Below the Belt, from the Peanut Gallery: Harsh Criticism in the Freshmen Composition Classroom

Nothing feeds egotism more than multiple people badgering you to update your own personal corner of the blogosphere, and though my life since the heavy reflection on nostalgia has been nothing but a haze of feminists erroneously capitalizing bell hooks' name and student personal essays about dead grandparents and the huge effect high school football has had on their lives, I will oblige.

In deciding to oblige, however, I've had to pick through the past two weeks with a fine-toothed comb to find anything worthwhile to blog about. Graduate school, it turns out, is an all-or-nothing endeavor. I seem to be consumed with reading, with writing, with planning, and with responding to student work. Ian tells me I haven't learned that I need to do only as little reading as possible to scrape by in class discussions, but I'm not sure if I'll ever learn that. It's never been in my nature to not complete what I've been assigned, to not finish what I've started. I imagine that because of this, I'll turn up at the Seatac airport in May of 2011 looking gaunt and exhausted, not having been in contact with friends or family for months and months, and completely unused to human contact and company. You might be reminded of those awful Bing commercials that are airing at the moment--people unable to communicate effectively because they are suffering from "information overload". Don't fret if, when you ask how it feels to be back in the PNW, I quote Derrida, or ask you to fully explain the "so what?" factor in your response to Malcolm X's literacy narrative. A glass of Honeymood house red wine and a good long break before beginning my PhD should get me back to normal within a few months' time.

In light of the all-consuming nature of graduate school, I present you with an exercise I recently did in my freshman composition class. The essay assignment at the moment is a personal change story--the class has to write about something that happened to them that changed them, or changed their thinking, in some way. I've gotten a variety of topics, from fathers passing away to realizing why magicians are important. In my pedagogy course, we have to write first drafts of the essays we assign, to familiarize ourselves with the complications and difficulties students might have in writing themselves. I produced a rather rough draft of my own personal essay, chronicling my drive from Bellingham to Dover--I actually culled quite of bit of it from previous blog posts, most notable "Here I go again." In an effort to create an understanding of the revision process, I had the students work in groups to read, edit, and revise my essay (without telling them it was mine).

The result was disastrous. Had I any softer of a skin, and hadn't recently been accepted into six, count 'em, six, graduate schools based on my writing ability, I would be running home to skulk and bemoan the malice of 18 year old college students. They hated my essay: it was too wordy, the sentence structure was confusing and complex, the paper "forced them on a road trip they did not want to be on," it was not a personal change, the author came to no realization, it sounded as if it were written by a guy but the author mentioned wearing high heels, it criticized New England too much, there were details but all in the wrong places, the 'scenes' seem too disjointed and there isn't anything linking them, the list goes on and on and on and on. You wouldn't believe how much they railed on it.

I found myself wanting to defend my writing, to defend my position as the author ("but you see, there is a significant change..." "the narrative feels disjointed because I am coming to the realization that America itself is disjointed..." "I don't sound like a man when I write, do I???") to a class full of 18 year old that were not qualified to judge my writing (particularly when they admit that the essay had words they had never heard of before). I stressed that they should leave behind their judgment on the essay's merit and work towards coming to an agreement about what the essay needed, how it could be revised to fulfill the requirements of the assignment. To no avail. They could not move past their distaste for the essay. Once told that this was student work, and not their classmates' work, they felt at ease to tear it apart--something they do not do even with the student work we deal with in class that is published in one of their textbooks. To these freshmen, there is a difference between published writing and unpublished writing, a difference not determined by the actual quality but by the mere fact that someone--someone more important than them--decided to put it into a book. I am tempted to pull a published essay out of a book, print it off, and let them go wild. Something written by someone they know and consider an authority, but something they will never have read before. Suggestions?

