Letter to the Leaves: We as English Majors

I want to make it known that as an English major, I at times feel as an outsider. All too often in my classes do I hear how he's been reading books since he’s been in middle school, or how they've got this published or that published. I see how some of my fellow classmates use knowledge as social currency and think that they are wealthier then someone who is less able to present their self in the written word.

As English majors, we have to acknowledge that we view education differently than others.

Because so much of our worth is intangible, we are quick to defend it at all costs. We have put so much time and effort into reading and acquiring this motivation for self-education that we forget that not everyone has this.

In the sciences, people expect the instructor to tell them the right answer. This is expected because most if not all of the time there is only ONE right answer. It is as simple as "put this in, get this out". Tests are multiple-choice and leave no room for the self.

English isn't like that. All we have to do is justify our ideas with a few lines from the text and we arrive at a correct answer (thus we are all critics with our own critical theory; We create this critical theory, from our sense of self). We have all had that kid in class who is way off base, but the teacher still gives him a pat on the back.

He gets that pat on the back because in English there is partial credit. We reward effort.

Sciences do not. It’s all or nothing. And with all this emphasis on the correct answer, the end, why is it so surprising to you instructors that this is your students’ main concern.

We as a society have shifted from transcending Emerson to deifying Einstein.

We live in a world of instant gratification.

To call your students "idiotic", "stupid" or "unmotivated" is superficial. You are criticizing the effect and not the cause.

But Bermuda, it’s not a lack of ability. These students are not mindless robots programmed by society. They can still choose to make an attempt. You see Bermuda, all it is a lack of effort.

Yeah, I agree. It’s totally a lack of effort and not a lack of ability for most students. But you see that’s where you instructors come in. You have the toughest job of all because you have to reverse this social norm. You have to inspire your students to want to better their self for more than a piece of paper.

But you must understand that genuine inspiration cannot be given, but must be fostered.

No one should be in a position to instruct if they cannot put aside their self-wealth to see the promise each student has. It is your job to show these students the relevance writing and reading have for their lives.

Now, there are always going to be people who just go to college to get a piece of paper. But those are going to be the same people who go through life as a means to an end.

They will never know the beauty of a sunrise, the soothing echo of the ocean waves, or the invigorating power of mountain air.

And even this is not the greatest tragedy. A tragedy more egregious, is their loss of self-reliance.

People are no longer reliant on themselves as they once were for knowledge. We are slowly losing that aspect as more and more of our society becomes Google-able.

But as English majors, this is our duty to the world:

To show the rest, the relevance of writing, the importance of reading, and most of all,

The beauty inherent in the self.

Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda

If BP owned his career it would cost you $9.95 a line

Hello to all who have surely missed me in my time of absence (Although, from what I can read and hear, there hasn't been a lack of excitement, or at least controversy, on this thread). I assure you that I will never again leave you to helplessly roam the overwhelming expanse of literary criticism in search of a glimmer of wry sarcasm, an inkling a priggish intellectualism, or even a soupçon of what can only be rightly described as all things Stregean without my services as academic ombudsman . . . that is until the next time I'm not scheduled to blog for a while. Nevertheless, I am with you now, and our short amount of time together must be appreciated. I have been working on a socially destructive amount of papers recently which, as usual, has been preceded by an even more unfathomable number of hours spent researching. (For the record I love writing papers and even researching them, don't get me wrong, but sometimes when it takes you away from tasting a vintage year of Château Lafite Rothschild, I, unlike the seductively aromatic acescence of the Lafite, become temporarily bitter)

Thank you for allowing me this minor digression, but I find that even my tangents have the potential for elucidation, so why deprive you? Anyhow, I came across a quote by one of my personal favorite theorists, William H. Gass. The quote reads as follows:

"The expression 'to write something down' suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it"

I was inexplicably moved by this statement, and found myself possessed with the fervor to share this with you. As you may or may not know (and what my fellow colleagues know all to well) is that I have an inexhaustible theoretic preoccupation with Carl Jung and his psychiatric models and how they aid in the analysis of our most seminal literary works. So, in the spirit of your new-found understanding of a portion of what makes "yours truly" tick, and this delicious quote from Gass, I am making an intellectual call to arms! Is our field of endeavor, that is, writing, fundamentally flawed? And if so, what does this mean for our understanding of truth? Now I don't want banal discussions of language as arbitrary, I want real discussion!

Thank you all for taking the time to consider this blog and for your magnanimous efforts in supporting this blog and magazine. As always, read, discuss, comment, and for god's sake, leave your knives at home,because I would like to say on behalf of some of the editorial staff, there are enough knives in our backs already.

