In previous classes (for previous courses) I’ve done things like play Jenga (analogies TBA), arm wrestle (to illustrate dialectic), role-play a Greek tragedy (to flesh out the human condition), and lastly I’ve hurled a hard boiled egg into the throng of a crowed lecture hall.   “Poetry differs from prose,” I proclaim with this latter demonstration… “Everything is coming at you — and potentially it’s going to be messy.”

You may, of course, call that a gimmick, or the hobgoblin of an inexperienced college professor’s tortured mind, but I love to see the bodies scatter, while others cover and duck.

And yet, with Tuesday’s educational schtick, my hope is to play things a little more close-to-the-vest.   The exercise will consist of a free-writing response to five poems and will hopefully allow the students (ages 18 to 20) the opportunity to resonate with an image.  An image or two…  I’ll let you know how it goes.   My thinking is that many of these first-generation freshmen have never encountered the likes of Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Sharon Olds, William Stafford and Anne Sexton, and that some of their word-explosions might shower down body-parts into the blend-in style of dormitory prose.

You see, thus far, we’ve muddled through one Essay Exam and assorted supportive gigs in which I’ve asked them to harangue the system in which they’re all clamoring to become a cog.  How to write a thesis statement... How to identify key words, indexical concepts, supportive evidence… This is the standard fare of what every incoming neophyte should learn about academe.   Later in the quarter, we’ll marshall our skills of mimicry in the service of a Persuasive Essay.   Whoopee!   Potential research foci may include The Decline of the Hipster In What Used To Be Pop-Culture, The Resurgence of Dallas and Other ’80′s Nighttime Dramas and Snooki:  The Femme Fatale of A Post 2001 Generation.   And, for all the fantastic insights these papers may elucidate, I’m not expecting that the full-throated ‘second naiveté’ of Paul Ricoeur has caught up with the budding intellects.   That is to say, I trust the wounded hearts of these students more than I do the reductions of rationalism we often require them to make.

They have hunches that institutions, upon which they rely for future well-being, are hurtling forward with no competent soul at the helm.    I’ve heard them.

They have carefully-concealed broken spirits–concealed for fear being swept aside and broken by a dubious Protestant work-ethic.  I’ve broken them (or at least backslapped the ol’ boys who have).

And ultimately, they have an imagination that we have morally and cynically pounded with enough advertising wit and charm to tame the bravest of the Brave New World consumer.   I’ve seen their attention-spans snap back like a braid of tired rubber bands around copious deliveries of the Spokesman Review.

***

Again, I’ll let you know how the exercise goes.   But the poems to which my 101 cadre will respond do come to us like organic, free-range-chicken-eggs, eggs that have  been acted upon by a force, a force stronger than my middle-aged and wannabe-bottom-of-the-ninth-strike-out pitcher’s arm.

Dean Young, in his book, The Art of Recklessness, makes this provocative remark on autobiography and poetry.  He says, “MY POEMS ARE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL, I JUST DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE ABOUT.”   Coincidentally, as the impressionable minds in my care launch into their Autobiographical Essay (Due April 30th), may they find comfort in the heroic ignorance.

The Nude Swim

On the southwest side of Capri

we found a little unknown grotto    

where no people were and we

entered it completely

and let our bodies lose all

their loneliness.

All the fish in us

had escaped for a minute.

The real fish did not mind.

We did not disturb their personal life.

We calmly trailed over them

and under them, shedding

air bubbles, little white

balloons that drifted up

into the sun by the boat

where the Italian boatman slept

with his hat over his face.

Water so clear you could

read a book through it.

Water so buoyant you could

float on your elbow.

I lay on it as on a divan.

I lay on it just like

Matisse’s Red Odalisque.

Water was my strange flower,

one must picture a woman

without a toga or a scarf

on a couch as deep as a tomb.

The walls of that grotto

were everycolor blue and

you said, ‘Look! Your eyes

are seacolor. Look! Your eyes

are skycolor.’ And my eyes

shut down as if they were

suddenly ashamed.

