Word

English majors -- you know what I mean?

A few select characteristics probably come instantly to mind to describe the average, ordinary English major: word person, a bookworm, big vocabulary, good at Scrabble, and so on.

But to those of us who majored in English at HSU there are three very distinct and easily recognizable subcategories. At HSU, the major is split into three pathways: Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Language Arts Instruction. We can tell one another apart from a mile away.

Language Arts Instruction majors were tomorrow's middle school English teachers, down-to-earth, pragmatic and prescriptive, ready to enforce the "rules" of English.
Creative Writing majors were artsy, unstructured poets, as dramatic as invaders from the Drama Department, with more creativity and instinct than technical knowledge.
Literary Studies majors (of whom I am one) were either railing against the canon in favor of women's/cultural/ethnic/queer studies or alternately, they were lamenting the lost classical canon and reading Beowulf for fun.
I'm a variation on that theme: I began by lamenting the lost classical canon while still enjoying some of the marginalized voices we studied (for example, Sherman Alexieand Naguib Mahfouz), then began finally to recognize what we were doing as cultural studies, which as it turns out, I love.

But I continued to be turned off by things like post-structuralism's endless hair-splitting and annoyed by the emotionality of the politically-correct mob that ruled in some of my classes.

At least I can say with authority that I don't like George Eliot or Trollope, but that I do like Dickens and Melville. And happily, I never once took a Shakespeare class.
Midway through, I discovered Linguistics. It was like finding a life raft in the middle of the sea, because linguistics makes sense.

I began to minor in linguistics, while unofficially and secretly, I began to major in it -- as best I could considering such a major doesn't exist at HSU. I took sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, history of English, language analysis, and grammar. And I interned in each one so I could take it twice.

Even in grad school, I have continued my underground major --applied linguistics, viewing everything I learn through the lens of discourse analysis, bending everything I learn about composition theory toward my goal of teaching ESL.
And now that I'm in grad school, English grad students are once again divided into easily recognizable groups. You think you know English grad students? OK, yes, it's true, we are the ones using words like recursivity and genre in ordinary, non-academic conversations, for example, at the laundromat. Words like intertextuality and intersectional actually mean something to us.
But among us English grad students, there are two distinct types: Master's in Literature and Master's in Teaching Writing.

The MA Lits are drinking hard liquor and quoting poetry in public places right now.

And right now, the MATWs have in our satchels great stacks of freshmen composition papers we're doomed to read. We occupy a special level of hell where paperwork keeps multiplying no matter how late you stay up reading it. We are like Sisyphus if his boulder were made of reams of paper covered in type.

Among English grad students, we're the pragmatic ones, hungry for practical ideas for teaching writing.

We are kept from being utterly boring by our fascination with any combination of these major theorists: Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin or Kenneth Burke. Yet, it hurts our brains to float for long in the rarefied air of theory when we long for practical applications.

MA Lits, on the other hand, thrive in the airy realm of theory.

So people like Phyllis Schafly think they know English majors? It's not as simple as that.

Many thanks to all the sites I borrowed these illustrations from.

I Wish You Were Here

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

I finally got down to the business of actually writing my thesis today.

As opposed to seemingly endless research and reading. As opposed to sorting out my previous work, three different papers, under the headings of my thesis sections. And as opposed to crafting a comprehensive works cited section.

In other words I have done everything under the sun to get out of the process of actually writing.

But today, I finally worked: writing, creating, expressing the complexity of my ideas. Trying to lay them out in an orderly fashion without being too dry.

I didn't actually write all day, although I was a virtual prisoner in my apartment, held captive by the necessity to get something done.

All I have to show for it are 511 words that were harder to extract (from what seems like my very soul) than wisdom teeth.

When I look through my other writings on the same subject matter, I seem so fluent that I hardly recognize myself. Why can't I do that this time?

I think of all these American idioms to express difficulty, and they speak to me.

I am out of my depth and in over my head. I have bitten off more than I can chew.

But I can't escape the imperative to write this damn thing. I either write it or I fail. I'm between a rock and a hard place. I have no other choice except to get it done, but I don't feel like I can.

Then again, if it weren't difficult, if it weren't soul-wrenching, then I suppose it wouldn't mean much. And without this baptism of fire, I could never expect the academics to welcome me to their fold.

P.S. Is it any wonder I can't write when all I have to offer are bouquets of cliches?

Dust

Image of Spalding Butterfly Collection courtesy of mark6mauro

Bear with me while I mix metaphors recklessly as I try to pin my feelings down long enough to analyze them a little.

Pin them down -- as if my feelings were pretty butterflies, tragically pinned to a board in some collector's den, their lives of sunshine, flowers and flight cut short and sacrificed to knowledge that is, after all, pointless.

I've been criticized in the recent past for being too analytical, or perhaps it was for being analytical at the wrong time. Not everything requires analysis, so someone said to me.

When I think of the butterfly analogy, I realize there might be some truth to that.

I realize how tenuous attraction is -- a fragile and delicate thing that it can't really bear up under the collector's scrutiny. Pinned down, it is likely to crumble into fine dust and blow away on the slightest wind.
The biggest mystery I have ever known is my own heart. The closer I look, the more unknowable it is. With a heart this unknowable, it's a wonder I get anything done at all.

The only solid thing I have ever discovered there is the love for my children.

Outside of that, however, everything is a contradiction. I want to be safe at the same time I want to be free. I am fiercely independent but also lonely. I am always walking away even while I'm approaching.
Attraction is fragile, oh-so fragile, maybe nothing more than a trick of the light, as it turns out.

All it takes is the slightest shift in perspective, and your precious dreams, built up over the course of a year, vanish -- dusty smudges on your hand after you try to catch butterflies.

Gathering Flowers

You know, I always say the reason I'm a journalist (and now an academic) is I don't have the stamina (or the attention span) for long, sustained writing.

I like small things-- news articles, press releases, 5-page literary analyses, etc. -- things you can finish in short order. I work very intensely for awhile, then move on and forget about it.

I am struggling to manage my thesis, which in the grand scheme of things isn't even that long, really: approximately 50 pages when it's done. But I am lost in it and overwhelmed by it.

I have these novelist friends, who think nothing of 40,000 words, who have to limit themselves to a single volume. I look at them in wonder; they're sort of alien beings to me, creatures who have been blessed by both inspiration and tenacity.

I could never do that.

And then I think of the Bitten Apple. OK, so it's an anthology, which by the way comes from the Greek anthologia "flower-gathering-- a collection of smaller works. But there are 217 of them, counting this one.

I am encouraged. Apparently I can do this if I break it into mini-tasks, each section of my thesis like a mini-paper all in itself. Intro, Lit Review, Definitions, Apprenticeship, Transparency, ESL Research, Textbooks, and Conclusion.

I just have to write each one like a small paper, then gather them like flowers, and arrange them elegantly into a thing called a Master's Thesis.

I like this analogy better than Frank.

Building the Big Love

And I know what love can do.
Yes I know what hearts can do.
The big love -- is taking the wheel,
The big love -- goes head over heels,
The big lust-- bring it into the small world,
The bigger, the better-- Big love

Waiting to catch the big one,
Head over heels, the big one
Bring it into the small world.
I'm building the big big love,
I'm building the big big love.

It has to be a big thing.
It's bringing me to my knees.
Has to be a big thing, big thing,
ya know what I'm saying...

Visual Rhetoric

My master's thesis (or master's project, depending on who you ask and on what day):

Image courtesy of premiere.com

Constructed from three different papers I've written, it is roughly pasted together connections built from reading, research and classroom experiences.

It will probably walk funny, question its origins and perhaps even try to kill me.