Knowingly Poignant,

Eric W. Strege

In Defense of Meanness

Today, I told a student, to her face, that she had done something “stupid.” And the crazy thing is she didn’t run away crying or put up a defense mechanism or block out entirely the point I was making. She smiled and quietly laughed and nodded knowingly. Because she knew it was true. (She had plagiarized).

I did not go into my meeting with this student with the intention of using the word “stupid” or any other word like it. However, once speaking with her, I knew something had to be said to get my point across about the severity of what she had done. I was speaking with her directly and openly, with no hostility, reiterating to her what could happen to her student status if she were to ever do this again. She didn’t really “get it” or react until I said, “what you did…was stupid.” Her quite laugh spoke volumes to me as I understood completely what it meant coming from her: she got it. And she clearly agreed.

Despite what some of my fellow educators may feel about words like “stupid,” I know that what I said to this student, paired with my tone, made all the difference in her understanding and openness to what I was telling her. As soon as we started talking, she was not afraid; she knew she had no reason to be because I was not angry. I was not giving up on her as a person; I was simply letting her know that what she did was dumb and could have and should have been avoided. It was this little bit of honest meanness in word choice that brought everything home. She expressed appreciation for what I said- because it was honest. We were two people communicating openly, an often difficult feat for a professor and a student.

After the disagreements that went down on this blog last week, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of “meanness.” Is it, in fact, an act of flagrant self-regard for one to proclaim the downfalls of others? Was I just abusing my position as this girl’s instructor when I told her that what she did was idiotic? Or was it in fact my duty to tell her that?

What I realized is that when we talk about people being "idiots" or doing something “stupid” or “dumb,” it is not a reference to their mental capabilities; it is a reference to their behavior. An “idiot” is "an utterly foolish or senseless person." Not someone who is incapable of higher thought or sense, but rather someone who practices neither.

When students don't put in the effort to improve and when they don't attempt critical thought and when they write half-assed drafts with no thought behind them (and when they knowingly plagiarize), they are behaving like idiots. It is idiotic to spend thousands of dollars on an education that you are not intellectually invested in. This common behavior not only reveals a problem with the average modern student but also with the system as a whole. How did it get this way and what can be done about it? In my opinion, the main issue is that college has become a means to better career prospects. It is just a game so many people play- they want the rewards of the game (the degree, the better paying job, the prestige) without putting in the intellectual work. And without that intellectual work, they don't deserve the degree because, damn it, they're not earning it. To expect to get rewarded for something you're not putting in the work for is idiotic. And it is clear when a student and a person is really trying (like the English language learners both Jack and Slick mentioned in their blogs last week), because improvement comes with that territory. And it is obvious when a student is not trying. Higher education is great because no one has to do it; no one is forced to go to college. So, when a student behaves like he is forced to go to class and forced to go to the writing center and only put in the minimal thoughtless effort to get by, he is being idiotic.

And this branches out to all aspects of life- people who live their lives as if they are forced into every action, every event, as if they have no freewill are idiotic. The only way to not be an idiot, is to stop being so apathetic and to really try at the things you set out to do, not just float by at everything. People like that, until they change, are a waste of everyone's (except maybe therapists') time and energy.

This brings me back to my original point: I point out the downfalls of lazy students and lazy people who show no progress because they do not put in the time and effort to improve at the things they do, they allow themselves to be coddled and their only explanation for their behavior is boredom. I feel like them sometimes, but I won't allow that to be my life because I see the way they are and remind myself and others not to be like that. This has nothing to do with talent or natural brilliance, it has to do with effort, critical thinking, and drive which, just like reading and writing, are not natural abilities, but must be learned and always honed and which are qualities exhibited by the English language learners discussed in last week's blogs.

We must stop coddling students (and all people for that matter). We must not be afraid to tell them when they are not cutting it. We must hold them to the higher standard that is at the heart of higher education.

And sometimes we must push them out of their apathy and away from their destructive behavior- and if that means telling them that their actions are “stupid,” so be it.

But, of course, proceed with caution.

Until next time,

Leena

It's (Loosely) Like That Movie About Shakespeare, Although That's Only an Educated Guess!

(That's only an educated guess because I don't watch crappy movies)

Anyways! Here we go. I'm going to change the way you think about everything. EVERYTHING!!! Here goes:

Good evening. My name is Andrew D. Cochran, and I use a pen name.

I'll let you have some time to absorb that. Take a deep breath. It's ok.

Ready? Alright. I'll begin.

