In this interview, Dr. Emily Sok, a Writing and Rhetoric PhD student who recently defended her dissertation Reading Identity in Composition Scholarship: A Content Analysis on Reading, discusses her dissertation and defense process. We talk about how she chose her topic and research method, her experiences after pausing teaching, and how she tried new skills throughout her time in the program.
Congratulations on passing your defense! Can you talk a little bit about your dissertation and what it was about?
My dissertation was really about how we're not teaching reading, and we're not doing enough with reading.
Before I joined this program, I got a master's in education and taught fifth and sixth grade language arts. I was teaching college composition at the same time, and I saw some huge differences in how we're teaching reading. The more I started reading about it, the more I realized we're not really teaching reading in our composition courses.
When we are teaching it, if it's brought up at all, we're only talking about skills and strategies, but there are lots of factors that go into teaching reading besides skills and strategies. I started reading about reading in composition literature and found that my first observation was right: skills and strategies are the hill that every educator wants to die on at the college level and K-12. So, I did a project on reading with these observations in mind.
You recently successfully defended your dissertation. What did you do to prepare for that?
Preparing for the defense was a mystery. I've never done this before, and I think a lot of people are going to get to that moment and have the same unknowns.
I asked my committee chair, Dr. Courtney Adams Wooten, what I should expect and if there were questions that I could know about ahead of time. She said to think about the feedback that I was given throughout the review process [from my committee members]. From that feedback, Dr. Isidore Dorpenyo had asked me about defining structural oppression because I was writing about oppression, so I started reading about that.
I also asked Dr. Wooten what to do if I'm asked a question that I don't know how to answer, and she said I could say, “I don't know about that, can you tell me more?” I wrote down that question and read it back to myself a few times before the defense so that I would be able to remember it.
If anyone is preparing for the defense in the future, memorize the response, “I don't know about that. Could you tell me more? Could you give me some context?”
What classes or research experiences led you to this dissertation topic and method?
I chose qualitative content analysis specifically for a few reasons. I've been in college for forever, I've taken so many research methods courses, and they always go back to qualitative analysis. I felt that I wanted numbers to show why my research findings were believable, so I picked qualitative content analysis, specifically.
Also, I wanted to create a dataset that practitioners could use. I see this as a way that could help people who don't know how to teach reading. Most composition instructors are adjuncts. If you are faculty, you're not going to a ton of professional development meetings on the subject of reading.
[In regard to replicability,] I picked content analysis because you're counting codes. I counted the categories, and then I could say that I have a thousand references to skills and strategies here and no references to choice or personal aspects of reading. I really wanted something credible [and replicable].
It also had clearly defined steps, which were really helpful for me as an inexperienced researcher. It's really easy to do qualitative content analysis, but there are tons of limitations.
Moving away from the topic of your dissertation, but potentially alongside it, what are some other really cool accomplishments or things that you’re proud of that you’ve done while you’ve been here at Mason?
I think my biggest accomplishment is quitting teaching. I feel like that's an accomplishment because I wasn't sure if I wanted to teach full-time. You know how they assign books during summer reading? My life has felt like a permanent summer vacation ever since then. Essentially, all I've been doing is reading and writing. I think if I hadn't gotten so tired during those first two years in the program, I might not have let myself do that.
At first, I took an internship at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for data analysis, even though I'm a qualitative kind of person, not quantitative. I did a proposal writing course with Dr. Tom Polk, and then I got a proposal writing internship, and that was not my thing either. Still, this whole entire process was so cool because I got to try other things out. I went to the career fairs at Mason to try to find other internships that I might want to try. You don't get an opportunity like this as an adult...not very often. So, I highly recommend it.
What's really exciting is I then applied for the Doctoral Research Scholarship, and I won.
What was that experience like?
The Doctoral Research Scholarship is a grant that pays for two semesters of English 998: Doctoral Dissertation Proposal and/or English 999: Doctoral Dissertation. It pays for that, and it gives you additional money for your research.
I got ahead of my project. I got so far ahead. I ended up having 11,701 coded segments, and I had it done in about a month because I was doing it full-time. I didn't have a job, and I didn't have classes; I just had my project to work on.
That put me so far ahead that I ended up having drafts sent through to my committee members twice before the defense. Since I did take time off from teaching to focus on my research, I had no revisions after my defense, which they said is not common.
Those internal awards made this so fun. I enjoyed all of this up until my discussion chapter. That was the only challenging part of the whole experience. It was so magical. I think I'm going to miss it once I start working again.
Also, I just want to put out there, I’m not super special; there’s nothing about my journey that is unique, so I highly encourage anyone to apply and give that a try.
What is next for you after graduation?
As far as what's next for this immediate moment, I'm sitting around my house reading books.
My situation is different from other students because I've not been actively trying to publish. I'm going to try to apply for high school English reading and teaching jobs. You don't have to publish to have those, and you can apply what we've been learning in this program because they're transitioning to college. Although, I did recently apply for a position that was a reading and writing specialist at the college-level.
I also might want to publish. I was highly encouraged because I have a pretty cool data set that I think could be helpful for people.
What's just something fun that you've done throughout the PhD program to kind of keep your momentum?
Well, two things. Being home and getting the Doctoral Research Scholarship meant that I could take walks. Sometimes the reading would be a little dry, and I could take my dogs for a walk. Also, I could read something challenging, or something where I had a lot to think about, and I could take a thinking walk.
Also, more recently, leading up to the defense, I started to realize that I didn't have a lot of skills and that I needed to do something. I started learning how to sew, and I made all my clothes for my defense, which was really cool. Having some time toward the end of the program to focus on hobbies or skill building has been cool.
March 16, 2026