Help me, help me, help me!

This weekend was a test on my career choice. I work (as I believe I’ve noted before) at a music store, and this weekend we had a few groups of several young teenagers “shopping” without and sort of adult supervision. The rate at which these kids annoyed me was astounding and one of my first thoughts was, “Why is it that I want to work with these morons?” I even went as far as to ask a co-worker, “They’re different in the classroom, right?”

Her answer was a not-so-encouraging, “No.”



If we’d had more time to discuss it, I might have asked in more detail about my hopes that they go a little wild in public because they don’t have a direct authority figure to report to. I’m seriously hoping that, although they will be difficult, the kinds of issues that come up will be much different than I experience as a retail clerk in a store popular with teens.

There are a lot of differences in their environment that indicate to me that their behavior may be different. For one, they don’t have control over which of their peers are in their classes, which will hopefully mean that groups of friends are separated into different classrooms, and cannot stir up the same kind of excitement and frustration that they can as a unified group. Another aspect is that direct authority figure in the room. They are free to use any sort of language they want in public, but with a teacher in the room I don’t remember any of my friends letting a single curse word loose while I was in high school.

I really hope that my ideas about different attitudes in different environments is true and that I won’t constantly have to deal with the idiots that we sometimes have to kick out of our store. I’m a little discouraged because I don’t change my behavior too much based on my company, but in talking with friends I’ve recently come to realize that I may be the exception the rule and that maybe most people do.

Here’s to hoping I’m a freak!

Using the words we’re allowed.

Listening to the radio last week I was really surprised by the reporting on protestors at the G-20 summit in Pittsburg. The protesting itself didn’t surprise me, people can find reasons to be upset about anything, especially on the global level now. What I was more concerned with was the fact that the police were there to break up what was being reported as a peaceful protest and were doing so without much cause of the breakups being reported. Sure there was some activity of questionable behavior that might call for some intervention, but the biggest offense brought to light was that the group of about one thousand protesters didn’t have a permit.

Seriously?

A permit to gather peacefully? Excuse my language, but that is complete bullshit.

I can understand that on some level these permits are to protect the protestors themselves as it was in the case of protesting for and against proposition 8 in California last year, but the real reason behind a permit is obviously to be able to deny certain protests, or to keep them contained to a “safe” (read unobtrusive and ineffectual) location or distance. Aren’t we given the right to peaceful protest in our nation’s constitution?

Hold please while I do some research on that.

Ok, so maybe I had the wording off, but we are given the right to assembly. The problem with that is how vague it is.

Since this is supposed to be about my Writing and the Young Writer class, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this. I promise I have a relevant point.

If I were currently in the classroom, I would use an opportunity like this to share with students the importance of not only knowing our rights, but also using them to our fullest capacity.

So they won’t let you protest the way that you would like to, what else can you do? Write about it! Write to your local paper, write up a flyer to give out, blog, whatever. This is also where using the writing skills that one learns in high school and college come into play. Words are not enough if they do not convey the message that you want them to.

This could even turn into a decent writing assignment. I don’t think that I would want to bring my students’ personal political opinions into the mix, but maybe something about school policies that they would like to see changed, but for whatever reason could not protest. Instead they would have to write a flyer, or letter for the school paper, or even a letter for the local paper to bring more attention to the issue outside of campus. I’m liking this, I think later I shall expand on it for my writing prompts assignment.

It's all in the phrasing.

I’m a bit of a hippie. I will fully and openly admit that. I try to reuse anything I can and use fewer resources whenever possible. I’m not actually that good at this whole green living thing, but I’ve got some good Catholic guilt going on whenever I don’t bring my reusable bags to the grocery store, or take a shower that’s longer than necessary. So, even though I may not be so great and example of living green, I do try to contribute where I can. That includes simply not taking a bag if I’ve bought something that I can carry without it.

Along with that, I encourage others to do the same.

I work at a music store and a lot of customers buy only one or two items at a time, definitely a reasonable amount to carry without assistance for most people, especially those with a decent sized purse. More as a means to cut costs (because Dimple is cheap) we don’t automatically give every customer a bag with their purchases. The practices that each of us use to find out if a customer wants a bag vary a bit.

