Subjectivity and Contact Zones

I found Jacqueline Jones Royster's article, "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own" very intriguing. Her argument that subjectivity is the key to helping "deepen, broaden, and enrich our interpretive views in dynamic ways" struck me as obvious, but I realized it was something I hadn't really thought about in depth, at least in terms of ethnic background (29). I remember at the ALANA talk the students spoke of how important it was that students representing minority ethnic backgrounds really evaluate their experiences on a predominantly white campus and try to come to an understanding of them. At the time, I did not think it was vital for ALANA students to represent their group in such a presentation because I always thought that this deliberate "us vs them" dialogue kind of promoted the separation of white and minority cultures, but now I am not so sure. At some point I realized most people I heard talk about race issues at our institution were white, so I read Royster's article thinking this. She says that she has "found it extremely difficult to allow the voices and experiences of people that I care about deeply to be taken and handled so carelessly and without accountability by strangers" and I thought, hm, I'm not sure about that. But I thought further:  isn't it true that we all need to speak from some experience (race included) to avoid our interpretations of such experiences becoming "a type of discourse that serves as a distraction, as noise that drains off energy and sabotages the work of identifying substantive problems within and across cultural boundaries and the work also of finding solutions that have import, not simply for a 'race,' but for human beings whose living conditions, values, and preferences vary" (31)? To me, Royster's article was about breaking down stereotypes to really listen to a person, any person, with a particular experience (race in this case) and being able to RESPOND thoughtfully, and not just carry on a conversation for the sake of it, for the mere necessity of it. Obviously, racism is still an issue and our institution is grappling with diversity and culture incorporation, trying to start up a dialogue with students at the forefront. And now I am confident they are on to something valuable through their subjectivity, inviting us "to understand human history both microscopically and telescopically" from their standpoints (34). She asks, "How do we negotiate the privilege of interpretation?" (36) But I say, ask the ALANA students who are striving to gain awareness of their experiences and start an authentic dialogue about it with those who will listen, and think, and then speak to communicate meaningfully.

As for Mary Louise Pratt's article on contact zones, I was engaged with her discussion of useful cultural literacy in terms of baseball at the beginning. I thought this was a perfect example of how we gain strong subjectivity that provides us with a perspective we can discuss effectively with just about anyone. I thought this was a strong argument that could back up Royster's ideas about the importance of subjectivity in such discussion. She lost me a bit with the historical backtracking, maybe because it was one in the morning, but I think her point was the show that historically we have allowed marginalized groups entrance into the dominant culture through a somewhat predictable and normative series of actions (2). I think she was arguing that subordinated people will challenge that dominant culture by means of parodic language and images, among other methods, in contact zones where the cultures meet. One other argument she made that was interesting to me was that "human communities exist as imagined entities in which people 'will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of the communion.'" (4). Thus, she says, these communities are defined by what style they take on in the imaginations of the constituents. I thought this was interesting in this context because most of what we think about anything, in terms of a group, is collectively subjective. This introduces a whole politics of superiority and pride and other virtues -- and allows one in this group to easily adopt assumptions as fact. I think Pratt then makes a valuable connection to these issues in the classroom:  we all can be challenged on our assumptions, on race, on anything, no matter if we are "dominant" or not. That's just an imagined inclusion, so we can all benefit from a collective discussion of reality, comparing perspectives, and like Royster said, listening, analyzing, speaking from the contact zone of the classroom that allows students to do so.

Maxine Hairston, Freshman Writing, English Departments, etc.

I thought that Maxine Hairston made several interesting connections between the field of composition studies and English departments. She made it evident that a culture of power exists within a university, giving more authority to those departments that are politically charged and integrative. She argues that English departments tend to have a bad reputation with administrators, that is unless they craft their curriculum to be more literary criticism-based or transform their writing courses into "vehicles for social reform rather than as student-centered workshops designed to build students' confidence and competence as writers" (180). She discusses the controversial way of leading freshman writing courses, suggesting perhaps it would be better to let students, through liberal guiding on the professor's part, choose their own topics to write about and then workshop them with their peers. She believes that this will get students to really encounter and challenge themselves with their preconceptions and develop new notions of diversity and ideology. If a professor does the opposite, uses the class to establish and promote their own beliefs, she says they would largely be supporting capitalistic ventures by encouraging students to create a niche in the "power structure" (184).

She worries about the future of writing if students are being taught by professors with political agendas rather than professors who can actually teach craft and critical thinking skills specific to writing itself through genuine exploration of a student-chosen topic. I find myself agreeing with her statement: "Authoritarian methods are still authoritarian methods, no matter in what cause they're invoked" (187). I think she is right that students need to learn to critically evaluate the wrongs of the world, rather than have them inculcated by the institution, even if their tendency to challenge injustice is admirable. I know I can't just say "OK, ____ in society sucks and I'm going to say/do ______ to change it." I need to be informed about it through a class structured in the manner Hairston describes in which I evaluate my own knowledge/perspective on the situation, write about it, discuss it with my peers, revise, discuss it with my professor, discuss, discuss, discuss. I find that that's how I do my best learning in terms of political/social issues. Tom Kerr's Arugment class is a good example of this. Otherwise, like Hairston says, we find that incoming students in writing classes just learn how to play the game and use "fake discourse" which "is a kind of silence" and don't actually cultivate critical thinking skills (189). And that's critical. (I feel like that pun was valid because Hairston used a tapestry metaphor.)

Ellen Cushman - Public Intellectual

Cushman believes that the definition of "public" in the term "public intellectual" can be problematic because it is often unrepresentative of an actual public, and is often used to describe a more privileged class of citizens. She holds that using traditional methods of anthropological, observation-based research serves only to inform an already educated and well-off demographic about the problems of the world without actually helping to make any changes for those who need it most. She argues that the best way to remedy this is to switch to a perspective that allows for engagement or interaction within the community requiring assistance. This way, she says, both the community and the public intellectual will benefit from a mutual exchange of knowledge. Through service learning at the university level, as well as activist research, Cushman believes students, professors, and community organizations will see more meaningful socio-political action taking place by learning to "work together to identify and ameliorate local-level social issues" (334). Outreach courses promoting such values will find that they no longer "deepen the schism between universities and communities" to the same degree as those promoting more traditional values.

I have a feeling Tom Kerr is going to be speaking in class about the prison correspondence project he led last spring in our Argument class, so I will add to that during discussion. =)

Chris Anson - Distant Voices

In 1999, I was blissfully learning the joys of computer games while Anson was busy writing this article. It's interesting to me that for so much of my first few years having a computer, the internet played no part in my life, and yet if I go a day without internet in 2011, I miss crucial emails or fail to complete assignments.

