Jocelyn Pihlaja

Armed with an undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies (granted by Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and The School of Irish Studies in Dublin, Ireland) and an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language (granted by the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID), Jocelyn Pihlaja has been teaching college-level composition and literature since 1991. She enjoyed students for several years in Idaho before becoming an instructor at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, moving to Riverland Community College in Austin, MN, and then settling in Duluth in 2001; Jocelyn now delights in Lake Superior College students, and not only for their outdoorsy complexions and the amount of flannel they sport. Indeed, she also revels in sharing with them the glorious connectivity of an apppropriately-placed semi-colon and the sass of an occasional interruptive dash. During the academic year of 2010-2011, Jocelyn and her family lived in the Cappadocia region of Turkey. Since that time, she has fostered an inordinate fondness for braying donkeys and the sundown Call to Prayer.