Rosie O’Donnell’s recent stint on the View got me thinking about the days (mid-90’s) when I used to watch her talk show. I remember that I really liked her talk show, and because I can’t stand the View, I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly was so appealing about it (to eighth-grade Faith). What I remember first and foremost was that she was a pop culture fan, like me. When famous people came on, she got star struck just like I did at home, and because she was so star-struck she didn’t try to make the show as much about herself (like say, Jay Leno, who will cut off an interviewee at any chance to make his own joke). It seems that now Rosie has devolved into self-caricature, which is why it’s so easy for people to make fun of her. Clearly, she understands that she was brought to the show to play a part.
It’s also one of my pet peeves when people complain that Rosie (or other celebrities) are “political.” I say that in a country where half the population doesn’t vote, anyone famous being political is a pretty good thing. I liked that she said controversial things about the war on TV, because at least it got people talking about major issues and she was the rare host who could go from talking about the war to talking about American Idol intelligently.
(But Faith! All Rosie ever does is yell! And all anyone else does is yell back! How is this at all effective?)
First, let’s be honest, the reason people kept talking about her and Hasselbeck’s showdown was that it was between middle-aged women who (if we are to take a cue from shows like Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart) are apparently only supposed to talk about the latest summer BBQ recipes and slimming pants. It’s the men in suits on Crossfire who are supposed to yell at each other! Furthermore, maybe I think that rhetoric doesn’t have to be persuasive to be effective, and maybe I think that it’s good that people are finally shouting about something that really matters.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
A Story I Have Heard Before
There is a girl, typically a high school girl, often aged 16 or so, ALWAYS with hair described as “mousy brown.” Her looks are “ordinary.” She is awkward, which we know because she is frequently doing things like getting books out of her locker and spilling them all over the floor (oops!). She has few, if any, friends and on more than one occasion a popular blonde girl has made fun of her, typically to the amusement of her popular blonde friends.
But don’t worry about her! Because no sooner have we established her extreme dork factor by having her read Tolstoy on the school bus, than the “handsomest boy in school” performs some sort of heroic act. He picks up her books when she drops them, he catches her when she faints, performs the Heimlich maneuver after she’s downed an errant grilled cheese, swims out to save her from drowning in a polka-dot bathing suit. Like all good men throughout time, he “saves” her. As it turns out, he’s witty and charming, and although he easily talks to her, her hands are “clammy,” stomach definitively full of “butterflies,” and stammering is always involved. She is in disbelief that this handsome creature has deigned to acknowledge her existence. Though I know I’ve seen this conceit a million places, the specific examples I can think of here are season one of Gilmore Girls, a book I just read called Prep, and at some point in Ugly Betty.
This storyline is wrong to me for a number of reasons. Number One, as a certified ordinary Mousy Brown in high school, who read on the school bus and was regularly in need of saving, this kind of thing NEVER HAPPENED TO ME. Pretty blonde girls need saving all the time, and there just isn’t enough teenage boy heroism to go around. The second thing that’s wrong here is that teenage boys are some of the least witty and charming human beings on the planet (and they never have skin as good as Jared Padalecki’s). Finally: Why can’t mousy brown just be okay? Why does she need the basketball captain to fall in love with her? The only answer I can come up with is that society has determined that dorky women need the handsomest boy to be Okay. Somehow, a teenage boy falling in love with you validates your existence.
These were the ideas going through my head last night as I read Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld, a hum-drum book about a girl named Lee who goes to an elite East Coast boarding school. I had heard great things about the book by people who know stuff about books. This book annoyitated me for several reasons. First, the main character is a poorly disguised stand-in for the author, whose mousy brown mug can be found on the back flap. The main character’s name is “Lee” and she’s a girl. And the author’s name is “Curtis” and she too is a girl. Get it? The book’s chapters are divided up by the semesters at school and each chapter could basically be called “funny stuff that happened this one time” because the stories in each rarely intersect in any kind of meaningful way, save for the fact that they seem to happen to the same bunch of characters (same characters doth not plot continuity make). And what happens (“plot”), like everything that happens in high school, is basically meaningless. What I’ve always found appealing about the teenage narrator is that everything seems really important – this is an easy way to give a story significance. In high school, everything always feels like the end of the world. But Sittenfeld is desperate to show you how she’s Come So Far since those silly high school days, that she occasionally, much to the vertigo of the reader, inserts Wise Reflections telling you just how little the moment actually means in the Grand Scheme of Things (Message!). Essentially, she sets up all the drama of a scene, assembles its characters, executes it well, but then deflates it. For example, there’s a quite compelling scene where Lee’s parents come visit her at school and she’s snotty to them. Her father slaps her and tells her that she’s become an east coast snob, and has forgotten her Indiana roots. Immediately following this scene, there are three pages of narration saying (1) that the family laughed about it in retrospect (2) that her father never hit her again (3) that she and her father eventually became very close. So you’re left wondering, why did you tell me this? Teenagers have no perspective, which is why they’re fun to write with – the author doesn’t have to worry about not placing enough gravity in the situation, because with teenagers, everything has gravity. Unless, after every single scene that might mean something, an Older Self dues ex machinas her way into the narrative to tell you it didn’t really mean anything after all. I can just imagine this in Catcher in the Rye (which this book is compared to in a cringe-worthy blurb on the back from Wally Lamb). “Gee, I was so alienated and cynical at the time. I felt that everything was phony. In retrospect, I realize the value of human existence.” (To be fair, Holden does narrate in retrospect, but it’s only a year later, and he’s in a psych ward for crying out loud, where Prep’s narrator seems to be lodged in happily married suburbia, post-college). The grown-up voice also just feels like a cop-out – the writer is too lazy to stay with the voice and let it carry the story.