All in all, I thought his article was introspective and that he was genuinely concerned for the future of teaching writing, but oftentimes he seemed to get too excited with predictions of the near but strikingly technological future (ooooooh). I think it is very valid to discuss such technological advances though, especially since we are now twelve years past this and so many of his craaaaazy ideas have already been implemented, and we are sure to see just as much in the next decade, I'm sure. He argues that it is so important that writing is never taught online because the benefits of it all occur in the classroom through face-to-face interaction and collaborative workshopping. He says that we must be careful and thoughtful about the decisions we make to move key educational communities online because we sacrifice the "teacher-learner, learner-teacher" relationship and the online teacher as moderator/expert changes that dynamic. He wonders, like I do, if decisions for institutions to move some courses online comes from a financial standpoint, rather than a concern for good education, and fears that teachers will face lower wages with less benefits employed, or "outsourced" on a non-tenure track. He also reiterates the importance of physical spaces for education, such as writing centers and offices, yet does give kudos to email for being a 24/7 ease of access way of communication. Basically, he believes there are good things that can come from technological advances in relation to writing education, but he is primarily skeptical of the intentions for doing so when so much is sacrificed. I enjoyed his discussion of multimedia, particularly because we do not generally use several sources of media anymore in the classroom as he says we did in 1999; most resources are DVD and/or computer-based these days and, in fact, a professor told me IC is trying to phase out of VHS media and projectors. Overall, I think he just wants us to engage in our communities and weigh the positives of negatives, if only to be aware of what we are missing with each choice we make in either direction. Cultivating this awareness will guide us to make better decisions and theoretically receive a more in-depth and cutting-edge education.

Mike Rose - Language of Exclusion

Rose writes about the all too common mistake many American university affiliates make, that of not only defining all writing in terms of their utilitarian "skill/tool" bias, but more importantly that of assigning students a "remedial" role they become boxed into. He worries for the future of students in universities across the nation, which are continuously accepting more and more students from varied educational backgrounds. His primary concern is that attitudes, shaped over the past two centuries of American history, toward writing as a product, rather than a process, lead teachers to grade students based on surface correctness. They consequently promote, he argues, a trap for students who cannot meet unrealistic academic standards and label them as deficient, in need of a "remedy" of sorts. I found his medical allegory appropriate because we do kind of treat our "remedial" students in the same way as patients: test, diagnose, dose, repeat. It is fundamentally crucial, he says, that we must stray from this superficial regard of writing in order to evaluate and understand where actual issues stem from and try to genuinely work with them on a case by case basis, rather than cast aside those judged incompetent. This is a political problem, since those judged "inadequate" are given less power in the system, leading me back to Delpit's article on inequality resulting from our culture of power. Rather than condemn students of any background who fail to meet these rigorous standards to "scholastic quarantine until their disease can be diagnosed and remedied," I suggest we implement Rose's idea to redetermine what illiteracy is and use the term more wisely where it belongs, and never by the academics feeling "frustration and disappointment in teaching students who do not share one's passions" in the university environment (352, 354).

I think he is right that "the ways society determines what it means to be educated change" and that "the story of American education has been and will in all likelihood continue to be a story of increasing access" (356). We must follow his advice and act to make an equitable present, rather than push the issue under the rug of the past or future. And because writing does lead us to engage more deeply in a discipline, even if, as Barbara Apstein says, we may read writing that does this and yet not write it ourselves, it is an ideal way to attempt to do so (I guess that's why he wrote the article!). I just wonder "if we gave it full status, championed its rich relationship with inquiry, insisted on the importance of craft and grace, incorporated it into the heart of our curriculum," if this would be enough to really make any significant changes for students deemed remedial for the simple fact that the education system is complex, public and private, well-funded and not, etc. (359).

Underlife and The Silenced Dialogue

Robert Brooke arrived at a concept regarding the self more similar to my own view, compared to those of Peter Elbow and Walter Ong, in his essay discussing the sociological theory of the "underlife" in relation to the classroom. According to this theory, one's underlife comprises "those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation" (141). He goes on to discuss how both students and teachers engage in a game-like series of actions that "show that their identities are different from or more complex than the identities assigned them by organizational roles" (142). People, he argues, generally try to make new roles conform to part of their present identity and work only to shape it through rejection or acceptance of these new roles in new contexts. These individual stances, exhibited through observable behaviors, set one's identity apart from the rest and in this way, "the self is formed" (144). He provides examples, the one in particular about the lesson on fermentation resounding for my experience in a bar tending class; I set myself apart by trying to learn the basics of alcohol production and understand it as a process while others only memorized what was necessary to pass the exam and be able to bar tend (the product). Yet I did notice those who had tried to only memorize the information were able to apply that knowledge to what interested them, just as I had, but by a very different path. Anyhow, I thought his argument about the self was valid in that he implies both conscious and unconscious showing and hiding of facets of our identity. We judge what fits in a situation and we put it forth; this does not mean we aren't anyone else, but rather that we have a visibly selective identity. Thus I also think it's appropriate to say that students need to think of themselves as writers in order to write better; this brings them in closer proximity to their voices and allows them to say what they have to say. Teaching writing as a "disruptive form of underlife" would therefore lead to an even closer proximity to one's identity for simply increasing informed awareness of it.

Lisa Delpit brings attention to the issue of inequality in the classroom environment due to the culture of power enacted in our society. She places blame on white academics for establishing a discriminatory (with or without intention she does not specify) educational system which favors primarily white, middle-class students in terms of established societal norms for success. She argues that current classroom practices treat poor or minority students unfairly, labeling them as remedial or misbehaved, and that solutions to help these students succeed often are too indirect and useless for real improvement to occur. Arguing that this stems in part from cultural differences between white and black educational practices (for example, the issue of authority she presents), she also suggests that in the U.S. "students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it" (287); this makes the learning process more difficult for non-white students because they are expected to understand the process when in reality they have, she argues, never been properly taught that process to begin with. I am not sure how widely correct her observations are when applied to the American population as a whole, especially back in the 80s, but I expect her results are probably still quite shocking today in a society that claims to be racially transcendent. While we may have passed laws making discrimination illegal, education still suffers in that teachers, like she argues, do not always know how to deal with students from different backgrounds with different experiences, from any culture, since the educational system still tailors to that same white, middle-class demographic. I think it's true when she says that we all are experts at what we know best and thus we all need to approach education on a more personal level in order to really learn anything. This goes beyond class and race, and right to the foundations of human connection. How can we learn anything, she asks, if we don't listen and hear from our hearts? This speaks to all inequalities, all differences in conviction, not just the plight of the teacher and student misunderstanding and miscommunication related to race and socioeconomic standing.