I’ve recently heard a lot of, “Do you want a bag for this?” When I ask a customer, my question is whether or not they, “need” a bag. Just that one little word difference is a whole different message. I don’t know how many customers are swayed by the one little word, but I hope that enough of them are.

With words having such a significant meaning, I can only imagine what one could really do with a full essay. Let’s hope that I find a magic way to communicate that to some teenagers within the next couple of years!

The point being?

One of the words that I most despise in writing is “thesis.” It conjures a mental block and will not allow me to write anything that resembles what a “thesis” should be. I’m about 96.7 percent certain that this is because of the importance that has been placed on the writing of one’s thesis in my writing education. Sure, having a clear idea of where you’re going and stating your direction from the beginning is important, but does it have to be the first thing that is created in a paper? Not at all. The times that I have been most successful with creating a concise statement for my thesis have undoubtedly been after I’ve written my arguments and asked myself, “Ok, now just what is it that I’m saying?”

That is precisely how I intend to present the idea of thesis writing to students when I have some to call my own.

Rather than using such an intimidating task like “write your thesis” I plan on having them organize what it is that they want to say, then actually say it, and make sure that is where their paper went before committing that to a “thesis statement.” That way will introduce them to the idea with the first paper that they will write. For a second essay I will have them bring in that first assignment to remind them of the process. Then they will be asked to tell me in one statement before writing what they “intend to prove” through the rest of their paper. Or, for an even simpler phrasing, “What’s your point?” This way, for teachers and professors they will encounter later who are fans of the thesis first method, they will be prepared.

Hopefully I will have lost some of my thesis phobia before then!

Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious!

Showing off. It’s a big reason that I like to write. I consider myself to be an intelligent person, and what’s the point of being that if no one else can ever see any evidence of it? Making it known in conversation can be tricky though, that requires a level of wit that I have yet to fully grasp, and verbally it is easy to come off as though not only to I think that I am intelligent, but that I think I have to prove it, or that I believe myself to be more intelligent than those around me. (That’s definitely not always the case.) Writing is a bit different though.

When I’m writing I can let the words come as they may, celebrating for myself the moments that they come very quickly, and not caring if it takes me 20 minutes to figure out the precise word to express the correct sentiment. I can take the time to show off the expansive vocabulary that I am proud of, and even expand it further when the right word is just out of grasp but a thesaurus is not. Finding the right phrasing and proving a point in the black and white print of the page is not something that someone can “one-up” me on in the moment, and if I do it right; they can’t really “one-up” me at all.

Vocabulary is really a big motivator though. I love knowing a lot of words and using them. When writing a paper I can look them up again and make sure that I am using them in the correct context, rather than throwing them out there in conversation and risk someone knowing that I just completely bastardized the actual meaning of the word. Sure, the look on someone’s face when I use a word that they obviously don’t know is pretty awesome, but is it worth that risk of being found out and not quite as clever as I was trying to show myself to be? I don’t think so, I’ll stick to the written form.

I think that everyone has something to show off with their writing, whether it be good ideas, or kick ass arguments, or a vocabulary that completely eclipses mine, I can’t wait to see what will develop in a student’s writing throughout a semester and what other people enjoy showing off!

Mary Poppins had it right.

Once begun is half done right?



That’s the way that I’ve always heard it. I definitely think that this phrase applies to writing. At least for my writing. I hate to commit anything to paper (or screen) that isn’t phrased precisely how I would like it to be. Because of this, I have issues getting my first sentence out. I know that this is an issue for a lot of students, and maybe even for a lot of people who happen to call themselves writers, but that doesn’t really make it easier to get over.

I’m not sure just what the difference is, but once I’ve got that first sentence and my thoughts are going, I definitely don’t have a problem spitting out anything that comes to mind.



For some reason that first line needs to be something that I feel I’m definitely going to keep, but the rest of it can be complete crap, and I’m comfortable with knowing that I can throw it out later. What’s so different about that first line? I don’t have an answer here, because I almost always end up getting mad at myself, forcing myself to get over it, and just typing anything that will come through my fingertips.