Anyway, I recently read a fantastic teenage narrative in Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics which is full of pop culture and literature references, and if you haven’t read it already, please drop what you are doing and proceed directly to Amazon.com, where you too can experience this book for a mere $6.15. I read this book almost a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. In fact, that’s why I haven’t blogged about it yet, because it seemed to render me speechless. More later!
But don’t worry about her! Because no sooner have we established her extreme dork factor by having her read Tolstoy on the school bus, than the “handsomest boy in school” performs some sort of heroic act. He picks up her books when she drops them, he catches her when she faints, performs the Heimlich maneuver after she’s downed an errant grilled cheese, swims out to save her from drowning in a polka-dot bathing suit. Like all good men throughout time, he “saves” her. As it turns out, he’s witty and charming, and although he easily talks to her, her hands are “clammy,” stomach definitively full of “butterflies,” and stammering is always involved. She is in disbelief that this handsome creature has deigned to acknowledge her existence. Though I know I’ve seen this conceit a million places, the specific examples I can think of here are season one of Gilmore Girls, a book I just read called Prep, and at some point in Ugly Betty.
This storyline is wrong to me for a number of reasons. Number One, as a certified ordinary Mousy Brown in high school, who read on the school bus and was regularly in need of saving, this kind of thing NEVER HAPPENED TO ME. Pretty blonde girls need saving all the time, and there just isn’t enough teenage boy heroism to go around. The second thing that’s wrong here is that teenage boys are some of the least witty and charming human beings on the planet (and they never have skin as good as Jared Padalecki’s). Finally: Why can’t mousy brown just be okay? Why does she need the basketball captain to fall in love with her? The only answer I can come up with is that society has determined that dorky women need the handsomest boy to be Okay. Somehow, a teenage boy falling in love with you validates your existence.
These were the ideas going through my head last night as I read Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld, a hum-drum book about a girl named Lee who goes to an elite East Coast boarding school. I had heard great things about the book by people who know stuff about books. This book annoyitated me for several reasons. First, the main character is a poorly disguised stand-in for the author, whose mousy brown mug can be found on the back flap. The main character’s name is “Lee” and she’s a girl. And the author’s name is “Curtis” and she too is a girl. Get it? The book’s chapters are divided up by the semesters at school and each chapter could basically be called “funny stuff that happened this one time” because the stories in each rarely intersect in any kind of meaningful way, save for the fact that they seem to happen to the same bunch of characters (same characters doth not plot continuity make). And what happens (“plot”), like everything that happens in high school, is basically meaningless. What I’ve always found appealing about the teenage narrator is that everything seems really important – this is an easy way to give a story significance. In high school, everything always feels like the end of the world. But Sittenfeld is desperate to show you how she’s Come So Far since those silly high school days, that she occasionally, much to the vertigo of the reader, inserts Wise Reflections telling you just how little the moment actually means in the Grand Scheme of Things (Message!). Essentially, she sets up all the drama of a scene, assembles its characters, executes it well, but then deflates it. For example, there’s a quite compelling scene where Lee’s parents come visit her at school and she’s snotty to them. Her father slaps her and tells her that she’s become an east coast snob, and has forgotten her Indiana roots. Immediately following this scene, there are three pages of narration saying (1) that the family laughed about it in retrospect (2) that her father never hit her again (3) that she and her father eventually became very close. So you’re left wondering, why did you tell me this? Teenagers have no perspective, which is why they’re fun to write with – the author doesn’t have to worry about not placing enough gravity in the situation, because with teenagers, everything has gravity. Unless, after every single scene that might mean something, an Older Self dues ex machinas her way into the narrative to tell you it didn’t really mean anything after all. I can just imagine this in Catcher in the Rye (which this book is compared to in a cringe-worthy blurb on the back from Wally Lamb). “Gee, I was so alienated and cynical at the time. I felt that everything was phony. In retrospect, I realize the value of human existence.” (To be fair, Holden does narrate in retrospect, but it’s only a year later, and he’s in a psych ward for crying out loud, where Prep’s narrator seems to be lodged in happily married suburbia, post-college). The grown-up voice also just feels like a cop-out – the writer is too lazy to stay with the voice and let it carry the story.