My Thought Paper

Dimensions of the Writer: 

    Evaluating Insinuations of Psychosis and Schizophrenia

         As an early writer, I always had it in my head that I had to solidify my identity through my writing, rather than lose it. I had learned about enough writers gone psychotic to know I had to be careful, but careful about what exactly? I wasn’t sure then, and I still am not certain. I was taught in school to become a simplified, definable person, easily categorized and placed into society where I was fit, and I despised this sentencing to a basic identity. I knew that I, like all others, had potential within in me to become something more than just that.
        Writing taught me that “I” was far more complex than I could imagine. Few of my thoughts strewn on paper were visibly connected, yet I knew they were all part of me and could make sense to myself and others if they were reordered or elaborated on; I wondered if I was crazy since I could not seem to forge these thoughts and perceptions into clean-cut pieces of writing. I decided that I probably wasn’t and started to think more carefully about the nature of these thoughts and perceptions, where I guessed they had originated and why they had anything to do with the rest of them. Eventually, I began to note the connections and, in various stages of revision, learned to make my writing more coherent and cohesive as my understanding of the ideas became apparent. I was improving as both a writer and a thinker, made evident by the results of my academic labor. I did not have multiple personalities, I concluded much to my relief, but rather access to a multitude of ideas I could consider outside of my own tunnel vision.
         I realized that my identity, along with everyone else’s, was fluid because of this possibility of differing perceptions and experiences within my own point of view. I was unaware at the time that this idea of a single identity was stifling my ability to process the stimuli the world presented to me. Breaking it down through my explorations in writing and revision started to reveal the wealth of “selves” I had been denying breathing room. In fact, I believe the need for revision signifies that there is no one true all-knowing self, but rather a self contingent upon the selves of all the people one interacts with and accumulates knowledge and ideas from over the course of the writing process. With this in mind, one can imagine how impossible it must be to pinpoint just exactly “who” they are.

        Theorists Walter Ong and Peter Elbow discuss this idea of a complicated collection of identities harbored within one human being. While Ong suggests that these other selves are fictionalized, thereby implying there is one true or base self, Elbow seems to hold that these selves are simply complex social and private dimensions of one’s being. I side primarily with Elbow because I dislike the notion of a fictionalized self; it perpetuates the stereotype of the crazy writer and boxes the writer into an overly simplified, unrealistic identity. Exposure to such investigation of the self was limited for me in my education, as I suspect it has been for most Westerners. The books of my schooling tended to emphasize the negative aspects of writers’ lives, presenting them as neurotic or depressed. We had few exercises allowing us access to other dimensions of the solitary self we assumed ourselves to be, and no explicit lesson that we had this potential to begin with. I think this is the type of education Ong hails from.
        Both Ong and Elbow are skeptical of personal diary-style writing as a solution to discovering one’s identity. They argue that one can be writing to an imagined self, an idealized self, a false self, a self he was, a self he will be, a self others believe him to be, and so on. Thus, the reader, oneself, is asked to “play the role in which the author has cast him, which seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual life” (Ong 12). These conflicting identities, discovered particularly through diary writing, suggest a life of constantly altered being rather than a life of stagnant being. One writes to a self that is constantly changing, yet retaining much of its basic components. Therefore our skewed sense of the self, a term used by the Dalai Lama, is what is at fault for the negative stigma surrounding the mental state of the writer, and this lies in our cultural and educational exposure and experience.

Feminism and Writing

Although I am a woman and I understand the need for gender equality, I often have a hard time sympathizing with feminist arguments. They may have valid or intriguing points in their essays, in this case Elizabeth Flynn and Kristie Fleckenstein's, but they are filled with contradictions. In the case of the field of composition, Flynn writes that its "foremothers" are abundant and the field "from the beginning, has welcomes contributions from women-- indeed, has been shaped by women." So what's the fuss, I say. When we read Emig's essay, Flower's, Lunsford's, and so on, I was certainly captivated by their arguments just as much as the others. I felt their points of view were valuable to my understanding of the topics in conjunction with those written by men quite equally. Flynn attempts to illustrate a divide between the genders to account for the female-male differences she's observed, but I truly think, although we are a gendered society, all people differ enough for hundreds of reasons of which gender is only one. I found her ideas about the gender-dependent differences in development compelling in relation to her discussion of the student narrative examples in which female students wrote "stories of interaction, of connection, or of frustrated connection" and male students wrote those "of achievement, of separation, or of frustrated achievement." (428) I found it a little simplistic as a conclusion, but nonetheless interesting to consider. In the end though, I felt her whole point of writing was to empower these "selfless and voiceless" women to "reclaim the self" and transcend male writing and power, leading the way to a matriarchal revolution... probably not the best idea.

As for Fleckenstein, what little I could extract from her verbose argument hardly resounded for me. I felt as though she was doing exactly what she was arguing against: trying "[t]o gain discursive authority... to cultivate the voice of masculine privilege--creating a masculine writing figure inside the text by erasing expressive elements or subjectivities that reveal their feminine signature or identity outside the text" (114). I hardly had a sense of who Fleckenstein was, or where she was coming from. Her defensive point of argument lends itself well to this reduction of her identity. She seems to be coming from a scholarly standpoint, adopting the "masculine" form she denies her approval. She writes to counter Bartholomae's points and quotes enough to lose her sense of self she so desperately wishes to inform the academic community exists; yet caught up in the form, I think she is unaware that she gets lost somewhere. Perhaps if she focused less on unnecessary parentheses she would have realized her argument started to fall apart -- well before the bit about female students wishing to fulfill their male professors' sexual fantasies. I found much of her argument irrelevant, and am still turned off to feminism, maybe even more so now.

Inventing the University

David Bartholomae's article was the shortest article we've read, I believe, yet the hardest for me to get through. It seemed to me that he was primarily ranting about how students cannot live up to his academic expectations, and I was reminded of several professors I've had with impossible standards. I often felt my learning was impeded by translating my interpretations of my education into this overly formal language I did not intend to use; I had no interest in joining an academic community, only in satisfying my curiosity in intriguing, coincidentally "upper-level" electives.