[by Anne Sexton]

***

ENGLISH 101.10 POETRY TO SHAPE PROSE

Traveling Through The Dark
 

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason–

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all–my only swerving–,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

[by William Stafford]

***

ENGLISH 101.10 POETRY TO SHAPE PROSE

A Time Past

The old wooden steps to the front door

where I was sitting that fall morning

when you came downstairs, just awake,

and my joy at sight of you (emerging

into golden day—

the dew almost frost)

pulled me to my feet to tell you

how much I loved you:

those wooden steps

are gone now, decayed

replaced with granite,

hard, gray, and handsome.

The old steps live

only in me:

my feet and thighs

remember them, and my hands

still feel their splinters.

Everything else about and around that house

brings memories of others—of marriage,

of my son. And the steps do too: I recall

sitting there with my friend and her little son who died,

or was it the second one who lives and thrives?

And sitting there ‘in my life,’ often, alone or with my husband.

Yet that one instant,

your cheerful, unafraid, youthful, ‘I love you too,’

the quiet broken by no bird, no cricket, gold leaves

spinning in silence down without

any breeze to blow them,

is what twines itself

in my head and body across those slabs of wood

that were warm, ancient, and now

wait somewhere to be burnt.

[by Denise Levertov]

***
ENGLISH 101.10 POETRY TO SHAPE PROSE

True Night

Sheath of sleep in the black of the bed:

From outside this dream womb

Comes a clatter

Comes a clatter

And finally the mind rises up to a fact

Like a fish to a hook

A raccoon at the kitchen!

A falling of metal bowls,

the clashing of jars,

the avalanche of plates

I snap alive to the ritual

Rise unsteady, find my feet,

Grab the stick, dash in the dark -

I’m a huge pounding demon

That roars at raccoons -

They whip around the corner,

A scratching sound tells me

they’ve gone up a tree.

I stand at the base

Two young ones that perch on

Two dead stub limbs and

Peer down from both sides of the trunk:

Roar, roar, I roar

you awful raccoons, you wake me

up nights, you ravage

our kitchen

As I stay there then silent

The chill of the air on my nakedness

Starts off the skin

I am all alive to the night.

Bare foot shaping on gravel

Stick in the hand, forever.

Long streak of cloud giving way

To a milky thin light

Back of black pine bough,

The moon is still full,

Hillsides of Pine trees all

Whispering; crickets still cricketting

Faint in cold coves in the dark

I turn and walk back slow

Back the path to the beds

With goosebumps and lose waving hair

In the night of milk-moonlit thin cloud glow

And black rustling pines

I feel like a dandelion head

Gone to seed

About to be blown away

Or a sea anemone open and waving in

cool pearly water.

Fifty years old.

I still spend my time

Screwing nuts down on bolts.

At the shadow pool,

Children are sleeping,

And a lover I’ve lived with for years,

True night.

One cannot stay too long awake

In this dark

Dusty feet, hair tangling,

I stoop and slip back to the

Sheath, for the sleep I still need,

For the waking that comes

Every day

With the dawn

[by Gary Snyder]

***

ENGLISH 101.10 POETRY TO SHAPE PROSE

Once

I saw my father naked, once, I

opened the blue bathroom door

which he always locked — if it opened, it was empty —

and there, surrounded by the glistening turquoise

tile, sitting on the toilet, was my father,

all of him, and all of him

was skin. In an instant my gaze ran

in a single, swerving, unimpeded

swoop, up: toe, ankle,

knee, hip, rib, nape,

shoulder, elbow, wrist, knuckle,

my father. He looked so unprotected,

so seamless, and shy, like a girl on a toilet,

and even though I knew he was sitting

to shit, there was no shame in that

but even a human peace. He looked up,

I said Sorry, backed out, shut the door

but I’d seen him, my father a shorn lamb,

my father a cloud in the blue sky

of the blue bathroom, my eye had driven

up the hairpin mountain road of the

naked male, I had turned a corner

and found his flank unguarded — gentle

bulge of the hip-joint, border of the pelvic cradle.