Anyway, I recently read a fantastic teenage narrative in Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics which is full of pop culture and literature references, and if you haven’t read it already, please drop what you are doing and proceed directly to Amazon.com, where you too can experience this book for a mere $6.15. I read this book almost a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. In fact, that’s why I haven’t blogged about it yet, because it seemed to render me speechless. More later!
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Dissertation Idea
Okay, so it’s a little early to think about a dissertation (hello, Faith In Five Years!) but I’ve been inspired by a book I just read: Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year. Nathan – a pseudonym – was a professor or anthropology at a large state university, and felt that she was disconnected from her students. They fell asleep in class, didn’t do the reading, and basically didn’t seem to care much about school. So she decided to investigate undergraduate culture from their point of view – she moved into a dorm and enrolled for a full freshman courseload.
I greatly admire Nathan’s ambition. In fact, this is something I can say for anthropological ethnographers that I can’t say for composition ethnographers – they put themselves out there. They take risks. I would love to do a project like this, except instead of aiming to discover all of undergraduate culture, I would be more interested in learning about how the freshman experience relates to student writing. How does the freshman composition course compare to the other courses the students are taking? How does the intellectual activity of writing fit in with their other activities? Where does comp fall in their list of priorities? Nathan took five classes with five professors and three teaching assistants, which meaning that in one semester there were eight people making rules and structuring her day. It’s little wonder that students feel overwhelmed trying to meet so many different expectations. Since writing is always “for an audience” I wonder how these different demands influence students’ writing as well.
Nathan discusses some interesting ethical issues she faced: with very few exceptions, she didn’t reveal her true identity. She even paid for the whole thing herself so she wouldn’t have to turn over her notes to anyone. I think I would have an advantage over also be able to pass for a freshman, whereas Nathan was in her fifties. I wonder, however, if I’m not distanced enough from the culture to see it objectively.
Some of Nathan’s insights:
Students are working more than they ever have (or have had to) in the past, and their jobs not only take up a large part of their time but also play a large role in their social lives. A student once told me that she kept missing my class because she had to work late and this made her either (1) tired or (2) sick. And she had to work forty hours a week to pay for school. Though I sympathized, I wondered why she was working so hard to pay for classes she didn’t go to.
Nathan believes that the lack of “community” on typical college campuses (e.g. poorly attended hall events) stems from the overabundance of competing options as to how students can spend their time. She explains “it is hard to create a community when the sheer number of options in college life generate a system in which no one is in the same place at the same time” (38. Students can choose where to live, their major, their extracurriculars, their classes, where to eat, what to do with their free time, where to study, etc. This has gotten to the point where just because you go to the same school as someone doesn’t mean you have anything in common. She writes, “Seen from the level of the institution, ‘community’ is a lofty ideal but with few common activities, rituals, or even symbols to bind together its diverse inhabitants” (40).
Besides work friends, students also seem to form networks based on “shared circumstances and shared demographics” rather than “personality” (57). I thought this happened just at UW because classes were so large, but she reports that in her research “classroom contacts figured relatively little into the social networks of students” (57). In fact, “the most significant relationships are formed either before college or either very early on in one’s college career, most often in some shared affiliation, whether voluntary or not, such as freshman dorm assignment, special freshman summer program, ROTC, ethnic club, or sorority and fraternity rush” (58).
She has some great ideas about why students are hesitant to speak in class. “Equality” is an unconscious norm of the classroom, meaning that students strive not to be “too noticeable . . . It is fine to do well in a class, performing better than others, but only if you do it unobtrusively” (91). She links this to campus activism that doesn’t engage in dialogue with anyone, despite its attempt to be “in your face.” I was thinking of Bascom Hill at UW-Madison, which was variously littered with signs, crosses, pink flamingoes, all in the vague name of “awareness-raising.” Nathan calls these “assertion without direct dialogue, an ‘in your face’ argument without a real face at the other end” (96).
Nathan also points to the depressing reality that “academic life is tangential or at odds with peer culture,” which as been a finding of many studies of campus culture. When she wandered the halls of the dorm, students were talking about sex or boys or drinking. Aside from meetings, like those for group projects, “none of the talk . . . concerned either the substantive content of a class or any other topic that might be labeled academic or intellectual” (99). This also offers an explanation for why students don’t seem to think it’s a big deal to miss class or not do their work. If academic isn’t the number one priority in their lives, it makes sense to them that going home for Easter or being sick or drinking with their friends is a good reason skip school. She said that one of her most sobering insights was that intellectual life just didn’t matter that much in college.