Certainly, we need to learn the academic discourse he describes through introductory classes in order to write as a member of the academic community, which, as he states involves a great deal of imitation at the start. We must learn to write in the format that the university demands of us if we wish to think of the university as an institution of learning and reporting to those in that institutional environment. He's correct in this respect, but all too condescending. I felt like his complaints about student essays were nit-picky and too precise for the standards of most professors. I understand that he is committed to academia and wants to engage students in that world, but honestly, I think he expects too much from undergraduate students. I think his arguments are valid perhaps for students preparing for graduate work in a field, but most undergraduates I know do not have any serious interest in permanently joining an academic community. Thus, the hundreds of students he, like so many other theorists, deems "basic writers" are probably mostly good writers. In fact, some of his examples were not as troubling as he made them out to be. I don't like to think of my university education as empowering me with a superior discourse; rather, I like to think of it as enlightening me as to other forms of discourse aside from my natural one. I agreed with his understanding of the undertaking of university discourse and how we grapple with it as students, but I definitely do not agree with the emphasis he placed on its importance. University education is about more than learning how to manipulate language and engage in the academic community accordingly.

Basic Writers and Liberal Education

I was surprised to realize I myself regarded the concept of basic writers quite like the doctors Mina Shaughnessy describes in her first paragraph, who she says look at patients as other and thus separate their own health concerns from theirs. Teachers who regard their students in this manner cannot possibly create a healthy relationship with them if they are looked to as the learned authority figure, rather than a partner in experience. I hate the term "catching up" since it implies one is left behind somewhere in a "normal" learning process; however, I think everyone develops at their own rate due to the complexity of contributing factors from all walks of life so there is thus no possibility for accurate gradation or staging scales. Like Shaughnessy, I believe that instituting impossible standards "radically lowers the standards" (235). Strict enforcement of meeting established standards stifles exploration in those who are excelling while at the same time producing mental blocks in those who cannot quite comprehend the standards just yet. She argues that the "issue is not the capacity of students finally to master" any given aspect of literacy development, "but the priority" being placed on it (237). In a rewards and punishments system, served by ignorance and authority, what do students learn? The rules of an unfair game, not an education in thought processing. Shaughnessy argues that teachers must "dive in" so to speak and engage themselves in the learning process as a student to their students' learning experiences. They must learn to avoid "underestimating the sophistication of our students and ... ignoring the complexity of the tasks we set before them" (238) and therefore enable a better exchange between them.

Patricia Bizzell introduces William Perry's stages of college student development into adulthood: Dualism, Relativism, and Commitment in Relativism. Dualism deals in absolutes, wrongs and rights, questions and answers. Relativism provides a context for individually persuasive argument that allows for some exploration within self-interest and the teacher's interest. Commitment in Relativism is the process by which a student learns the proper judgment for making decisions with consideration for others values and experiences. Because not everyone goes to college and/or experiences these stages of development, because they must be undertaken and do not simply unfold, Bizzell argues that his stages are not necessary to the normal course of development and are instead of cognitive stages, "philosophical assumptions" that can be altered (449). Commitment in Relativism is a stage that arises, she argues, out of liberal education from a basis of pluralism, eventually transcending the stages of Dualism and Relativism. Bizzell believes that Perry's stages do not happen in any specific time frame (Freshman, sophomore, etc.) and may not even happen at all in college for some writers. This is accounted for, she argues, by the gap in students' wide variety of experiences with teachers. If a teacher facilitates a certain viewpoint from one of these stages in an appropriate way, they may encourage a student to move onto the next stage. She warns that we must not try to rush students through these stages of development, though, since she agrees with Perry that an emphasis should be placed on "the function of education as acculturation, not training" (452). This acculturation of students refers to the culture of liberal education, in which teachers are "teaching them to think in a certain way, to become adults with a certain set of intellectual habits and ethical predilections" (452-3). We become persuaded into the liberal academic community as we develop into the Commitment in Relativism stage through our education.

Elbow and Ong: Audience

I decided for this blog I would try out Peter Elbow's "invisible writing" technique, described on page 64, meaning the rest of my writing will be invisible to me in an attempt to remove my self from my expected audience. Once I have written it, I'll of course revise it, rather than edit as I go, and reflect on the experiment. So, onward.

Ong: I was very skeptical at first of Walter Ong's idea that audiences are always fictionalized. I often feel that I am myself reading a book, note, article, essay, etc. and hardly have to make myself into a fictionalized version of myself in order to understand what the writer is saying. But I have to say, Ong did turn me to his side by the end of his argument; and I have to wonder if this has anything to do with his article itself, if I fictionalized myself to make sense of his work. I think this can be true in creative fiction that presents a world from a a character's perspective we aren't familiar with and don't need necessarily to connect to as ourselves. And I think sometimes this can help us to "play the game" Ong suggests all of literacy is in written form.

I thought his comparison of oral and written narrative was compelling in that oral storytellers do in fact have a greater power over their performances as they can directly respond to their "readers," whereas written works rest as they are.  (Two-way vs. one-way in Ong's terms.) I liked that Ong even exposed historical writing as being  "a selection and interpretation of those incidents the individual historian believes will account better than other incidents for some explanation of" historical events (17). Thus the historian only selects and interprets those events that seem "interesting" or "significant" based on his taste, and the reader has a role forced upon him based on this.  I also liked his idea that even letter and diary writing fictionialize their audiences, even though they seem to be easy to write genuinely, being on a personal level. For a letter, one must assume a mood for the reader and structure the letter accordingly, and the reader, he argues, will take on that mood in order to follow it, even if he is not particulary in that mood. As for diaries, the "self" one addresses, he says, is questionable since one can be writing to one of many identities, to an imagined self, an idealized self, a false self, one he was, one he will be, or one others believe him to be... Anyhow, I enjoyed his likening of a reader to an actor in which the reader has to "play the role in which the author has cast him, which seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual life" (12).

Elbow: I hadn't realized the idea of an audience was so complicated before reading Peter Elbow's essay.  Like he mentions, I was taught like most students that the audience has to always be kept in mind in order to write something worthwhile, and even though pre-writing was taught, it was not encouraged because the audience was not usually of concern at that stage. Not in a long time have I considered simply ignoring my audience, not since the days of innocently writing mermaid stories I knew were only for my eyes. It was a time when I could sit on my carpet for hours, pencil in hand, swaying my body around like Kiara swimming through the ocean. I could feel the stories in me and when I read them once over I think I did so only to know how to continue the journeys. Anyhow I liked Elbow's discussion of the necessity for both more thought about readers at more self explorative writing.  I think it was important to assert that writing can be incredibly public and helps develop our social skills, but at the same time helps us develop our reflective and interpretive understanding in our inner worlds. Elbow too signifies that "the self is multiple, not single and discourse to self is communication from one entity to another" (61).  So even the "self" has its social and private dimensions. Although Ong was more focused on proving that the multiple selves are fictionalized, Elbow uses this fact to show that these selves are not always as private as they seem.  It seems that engaging students in both social and private writing helps one develop in both areas, but both need to be rigorous and full of trusting audiences. And we must also learn to listen our selves with more trust and more awareness of their complex multiplicity.