[by Sharon Olds]

ENGLISH 101.10 POETRY TO SHAPE PROSE

Peace–

Here are some of the remarkable things that I’ve found while wading:

1. An expository essay on how to cook, cut, and sell meth. Among the helpful tips: a paragraph on how to not get caught. The trick, it seems, is never to tell anybody your name, never to sell to anybody you know personally. Also, it helps to own a business in the industrial district that refinishes bathtubs. The smell of the chemicals used to re-enamel the tubs hides the smell of the chemicals used to cook the meth.
2. A brief personal narrative involving a camping trip, some pickup trucks, a fight, a shotgun (loaded?) being used like a baseball bat in said fight, and an extended visit to the hospital. (I teach in North Idaho, by the way).
3. A profile of some VP at Google. My student drove across the entire state of Washington and across a snowy Snoqualmie Pass to get this interview. I was impressed at his initiative. I was less impressed the time he showed up to class visibly drunk with his also visibly drunk buddy who wasn’t in the class. Apparently it was his birthday, but he just couldn’t stand the idea of missing class even though he had been drinking since 10am. (It was a late afternoon class). I’m still not sure whether or not I should be flattered by this.
4. This sentence: “I would like to know her perspective as a member of the Church of Ladder Day Saints.” Actually, there are lots of semi-comical malapropisms, and this one, like most of them, isn’t anything special. But it’s a little glimmer of humor in the bleakness. Whenever we read essays collectively as a department (a process known as “norming”), there are spontaneous recitations of the funnier malapropisms. Only English teachers could possibly enjoy this. And even we only enjoy it in moderation.
5. A smart but more-visceral-than-rational indictment of Idaho’s lack of a distinction between statutory and felony rape. The argument is based entirely upon the student’s own experience. He was charged and convicted of felony rape after being caught in flagrante in his car with his 17-year-old girlfriend. He was 18 at the time.

In some cases, the genius is clearly incidental. But in some cases there is some wonderful bit of brilliance there, however unpolished. One more example: In my English 101 class, I assign a profile, asking students to conduct an interview with someone who is an “expert” on some interesting subject and to profile that person. Last year, I got one in which a student had decided that she would profile time. That’s right, time. Nevermind that time isn’t a person and, thus, is not really available to be interviewed. She didn’t quite get the idea of the assignment, but the resulting essay is actually kind of amazing. She interviewed a bunch of people, and she overlaps these weird micro-narratives of their lives at a precise moment (8:15 some random morning) with material from her conversations with them. One of them is visiting his mother in a nursing home before work; one is trying to navigate the chaos of seven adults and small tribe of children, all of whom she shares an apartment with; one is the writer’s own hairdresser, doing the writer’s hair. And they’re all trying to answer the writer’s nutty questions about time, and time travel, and whether time is linear or circular, and they all come off sounding like nerdy kids at a sleepover. It’s weird, funny, surprisingly meta. Grading her essay, I found myself laughing out loud several times and giving her an A despite the fact that this absolutely was not a profile and did not meet the criteria of the assignment. (I never do that, by the way. Strict adherence to a rubric is one of the small handful of tactics I’ve learned for navigating the 300-500 essays I grade each semester with anything approaching fairness and objectivity, not to mention efficiency). Of course, such sparks of real genius are not things I can take credit for. I teach writing, not awesomeness. If awesomeness happens too, great, but I was teaching topic sentences.

This raises questions for me about the nature of literary “success,” the same kinds of questions I had when I was working as a reader for Willow Springs, trolling the slush for hidden marvels with only my half-formed aesthetic impulses to guide me. If I found something that struck me as brilliant, how would I know if it actually was brilliant? Someone else would tell me that it was, that’s how. And then we’d sit around the table, lobbing back and forth our radically idiosyncratic experiences reading (or not reading) the piece, and that would be that. There is no rubric for artistic success. It is wholly subjective.

So, when I hear my creative writing students in workshop praising to the skies a piece that I know is weak, what can I say? And when they complain (rightly, really) that the workshop is an exercise in finding fault, that it is a tool incapable of acknowledging success even when it’s right in front of our faces, how do I respond? I usually say something like, “True, but that doesn’t change the fact that this piece is flawed.” Or I say something like, “These are all works in progress. They can all be improved.” But what I’m really thinking is: What do I know? These are mostly matters of taste, and taste is infinitely changeable.