So I know it's a shock for you guys to find out my Walt-given name is actually Andrew, but, now that you know this, please don't think I'm some weirdo who moonlights as some character named Jack Foster. Jack has a history behind it, and my choice to publish under Jack is one I thought about for a while. I think the initial intention for using a pen name - and I use pen name because I prefer its connotation to that of pseudonym (thanks to Leena) - may have been lost in translation somewhere in the history of the magazine.

We, the original four editors, decided to use pen names. I put this idea forward because we intended our contributors to be the English majors of Cal Poly, and I didn't want them to be apprehensive about sending their work to people they know; after all, sending work in for review is a scary, vulnerable prospect. So, we all made pen names. I think everyone had a different outlook on the actual reason why we used pen names, and that's ok; however, I have to say I've never used my pen name as a handle for a character or an avatar. Jack and Andrew are synonymous.

Before I delve more into that, I'll share with whoever is reading this how I got the name. It's simple, really. I haven't been actively writing prose and poetry for too long; in fact, it's only been about a year now. When I started writing, though, I randomly came across a typewriter that was under my stairs. It belonged to my great-grandfather, Jack Foster. Apparently, he used it all the time. I'm sure he didn't use it for poetry like his daughter, my grandmother, did, but I felt connected to him through the heirloom, and I decided to revive the man I never met.

Why does this matter? It doesn't really, but to an extent my pen name is not a character, but a homage of sorts. Jack Foster is Andrew Cochran. I don't change my voice, I don't use different language, and I certainly don't present something I'm not through my pen name. Jack Foster is the published version of Andrew Cochran; nothing more, nothing less (okay, maybe a bit more, but only on a sentimental level). Pen names are not characters, people.

Anyways, that's my rant about pen names. As I said, I believe pen name and pseudonym have different connotations, and I think the connotations have been a bit mixed up in the process of making this magazine. It's not a bad or good thing, but it is, I think, interesting to look at. Before this blog, I had never really given much thought as to what pen names signify. I do believe, however, I'm starting to gain some understanding about said question.

Until next time,

JF

P.S. For those of you who are thinking, "hey! This doesn't sound like Andrew Cochran or Jack Foster!"....

Fuck.

There it is. There always has to be one in my blog posts.

Good night and good luck.

Making time for fiction

Your real life doesn’t matter to fiction. Yes, your spouse or significant other is important. Yes, it’s a big deal that you’ve got a good job (maybe even a good job that you like or a shitty job that you hate). Yes, you’ve got pets and family and traffic and drama and a social life to deal with. But none of that matters to fiction.

There was a man I once knew who was touched. He was a poet and a songwriter and beautiful and brilliant. He was actually the man who inspired me to start writing down the wordherds floating through my mind and organizing them into something that mattered to me, and might someday matter to someone else. He wrote amazing poetry, poetry that spoke to me and to everyone who heard it – which is pretty impressive when you consider his audience was largely made up of high school dropouts. I met him at a coffee shop and got to know him better when everyone at the coffee shop went into a frenzy over his poetry; we were helping him edit and organize a manuscript for publication, going through chapbooks and notebooks and stacks of stained napkins finding the best of what he had and trying our best to make it better. The manuscript got accepted and my poet friend got paid, but the book was never printed and eventually he got fired from the coffee shop. A few months after that he started waiting tables at Denny’s. A few years after that he started managing the Denny’s. Now he’s the manager of a different Denny’s, he doesn’t write, he doesn’t sing, he’s getting married and is very happy and I’m fairly certain that the dark-eyed young punk who scribbled poems on beer coasters is dead inside of him, or is shrunk so small that he’ll never find his way out into the sunshine again.

He didn’t make time for fiction.

Let me make something perfectly clear here: art isn’t easy. People watch me drawing or read my poems or hear me planning out essays and say “Wow, you should be an artist,” “Why don’t you write novels?” or “You should be famous” to me all the time. I usually nod, smile, and thank them then go back to work on my real life silently asking myself what people think art is – do they think it’s automatic, do they think that I can sit down and dictate a full novel (or even a full short story or a single-stanza poem) to a word processor and call it a day? Well I can’t. And I don’t know anyone who produces perfect first drafts 100% of the time. Once in a while there’s a fluke, and you spit out a perfect poem or someone pitches you a softball essay topic that is easily completed, but that’s once in a while, not every time. Art is work and art takes effort, multiple angles of attack on a project, and a good deal of time.

I got a new job recently; it’s not my ideal job but it’s a pretty good gig – there are advantages to having an okay, well-paying job but I’m finding myself in the same boat as my used-to-be-a-poet friend and I’m having trouble making time for fiction.