Ultimately, Nathan argues that college needs to be a site of “liminality” or a rite of passage for students. In order to do so, it must resist the world, which is becoming more market-driven (hence the multitude of options for students. She says, “we would not want a university to become so immersed in the world that it can neither critique that world nor proffer an ideal vision of how else it might be” (153).
I greatly admire Nathan’s ambition. In fact, this is something I can say for anthropological ethnographers that I can’t say for composition ethnographers – they put themselves out there. They take risks. I would love to do a project like this, except instead of aiming to discover all of undergraduate culture, I would be more interested in learning about how the freshman experience relates to student writing. How does the freshman composition course compare to the other courses the students are taking? How does the intellectual activity of writing fit in with their other activities? Where does comp fall in their list of priorities? Nathan took five classes with five professors and three teaching assistants, which meaning that in one semester there were eight people making rules and structuring her day. It’s little wonder that students feel overwhelmed trying to meet so many different expectations. Since writing is always “for an audience” I wonder how these different demands influence students’ writing as well.
Nathan discusses some interesting ethical issues she faced: with very few exceptions, she didn’t reveal her true identity. She even paid for the whole thing herself so she wouldn’t have to turn over her notes to anyone. I think I would have an advantage over also be able to pass for a freshman, whereas Nathan was in her fifties. I wonder, however, if I’m not distanced enough from the culture to see it objectively.
Some of Nathan’s insights:
Students are working more than they ever have (or have had to) in the past, and their jobs not only take up a large part of their time but also play a large role in their social lives. A student once told me that she kept missing my class because she had to work late and this made her either (1) tired or (2) sick. And she had to work forty hours a week to pay for school. Though I sympathized, I wondered why she was working so hard to pay for classes she didn’t go to.
Nathan believes that the lack of “community” on typical college campuses (e.g. poorly attended hall events) stems from the overabundance of competing options as to how students can spend their time. She explains “it is hard to create a community when the sheer number of options in college life generate a system in which no one is in the same place at the same time” (38. Students can choose where to live, their major, their extracurriculars, their classes, where to eat, what to do with their free time, where to study, etc. This has gotten to the point where just because you go to the same school as someone doesn’t mean you have anything in common. She writes, “Seen from the level of the institution, ‘community’ is a lofty ideal but with few common activities, rituals, or even symbols to bind together its diverse inhabitants” (40).
Besides work friends, students also seem to form networks based on “shared circumstances and shared demographics” rather than “personality” (57). I thought this happened just at UW because classes were so large, but she reports that in her research “classroom contacts figured relatively little into the social networks of students” (57). In fact, “the most significant relationships are formed either before college or either very early on in one’s college career, most often in some shared affiliation, whether voluntary or not, such as freshman dorm assignment, special freshman summer program, ROTC, ethnic club, or sorority and fraternity rush” (58).
She has some great ideas about why students are hesitant to speak in class. “Equality” is an unconscious norm of the classroom, meaning that students strive not to be “too noticeable . . . It is fine to do well in a class, performing better than others, but only if you do it unobtrusively” (91). She links this to campus activism that doesn’t engage in dialogue with anyone, despite its attempt to be “in your face.” I was thinking of Bascom Hill at UW-Madison, which was variously littered with signs, crosses, pink flamingoes, all in the vague name of “awareness-raising.” Nathan calls these “assertion without direct dialogue, an ‘in your face’ argument without a real face at the other end” (96).
Nathan also points to the depressing reality that “academic life is tangential or at odds with peer culture,” which as been a finding of many studies of campus culture. When she wandered the halls of the dorm, students were talking about sex or boys or drinking. Aside from meetings, like those for group projects, “none of the talk . . . concerned either the substantive content of a class or any other topic that might be labeled academic or intellectual” (99). This also offers an explanation for why students don’t seem to think it’s a big deal to miss class or not do their work. If academic isn’t the number one priority in their lives, it makes sense to them that going home for Easter or being sick or drinking with their friends is a good reason skip school. She said that one of her most sobering insights was that intellectual life just didn’t matter that much in college.
Ultimately, Nathan argues that college needs to be a site of “liminality” or a rite of passage for students. In order to do so, it must resist the world, which is becoming more market-driven (hence the multitude of options for students. She says, “we would not want a university to become so immersed in the world that it can neither critique that world nor proffer an ideal vision of how else it might be” (153).