To be clear: I don’t actually think that true literary genius happens by accident, or that literary success (however we define that) is more a product of readers than of writers. Certainly, thoughtful readers can find a great deal of consensus, but beyond that consensus, we venture into this vast gray area. And in that gray area, there is both hope and despair for the beginning writer. We can hope that, despite the ever-growing pile of rejection letters, our work has merit and it’s just a matter of finding an editor who sees that intrinsic worth that everyone else is missing. Or we can despair of having any real control over the success or failure of the piece: It’s simply a matter of it striking the right reader in the right way at the right time.

I take consolation in the example of my comp students. Most of them wouldn’t write if I didn’t make them, but I do make them. And so they do write. And when they really give themselves to the task, sometimes, cool stuff happens.

Three days ago, I finally started reading it.

I’m not very far yet—only through the first duo of introductions and stories, but this is largely because I spend most of my time with this book flipping through it. I glance through the introductions, looking for connections and observations, but then, when I start to read—really read—I let the book fall, let the pages close. Anthologies can be explored in any order, of course, but for this first read, I want to experience it in the way the editors thought best.

I met with a fellow faculty member yesterday to discuss a freelance writing course we may end up teaching together this summer, and our discussion eventually turned to the idea of mentorship. We talked about our experiences in our MFA programs (and before, in undergrad), talked about the ways the faculty helped us over stumbling blocks, the ways they saw and encouraged our strengths. We talked about times we hadn’t been challenged enough.

Good writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, though sometimes I think new writers think it does. I poll my first-year writing classes on the first day of class, asking them what they think makes a good writer, and without fail, no one mentions writing for audience or revision or seeking out help when you need it. Most of my students balk when I have them workshop their pieces in groups, wondering out loud whether it can really help to have a peer look the piece over.

Peer-to-peer relationships are different than the ones explored in Of a Monstrous Child, but they are important just the same. To have similar moments of uncertainty, to still be learning the same lessons, to still need help with the same things. But the further I go in my writing career—and the further I read in this book—the more I realize that how I’ve thought of my various writing relationships isn’t exactly true. I have mentors and I have peer readers, but I’m coming to see that the difference between the two types is simply time and credentials. It’s the attitude I approach the person with: looking for answer or looking for conversation, though I usually end up with the latter from both parties.

Over the summer, I posted here about the doubts I was gathering to myself after getting a particularly difficult rejection. I had been overconfident in the piece I sent out, to the point where even the kind personalized rejection hit me hard. I wondered if I was really good enough to keep writing or if I was just wasting my time. I was struggling without the structure of graduate school, without regular workshops or thesis meetings, without being able to sit down, face-to-face, with fellow writers and have a discussion about any and everything writing.

The editor, Roxane Gay, saw my post and offered to help me with revisions on the piece. She sent me a detailed email of the problems in the story as well as a marked up version of the story itself. It was exactly what I needed—not just the kindness and assistance, but the faith, the gesture of someone essentially saying that, yes, I could still do this.

I spent months on the edits, not only applying them to the piece in question, but also to my other work. I began to see the own moments of trouble in my stories, and also how to fix them. I didn’t always get it right, but for the first time since leaving my MFA program, I felt my writing progressing again. Then, on Friday, the piece was accepted for publication.

The people who have taught me over the years have left me with more than improvements to my own writing. Each semester I step into the classroom with my own group of writers to teach, and I look back at the ways I have been helped, at the things that did and didn’t work for me, at the challenges I faced and the critique I received, and it helps me become a better mentor in turn.

* Though I will use the term “mentor” throughout this post, I find it somewhat problematic. It implies a hierarchy that I’m no longer sure exists. I find that I learn from all writing and from all writers, be they better or worse than me (two other very problematic terms). Reading slush, for instance, often teaches me what I should avoid in my writing, just as reading work I admire offers me techniques to try. “Mentor” seems to me more of a one-way street of knowledge, but I’ve had peers give me fantastic feedback/ideas/advice and had mentor-like figures offer knowledge I rejected.

Student who paid attention in high school English: I disagree.

ME: You’re wrong. Here’s why. [NOTE, in case my tenure committee is reading this: I say this very kindly, taking advantage of a teachable moment, making sure that the student understands that his/her participation is valued and feels both validated and enlightened.]

STUDENT: My HS English teacher said there are no wrong answers about literature as long as you can defend your ideas.

