Editor’s Note: As writing center people, our focus is on our students’ diverse backgrounds and how they come to the center. But how do we the writing center directors, managers, and consultants find our way to the center? What motivates us to remain in the field and make a career out of it? Dr. Natashia Muna (University of Cape Town Writing Centre), scientist and Director of the UCT Faculty of Heatlh Sciences Writing Lab, shares how she found her way to the writing center. If you want to share your literacy story, email wlnblog.editors@gmail.com.  

As a South African, any story that I tell about my literacy history must begin with an acknowledgement of my positionality within one of the most unequal countries in the world. As a white, English South African, I was born into enormous privilege. It’s important to say that this does not mean I came from a wealthy or highly educated family – quite the opposite. And yet, through nothing more than the genetic lottery of my birth I have been privileged. As a white child growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I had access to well-resourced schools, and I was exposed to social, cultural, and recreational experiences that were denied to others. Doors were always opened for me, and I never had to justify or fight for my right to be there. As an English home/first language speaker, my language is spoken and written everywhere and used as the dominant language of instruction in most educational contexts. I’ve never had to clamber over this language as a barrier to meaning. And, when I speak, I can do so without fear; no one condescends my accent or doubts my intellect based on my pronunciation. 

Unquestionably, my privilege has shaped the experiences, opportunities, and trajectory of my life, not only in the ways I have described, but in many other ways of which I may not even be aware. And so it is against this backdrop that I share my story, conscious that my achievements are not simply the product of my own merit or effort, and that everything I have has come at the expense of those who have gone without. 

I was raised in a home where great emphasis was placed on the value of education, and my parents sacrificed and invested in many ways to ensure that my sister and I had a strong foundation. I grew up loving learning; English and Biology were my favourite subjects in high school, but despite several English teachers recognising my potential and encouraging me to pursue the humanities, my parents pushed me towards the sciences as a more ‘serious’ pursuit.  “You can always write as a hobby”, they told me. And so, in 2000 I registered for a Bachelor of Science (BSc) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and I put my other interests aside. 

My transition into university was challenging. Although I loved the university environment, I struggled with foundational science subjects like maths, physics, and chemistry and those early years were all about hard work, perseverance, learning to navigate failure, and developing grit. It was only in the final year of my programme that I began to flourish; as the nature of assessments changed from multiple choice and short answer questions to long form essays that required us to write about our understanding of disciplinary theories and concepts, so I was better able to engage and showcase my learning. I now recognise the role that writing played in enabling my academic success, but at the time my attention was still firmly focused on the sciences. 

My return to writing as a focus only happened in 2010 when my department held a postgraduate writing competition. I was a PhD student at the time doing a population genetics study of the termite Microhodotermes viator, and I was grappling with a juicy debate in the literature about the potential geological age of their termitaria (interestingly, this is still a topical issue). I wrote a critical interrogation of the debate as my competition entry (which later became a full chapter in my thesis), and to my great joy and surprise, I won. And, while at the time I was most grateful for the R5000 prize money, the true reward of this experience was that I became aware of the university writing centre for the first time.

Staff from the UCT Writing Centre had been included in the panel of competition judges. And so, encouraged by my win and excited to find a space that would allow me to engage with writing in an intentional way, I applied for a job. I began working as a part-time, postgraduate student consultant (tutor) at the writing centre in 2011. 

I had no idea how this simple chain of events would forever alter the direction of my career. 

I felt a real sense of risk in “walking away” from 14 years of study, changing my focus, resigning from a postdoctoral fellowship (who does that?!). But I also felt the risk of missing the opportunity to unite the parts of myself – scientist, researcher, writer, teacher – and negotiate a new professional identity.