Monday, May 21, 2007
People that have been irritating me lately
1. People that complain about the price of stamps. The United States Postal Service is the best friggin deal around. What if I showed up on your doorstep and told you that for 41 cents – forty-one cents! – I will PERSONALLY DELIVER your belated Christmas card to your Aunt Josephine in Tulsa. Yes, it may take two days, and yes I may bend the corners slightly, but it will get there. You would do a happy dance and tell your neighbors – then you would tell me I’m crazy. What else can you buy for 41 cents!? Even the quarter machines outside WalMart now charge at least two quarters for the metal snake ring that turns your finger green.
2. People who are on my favorite stairclimber at the gym and aren’t even using it properly. You’re not supposed to hunch over! This places too much stress on your shoulders! At least if you’re going to make my day more difficult, do it with proper spinal alignment!
3. People who think they are saving the environment by buying a Prius. You know what saves the environment and is free? WALKING. Don’t tell me you’re saving the environment if you’re just trying to be trendy.
4. People who Prefer “Film” over Television. If someone told you they were a “film” buff, able to clean out entire Jeopardy categories like “The Talkies” and “Cinema,” what would you think about them? Now, what if someone told you that they watch 30 hours of TV a week? I’ve had a problem recently with people judging me because I like TV. No, maybe I LOVE TV. I’d like to clarify: I don’t like According to Jim, or Will and Grace, or The Hills. I like smart shows, like Buffy, Studio 60, The Office, Veronica Mars, 24, Freaks and Geeks, and most recently HBO’s Carnivale. And yet I am judged. I firmly believe television is becoming a superior art form to movies. First, the extended time period of television allows you to become closer to the characters, to become more involved in the storylines, and to create allegiances to the idea of the show. (It is this kind of loyalty that makes people (me included) line up to see garbage like Spider-man 3.) Television is like one sequel after another! Buffy can explore a hundred themes because it has seven years to do so – a movie barely has two hours. And now in an age of Tivo and DVD and streaming video, television has lost all of its past inconveniences. (And I’d still rather save up to buy a series on DVD than pay outrageous movie ticket prices – AND I can’t watch the movie again or sell it on Amazon if I get bored with it. Television also doesn’t need the kind of commercial success of film (although it doesn’t hurt). Even shows with little to no commercial success typically get to stick around for a good 20 episodes or so, whereas movies rarely see a green light without endless rounds of audience testing.
5. People who don’t realize the dangers associated with being a small female. I was recently denied full funding for a travel grant because I didn’t share a hotel room. Apparently, I was supposed to find a stranger and lock myself in a strange hotel room with them for two days to cut costs. Don’t even get me started on poorly lit sidewalks or entire campuses with few emergency phones.
6. People who don’t stop for me in crosswalks. Please, let me get out of YOUR way.
2. People who are on my favorite stairclimber at the gym and aren’t even using it properly. You’re not supposed to hunch over! This places too much stress on your shoulders! At least if you’re going to make my day more difficult, do it with proper spinal alignment!
3. People who think they are saving the environment by buying a Prius. You know what saves the environment and is free? WALKING. Don’t tell me you’re saving the environment if you’re just trying to be trendy.
4. People who Prefer “Film” over Television. If someone told you they were a “film” buff, able to clean out entire Jeopardy categories like “The Talkies” and “Cinema,” what would you think about them? Now, what if someone told you that they watch 30 hours of TV a week? I’ve had a problem recently with people judging me because I like TV. No, maybe I LOVE TV. I’d like to clarify: I don’t like According to Jim, or Will and Grace, or The Hills. I like smart shows, like Buffy, Studio 60, The Office, Veronica Mars, 24, Freaks and Geeks, and most recently HBO’s Carnivale. And yet I am judged. I firmly believe television is becoming a superior art form to movies. First, the extended time period of television allows you to become closer to the characters, to become more involved in the storylines, and to create allegiances to the idea of the show. (It is this kind of loyalty that makes people (me included) line up to see garbage like Spider-man 3.) Television is like one sequel after another! Buffy can explore a hundred themes because it has seven years to do so – a movie barely has two hours. And now in an age of Tivo and DVD and streaming video, television has lost all of its past inconveniences. (And I’d still rather save up to buy a series on DVD than pay outrageous movie ticket prices – AND I can’t watch the movie again or sell it on Amazon if I get bored with it. Television also doesn’t need the kind of commercial success of film (although it doesn’t hurt). Even shows with little to no commercial success typically get to stick around for a good 20 episodes or so, whereas movies rarely see a green light without endless rounds of audience testing.
5. People who don’t realize the dangers associated with being a small female. I was recently denied full funding for a travel grant because I didn’t share a hotel room. Apparently, I was supposed to find a stranger and lock myself in a strange hotel room with them for two days to cut costs. Don’t even get me started on poorly lit sidewalks or entire campuses with few emergency phones.