ME: Your HS English teacher was wrong. There are plenty of wrong answers about literature. What your teacher meant was that there are also plenty of defensible potentially right answers too.

[LONG PAUSE]

STUDENT: So are you saying there are wrong answers in literature and that my HS English teacher, who was my personal role model and who died last week after a heroic bout with cancer, was wrong about everything?

[LONG PAUSE]

ME: I’m sure your teacher was a remarkable person.

STUDENT: A remarkable person who was wrong about everything.

ME: Probably not about everything.

[PAUSE]

ME: Just about this thing.

[At this point, some people are crying in the back of the classroom.]

ME: Let’s move on, shall we?

Dear HS English teachers,

Please stop teaching my future students wrong (read: oversimplified) stuff. They get enough of that from TV.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Frey

the guy who will have them as college freshmen

I’ve always been uncomfortable displaying anger. I listen to all telemarketers. I’ve never hung up on anyone. I don’t send mean text messages. And I certainly struggle with face-to-face encounters, always erring to the side of politeness and self-effacement, instead choosing to turn the blame and anger inward. On the one hand, it’s nice because I’m not someone who’s drawn to angry outbursts that I regret later. On the other hand, I have a hard time sticking up for myself in situations where I have every right to be angry.

For example, two months ago, my xbox broke. Long story short (because it’s a crazy long story), Microsoft screwed up majorly handling my repair and a series of phone calls afterward, dealing with my repair and replacement xbox. The end result was that their mistake cost me money and over twenty hours of my life. I’ve called them probably two dozen times, and despite the fact that they refuse to compensate me in any way (or even give me my money back), I have yet to raise my voice at anyone; you see, I feel bad even though their the ones screwing up at every turn.

But twice this week I’ve gotten angry. The first time was in class after a student complained about the reading I had assigned, calling it “the dumbest reading I’ve ever read.” The second time was during my soccer game after I overheard a girl complaining to her friend about the way I sub players to keep playing time equal. It surprised me both times when I reacted with anger (“I get really sick of listening to everyone complain about the homework I give. I assign things for very specific reasons, so maybe you need to spend more time trying to discover what those reasons are. And twenty-four pages of reading is not an unreasonable amount.” “Do not ever criticize the way I run this team again, and now you can sit longer waiting for your turn to go back in.”)

And boy did it feel good.

I mean, adrenaline pumping, endorphin rushing good. Want to do this much more often (I hate to say “all the time”) good. Seriously how did it take me twenty-seven years to figure this out good. And, just a little bit: how can I keep this from becoming a bad thing good?

There’s a balance to find here, and probably a lesson to be learned, but all I want to think about is when I get to do it next. Oh, and about how I’m going to get Microsoft to give me my money back before I switch to Playstation.

In tenth grade, our first assignment was to write a sort of writer’s autobiography, to assess our strengths and weaknesses as writers. Like an idiot, I included a line that basically said I was awesome. My teacher wrote one word next to my claim: “Really?” That was the first time I really realized that I had a lot to learn, because it was the first time my writing knowledge had been challenged. I still react this way, and now make sure that my readers don’t sugar coat their feedback. I just want it straight; my feelings are less important.

During my sixth year of college, I took a graduate-level English class at the invitation of the professor. Our final project was to create a graduate-level project on one of our books. That was pretty much our assignment. My professor, who knew I was applying to MFA programs, encouraged me to use my creative writing skills in the paper, and I ended up writing a creative research paper where I mimicked Carole Maso’s Ava, a lyric novel that plays with truth, has an unreliable narrator, and no paragraphs. (This is probably the reason I really enjoyed writing the imitation pieces in grad school—I got to play.)

I always loved these hybrid assignments, and I’ve been brainstorming ways to introduce them in my own class. How does social media relate to communication? How is truth malleable? How can creative writing enter the research-writing classroom? How can I introduce writing assignments that get the students to respond as if to a community of peers, from a real desire to contribute to the dialogue, rather than simply because they want to pass the class?