Brief reflection: WHEW. It was terribly hard to not be able to see what I was writing, but it felt more in my head that way. I felt I owned my thoughts better than normal, switching my gaze from packet to keys, rather than packet to screen, email to paragraph one to that word I misspelled to packet to screen, and so on. Although I made some aggravating and strange mistakes, I remembered my train of thought quite clearly and was able to correct them quite easily. I felt more than normal as though I was writing for the sake of it, and the idea of audience didn't cross my mind very much until I revised. My writing focus was totally on the reflection I was responding with. I think I would do this again.

Mirskin's Writing as a Process of Valuing

Professor Jerry Mirskin discusses the relation of meaning to value in the context of the writing, rewriting, and revision processes. He asserts that "value determines the form and content of what we attend to as it selects from an infinite world and assigns meaning." (389) Thus, if one imposes a value onto something, meaning is thus given to it. Social contexts, he argues, are key for this process of making meaning since attitudes and understanding generally develop from interpersonal content we internalize and negotiate into our own perspectives. I particularly enjoyed the description of the stages of the writing process, especially the first draft as "testifying." (399) I thought after reading this that at least four rounds of revision are necessary to end up with a piece of effective writing, and I realized speech and early drafts just don't cut it. The "activity of writing" needs to continue in order to produce something useful to readers, and cannot occur just as a single "act." (399) And yet, I do see in myself and my peers the same reluctance that Jeanne displayed to do serious revision; we feel as though we've gotten it out, but really there is so much to strengthen and clarify after the foundation is settled. Like Jeanne, I think we learn through workshops that our writing can become even more introspective and profound, as "her process of valuing could be unpacked as a way of understanding how she is constructing the meaning of her experience." (406) New contexts of value we develop in revision allow us to make new, significant meanings for ourselves and our readers, resulting in a more complete piece of writing.

I was inspired to conduct a little social experiment at dinner this evening, having finished reading the article just minutes prior. I was eating with three of my close friends and decided to tell a very vague story with an ineffective ending, followed by a very specific one laden with direct quotations, detailed points, and a heartfelt ending. Obviously, the second one received better response than the first. I think my friends were more able to connect with the story that way, observing something meaningful about it in the value I ascribed to the instance I recounted. They responded thoughtfully to the content and pressed me forward, asking questions and remarking specific points they were engaged in, whereas with the first story the conversation moved on to another topic pretty quickly. I think this was in keeping with Professor Mirskin's findings in his peer review examples. Like the students who reviewed Jeanne's paper, with the hope of "'identifying with,' relating to,' and 'understanding' the significance of Jeanne's experience," my friends were more likely to look for meaning in my words when it was evident I was doing so myself. (405)

Thinking About Conversation

Kenneth Bruffee has written an intriguing essay on the nature, history, practice, and necessity of collaborative education in the world in which we depend on conversation and social learning to come to agreements on important issues we try to be knowledgeable about and also to come to new understandings based on individually revolutionary ideas on the traditional. He points out that collaborative education is not a new concept and it has been the largely natural process of developing good judgment, genuine interaction with peers, thought-provoking interior reflection, and consequential meaningful discussion throughout history. He explains that we need to work together in order to know the source of "normal discourse" and contribute more appropriately to it, whether in approval or contradiction to the established ideas being communicated. In theory, if we understand the nature of the world we are speaking about, we can thus speak better about its constituents. I like that he establishes that writing can only develop from the existence of social interchange and dialogue; otherwise I think writing begins to exclude itself from the social context, its very audience, and becomes inaccessible and alienated. Since knowledge is a "social artifact" and is neither concrete nor singular in truth, it is necessary for a continual conversation to occur in order to further knowledge acquisition in a generative fashion. Bruffee argues that we must constantly be open to negotiation in order to keep this conversation growing, maintaining established ideas of the past while challenging them with innovative ones. We must reacculturate ourselves and our values to stay engaged in the conversation we currently take part in, rather than simply solidify our standing in traditional rights and wrongs.

It is nice sometimes to remember why I came to college to begin with: to put myself into the conversations I wanted to partake in, to immerse myself in my interests and concerns with others doing the same, quite unlike my peers in high school. This is primarily why I often tell my father how thankful I am that he let me come to I.C. rather than take the free route of New Jersey's scholars program. I felt distant from the conversation I had been in all my life back home and I knew the kids who went to the community and local colleges; they did not talk about the subjects I wanted to explore and only seemed to continue those of high school. I felt Ithaca was where I could blossom and develop into the person I dreamed of being; but I also knew that I couldn't do it alone, like I had been trying. Ithaca was the model of collaboration for me at that crucial decision-making time, and I think I chose well, however unconsciously it may have been.

What I love about I.C. is that collaborative education seems to often be the goal, even if it's not always the actual case in execution. I am motivated by their goal to interact more often with my peers and more meaningfully; I've noticed that many of the ones I push to join me actually have, and they keep bringing others into the action. Now, I do this with sincerity because I value my education dearly, and it is frustrating when I learn that students do not share this respect of the learning process and look at school as an obligation, rather than an incredible chance for exploration -- the awful reality of education in high school for me. I'd like to see more collaboration in certain areas, but in the Writing department at least I feel the level of collaborative work I've experienced in workshops, peer revision, meetings, etc. has been just as I'd hoped for. Education feels real and tangible to me in this manner, and I think other students in less collaborative-geared schools, programs, or classes might feel differently about their place in the conversation if they were more aware that they were in it (which I think is what collaborative work ultimately results in-- do you?).

Flower and Hayes; Lunsford

I apologize for not having these in on time, but I had a second wind of the flu. So, here goes!

Flower and Hayes

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes present their cognitive process theory in four main points: the first, that writers organize as they compose writing, the second, that writing is hierarchical and embedded, the third, that composing is directed by a growing network of goals, and the fourth, that writing is composed with different levels (high and sub-) of goals that support a writer's purpose and that this process can change these goals or create new ones based on what the writer learns during the creation. I found that this model of writing was more effective than that of the stage model since this one emphasizes that all creative choices are contingent upon what ideas are generated in the process, regardless of what initial goals are set forward. I like the potential of having a surprisingly different piece of writing than one intends because the potential for discovery and subsequent major changes in thought and knowledge demand that kind of outcome, in my opinion. The linear model seems to lock one's ideas in the past, returning to the opening as if to simply justify the act of writing, while the other seems to promote and demonstrate true experiential growth and understanding of a topic. Because we go back and forth as we write, and because we read through and compose new drafts once they are "complete," only to change them again, I think the cognitive process model is ideal for generative thinking.

