibrant cohort studying composition pedagogy. USF’s Rhetoric & Composition department designs the introductory writing curriculum with contributions from graduate students. I wrote articles for our course textbooks, celebrated the work of undergrads on the Student Success Committee, and learned invaluable lessons from my trial-by-fire initiation into the realities of teaching. As a member of the English Graduate Student Association (EGSA), I helped organize colloquiums, recruited English majors, mentored undergraduates, and presented conference papers for the first time. I wrote my Master’s thesis on the parallels between H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

After I graduated, I taught community college for two years to the tune of a call from philosophiae doctor that grew louder with time. The opposition I’d encountered when considering a Master’s in English was nothing compared with the furious objections to earning a Ph.D. Googling “doctorate in English” amounted to a rallying cry for Ph.Ds and ABDs with horror stories about massive debt, zero job prospects, social isolation, unreasonable workload, and regular criticism from professors that, for many, became an insidious force feeding on students’ self-worth.

I disregarded all of it and spent the next five years earning my doctorate. For various reasons, I was what they call “place-bound,” meaning it would have been very difficult to move to a new area. So, I found myself back at USF. I knew full-time instructional positions in my discipline were few and far between, and, supposedly, attending the same institution for all three degrees significantly lowered the chances of landing an interview. It was something I would figure out later. For now, I had returned to the academic study of literature – my intellectual bread and butter that, more than anything else, gave me a sense of purpose. I was writing articles for scholarly journals. I was speaking at conferences across the country. I was discovering the stark difference between peer reviewing a classmate’s rough draft and undergoing professional peer review for publication. I was playing with the big boys.

The concept of place, which influenced me to choose USF again, became central to my academic contributions as a doctoral student. I explored the provocative and rewarding field of ecocriticism, which allowed me to merge my interests in human-animal ethics and environmental activism with the study of literature. My dissertation was born from a course on Florida literature, which focused on place attachment, or the emotional connections people make with physical locations. We discussed the relationship between identity and place, and the kinds of advocacy this attachment can produce. For me, reading literature set in Florida through that particular lens revealed the essential role of animals in how writers attempt to portray and define the state. Ultimately, I argue that literature about Florida depicting place attachment and its reliance on animal presences can promote activism on behalf of Florida’s nonhuman natural world. I graduated from USF for the third (and probably final) time in December of 2018.

That was 8 years ago. I have yet to secure full-time residence in the ivory tower. I am thankful that my husband’s salary allows us to get by with me adjuncting, but there’s only so much of that a person can take. It’s only natural to wonder if I made the best decisions throughout my academic path; someone looking in would have every reason to question my judgments. And if given the chance to start over in 2005 – well, that doesn’t matter much, does it? Despite it all, I can say with candor that I am proud of the work I produced over those 10-odd years and grateful for the knowledge and skills I gained. Plus, being called “Doctor” never gets old.