Hooley comes to school(y)
Matt Hooley makes his debut as a visiting English professor at The College of Wooster
Anya Cohen
Features Editor
Matt Hooley, young and having newly entered academia, answered questions about his experience as a visiting English professor at The College of Wooster with zeal.
Cohen: What were you doing before you came to Wooster?
Hooley: I was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Cohen: How has your experience been thus far?
Hooley: It’s been great. I couldn’t have hoped for a better bunch of students and faculty members and it’s beautiful here.
Cohen: Is this where you envisioned yourself teaching after graduate school?
Hooley: I think that visions are somewhat of a luxury for people entering academia. The best kind of approach is to save your fantasies because there is no control about where you go. I did not necessarily anticipate working at a liberal arts school, even though I went to one and I believe in liberal arts. So in that sense, no, it was not at all. But I’m very glad to have done it; it’s changed my mind to what I want to do permanently.
Cohen: So you didn’t see yourself at a liberal arts school?
Hooley: Not originally, no. But now I think I do.
Cohen: What benefits do you see in teaching at a liberal arts college rather than a big state university?
Hooley: I really appreciate the way that you can think and teach between disciplines here in such an improvisational way. In class today we read basically a social science text that has nothing to do with writing at all. That is something that is much more restricted at research-oriented universities, especially in native studies which is something that I usually work in.
Cohen: How long will you be at Wooster?
Hooley: I will be here until, when does the term end? May? May or June? May or June.
Cohen: What are your plans for directly after?
Hooley: Well, I hope to be employed. The way that the cycle of jobs works for academics is that it begins in the fall and it takes six or eight months, so I won’t really know until spring. But during the summer I will definitely be going to Milwaukee because my wife, Mary, who is an adjunct here in the English department, just took a job as the deputy director for this thing called The Center for 21st Century Studies, in Milwaukee.
Cohen: So what happens if you get a job somewhere and she gets a job elsewhere?
Hooley: Well that’s what’s happening now. That was always a provisional question before, but it’s a real question now. What happens is that we do long distance for a while. It is a bummer. I remember meeting with one of her advisors right before we got married, and her advisor said “Don’t worry, my husband and I only did long distance for seven years, three of which we were raising a child.” The way things are these days, it’s something that is almost guaranteed to happen.
Cohen: What other jobs have you, or are you, considering?
Hooley: I think I would do best with having no job at all. I think I would do that really well. For a while I was a runner and it was kind of on my mind to do that professionally for the rest of my life, but I decided not to do that. I couldn’t do that and this at the same time so I had to choose. I guess I would be a writer, I suppose, if I didn’t do this.
Cohen: You are still relatively young, what are some things, teaching or non-teaching related, that you want to do over the next several years?
Hooley: Well, I would really like to finish my book, that’s a major priority. It’s about contemporary Native American writing in Minneapolis. I would like to do more teaching in environmental writing and the intersection of native studies. I’ve started doing more rock climbing instead of running and I hope to do that more. Maybe you should print that I hope that they put a climbing gym in the new Scot Center.
Cohen: What do you like most and least about teaching?
Hooley: Like all teachers, I like grading least. Not only because its incredibly time consuming but also because it kind of stinks to evaluate people. But I like everything else the best. I like, I’m trying to make this not corny, I like the sort of sense of unknowing. I’m not the kind of teacher who necessarily plans out everything that is going to happen in class down to the second and I kind of like the sense of spontaneous uncertainty that is a part of teaching.
Cohen: Got a fun fact or anecdotal story for me?
Hooley: No facts about oneself are fun, it’s impossible. There are lots of fun facts about other people…
After plenty of harassing, I was able to extract the story behind his marriage proposal to his wife.
Hooley: I proposed to Mary on the snowiest, most disgusting day in Wisconsin. It was cold and everything was soft and brown and horrible. We had both had super long days and I had gotten into a car accident because it was snowy. It was just not a good day. I came home, and it was right before we went away for Christmas, and she gave me a food processor. I was so taken by this food processor that I realized that the only thing that I could do to counter it was a marriage proposal, so that’s what I did.