My name is Greta Mau and I’d love if you’d refer to me using she or they pronouns. This semester, I began stumbling through my last year of UWM’s Secondary English Education program. Thus far, I’ve earned a minor in Theatre, which I also hope to teach someday. Juggling fieldwork and my senior year has defined my past month. Working toward full-time student teaching while attending regular coursework makes me relate to my 10th grade students more than I thought possible. Just like them, I’m bustling, red-faced, up steep flights of cracked concrete only to slide into someone else's non-assigned spot five minutes before the bell. Like them (as always) I’m playing weeks of procrastination-based catch-up. The tension of impending obligation sands me smooth. Only, I don’t have my mom to blame it on, anymore.
I love sharing my writing, but especially with an environment in place to receive feedback. It is so important for me to receive critical and formative advice in order to claim that I’ve actually completed something. In the same way, my favorite part of writing is the workshopping. As a future English educator currently building my pedagogy, it is vital that I expand upon my ability to critique in real time. The stories I enjoy most are stories that feel lived, rather than larger-than-life tales. When working with students, I emphasize forming clear and direct narratives (which I need to work, on, myself) while finding moments of idiosyncrasy. Personally, I struggle most with meeting word count. I find myself writing out my entire idea in the smoothest way possible, and then needing to add clunky paragraphs to satisfy the prompt.
As I’ve said above, writing and teaching about writing is about all I’ve been able to cram into my full head lately. But when I do have time and space to myself, I love to play guitar, write bad poetry (without necessity– so more like journalling), and play narrative-based videogames. More than anything, I love living in Milwaukee on the three nights every autumn when the fog is so thick that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. When I first moved to the Sandburg dorms it was the peak of the pandemic. Surrounded by 3,000 kids I didn’t know and one-person-per-room limits, Milwaukee felt massive and looming and foreign. At least, until it was blanketed by the soft cushion of mist off of the lake and one night, felt somehow intimate. Like Lake Park wasn’t some dot on a globe but grounded, just one place within my drastically limited perception. Slowly, I could bite off this big city one chunk at a time, breathing in the dew from last night's rain. Everything caught under rolling waves, coated and sweating, and me, too. I just love to be in the fog.
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