Just When I Thought I Had Outgrown You

This Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of visiting my family in Northern California. We ate turkey (too much), caught up on each others' lives, and, most importantly, got out the Christmas decorations. All of these events where fun and memorable, but, now that I have returned to Southern California, the experience that I find myself returning to most during the break was a run in with one of my old high school teachers; the teacher who inspired me to become an English major.

Here is a bit of back story before we begin: Up until junior year in high school I hated writing. It was tiresome, burdening, and restrictive. Now let me explain. Before junior year the majority of English classes which I took where pre-examined, predefined courses, and the essays which were required in the courses revolved around proving a theme that the teacher had already picked out for you. I was not prompted to think critically, I was not asked for my own opinion, I was just asked to think as my teacher did and demonstrate why my teacher's said theme was prominent in the story. Well, needless to say, I did horribly. Why? Because I was bored.

Junior year, however, was new. I decided to take honors English that year and, even though I begged my mom to let me drop the course, it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. This teacher didn't like to hear himself reiterated in the essays which he assigned. In fact, he hated it so much that he would mark us off for doing it. I can remember thinking after receiving the first blog prompt that the printer must have failed. The prompt was much too short. It merely stated something along the lines of: pick a theme you feel prominent in Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot” and reveal how this theme functions throughout the story. I was inspired. My boredom was over and I felt a sense of freedom which I never before had felt in school. That quarter I fell in love with writing, I fell in love with reading, and I fell in love with literature. That love has only continued to bloom as I have furthered my education into college.

But that is the past. Moving forward, I had a run in with this teacher, and this run in was something that I had wished would happen for some time now. I had imagined that the greatness I had seen in him was due to the lack of knowledge that I possessed, and, like most aspects of life revisited after growing up, I expected to be let down. I was not however. The education that I have received thus far in college only spurred our conversations further. As we navigated from Wordsworth to Whitman, from Ovid to Arthur I now found myself keeping up. Picking up on things that he would say that I would not have during my high school years. It was a great experience and made me realize that certain aspects of life, such as a conversation with a past instructor, are only made better with the more knowledge that we possess. Though I was able to have much more involved literary conversations with this teacher, I was still impressed with the amount of knowledge that he possessed and I continued to learn from him throughout our interaction.

It seemed that fortuity was on my side that day. As I came home my mom was digging through an old box of books so I sat down next to her and helped her look through them. During our dig I came across my childhood favorite book: The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm by Nancy Farmer. Seeing that I had just had the recent run in with my high school teacher I took my finding of the book as more than coincidence and decided that I would sit down and read the book to see if I would still find it great, though I had not read it in over ten years. And let me tell you, it was. My love for this book could have possibly been driven by the nostalgic euphoria that fell over me as I soared through the pages, but I would like to believe that it was more than that. The entire experience was unique and new because, though I found myself enjoying much of the same parts of the book that I had when I was a child, I also found myself intrigued by so many new sections that I had not fully understood as a kid. I picked up on allusions that I was not aware of and found meaning that was not apparent during my readings ten years before. During this reading, the book morphed into something new, while still preserving the roots that the 11 year old version of myself had grown so close to.

So what am I saying? I am telling you to try it. Think back. What was your favorite book as a child and when was the last time you read it? Go and find this book and reread it and decide for yourself if it is still worth the praise it received from you as a child. So take a step back and give it a try. You never know what you might find.

-Nick

Building Better English Majors Part I

The English Undergraduate program at Cal Poly Pomona is wonderful - that is, if you take out the useless English majors, the awful admissions bureaucracy, and add in a few more million dollars to the budget. I've had a great time as an undergraduate student at Cal Poly, and this magazine would not be where it is today if it weren't for the occasional combat boot to the back of the head; however, it is becoming clear that our department, as great as it is, needs some major improvements. We need to re-examine what it is to be English majors at Cal Poly just as much as the department needs to re-examine what they must do in order to facilitate our growth as academics.
One of the largest flaws I see in the undergraduate program at CPP is the set of classes the department has deemed the "core classes." All English Literature majors are required to take Shakespeare After 1600, Literary Theory, Advanced Expository Writing, and Grammar of Modern English - the rest of the units are up to the student.

I, by no means, am one for imposing an entire curriculum on a student; however, I think there are a couple of fundamental things an English major needs to have under their belt before they complete their Bachelor's Degree. The four core classes, while useful in their own regard, are not enough to build a foundation for even a decent English major - of course, this is just my opinion. The core we currently adhere to needs to be revised, and the department needs to consider re-establishing a core that actually means something.

The first section of the core should be a two-part class based in Literary Theory. Literary Theory should be taught early on in the undergraduate career, as it is the first real tool a fledgling English major needs in order to be successful. Lit Theory, as it currently is set up at CPP, briefly looks at four to six theories over the span of ten weeks, creating merely a synopsis for students to work off of. The first section of Literary theory should, therefore, be a broader, deeper examination of the theories rather than a quick glossing over of Derrida or Aristotle - especially because entire classes could be focused around either of said theorists. The second portion of Lit Theory should be dedicated solely to the application of the theories learned over the course of the previous installment of ten weeks. Theory class, as it currently stands, can only touch upon meaning, and - in my experience - the application of theory seems to follow auto-didactically after the class is over. If a secondary "application" class were to be followed directly after the "theory" based class, students would more likely to understand and use theory correctly and efficiently.

-side note - I'm a huge theory guy, so I apologize if the previous paragraph came off as a rant

The other classes all sort of go hand-in-hand. The other parts of the core should be Bible as Literature, Myth as Literature, and Dante's Divine Comedy. If this seems like a weird triad for what the core of literature should be, then you might want to quit reading this post now and go apply to be a business major or something of that banal nature.

Bible as Literature needs to be taught. It's in everything. Seriously. I'm not even going to waste my time creating a catalog of everything that's been influenced by the Bible. If an English major isn't at least familiar with the Bible, everything else is kind of a muddled mess.

The same goes for myth. I seriously can't believe Ovid isn't a mandatory text for all English majors. In fact, more Ovid references come immediately to my mind than Bible references. I admit, I started reading Ovid late in my academic career, but I really wish The Metamorphoses had been introduced to me earlier; it would have made things a lot easier.

Finally, we need to read The Divine Comedy. I still have only read parts - and even then I've only read translations. We need to read TDC for so many reasons; many of which are the same reasons why we need to read Chaucer. Translation of text is something all English majors - who, I assume, are language lovers - need to do for a multitude of reasons. Furthermore, Inferno alone is referenced throughout literature as much as the Bible or Ovid are. These three texts are the basis by which many texts were crafted, and a fundamental understanding of each of them is crucial to the success of any would-be scholar.

For the sake of space on the blog, I'll stop here. I'll be sure to continue this article next week.