Joan Bañez
Joanmarie is a second-year master’s student of English with a concentration in literary studies. Her research focuses on how Indigenous critical theory examines relationships between trauma, travel, and identity in contemporary Indigenous literature. Although not a native speaker, Joanmarie also speaks Spanish and enjoys working with L2 students. Her tutoring strengths lie in practical grammar, all things MLA formatting (some APA), poetic analysis, and personal statements. Joanmarie’s favorite sessions include working with tutees on longer projects, such as theses and thesis proposals of various fields, scholarship or application materials, and research-heavy assignments. Once a Welcome Center tour guide and undergraduate at GSU, she encourages students to use her as a resource to explore the hidden gems Georgia State has to offer. Joan also enjoys dank memes and occasionally (spontaneously) cutting her own bangs. Sometimes they look good, sometimes not. Come be the judge and visit her at the Studio!
Learn more about Joan!
Where are you from originally?
This one’s complicated. While I was actually born at Grady Hospital (perhaps its proximity to GSU is what drew me back here), I grew up in rural Hiram, Georgia. However, when people often ask me, “Where are you from?” they usually mean, “What’s your ethnicity?” To which I respond: I’m Filipina.
What are you studying and why?
I’m a Master’s student of English with a concentration in literary studies. My research primarily focuses studies of identity in Native American/Indigenous literature and literary theory through the lenses of transnationalism and critical race theory, philosophy of physics, and metaphysics.
What are your goals for after GSU?
I’m currently breathing a sigh of relief from having applied to Ph.D. programs on the west coast. Let’s hope I get in. Ideally, I would like to begin a Ph.D. program in English in Fall 2019 and expand upon my research interests with Indigenous literature to Pacific Rim literature.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned from tutoring?
I’ve learned to be patient with tutees and myself as a tutor. It’s so easy to forget that writing is a process and that spoken feedback doesn’t always transfer to the page. Patience, to me, means reminding myself as a writer, and my tutees as writers, to not rush the process of creative or academic writing. Sometimes this just means approaching whatever we’re working on from a different perspective; this could include writing without the stakes of an assignment in mind, writing or recomposing in a different form or medium, or simply deciding to take a step back from writing at all and just talk.
What’s the most memorable thing a student has ever said to you?
I can’t remember exactly what the student said word for word, but it was something like:
“So, actually––can we like not talk about writing right now? I really just need to be real and vent about this semester. It really just feel like I’m about to lose it.”
Me: “You and me both. What’s on your mind?”
How has writing influenced your life?
Yikes. “Yikes” as a good thing, though. “Yikes” as a visceral reaction, good and bad, to my own writing. Writing personal history statements and statements of purpose for Ph.D. applications this past semester really required me to sit down and get to know myself, outside of myself, on the page. This was exciting, confusing, frustrating, painful, reassuring––like many things in life. Writing, however, allowed me to get closer to a concrete understanding of myself, having also in mind that writing is always political. And stakes are always involved.
What advice would you give to someone looking to get where you are now?
Where even am I, really? Not to put my pretentious pants on, but what does this even mean? I’m first-year GTA who’s only a handful of years older than my students, who chose to begin
grad school a month after graduate school on a whim. Where I am right now is a state of becoming, which I’m convinced (and content) I’ll always be. My advice to someone who’s “becoming,” too, whatever that may mean to an individual, is to actively participate in getting to know your authentic self. Call yourself out on your biases, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, speak up for things important to you––even if that’s most uncomfortable, especially then.