Working at the Writing Centre was an exceptionally rich experience. The consultant training exposed me to a whole new world of thinking about writing – the ways that we write, how we develop as writers, why we write, who we write for, and how we represent ourselves in our writing. I was given the opportunity to teach for the first time, and I came to love planning and facilitating workshops. I discovered that teaching is an important creative outlet for me, and to this day I derive real joy in conceptualising relevant and innovative analogies, examples, and activities to help students establish connections between prior and new knowledge and practices as they develop metaknowledge about academic writing. Working individually with students was fascinating, challenging, at times heart-breaking, and deeply satisfying. Alongside these teaching and learning activities, the comradery among the consultant team was beautiful to experience as we supported one another through navigating the demands of writing centre work, our own postgraduate studies, and life in general. I fell in love with writing centre work and stayed on as a consultant for the next three years while completing my PhD. 

During this period, probably towards the end of the second year, I had my true ‘lightbulb moment’. The person who flipped the switch was the Director of the centre, Professor Arlene Archer, who said to me very casually one day (while she was making a cup of coffee, as I recall), “You know, you could think about this as a career”. 

Her words brought me up short. I had spent over a decade committed to becoming a scientist and no one had ever put that invitation to me before – that I didn’t need to stay within the conventional confines of what it means to be a scientist, and that I had the power to reimagine my path. It was such an audacious suggestion that I couldn’t get it out of my head, but I was elbow-deep in my PhD at the time. So, like a seed, I buried the idea in my heart, not knowing when it would germinate or what it would produce, only certain that there was something there that needed to be protected and nurtured.  

My role as a consultant came to an end when I graduated with my PhD in molecular and cell biology in 2014 and immediately began a postdoctoral fellowship. But although I had started work on a brand new project and was achieving the milestones of a scientific career, without the writing centre work I soon lost my sense of fulfilment. I found that while I was still intellectually engaged in my research, it was no longer enough for me. I started questioning my research and its value to society, doubting my work and my worth. In an attempt to manage these feelings, I approached our university’s Language Development Group, and was able to secure some part-time lecturing in the Science Faculty, teaching students about writing laboratory reports. While this provided some temporary relief, it mostly served to highlight how much this work really meant to me. Every time I had to make a choice about whether to go to the lab or to focus on my teaching, the teaching won out. The seed had clearly germinated. And then, the stars aligned in my favour. 

Unbeknownst to me, while I was busy having an identity crisis, our university had identified the need to establish a dedicated writing centre for our Faculty of Health Sciences which is located on a separate campus. They wanted to recruit someone who had a background in the biological or health sciences, who would be able to navigate the specialised disciplinary content and genres, and who understood writing centre work, to take on the project of establishing and running the new centre. It was as if the advert had been written especially for me. 

When I was ultimately offered the job, accepting was still a surprisingly hard choice to make. I felt a real sense of risk in “walking away” from 14 years of study, changing my focus, resigning from a postdoctoral fellowship (who does that?!). But I also felt the risk of missing the opportunity to unite the parts of myself – scientist, researcher, writer, teacher – and negotiate a new professional identity. One that had the potential to meet not only my intellectual needs, but the needs of my heart as well. And so, in 2015 I moved to the FHS to establish the Writing Lab and the rest, as they say, is history. 

The Writing Lab will be celebrating its 10th anniversary next year, and I know with absolute certainty that I chose the path that was right for me. It hasn’t been an easy road – I have been stretched, pulled, pushed, and grown – but this work fulfills me in ways that lab work never could. And, far more importantly, this work pushes back on the inequalities and barriers that the majority of our students continue to face, and gives me a vehicle through which to invest the rewards of my privilege back into the society from which they were stolen. I am now privileged to serve.

About the Author: Natashia Muna has a background in science, with specialisations in zoology, biodiversity, and molecular and cell biology. During her PhD, Natashia worked as a student consultant at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Writing Centre, and it was there that she discovered her passion for working with the languages of science. She has been the Director of the UCT Faculty of Health Sciences Writing Lab since 2015. The Writing Lab is guided by the transformative ideology of the academic literacies approach, and provides academic literacies support, teaching, and capacity development available to all staff and students in the faculty. Natashia is currently researching and supervising in the areas of multimodal social semiotics, authorial identity development, the role of writing in team-based learning, and student reading practices.