Strangely, looking back at the first of my two examples here (or perhaps because of it), the assignment I’ve probably responded the most negatively to over the years has been that of the writer’s autobiography. It has always felt pretentious to me, because it feels so limiting, as if I’m supposed to make an inventory of what I’ve done and what I’ve learned up to this point but which leaves no room for the fact that I don’t think I know much definitively, because the day I stop learning through my writing is probably the day I stop writing altogether.

So what assignments/teaching styles did you respond to? What did you appreciate in your various writing class, and what made you go crazy? Help a new professor out.

At first I put this all on hold because it just wasn’t realistic (so said I) to move to a new city with a low-paying job and an unspeakable monthly loan payment. Plus, Michigan came with free rent, a nearby literary community that was easy to break into (hi, Ann Arbor!), and tickets to Spartan football games. A year, I said, then I’ll do something new.

And I am planning something new—it’s just not anything that was already on my list. Instead, I’ve decided to spend a year in France* teaching English. Well, technically it’s nine months, but my visa will be for a year. If my application is accepted, I’ll leave a year from this September. I’m young, I thought. If I don’t do something like this now, while my entire life is pretty much unattached, when will I do it?

Of course, I don’t know that much about teaching English to non-native speakers. I’ve done some tutoring to very advanced speakers before, but never to kids (8 to 18 years). But I figure an interest in language, in saying things, can only help. Plus, I’ll only be working 12 hours per week while there, so hypothetically I could come home with a finished book, or at least a bunch of new stories. And then I’ll get on to that list of mine.

* For anyone who is now saying, “How awesome!” a working knowledge of French is required for this program. But there are similar programs in (I think) Italy, Spain, and Austria, for Italian, Spanish, and German speakers. Also, Finland offers a program where you don’t need any language knowledge. Just English.

One of my favorite books

I was headed into hour eleven of a fourteen hour day last week when I decided that what my developmental writing class needed was a little poetry. After all, I fed them Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” the week before, and they ate it up like Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day. In other words, they loved it. I read the story aloud, and when I got to the last sentence– “They unlocked the door, and even more slowly, let Margot out.” –I heard a student in the back of the room whisper, This is gonna be awesome. So there I was a week later in my closet of an office reeling from that little bit of encouragement and searching for a poem that would provoke them to similar states of excitement. That’s when I remembered the final section of Adrienne Rich’s poem “An Atlas of the Difficult World”  in the book by the same title. In a rush, I looked it up online and read it for the umpteenth time, and then the craziest thing happened. I started weeping, like really crying my eyes out like a dumb ol’ baby. I was tired, yes, and stressed out, yes that too, but it was something else, too. That poem was the most beautiful thing I’d experienced in weeks. I was looking for direction, and there it was telling me who I was and how I felt. And by the time I got to the last sentence– “I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else / left to read / there where you have landed, stripped as you are.” –I had the eeriest feeling that Adrienne Rich had been residing in my brain all these years. Yes, this is why I read and write poetry, because there is nothing else left that will bring me back to life after all the countless external forces have sucked me dry. Thank you, Ms. Rich. I’ll be sharing this poem with my students in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

What poem, story, or novel revives you this way?

But anyway, this song has had me (and many others) thinking. For those that don’t know, last year Rihanna was involved in a very public episode of domestic violence with her then-boyfriend Chris Brown. She was attacked, her pictures leaked to the media, and then months of scrutiny followed, during which no few voices wondered what she had done to deserve it, because clearly, she must have deserved it. Anyway, I won’t go into the many details of the months that followed, of the back and forth in the situation and their relationship; there’s Google for that. It died down eventually, but then word broke that she was doing this duet with Eminem, and it all came back to the surface.

Though many do question whether or not Rihanna should have done such a song, I see no reason to condemn her decision to use her voice in this way, to tell this story. The concern I have seen repeated in feminist circles, however, is whether or not the song actually does make a statement against domestic violence, and whether or not the song’s main audience is mature enough to get any anti-violence argument or whether they will only see domestic violence as sexy and glorified. However, this discussion leaves out one very important factor, and ultimately sets out to control the parameters of Rihanna’s art based on what others prescribe to her as her social views.

And they may very well be Rihanna’s social views. I would find it hard to believe Rihanna herself promotes domestic violence or wants teenagers to go home and start hitting their partners, but that does not mean that all of her art has to automatically take the completely opposite view or say silent on the subject. There is room for ugly in art, and there’s room to go against what we believe.