6. People who don’t stop for me in crosswalks. Please, let me get out of YOUR way.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
GTD and Me
I recently read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). Allen has received a lot of buzz for his system of productivity, and many blogs (two of my favorites are Lifehack.org and zenhabits.com) are devoted to ways that people can implement the system in their lives for maximum productivity. For example, Allen recommends taking all the open projects in your life and breaking them down into “next actions” or “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion” (34). So for example if you need to get your oil changed, your next action might be to call the garage to see when it’s open and how much it costs. Allen also recommends categorizing these actions by their locations, so you’d have a next action list for “@Home” “@Work” “@Errands” etc.
I found Allen’s book incredibly useful and I would recommend it and the above blogs to anyone, but I’m concerned that his ideas are more applicable to Corporate America types as opposed to graduate students. He talks a lot about faxes, meetings, agendas, organizing one’s “office” – these are not the essence of what a grad student deals with everyday. What I’ve found difficult with implementing this system is the physicality of it all – Allen stresses that you need to think of things in terms of the next physical action, but I feel like a lot of what I do in grad school is internal and mental (perhaps this causes procrastination?) For example, say I’m writing a paper. I could put on my next actions list: Write one page of paper. But that’s not really how I write. My style is very recursive, so although I may have written a page, it’s likely that very little of that will contribute to what Allen calls completion. In fact, I could babble for a page. Sometimes I think my next action is “Stare into blinking cursor” or “Think of title” neither of which are especially physical actions.
I do think that I could teach some GTD principles in a freshman composition course. Allen writes that we procrastinate because we start to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong (this is why sensitive and imaginative people are especially prone to procrastination). He says that we just need to start plodding along and making things happen instead of worrying about the end point. Many students in a freshman composition course have not had good experiences with writing in the past, so when I assign the first paper, they are instantly filled with anxiety (“It’ll never be good enough” “Mrs. Horrible Sophomore English Teacher hated everything I wrote”) and thus procrastinate. But what if we could break down the paper into a series of next actions? Would this relieve the anxiety? For example, it might go something like this
1. Get together notes from class, assignment sheet
2. Brainstorm three topics
3. Choose a topic based on guidelines in class
4. Find three quotes I want to use
5. Write thesis statement
6. Make outline based on thesis statement
WOW! I already have less anxiety! Now this is not to say that the students wouldn’t encounter the same problem that I mentioned above, but I think that a set of physical actions would at least get them started. Plus, looking back at that list now, I realize that “staring off into space” and “thinking” are mental actions that are kind of embedded in the physical actions of creating a thesis statement or outline.
I found Allen’s book incredibly useful and I would recommend it and the above blogs to anyone, but I’m concerned that his ideas are more applicable to Corporate America types as opposed to graduate students. He talks a lot about faxes, meetings, agendas, organizing one’s “office” – these are not the essence of what a grad student deals with everyday. What I’ve found difficult with implementing this system is the physicality of it all – Allen stresses that you need to think of things in terms of the next physical action, but I feel like a lot of what I do in grad school is internal and mental (perhaps this causes procrastination?) For example, say I’m writing a paper. I could put on my next actions list: Write one page of paper. But that’s not really how I write. My style is very recursive, so although I may have written a page, it’s likely that very little of that will contribute to what Allen calls completion. In fact, I could babble for a page. Sometimes I think my next action is “Stare into blinking cursor” or “Think of title” neither of which are especially physical actions.
I do think that I could teach some GTD principles in a freshman composition course. Allen writes that we procrastinate because we start to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong (this is why sensitive and imaginative people are especially prone to procrastination). He says that we just need to start plodding along and making things happen instead of worrying about the end point. Many students in a freshman composition course have not had good experiences with writing in the past, so when I assign the first paper, they are instantly filled with anxiety (“It’ll never be good enough” “Mrs. Horrible Sophomore English Teacher hated everything I wrote”) and thus procrastinate. But what if we could break down the paper into a series of next actions? Would this relieve the anxiety? For example, it might go something like this
1. Get together notes from class, assignment sheet
2. Brainstorm three topics
3. Choose a topic based on guidelines in class
4. Find three quotes I want to use
5. Write thesis statement
6. Make outline based on thesis statement
WOW! I already have less anxiety! Now this is not to say that the students wouldn’t encounter the same problem that I mentioned above, but I think that a set of physical actions would at least get them started. Plus, looking back at that list now, I realize that “staring off into space” and “thinking” are mental actions that are kind of embedded in the physical actions of creating a thesis statement or outline.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
An Open Letter
Our relationship is based on a cycle of abuse. You get my hopes up, and send them crashing to the ground. Week after week, I come crawling back to you, and you consistently fail me. It’s been so long since you thought about my needs. After our encounters, I walk around in a storm for a week, telling everyone I hate you, saying I’ll never let you back in my life, that we’re through For Real This Time, and yet every week, I find myself in your grip. You tell me that I’m wrong, prove to me that you couldn’t care less about what I think. You’ve done this for FIVE years now – you get me excited about our relationship and then you break my heart. You are such a waste of time.
