Melissa's Going To Leeds!
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Hello! My name is Melissa Elmes and I am a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where I am finishing my PhD in Medieval English Literature. My dissertation is on "Negotiating Violence at the Feast in Medieval British Texts" and I am trying to raise money to get to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England. The conference theme is "Food, Feasts, and Famine" -- an entire conference devoted to the topic of my dissertation. I've never been to a conference abroad, and I've never been to England. As a scholar of English literature, I have felt very keenly that never having been to England is a major handicap for me in terms of being taken seriously in my field. Asking for money is very strange and uncomfortable for me, but it seems that this might be the only way to really make this trip happen, so I'm trying.
I am a nontraditional student, and the first in my family to obtain a PhD. Before I took the plunge and went back for the PhD, I taught high school French, English, and AP Art History for fifteen years in public schools in rural Virginia and inner-city Washington DC, and then at a private boarding school in Virginia. Along the way, I married a wonderful man and had two wonderful children. I feel caught between my responsibilities right now--as a scholar of the medieval period specializing in feasts and feasting, I have a responsibility to my colleagues to share my dissertation findings. As a mother of two and a wife, I have a responsibility not to put the family into debt in order to share my research with other scholars.
When I applied for and was accepted to present a paper at Leeds, we thought we would be able to sell our house (we had to move for my graduate program and were planning to sell it anyway) and thus, be able to afford this trip, but unfortunately we lived in a very rural area where the housing market is terrible. We had tenants for a while to cover the mortgage payments, but they caused a lot of damage to the house, including structural damage to the kitchen floor. We spent a lot of money, time, and effort on repairs, including ripping out the floor and sub-floor and putting an entirely new kitchen floor in, thinking we could recoup the expenses and pay for Leeds with the proceeds from selling the house. We tried to do the right thing, but it didn't work out. Ultimately, we had to give the house to the bank and walk away from it. This has now resulted in an unexpected $3,000 tax bill from North Carolina, which considers deeds-in-lieu to be income. That wipes out much of what is left in savings.
I have had a very blessed and charmed life as a wife, mother, high school teacher, and now a college instructor, but one thing this life has not provided us with is money for extras. We don't take vacations, we drive older cars (currently, a 2000 Mazda with 189,000 miles on it), we've worked hard to reduce our overall family debt, and we try not to live beyond our means. Although I received a teaching fellowship from my program that covered my tuition and fees and paid a small stipend, we have had to take out student loans to help our family stay financially solvent while I completed this degree. Beyond that, we've just paid off my fight with cancer (5 years this spring). Because I am graduating, I am not eligible for university funding for travel to conferences, so it has to come out of pocket. Unfortunately, the academic job market is also pretty awful and while I still have several applications out, right now, I don't even know where I'll be working next year, which makes me feel even more guilty about spending money on this trip.
In short, I've exhausted all of my funding possibilities, and tried everything I could think of to make this work without putting our family into debt.... so now I'm turning to crowdsourcing to try to make this happen. It feels weird and deeply uncomfortable to ask for money, but I feel like I have to try, not just for me, but for everyone who's had a dream and gone for broke and gotten to a breaking point and had to reach out for help. So, I'm asking for help.
From my observation of other campaigns to which I have contributed in the past, every contribution, no matter how small, helps make a GoFundMe campaign successful; I've seen thousands raised incrementally by $5.00 and $10.00 donations as much as by those giving more, and I am appreciative of anything you are willing to contribute. The money raised for this campaign will pay for the plane ticket ($1,000 USD plus taxes and fees), conference registration (125 pounds), four nights in Leeds University dorm room accommodations (34 pounds per night), and lunches (5 pounds) and dinners (10.50 pounds). I would like to try to get the plane taken care of by the middle of April, and must register for the overall conference by May 14. I know that doesn't leave a lot of time to raise money--but honestly, until my husband urged me to try this, I had just given up entirely and thought I simply wouldn't go. Now I see that it means a lot not just to me, but to my family, to see me make this happen, so I've decided to try.
The prompt on the side of my screen tells me to let prospective investors in this trip know "why this means so much to me" and "how thankful I will be." This means so much to me because in addition to being an important professional opportunity for me, it is also a step forward, by me, on behalf of everyone who has spent a lifetime chasing down their dreams, banging their heads metaphorically against brick wall after brick wall and glass ceiling after glass ceiling, and found themselves at the threshold of victory, but just needed that little extra help to get there. Those who know me, know that I give my all not just as a scholar, but also every day in the classroom, trying to help my students become who they want to be. After almost twenty years in the classroom helping my students chase down their dreams, I just figure it's high time I practiced what I preached. Gratitude? As a cancer survivor, there are no words for how grateful I am to be here at all. But to finally get to England, against all odds, and for a conference specific to my scholarship? To see some of the things I've researched and written about in person? I don't think there are any words in the English language to express that level of gratitude. All I can say, is that I will use everything I gain from attending this conference to continue to develop into the best American medieval literature educator I can be, and I will pay it forward in every class I teach throughout my career.
