Meet Our Instructors: Carolyn Vargas-Hubner
Year: Senior
Major: Neuroscience
Minor: Writing Seminars
What inspired you to work with WBS?
I was inspired to work with WBS after learning that they publish their students' work in an anthology. When I was in elementary and middle school, I did not have access to this opportunity of having my own work published. The work WBS is doing to help students become published is enormous for their confidence and perception of themselves as writers and artists. Many times growing up, I kept my writing to myself instead of sharing it for reasons of “it’s not ready,” “it’s not perfect,” “I’m eleven, what do I know about writing?” WBS is attempting to break that narrative by giving eleven-year-olds an opportunity to share their work and feel in their right as writers.
Can you describe a favorite moment from teaching?
So far teaching writing my favorite moments have been associated with chicken. One time when we were teaching about sensory details, I had a student describe their brother eating chicken using the five senses, “I see chicken skin, I smell chicken skin, I hear the chicken skin.” It was the students’ goal to make me laugh and they did. Another time I gave a prompt where everyone slowly starts turning into chickens one day and one student interpreted the prompt more creatively than I expected. They had all their friends turn into chicken nuggets and ate them. That made me proud.
What is something you love doing even though you’re not very good at it?
An activity I love to do but I’m not very good at is performing stand up comedy. I want to push myself to do more standup since I enjoy writing jokes in my free time, but performing in front of a crowd can be scary. I hope my love of comedy wins out in the end.
What unusual skill do you have?
An unusual skill I have is that I’ve been cutting my own hair since I was thirteen. And the only thing I can say about that is please get your hair done by a hairstylist. Hair takes a long, long time to grow back, especially eyebrows.