I’m speaking, of course, about this season of American Idol. I have liked American Idol before America even did. I remember watching previews for it in the summer of 2002, between my sophomore and junior years of college, and distinctly thinking that it would be important for me to watch this show. But this season and last season to some extent have become more caricature than anything else. The excitement of American Idol comes from that feeling of discovering raw talent – where one moment a contestant seemed to be just another awkward teenager in an uncomfortable top, the performance makes them come alive somehow and you get to share in that moment of greatness. So:
Faith’s Favorite Overlooked American Idol Performances
I’ve selected these performances because they have in some respect stayed with me. I YouTube them in the wee hours, typically after a particularly dismal AI week (which has been much of this season). My other criteria is that when I hear the original on the radio, I think of this performance. For your assistance, I've included YouTube links to all the performances.
George Huff “Take Me To the Pilot” George Huff was probably best known for a calf bounce, painfully evident in the clip because he bounces in and out of the screen. Still, he had a great smile and an infectious enthusiasm that marked him as one of the few performers in recent memory that seemed to actually be having fun (I'm looking at you Underwood!).
LaToya London, “Somewhere” Perhaps a bit oversung, but I love this song and this episode has my favorite celebrity judge of all time: Quentin Tarantino. You wouldn't think Tarantino would be all up in the American Idol, but if you think about his role in pop culture, it kind of makes sense. He too is a student of pop culure.
Chris Daughtry, “Walk the Line” I loved Chris, which is why he finished fourth. Chris came in a line of “Rockers” on AI, including Bo Bice and Constantine Maroulis. But Bo was just all right for me. He sorta seemed to sing the same song every week. Something country-rock ish. But Chris has a great sense of self, meaning you could give him some ridiculous theme (American Songbook? Jigga what?) and he could come up with something like this.
Clay Aiken, “This is the Night” I have long since given up trying to defend my affection for Clay. Yes, it’s cheese. And yes, I love it. Would someone please cast this boy as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat already?
Tamyra Gray, “A House is Not A Home” Everyone and their mom has performed this song on AI at some point, but Tamyra’s understated version is absolutely the best.
Carrie Underwood, “Alone” Not a fan of the Underwood. Don’t love country music, and she always had a deer-in-headlights look that I found off-putting. It was this performance, however, that showed her range, and made me wish she hadn’t gotten pigeonholed as Country so soon. Also check out the cool shoulder twitch. Carrie Underwood also had a knack for making it look easy. A lot of contestants are up there working it and it shows -- you end up feeling kind of sorry for them and you want to let them take a nap. She pulls off those top notes without sounding shrill (I'm looking at you Jordin!)
Kelly Clarkson, “A Moment Like This” Okay, okay, so the performance I like is technically after she already won it. Kelly is one of the most consistent Idol performers ever. Before Idol became the extended Ford/Coke commercial it is today, before 17 bamillion people started voting every week, before the flashy lights and backup bands and celebrity judges, there was just Kelly, excited that she’d won a record contract. Watch it and try not to get choked up. (Also note the presence of Season 1 Seacrest co-host Brian “The Dunk” Dunkleman – whatever happened to that dude?)
Now, here's where the "making connections" part comes in. Compare ANY of those performances to Blake’s supposed “breakout” “You Give Love a Bad Name," which Michael Slezak of Entertainment Weekly (who should know better!) has called "audacious and unexpected." This person is in the FINAL TWO? Do you see why I'm upset?
I’m speaking, of course, about this season of American Idol. I have liked American Idol before America even did. I remember watching previews for it in the summer of 2002, between my sophomore and junior years of college, and distinctly thinking that it would be important for me to watch this show. But this season and last season to some extent have become more caricature than anything else. The excitement of American Idol comes from that feeling of discovering raw talent – where one moment a contestant seemed to be just another awkward teenager in an uncomfortable top, the performance makes them come alive somehow and you get to share in that moment of greatness. So:
Faith’s Favorite Overlooked American Idol Performances
I’ve selected these performances because they have in some respect stayed with me. I YouTube them in the wee hours, typically after a particularly dismal AI week (which has been much of this season). My other criteria is that when I hear the original on the radio, I think of this performance. For your assistance, I've included YouTube links to all the performances.
George Huff “Take Me To the Pilot” George Huff was probably best known for a calf bounce, painfully evident in the clip because he bounces in and out of the screen. Still, he had a great smile and an infectious enthusiasm that marked him as one of the few performers in recent memory that seemed to actually be having fun (I'm looking at you Underwood!).