I am a nontraditional student, and the first in my family to obtain a PhD. Before I took the plunge and went back for the PhD, I taught high school French, English, and AP Art History for fifteen years in public schools in rural Virginia and inner-city Washington DC, and then at a private boarding school in Virginia. Along the way, I married a wonderful man and had two wonderful children. I feel caught between my responsibilities right now--as a scholar of the medieval period specializing in feasts and feasting, I have a responsibility to my colleagues to share my dissertation findings. As a mother of two and a wife, I have a responsibility not to put the family into debt in order to share my research with other scholars.
When I applied for and was accepted to present a paper at Leeds, we thought we would be able to sell our house (we had to move for my graduate program and were planning to sell it anyway) and thus, be able to afford this trip, but unfortunately we lived in a very rural area where the housing market is terrible. We had tenants for a while to cover the mortgage payments, but they caused a lot of damage to the house, including structural damage to the kitchen floor. We spent a lot of money, time, and effort on repairs, including ripping out the floor and sub-floor and putting an entirely new kitchen floor in, thinking we could recoup the expenses and pay for Leeds with the proceeds from selling the house. We tried to do the right thing, but it didn't work out. Ultimately, we had to give the house to the bank and walk away from it. This has now resulted in an unexpected $3,000 tax bill from North Carolina, which considers deeds-in-lieu to be income. That wipes out much of what is left in savings.
I have had a very blessed and charmed life as a wife, mother, high school teacher, and now a college instructor, but one thing this life has not provided us with is money for extras. We don't take vacations, we drive older cars (currently, a 2000 Mazda with 189,000 miles on it), we've worked hard to reduce our overall family debt, and we try not to live beyond our means. Although I received a teaching fellowship from my program that covered my tuition and fees and paid a small stipend, we have had to take out student loans to help our family stay financially solvent while I completed this degree. Beyond that, we've just paid off my fight with cancer (5 years this spring). Because I am graduating, I am not eligible for university funding for travel to conferences, so it has to come out of pocket. Unfortunately, the academic job market is also pretty awful and while I still have several applications out, right now, I don't even know where I'll be working next year, which makes me feel even more guilty about spending money on this trip.
In short, I've exhausted all of my funding possibilities, and tried everything I could think of to make this work without putting our family into debt.... so now I'm turning to crowdsourcing to try to make this happen. It feels weird and deeply uncomfortable to ask for money, but I feel like I have to try, not just for me, but for everyone who's had a dream and gone for broke and gotten to a breaking point and had to reach out for help. So, I'm asking for help.
From my observation of other campaigns to which I have contributed in the past, every contribution, no matter how small, helps make a GoFundMe campaign successful; I've seen thousands raised incrementally by $5.00 and $10.00 donations as much as by those giving more, and I am appreciative of anything you are willing to contribute. The money raised for this campaign will pay for the plane ticket ($1,000 USD plus taxes and fees), conference registration (125 pounds), four nights in Leeds University dorm room accommodations (34 pounds per night), and lunches (5 pounds) and dinners (10.50 pounds). I would like to try to get the plane taken care of by the middle of April, and must register for the overall conference by May 14. I know that doesn't leave a lot of time to raise money--but honestly, until my husband urged me to try this, I had just given up entirely and thought I simply wouldn't go. Now I see that it means a lot not just to me, but to my family, to see me make this happen, so I've decided to try.
The prompt on the side of my screen tells me to let prospective investors in this trip know "why this means so much to me" and "how thankful I will be." This means so much to me because in addition to being an important professional opportunity for me, it is also a step forward, by me, on behalf of everyone who has spent a lifetime chasing down their dreams, banging their heads metaphorically against brick wall after brick wall and glass ceiling after glass ceiling, and found themselves at the threshold of victory, but just needed that little extra help to get there. Those who know me, know that I give my all not just as a scholar, but also every day in the classroom, trying to help my students become who they want to be. After almost twenty years in the classroom helping my students chase down their dreams, I just figure it's high time I practiced what I preached. Gratitude? As a cancer survivor, there are no words for how grateful I am to be here at all. But to finally get to England, against all odds, and for a conference specific to my scholarship? To see some of the things I've researched and written about in person? I don't think there are any words in the English language to express that level of gratitude. All I can say, is that I will use everything I gain from attending this conference to continue to develop into the best American medieval literature educator I can be, and I will pay it forward in every class I teach throughout my career.
Organizer
Melissa Ridley Elmes
Organizer
Winston-Salem, NC
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