After I revealed to the class that the essay was, in fact, my own, and I allowed the guy who said it sounded like a man wrote it to blush sufficiently, one of my students asked, "So did you write it bad on purpose?" I managed to scrounge up a reply that I don't believe revealed any wounded pride, and responded that I had intentionally written a rough draft, after which she said, "so, yes." Yes, according to my students, I wrote it bad on purpose.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Would you look at the upturn in the corners of those lips? Following an episode of This American Life, themed on the kindness of strangers, I have begun a download of Frankie's entire discography, and in the interim I'm youtubing that man like there's no tomorrow. Ira Glass brought us the story: For weeks and weeks, a man stood at the foot of his building with a sound system and a mic, crooning Sinatra tunes to his neighbors in a New York neighborhood, while another neighbor tap danced on the sidewalk. The police--despite Mayor Guiliani's crackdown on noise pollution--did not shut the operation down; they requested songs.

I've been thinking a lot lately about nostalgia, about that overwhelming feeling of loss that stems only from actually having. It's a grasping, a desperate clutching at the far-reaching past (known or unknown--I maintain a nostalgia for 1920s Chicago, for Bob Dylan songs, and also for Fraggle Rock) that cannot be satisfied. The word itself makes me think of dissipating smoke, which is either a particularly apt image or a completely contrived one when it comes to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is an abstraction most usually associated with the old (although, in the words of my own personal advice columnist, "I am only 23 and already my nostalgia is overwhelming". An old soul in a young body, I tell you...). We picture our grandparents thinking back to their youth, sitting in the den with their children and listening to Louis Armstrong tunes. This in itself is a form of nostalgia, though--a longing for the past, a sentimentality for a time, or a setting. Perhaps also this feeling of nostalgia--the ache for something we once had, but no longer do--isn't related to age or to the passing of time. I have nostalgia for this past summer, a time less than two months ago, a nostalgia for grilled peaches in a pool, for glasses of lovers' mead shared at Honeymoon (with Chelsea, not Ian. Obviously.) , for days spent on the dock at Lake Whatcom, for sunny mornings spent answering the inane questions of Canadians at VGP. I am 23 years old, just like you, and my nostalgia is overwhelming as well. The Oxford English Dictionary (yes I did online research for this blog post. No I will not be ashamed about it) traces the etymology of the word nostalgia back to the Greek word for 'return home'. In a way, even that idealization of the scene with my grandparents is a return home, or at least a return to a more familiar setting, to a more comforting time (even if I wasn't present).

Frank Sinatra has always reminded me of Christmastime, even his songs not about Christmas. It's something in the melody, something in the tone of his voice. And, indicative of that intense sentimental longing I've got for, well, whatever it is I'm longing for, Frankie's discography tends to do this to my heart. I find it fitting that my actual return home will correspond with Christmastime this year--when I can reconcile my nostalgia, my Frank Sinatra playlist, and my need for coffee from La Vie en Rose on Holly Street. But I won't really be returning to those times that make me nostalgic. I'll just be making more of them--a thought that is comforting and heart-wrenching at the same time.

Why My Kitchen isn't Smitten

Kili, let me just tell you why I couldn't ever run a food blog. In 9th grade, I cried because the nose on the ceramic bust I was making didn't look right. I have spent hours on a pie crust, only to drop the finished product at the foot of the stairs. To this day, I still won't let Ian tell me how funny it was. I get irrationally upset if my bread doesn't rise, and I haven't the patience to wait until the sage-pumpkin filling cools down before dolloping it on the ravioli dough, resulting in a sticky hot mess (sound familiar, Kili?) of pasta dough and sweet-smelling pumpkin goo--not in ravioli. A dropped stitch in a knit hat is enough to ruin my day, and the fact that the pair of gloves I knitted Ian requires some serious prodding to look like an actual pair of gloves still makes me wince. I can't remember a meal I've served that wasn't followed by, "needs salt" or "a little too dry" or some other critique that I myself made. In short, I am a perfectionist, which you already well knew.

But possibly more important than that, I forget about the process. I am too wrapped up in cooking, in creating, to stop and arrange the bowl artfully on the counter, and think of some glib remark that I might pair with the photo on next week's post. Rather, I knead the bread. I chop the shallots and cry onto the cutting board (omitting the need for salt further on...). I pop the dish into the oven, thinking only of the finished product, the plate of food I'm about to eat. And that's when I remember to take the picture--when I've got a counterful of bagels, or a steaming bowl of mussels sitting in front of me.

