Welcome; too little, too late?

I've created this blog in the final month of my second semester of graduate study in TESOL. I'm attempting to work out just what, if anything, I want to study in the future, and just what it is I'm doing now. I've name it "Applied Applied Linguistics" partly in fun, because I think it's silly when disciplines try to legitimate themselves by appending the adjective "applied" to their titles, and partly because I really am trying to figure out how the study of Applied Linguistics and a number of other disciplines with which I'm flirting will actually impact me as a student, a scholar, and a human being. Plus, I'll be "applying" all this stuff soon enough, I hope.

If all goes as planned, I'll be getting my praxis on in China or Mongolia, teaching English at the university level as a Peace Corps Volunteer, starting in less than three months.

I plan to explore, among other things:

TESOL/ESL/EFL
Applied Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Linguistic Anthropology
Sociology of Language
Ethnograpic approaches to TESOL and/or Applied Linguistics
Ethnography of communication
Language and culture
TESOL and religion
TESOL and, broadly speaking, "cultural imperialism"

Some thinkers/authors/theorists/whatever I'm interested in:

Suresh Canagarajah
Patricia Duff
Howard Gardner
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Vygotsky
Krashen
Friere


I consider myself a novice at most of this stuff; I'm here to work out my academic future in fear and trembling. Stay tuned.