LaToya London, “Somewhere” Perhaps a bit oversung, but I love this song and this episode has my favorite celebrity judge of all time: Quentin Tarantino. You wouldn't think Tarantino would be all up in the American Idol, but if you think about his role in pop culture, it kind of makes sense. He too is a student of pop culure.
Chris Daughtry, “Walk the Line” I loved Chris, which is why he finished fourth. Chris came in a line of “Rockers” on AI, including Bo Bice and Constantine Maroulis. But Bo was just all right for me. He sorta seemed to sing the same song every week. Something country-rock ish. But Chris has a great sense of self, meaning you could give him some ridiculous theme (American Songbook? Jigga what?) and he could come up with something like this.
Clay Aiken, “This is the Night” I have long since given up trying to defend my affection for Clay. Yes, it’s cheese. And yes, I love it. Would someone please cast this boy as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat already?
Tamyra Gray, “A House is Not A Home” Everyone and their mom has performed this song on AI at some point, but Tamyra’s understated version is absolutely the best.
Carrie Underwood, “Alone” Not a fan of the Underwood. Don’t love country music, and she always had a deer-in-headlights look that I found off-putting. It was this performance, however, that showed her range, and made me wish she hadn’t gotten pigeonholed as Country so soon. Also check out the cool shoulder twitch. Carrie Underwood also had a knack for making it look easy. A lot of contestants are up there working it and it shows -- you end up feeling kind of sorry for them and you want to let them take a nap. She pulls off those top notes without sounding shrill (I'm looking at you Jordin!)
Kelly Clarkson, “A Moment Like This” Okay, okay, so the performance I like is technically after she already won it. Kelly is one of the most consistent Idol performers ever. Before Idol became the extended Ford/Coke commercial it is today, before 17 bamillion people started voting every week, before the flashy lights and backup bands and celebrity judges, there was just Kelly, excited that she’d won a record contract. Watch it and try not to get choked up. (Also note the presence of Season 1 Seacrest co-host Brian “The Dunk” Dunkleman – whatever happened to that dude?)
Now, here's where the "making connections" part comes in. Compare ANY of those performances to Blake’s supposed “breakout” “You Give Love a Bad Name," which Michael Slezak of Entertainment Weekly (who should know better!) has called "audacious and unexpected." This person is in the FINAL TWO? Do you see why I'm upset?
Welcome.
I’ve decided that I need a hobby.
I discovered this while trying to write a bio of myself yesterday. I got through all the stuff about education and research interests -- I have lots of those. Then I looked at the little sample bio, and the person had written all their hobbies – it was something cliché like sailing, but it was a hobby no less. And so I tried to think of things that I really enjoy doing. I enjoy working out, but not really all kinds of working out. Mostly I like pilates, but I was afraid that people wouldn’t know what that was and I would look pretentious. I was going to put “running” but I don’t really like the treadmill as much as I like the stairclimber, and even then, only while watching TV on DVD. Reading and writing were boring hobbies. I like to play Nintendo Wii and read pop culture blogs (my favorites are EW’s PopWatch and The Superficial) but those made me seem shallow.
So blogging is my new hobby.
I also thought I needed a Blog With a Gimmick (my favorite example is this one), so I decided that I would write a blog where I made connections. Making connections is definitely one of my favorite things. Then I read this Onion article, and realized I had my title for this blog. Some goals:
(1) Post at least once every other day.
(2) Post about pop culture as well as my aforementioned research interests, which are, according to my bio: ethnography, personal writing, the freshman experience, popular culture, and writing across the curriculum.
(3) Make a lot of connections.
Welcome.
I discovered this while trying to write a bio of myself yesterday. I got through all the stuff about education and research interests -- I have lots of those. Then I looked at the little sample bio, and the person had written all their hobbies – it was something cliché like sailing, but it was a hobby no less. And so I tried to think of things that I really enjoy doing. I enjoy working out, but not really all kinds of working out. Mostly I like pilates, but I was afraid that people wouldn’t know what that was and I would look pretentious. I was going to put “running” but I don’t really like the treadmill as much as I like the stairclimber, and even then, only while watching TV on DVD. Reading and writing were boring hobbies. I like to play Nintendo Wii and read pop culture blogs (my favorites are EW’s PopWatch and The Superficial) but those made me seem shallow.
So blogging is my new hobby.
I also thought I needed a Blog With a Gimmick (my favorite example is this one), so I decided that I would write a blog where I made connections. Making connections is definitely one of my favorite things. Then I read this Onion article, and realized I had my title for this blog. Some goals:
(1) Post at least once every other day.
(2) Post about pop culture as well as my aforementioned research interests, which are, according to my bio: ethnography, personal writing, the freshman experience, popular culture, and writing across the curriculum.
(3) Make a lot of connections.
Welcome.
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