I enjoyed the idea of the think aloud protocols since I often find I forget my thoughts in the writing process and lose track of my ideas that way. I think it would be an interesting experiment to record my spoken thoughts as I work on some piece of writing to see if I become more engaged in it for simply hearing my own thoughts as I think them, and then later on in review. Of course, this process cannot enlighten us 100% as to how our brains work in the writing process, but it certainly provides insight. I also liked the end of the article, in which Flower and Hayes leave us with the image of writing as a process of genuine invention.  They emphasize the "inventive power of the writer, who is able to explore ideas, to develop, act on, test, and regenerate his or her own goals" and really present it as a working process, like scientific inquiry. I found that very compelling and true to my own experience.

I think a lot of the reason why we find it difficult to define "a" single process for writing is that it differs for each writer, and for each piece of writing; but I think this article certainly provided a lot of insight into that truth. In my own writing, I can come back to the beginning, reread and not change much, and follow through at the end as I think, in review, it works best to conclude, OR I can write a paragraph or two out of order, write around them, edit tons of sentences out, or whole parts, etc. The possibilities in revision are endless since we do have a real "re-vision" of our work from a slightly new perspective every time. We change our minds about what our goals should be with new knowledge, or new applications of old knowledge. It would be self-fulfilling and inaccurate to simply follow through with one's goal and not alter it one bit after being enlightened with research and consideration of a topic; I think that this is the separation between good and bad writing they discussed.

Lunsford

It strikes me now that, just as writing fits more appropriately under the cognitive process model rather than a linear/stage model, so does the process of learning basic writing skills. I recalled, reading the Andrea A. Lunsford article, that I myself had completed a great number of exercises similar to the ones she provided as basic examples used in training students to analyze and synthesize information in the "de-centering" process. I was, at first, offended by the simplicity of the verbs exercise, assuming that it was intended for an older age group than it must have been; however, I think now that each exercise would likely be beneficial in improving one's growing understanding of a less ego-driven way of making sense of the world, both on paper and not. I thought it was interesting that her argument, that students having trouble understanding unfamiliar circumstances or a person's situation will also have trouble "abstracting from it or replicating it in another context." (38) I thought that it was true that "students learn by doing and then by extrapolating principles from their activities," as well as that education in writing "can serve as a guide to art only if they can be integrated into the practical knowledge" one acquires. (40)

I found it true to my experience that imitation, like Lunsford writes, is truly important in achieving the state of de-centered once it has been understood that a work or style can not only be replicated but individualized, expanded upon, etc. We learn to infer such lessons once our analytical skills improve; and I do believe that successfully completing such exercises as the ones she provides, although shamefully simplistic, most certainly were necessary in continuing down our educational paths. (Though I hope we never had exercises as creepy as the "Oil massages you." one... Honestly, who thought that was a good idea?) Once we got a basic hold on these kinds of tasks, we were thus able to generate our own instances and more unconsciously, eventually, comprehend sentence structure until we could fly through novels and essays without ever really thinking about that careful and precise crafting. I liked that this article unearthed some of those unconscious habits of writing we now all probably take for granted on a daily basis.

As a side note, I also really enjoy seeing the names of other writers we've read being quoted, Janet Emig right at the beginning. It's fascinating to me that they really keep analyzing and synthesizing their thoughts, expanding on them, illuminating them. I wonder if the field of composition theory might never run out of wonderfully insightful new takes on ideas, like the two we read this week.

Literacy Autobiographies pt.2

Liam: I love how you throw a lot of seemingly disjointed memories together to recreate your literacy development. I think it's important to illustrate practical learning, like the driving lesson, especially since you came from a working class background. Although my dad certainly encouraged me to pursue academics, the practical education was really the most important at home for me too, so I definitely see its importance. However, I'd like to see you expand on more of those "home" kinds of education experiences in order to keep the opening, which should absolutely not be taken out. I like the bit you say on the second page about how we all have enough experience to write and nothing comes out of nowhere. I think when we have trouble recalling the significance of events in our literacy, like I think we've all had some issue with, we're just taking it for granted a little too much. Great observation. I also like that you value the slowness of your typing because it keeps you going at the same speed as your thoughts. But I'd like to see more of those thoughts on your development, especially at the end where it becomes a little confusing -- that's not where you get to end your history. Great draft.

Caitlin: I was so happy to see all the great detail you added in for this draft! You really started to explore and expand on your memories and opened up a lot of new windows into your earlier years, which we really needed. I don't really know what else you could add, except maybe a little more reflection. I think this essay pretty much contains itself, and that's great. I guess that reflection could come in at the end: maybe elaborate more on what exactly you like about writing teenage fiction? I think, now that you're not a teenager reading this genre anymore, it's important to try to understand what draws you to create more of it. It's something I'm very intrigued by anyway. And of course, I am pretty new to the world of fanfiction so I think it'd be interesting if you explored that a little more too -- though I don't think it's totally necessary to add here. Also a great draft!

Literacy Autobiographies pt.1

Josh: I was intrigued that you were so eager to perform, despite not being able to read, that you tried to memorize the words you heard the other boys say for their audition. It's interesting how we can want something so desperately, knowing how unqualified or unable we are to complete the required task, and put ourselves through difficulties just to try. I think a lot of really meaningful learning occurs this way, when we put all our energy into it, not necessarily understanding why we want to. I'd be interested in hearing more about your siblings -- why they weren't "gifted" and how they felt about your attendance at the hippie school. I'd also like to read more about your early experiences with art, since you say you were "developing a visual language in which text was secondary to page design, font, and image." That is a very interesting concept to me, since I used to make up a lot of stories based on pictures or objects without needing words; in fact, sometimes I'd just disregard them. Cool memories.

Alex: I was really impressed by your dad's dedication to creativity. It must have been an awesome retreat every weekend going to his house, making up all kinds of stories. I was also impressed by your persistence in writing what you wanted, even though you were reprimanded and your grades were affected. It takes a lot to keep doing that, and I know my response to that kind of negative response to creativity was to just hide all my work away. I became nervous about writing, I think, and picked "safe" subjects, things I'd read in novels and stories, in case someone found my notebooks. I couldn't stop writing, obviously, and neither could you I guess. I had a nice chuckle when I read what you wrote about for your 8th grade essay project and can only imagine how awesome that story must have been. (Also, I just realized you were in my Buddhism class because I vaguely remember you saying you read "The Dharma Bums" and you wrote that in your essay.) It was neat to see how your reading choices changed over the years, and I think you could write a little more analysis on that.  And I'm wondering, did you ever share your writing with anyone besides your dad and teachers?