Perhaps what I need is an assistant, Kili. Someone to come over and remember that the dough should be photographed as well as the bagel, that the closed mussel pre-steaming would juxtapose quite nicely with the wide open mouths of the mussels in the bowl. Maybe then I'll be able to blog with as much sass as smittenkitchen, with the parsimonious prose of orangette, and have the photos to boot. Maybe then I wouldn't have to throw out a bowlful of mussels just because Ian and I had eaten ourselves silly and couldn't bear anymore. If you're willing to learn photography, the jobs is yours.

For Whom the Bell Tolls...

The clock strikes at every hour and half hour at University of New Hampshire, and the tower in Thompson Hall has real bells--none of that recording stuff that Western does--that chime in. Hamilton Smith is located right next door to this bell tower, and I am greeted every half hour, in the classes I teach and in the classes I take, with the tolling of the bells.

On campus early today, I was witness to the veritable song that gets played at 11:00 am. It has been a full five minutes, and it is still going.

Sweat, Baby, Sweat...

Ah, the smell of ink on paper, of pencils and erasers and new books. Every fall I feel an intense nostalgia for "back-to-school", even though most years (all but one, so far, in fact) I am going back to school, myself. But it doesn't have the same feel to it as it did when I was ten, and I would go "school clothes shopping" (remember that?) and I had a new backpack, and a ruler, and glue. Man, I wish glue were still on my school supplies list. I still have like 4 sticks at all times, just in case.

But going back to college--to graduate school, no less--has a much different feel than starting 5th grade. My first day as a MA in literature student felt so far removed from even my first day at Western. I feel so different from the terrified faces of freshmen that I see wandering around campus. In so many ways, though, I am so similar. I am terrified. I am afraid of this strange campus that is laid out nothing like the one I am so familiar with. I am afraid to go get coffee, to go to the gym. I am too scared to set foot outside of Hamilton-Smith, the English department's building. Luckily, due to class arrangements, I rarely have to, though I still must brave the treacherous walk to the bus stop down the street. It feels awkward to be asked to re-acquaint myself with college culture--not only because I have been away from academia for a year, but also because I am stubbornly attached to my alma mater. There's no place like home, there's no place like home.

I could spend hours ranting about Dover, New Hampshire, and this backwards little University I've found myself in (we are required to wear T-shirts at the gym, no tank tops allowed, the buses only come once an hour and then sometimes there are two or three hour long gaps necessitating 8 hour days on campus, and I actually have to specifically request to receive a financial aid check), or extolling the virtues of that blessed haven of scholars in the Pacific Northwest (um, no need. I think you all know, Bellingham is perfect bliss...). But I suppose, like in Perpignan, it took a while to come to love even Bellingham's quirks. I'm not saying I ever grew to adore the dog-poop littered sidewalks in France, or the scary meth-heads that haunt that specific corner of Railroad. But I didn't immediately know my way around Western's campus, and it took time to find my favorite restaurants and coffee spots. And while I don't feel the immediate connection I felt upon my arrival in Bellingham, I am hopeful that I'll be able to walk from the university bookstore to my office without having a coronary soon.

This semester is shaping up to be a doozy (I think that's what happens when you spend the previous academic year having 8 hours of responsibility per week...), and unfortunately a not altogether pleasant one. I am required to take a graduate theory course, and this year's is themed around feminist theory and 19th and early 20th century women's literature (I'll be the first to admit, I actually hate women's literature and feminist theory. GASP!) and then my second course is a pedagogy class tied to my freshman composition class that I am teaching. Next spring should bring some courses that I actually have a vested interest in.

Teaching is a sweaty affair. I am not joking--I sweat more teaching freshman composition than I ever have in my whole life COMBINED. I really, really hope they don't notice. In the first week alone, I have achieved two things: 1. Giant sweat stains under both of my arms, during both class periods and 2. Covering my black skirt in chalk dust. I am on a roll. In all honesty, though, the teaching is going rather smoothly. The students seem talkative and receptive--and while they aren't presenting bright and shiny faces ready to learn everything, ever!, I don't think anyone has yet told them that freshman composition isn't a fun class. I've already got some gems of student writing, but I am little unclear about the ethics of posting that writing on the internet for all to see. If you're interested, see me after class in my office, Hamilton Smith, room 320.