I know that sometimes I’ve thought of the perfect phrasing for the idea I want to convey, but by the time I can get to the computer or a paper I won’t lose, I can’t remember the exact way that I’ve put it, and I get stuck on recreating whatever it was I had before.

I give the advice to other people all the time that no matter what it is, get it out and you can edit it later, so why can’t I follow my own advice? Well, tonight I did. I’m still not happy with what it is that is my first sentence for my Writer’s Autobiography, but I have some time planned tomorrow to edit it, and I may be able to find something else that I’m happy with.

If this works, I think I might be just a little more confident in passing on this advice in the future!

Helping others really helps yourself.

I just gave my email address to my brother’s friend. He was complaining about his English 300 course at Sac City College and that he believes he’s a bad writer, to which my brother and I replied that no one is a good writer. Good editors are called good writers, but no one gets that the first time through. He asked what I meant when I told him that the key to a good paper is editing, and I told him to get feedback from any and everyone he can to help him to identify where he is unclear or where his argument is weak.

He says that he has issues with over using certain words, so I told him to read through his paper looking only for those words and highlighting them as he finds them. When he’s identified them all I told him to go through and either rephrase things or use synonyms for anything in abundance.

I offered my email address if he wanted someone else to help with editing through out the semester and I look forward to seeing the types of issues he encounters throughout the semester. I hope that it will not only give me insight into the different types of issues encountered by different types of minds, but also some really great prompts for journal entries!

I look forward to a semester of helping Nick through his English 300 course and Nick helping me find some insight into young writers!

Motivation Such and Aggravation

This will be my first post in that blog for my class as soon as I can come up with a name for it I like.

You know that technology is having a huge impact on school when one can turn a simple journal assignment into a blog only to motivate themselves to complete it more thoroughly and in a timely fashion.

Such is this blog. For what looks to be quite an exciting course, I must keep a journal of thoughts related to writing and the teaching of writing. With the help of Google Analytics, I will be able to motivate myself to keep writing so as to keep some sort of audience interested. On that note, I have my first self-created prompt for this journal…

How on earth am I actually going to ever get a student motivated to write before the eve of the assigned due date?



Having been one of those students, I know exactly the thought process of the ones who are more than capable of doing any mundane task assigned, but not coming anywhere near caring enough to do them. In the first meeting of my American Gothic course today I was reminded of Professor Sweet’s practice of short quizzes on the assigned reading material and it got me thinking about applying something like this to writing.

Because I had her for American Lit a year ago, I know that Prof. Sweet’s quizzes are very simple ones, only really intended to motivate and reward keeping up with the reading assignments. As much as I hated them at the beginning of the last course, I came to love the easy credit for just doing what I should have found my own motivation to do.

I’d already attended Writing and the Young Writer when thinking about these American Gothic quizzes, and thought that if there was a way to modify this practice for writing, one might just be able to show high school and middle school students the benefit of staying ahead of their writing from the beginning. But just how would I ever be able to do that? I guess I have a few years until I’m in a classroom, and I have lots of teachers to learn from until then, so maybe I shouldn’t worry about it for the moment. If I can figure out a reasonable way though, I can’t wait to try and actually get students motivated.

I love how much better my writing is now that I start my writing earlier and have a chance to edit it. I wasn’t ready to admit that I needed that in high school though, and I’m sure I’ll run into plenty of students who feel the same way. I also feel as though I was able to scrape by and get B’s on papers that I pulled out of my ass the night before, so what real incentive did I have to start earlier?

Thinking about it in those terms has me remembering just last spring and my Advanced Composition course with Professor Dunstan. That’s actually where I finally found the drive to truly edit and give myself time to write. Dunstan was able to get me to see the light by having us turn in papers that were due at the end of the class around mid-terms, and giving us what our grades would be if we turned in that paper. Even the one that I had a solid B in then wasn’t enough for me when I still had the time to improve it. The notes that he’d made, made it very easy for me to spot what I didn’t like in my own writing and edit it to be more clear and definite.

I think before I write again I’ll pull out my old syllabus from that course and see if I can’t draw more inspiration from that, or in my current course with Dunstan!