Amanda: I really enjoyed the home setting you evoked in your essay, reading books on your parents bed, reciting the books with your brother. I thought it was interesting that you loved pretending to read, and that your creepy library was the birthplace of your solitary reading initiatives. I loved my library card too, and when my library switched over to a new design I was too attached to let mine go -- though I don't know what I did with it. It's interesting that your parents beat grammar into you and how you feel like you can never to this day make any grammatical mistakes around them. I think that your experience with using expletives in the home is pretty common; I know I at least had that happen to me. "Seriously irreparable damage" is right. I remember though my little brother trying to get me in trouble for singing a bad word (a little louder than necessary) in a Spice Girls song and my mom saying it was alright to sing, but not say to someone. I love that both you and Alex loved telling scary stories at sleepovers, and I remember I always loved when someone at a slumber party was a good storyteller, even though it always scared me sleepless. I wonder why you never wrote them down though, probably because your parents never really encouraged writing I guess. It's great you made the connection though later on. I'm sure your scary stories at least are "worth saying" and I wonder if you could try writing one down from memory. You should try!

Ava: It sure sounds like your house is lively 24/7 but it's really great how that shines through in your personality, even though you say you were straying away from your parents' lifestyle with your writing. I think it's great your dad found a writing group for you; I know my parents, always curious what I did in my room for hours, never really got involved with my writing, and I actually still don't share it with them. I don't know why. It seems you took to writing, not to separate yourself, but to educate yourself and make yourself more able to contribute to your family conversations and "one-up" your folks. I know I've been inspired to read or write or explore an interest I'd never considered before because of familial influence. But it also seems you really did just love writing, and that's awesome. I'd like to read more about your sister though, especially since she's your twin, and how she did or didn't prepare herself to fit that family dynamic. And I forgot all about the book fairs I went to; thanks for the reminder.

Very Late Reflection on Perl and Sommers

(As I emailed Jerry, I had a very long day yesterday and didn't get to read and post on time, so I apologize to you all as well for my lateness.)

The Perl essay was very meticulously written and dense, loaded with figures and terms I had a hard time following, although she did keep my interest for most of it. After much rereading and effort to figure out how they worked, I was impressed by the coding systems they used to conduct their research on how "unskilled" writers write and what behaviors they exhibited showed patterns of repetition in other test subjects. It intrigued me that I exhibited a lot of the behaviors that Tony and other case studies produced in their writing processes (i.e. editing within the first few sentences of writing), but then it also struck me that I exhibited just as many behaviors as the experienced writers that Sommers writes about, so I stopped feeling apprehensive about my abilities. (So far I haven't done much editing in this post.) Then I began to wonder about other writers' writing and revision habits, students, "beginners," and experts alike. I thought, especially reading about Tony's tendency to have more trouble writing efficiently on a topic he was not familiar with and could not relate to his own experiences, that this issue of repetition and evasion is a common experience for anyone talking or writing about something they are not well-versed on; and thus I thought maybe that is why "beginner" or "unskilled" writers are lacking in ability, motivation, and desire to improve their written work. Building experience really is necessary for developing writing skills (not getting caught on linear and other models, like Sommers describes, being very important here) and consequently revision skills. It certainly takes an extraordinary amount of time, effort, exposure, and education to become a proficient writer and reviser, and I know I'm far from being there, and probably most people are as well.

I find myself somewhere in the middle of the entire spectrum of non-writers to the best of the bunch, but on the spectrum of college students, certainly above average. I can reflect on my improvement, more aptly in this case in editing, since I have been actively editing since the eighth grade for the newspaper and yearbook and for peers and siblings. I find that most of my early editing was primarily focused on correcting sentence-level issues, grammar, and punctuation, yet over the years I have learned to better piece together ideas and explanations, quotes and paragraphs, etc. When I edit my younger brother's high school papers, I notice that I am no longer just telling him to change "there" to "their" or alter the phrasing a bit. I am helping him develop his ideas and flesh them out in a more appropriate order of progression, and I've noted his improvement on those areas as well (though he is still trapped in the grade-by-format style that stifles his higher level of thinking and reduces it to an "afterthought"-promoting model of "revision" that in fact "function[s] to restrict and circumscribe not only the development of their ideas, but also their ability to change direction of these ideas" (Sommers 383) thereby making both writing and revision moot). I hate to see my brother caught up in rules, training his brain to process the world through the established, conventional, and inefficient methods he is taught, so I do my best to rework his conceptions of education and give it some value, something he is inclined to do but is forced to avoid five days a week, six hours a day (although failing some of his classes proves to me he is unable to submit himself to conceptions he doesn't agree with). But at the same time, I'm doing this for myself -- and it's exhausting. I guess that's the result of working class aspiration though -- something I'm not willing to give up on for myself, or my brother, even though it can be frustrating. Seeing my older brother's progress in education has gotten me this far, and still gets me moving forward. The young one just has some catching up to do, at the beginning of something.

Donald Murray and Janet Emig (and I) Talk Writing

I like Emig's idea that talking is pre-writing. I have always been a poor conversationalist, preferring to organize my ideas slowly, prepare them visually, scratch out, erase, or delete the words that fail to express the meaning I wish to convey and replace them with more fitting words. I never feel like a conversation allows me to say much of anything significant, although I don't think it's impossible for everyone. I am just a careful and patient thinker, wishing that I could explain my thought processes and conclusions, well, more thoughtfully and conclusively -- and this is why I hesitate. I hate thinking on my toes, knowing I can't effectively reach for some distantly related memory (I always lose people in conversation, working my way to a point I feel is coming, but my listeners often can't) and arrive at a perfect full circle conclusion. Even in a blog, I feel like I am not crafting my thoughts so carefully as I would for a paper. I feel more loose, slangy, laid back. I feel like I am talking, in a sense, "not to say that writing is talk recorded" but more that pre-writing might be (Emig 123). I feel like this is pre-writing.

While Emig discusses more the inner realm of learning and its nature as developed physically, psychologically, and socially, Murray argues more for respect for good writing professors and students and writing as an intellectual, honest, and satisfying pursuit. He claims that writing is a powerful tool for self-discovery and thinks it vital that students of writing are able to write as they think and "read their own words to find out what they've said and decide how to say it more effectively" (1235). I think building on this skill in this fashion would improve not only writing capabilities but also self-consideration and self-expression. He brings up a good point, that "discovery drafts" and failures are necessary to this improvement (1237). It is only through self-evaluation, he argues that we even make way in our brains for these improvements to be made. I find a lot of personal truth in these ideas.