I’ve actually been having similar problems in my own writing lately (and by lately, I mean the last year). I have a character faced with a decision that, down one path, satisfies my social beliefs and would make my book fit into a specific social set of literature, and it’s really the choice I wanted my character to make from the beginning. Down the other path I write a much more conservative character would will please people I don’t want to please and quite possibly get my book scoffed at for yet another negative example of this social issue. Yet it’s what my character would do. I’ve spent months and months trying to make it not so, and the book has suffered for it. I think now that it’s time to do what’s right artistically, what’s right for the story, even if it might go against the message I might put on a billboard, even if it might make me seem less committed to my cause than I am.

So maybe there’s step three for you. Not only do I like this song and admit it publicly, but now I’m learning life lessons from it. I’ll leave you with the video, which I’ve also watched, though I’ll admit half the reason for that was because it has Dominic Monaghan in it, and I’ll watch anything with a LOST actor or actress in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U

I teach at a community college and most of my students work close to full time while trying to keep up with a full course load. Many of them also have families. This week I taught a module at my school’s First Year Introduction (FYI) seminar about how to succeed in science classes. (I teach physics.) FYI is like a booth camp for students who feel they need some preparation for student life and learn to model successful college student behavior. I told the FYI students the same I tell my regular students: the college curriculum load is taught as if you spend two hours outside of class on preparation and studying for every hour you spend in lecture. That means that for a five credit class, you spend a total of fifteen hours per week on just that subject. If you take a full load of three classes, you’re all of a sudden up to 45 hours per week of just school work—more than a full time job. To be able to have a life on top of that, you have to figure out a way to beat the system—a way to study more efficiently and be able to cram ten hours worth of outside classroom studying into eight or fewer hours.

I taught my module at 2.30 pm and at 7 pm. In the first class, most of the students were straight out of high school. As I went over the importance of preparing for class, why they’d be frustrated if they fall behind in a science class, and gave them practice exercises on how to effectively read a college textbook, they stared at me with glassy eyes, texted friends that were not in the classroom, and chatted with each other about current movies and video games. I had to dig deep into my arsenal of basic classroom management skills to be able to conduct an effective class. Five minutes before class was over, all of the students were gathering up their books, zipping up bags, and had one leg posed to sprint up from the chair and out the door. As I gathered up my handouts and erased the whiteboard, I wondered if I should ask for another year off. I had obviously forgotten how to be an effective educator.

Before the later module began, I ran errands and stopped by the grocery store to pick up something to eat for dinner. I also loaded up on cookies for the students. My plan was that if I didn’t get them excited about taking science classes, at least they would remember my session’s sugar high with fondness. If you can’t reach them through knowledge, try food.

The students that filed in through the door shortly before seven were a little bit older than my previous group. When they saw the cookies they exclaimed things like “awesome” and “I’m totally going for double-stuffed Oreos.” During my presentation, they stopped me several times to ask questions about what science classes were available on our campus, who the most popular instructors were, and why you have to take biology before zoology. They loved the textbook reading exercises and a few of them asked for my email and office number in case they needed further study tips after the quarter starts. At the end of class, most of them stayed behind to ask more questions about which science classes I thought might be right for them.

It was an awesome session. I drove home remembering how great it is to be part of students discovering something new and interesting. How privileged I feel whenever a student’s passion for the subject I teach is awakened. I also remembered the reason I went into teaching in the first place was because I want to show students how much fun science can be and that everybody is born a scientist. We start our early years in life investigating the world around us, recognizing the patterns of it, and figuring out how to function within it better—just like scientists. That evening I felt good about teaching again.  

I suspect the second batch of my FYI groups consisted of students a little more mature than the first, a little more motivated and a little more independent as learners. I probably did a better job of presenting the material since it was the second time around that day. However, I’m not taking any chances and come first day of the fall quarter, I’ll be walking in to physics class armed with a batch or two of cookies.

Hope your back to school week is a good one. I leave you with a spoof video from The Onion. It cheered me up as I prepared for lessons.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RrreVthWRY

How are you psyching yourself up for the beginning of school?