This weekend, because it was so long, gave me a chance to sit down and write. I didn’t write perfectly, and I’ve been feeling pretty rusty when I’m trying to churn out pages and paragraphs, but I’ve had a few things to help me along. I have excellent fiction to read and to help inspire me (currently it’s a Neil Gaiman short story collection) and I have my friend’s sad story to carry as a totem and a talisman.

Even though it’s hard, even though I’m feeling rusty, and even though I’m short on time I don’t want to end up lost. His brooding poet persona is hidden away, probably for good, and I won’t let that happen to the angry, pierced, pink-haired girl with something to say who’s hiding behind my pinstriped skirts and sensible flats; she demands light and attention, she demands a space in my life, and she demands that I make time for fiction.

You don’t need a muse, you don’t need divine inspiration, you don’t need a novel to simply fall into your head. If you’re losing time for your art just think about what first made you want to create: who were you, what drove you, and who’s that person inside of you still peeking out onto the page – you’ll find what you need looking at yourself, and you’ll know the value of choosing to prioritize your time in order to give that person a voice.

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

Who We Are

I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a theme.

As of now, I’m in the midst of writing a research paper on Cabeza de Vaca’s The Account. I’m focusing on his battle against his peers to define himself (as he sees fit) through his writing and how he fought to keep his identity intact while being surrounded by a completely New World. While talking with Jack recently about the merits of Final Fantasy 8 he claimed that the game was often misunderstood because it dealt so heavily with the theme of identity, and Americans just don’t relate that theme as much as the Japanese do. But what I think really cemented the theme happened today while I was speaking with my aunt who I hadn’t seen in years. After making small talk about school for a bit, she came out and said “It must be hard to be a writer, to have to show everything you are to so many people” she continued “I guess that’s how you know you’re a writer, when you’re not afraid to let everyone see who you are.”

What pushed me over was Bermuda’s blog, head over and check it out, it won’t even take thirty seconds to read. What he said was that we, as writers, must choose how we will be perceived through our writing. So maybe my aunt was wrong about that, maybe showing who you really through your is the mark of a bad writer. Oscar Wilde would certainly agree, to him the mark of a great writer was the ability to make believable lies in order to escape a mundane reality. But the act of taking on new identities in writing has been viewed from a less sardonic point. As Leena pointed out to Bermuda about a week ago, Peter Elbow has done a lot of work in the field of voice in writing. He came up with the theory of many voices in writing, each appropriate for the appropriate moment. Ironically enough, his theories dictate that voice doesn’t actually have anything to do with anything innate to the individual. But isn’t that true enough outside the world of writing? Don’t we put on different faces, different clothes, use different language, and laugh at things that aren’t funny when the time is right? Certainly we act differently in front of a classroom than we would when surrounded by friends. In his last blog, Nick brought up Donald Murray who would have us believe that all writing is unique and inescapably individualistic. It sounds a bit like the work of Karl Marx that was quoted by a Mr. Eric Strege not too long ago, but I assure you that Nick and Murray approach it much more romantically. Or for an even more fun example maybe we should turn to Alli who just can’t escape the moral standards set by Calvin and Hobbes.

So what do writers do? Do we work and work until we can put forward the exact identity we want (personal or not)? Or do we refine and refine our craft until we can express what is purely us? Surely the latter holds merit. I think that this fact can be most seen in Slick’s friend Chingu who just couldn’t portray exactly what he meant in English or Korean. It’s not uncommon, many people can’t convey exactly what they mean, it’s a problem that I struggle with constantly. But let’s not start with structuralism.

It reminds me of a Taoist story I read, it goes a little something like this. One day the king of the land wanted to see a painting of a crab, having never seen one himself. So he called all his greatest artists and a Taoist master. When the artists were given their materials they all began to paint, except for the Taoist master who waited and asked to postpone the painting for a year. As the king grows tired of all the artists, he places all of his hopes on the Taoist. The Taoist keeps postponing until four years have passed. Until one day, he picked up his brush.

And in one movement.

One clean stroke.

The crab was finished.

It was the most perfect crab anyone had ever seen.

So maybe the roll of the writer, an artist, is to convey perfectly through a craft that takes years of training to hone? Or is the point of the story that it takes years to even convey just one thing perfectly? Either way, the fact is, as writers we have chosen the path to sharpen our craft, to be able to convey what we want to better than most.

So what do I think we should all take away from this? Personally, I say we need to write daringly. Because we’re all a part of this narrative. Being a writer isn’t about not being afraid of being read, it’s being willing to do it over and over again. And if you don’t convey yourself through passion, don’t hold your convictions tightly, and you just write what works, then you might find out that you’re just a foil. And nobody wants that.

Sorry for the sentimentality.

It doesn’t come often from me,

-Ryan