Lastly, I would like to add a quote that resounded for me: "Writing as a mode is inherently more self-reliant than speaking" (Emig 127). Perhaps I prefer writing because I like to consider myself fairly self-reliant, or perhaps it is because of that self-reliance that I developed my writing skills more seriously than my speaking ones. What do you think of this relationship? Causation? Correlation? Coincidence?

Experiences and Attitudes Key in Literacy Development, Literacy Comprehension

Through her interviews, Brandt attempts to gather different attitudes and experiences with both reading and writing a wide variety of people in order to discover, not "how people make meaning through reading and writing" but rather "how people make meaning of" them. (pg. 460) Thus, she studies the intricacies of various influencing factors in the learning process, not limited to home or school-based learning, in order to explore how they have acquired their roles in human lives.

I think Brandt summed up the results of her research best when she wrote: "It appears that what gives writing its particular value for people--its usefulness in maintaining material life, withholding experience for private reflection, and resisting conformity and control--are the very qualities that make writing a problematic practice for adults to pass on to children or for children to share easily with adults. Paradoxically, writing remains more invisible than reading, both because of how it is embedded in mundane, workaday concerns and because of how it is surrounded by privacy, secrecy, and suspicion. Consequently, parents and children have fewer ways of seeing, naming, and talking about writing than appears to be the case for reading." (page 473)

While she meandered and repeated her points far too often, she did reveal some interesting tidbits, such as this paradox in which reading and writing do not equate. It makes sense then to say that the reason it is easier to talk about making meaning through reading and writing rather than of is because such perspectives are passed on through traditional child-rearing and educational methods, and thus generationally reinforced to a great degree. Thus, literacy development focuses less on critical, interpretive writing skills, aside from the practicalities, and more on reading as a source of enjoyment and closeness between family members. In my eyes, the former results in personal pleasure, healing, or growth, while the latter provides insight into the previous results.

To be more specific, Brandt brought up a topic particularly interesting to me. She mentioned that the destruction of writing, such as journals and diaries containing personal information, only adds to the inequality of the two subjects. She argues that the sharing of writing validates its production and will help eliminate the paradox she appears to believe is negative and detrimental to the field of writing. By mentioning civil rights activism and otherwise, she seems to want to move the reader to express their emotions and feelings for social change, while still including various tales of the heartwarming connections people generally have forged with reading. She wants to incite positivity in writers, I think, or at least make writing less alienating than she sees it. In her eyes, and many others', written word is both a powerful tool and a source of enjoyment, and she seems to want people to become more aware of this duality so as to validate its place in our society and maintain readership with new-found reverence and respect for the craft she admires. By attempting to understand writing's place and power in our lives, Brandt seems to feel that partaking in this comprehensive study of how we learn can even give us a refreshing new outlook as readers. For the most part, I agree. We always need to step back and become cognizant of our actions and thoughts, and why should reading and writing be exempt? We don't only live through our actions and thoughts, but rather advance through our reevaluation of them and by making any changes we see fit.

My question: What do we think of Brandt's discussion on page 474 of a claim that in literary and expository writing, using "professional models...was actually a way of imposing elitist values and domesticating amateur, popular forms of writing that had flourished in earlier times...[as] a way to curtail or control writing, not necessarily to develop it"? Considering here writing's less positive, lonely, impractical, suspicious reputation...

"Did you ever read something and realize it was about you?"

This is the question I asked my roommate as I sat on my bed reading the Rodriguez article. Intrigued, she listened to my brief quotation and explanation of it but she only appeared perplexed. "Huh," she said and continued on her way out the door to work the night shift. "I'm gonna get the garbage. I'll see you tomorrow!"

I frowned and continued onward, engaged as ever, motivated to follow an intuition I learned quickly the two of us did not seem to share. I had the thought that we might, both of us coming from working class families, both be inspired to further our education and abandon the lifestyles of those at home we'd be taught to no longer desire, but I realized the fundamental divide really rested in our personalities and personal experiences. Like Rodriguez, and unlike my roommate, I had a number of factors encouraging me to continue pursuing education through the exploration of literature. Guided perhaps by teachers with a knack for grammar and a love of a good story, I found my desire becoming cultivated in their happy existences. I began to "imitate" their lives by doing the research and reading necessary to get one step closer to that happiness I perceived they had attained through such methods. Though I found inspiration, lessons, and insight in these pursuits, I hardly felt a tinge of happiness with each step I took down their paths. Eventually, I decided mostly unconsciously to throw away the high school newspaper editing team, the dreams of one day living in a city (I hate cities) and working for a publishing company, the aspiration of being a notable author attending conferences, all dreams and activities I was guided to partake in and enjoy, all because, as Rodriguez learned, I hardly had a sense of what I truly yearned for. I mistook glances into the windows of my future life as nostalgic glimpses at the past; but all I want is to tend the garden my parents started when I was a child and make it my own. These are all things I've known, I suppose, on some level, but connecting them in such a manner, as he has done, illuminated the tiny fibers holding together my life ladder that dangles down into the caverns of my hippocampus.

Veering away from the personal revelation, remembering I am still a full-time student and my garden is buried under two feet of snow, I'll move toward more theoretical matters. Rodriguez, as I have related, enters the conversation about the working class family child's confusing placement in the world of academia and his therefore confusing replacement back into the working class world of his parents. He ventures to prove that children like himself, like myself, struggle perhaps more than others born into a higher class with coming to terms with one's social orientation, caught between two very different lifestyles and dependent on the occurrence of  influencing factors. He explains all such arguments through detailed personal accounts in which he evaluates his thoughts/feelings in the past and as he grew in age and experience to the time of his writing the article.

I believe Rodriguez had some terribly good insight, terrible only in the stark truth that education, though necessary to reach a point of decisive happiness, can appear futile and lose its appeal at such a point as he reached in graduate school; and good, in the sense that life potentially will thereafter feel more fully lived once one enters their own path and starts walking. I find his argument valuable in my understanding of the education system at large as I consider that his brutal, hard to accept honesty brightens the field of composition theory by improving one's literacy of their personal history and that of the system they work within. I feel far more informed, thanks certainly due to Rodriguez, about the unconscious life that I hoped such study would produce -- and confident about pursuing my desires.

Finally, my question: Being that Rodriguez offers the notion that "the end of education" can be achieved through an arduous mental journey, the "experience [that] had allowed me to shape into desire what would have been only indefinite longings," ending feelings of guilt, sadness, and anxiety and providing a new more fulfilling sense of achievement... should we believe those occasional "scholarship boy" working class children are destined for such an outcome? Or are the two of us just a couple of far too self-aware exceptions?