Stray Thoughts

I should be writing a response for my class tomorrow right now. I should be interacting with readings on how the University has forced students to appropriate an unfamiliar language and discussed their failure to do so in quantitatively diagnostic terms. Instead I'm listening to the Eagles and Ingrid Michaelson and thinking about how a lady's umbrella yesterday flicked up neatly and gracefully, like an extension of her arm as she stepped off the bus and into the torrential downpour.

Creative Break

Pictures!

Marie and I at dinner Friday night.

The Studio Theatre

Marie's favorite place in DC so far: Frozen Yo, where you can find almost any possible flavor of frozen soft serve yogurt.

Fall is coming! (or it might already be here)

The building in which I work, O'Boyle Hall

Marist Hall, the building that is supposed to be my home base since it houses the English department and graduate student offices, but alas, it is currently undergoing structural repairs due to earthquake damage.

Not a bad looking campus :-)

Of learning and living

Freshman student: "So, I really need help with grammar. Can we work on that during this session?"
Me: "Sure" (thinking to myself "I can teach grammar, parts of speech and sentence type; no problem") "what do you have questions about?"
Freshman: "I really just don't get the predicate stuff; direct and indirect objects, subject complements, and transitive verbs."
Me: "ok...let's see" (thinking to myself, "dang, how much have I forgotten since eighth grade? I don't even remember what those are.") "Let's see what your grammar text book has to say about those things! It can be tricky, but I bet if we work through the book it will all become clear." (thinking to myself "I hope")

Another day in the life of a writing center consultant. I'm currently on a mission to make the writing center a more welcoming environment. The people in the center are very nice, but the wall hangings currently are large barnes & noble-esque framed posters of Virginia Woolf and Nathaniel Hawthorne (not the two most cheery literary figures between a biography that ends in suicide and a novel about adultery and hypocrisy). So, every week I put a new inspiring quote about writing on our otherwise unused chalkboard and I've started bringing in cookies. I really want some lighthearted decorations to sprinkle around the room, but that might come later when (and if) I have money to spend on such things.

Classes are going very well, and I feel like I've finally hit my learning groove in most of the classes. The heavy theological reading is pretty much over for my class on Religion and Literature in Early Modern England (there is only so much Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Moore, William Tyndale, Philip Melancthon, Erasamus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin a girl can handle) and we're headed towards poetry. I'm also reading a book for that class of my choosing for which I have to write a book review by next Tuesday called The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama, and it discusses the ways in which theatre by using religious props on stage both confirmed and undermined the Protestant desire to move away from a material faith towards an inward immaterial faith. It combines my interest in Drama, props and religion and I'm enjoying it a lot.

My pedagogy class continues to be eye opening, mostly because half of my classmates are currently teaching English 101, and I feel like I'm learning a lot from their shared experiences, frustrations and successes. My intro to the profession of letters class is also interesting. Last week we went on a field trip to the University of Maryland to visit their archives where I got to look at and touch the marriage certificate of T.S. Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Christmas card he wrote to a friend, an early type-written with revision notes of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and a prescription William Carlos Williams had written. Most of us were in book nerd heaven. I also have an assignment for that class that will take me down to the Library of Congress in the upcoming weeks to look at 19th century British periodicals. I got my reading card for the library and have had a tour of their reading room, and it brought back lovely memories of doing work in the Radcliffe Camera at Oxford.

In other news, my roommate's sister who lives in Baltimore just had a baby boy, and Hannah is very happy. A week before she went into labor, Abby had Hannah and I over to make applesauce which was very much fun. Other non-school related activities have included a Friday night spent with Marie, reducing my bank account at H&M--my small wardrobe has grown disturbingly since moving to DC...have I become a clothing accumulator? I hope not!

Additionally, the weather in DC has taken a turn for the pleasant with cool sunny days after a mad string of humid rainy ones.

I think I'll wrap it up for now. Photo post to come!

Narrative

Story. Yesterday a student came into the writing center with an assignment. Hemingway claimed that the phrase "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" could be read as his autobiography. This student's teacher wanted him to identify what made that phrase a story and what could that story mean. I asked him what he thought made that phrase a story. He looked at me, smiled apologetically and said, "I'm sorry, Ma'am, I don't actually think its a story, I'm just writing that it is for the assignment." I hope the student left yesterday with a changed mind as well as a changed paper.

Hemingway's story, the terse collection of words and punctuation, imposes on the reader the lens through which he's asking us to look at him. Most of us go through life making stories out of experience; we interpret interactions, actions, and inaction narratively. Chronology, connections, and climax slip into our thoughts and spill out of our mouths often without us consciously aware of the verbal construction at work. As I find myself looking back and trying to craft my experiences into a mildly entertaining narrative, I'm more aware than usual of the potential for artificiality.

Story. I ventured inside the library on Monday. My religion and literature in Early Modern England had me comparing two different early english translations of the Bible. Our instructor stood in front of class and said, "now, I want you to realize what is at stake in the work of translation; you're literary scholars, this is what you do best. Get to the library and actually look at the Bibles we have there. Find a passage that is different between translations. Try to use some of the early ones, the Douay-Rheims, Geneva or Tyndale translations would be best. I guess if you have to use the Authorized King James Version, that's fine."

So there I was, in the library as ordered; I'd dutifully looked up the Douay-Rheims Bible, and I had the call number. I knew I was on the right floor because I was knee deep in biblical commentaries and concordances, but I could not find this book. So after walking up and down the three flights of stairs to double check that I had the right number, checking and double checking the library map and guide, I did what any young bewildered student might do; I asked a librarian for help. What did I get? A very nice albeit condescending tour of the third floor of the library, complete with a lesson on how to read call numbers (that stung my pride a bit...after all, I did know how to read call-numbers) and a lecture on the purpose of the reference section--something I was also aware of. All of which was spoken in a thick eastern european accent. What did I learn? The library stacks are half floors. So I needed to go up a half flight of stairs to 3a in order to find my book. All I can say is, that definitely wasn't on the map.

Story. The Douay-Rheims Bible is the Catholic translation of the Vulgate into English. It has undergone several revisions since the sixteenth century, but my understanding is that it remains heavily dependent on the Latin. The Tyndale and Geneva Bibles were early protestant translations that attempted to return to the Greek and Hebrew roots of scripture to translate. An early disagreement between Tyndale and Thomas Moore was Tyndale's choice to translate "ecclesia" as "congregation" rather than "church". Tyndale argued that people needed to know ecclesia included the laity as well as the leaders, and that it referred to a body of believers rather than an institution. However, later protestant translations returned to "church" as the translation of ecclesia. Our instructor used this example to illustrate the difficulty of translation when dealing with divinely inspired literature. He argued the reformers insisted optimistically that the ultimate meaning of the text could be understood and agreed upon by all true believers. However, if the meaning of language is created by the communities that use it, then differences in communities will ultimately create difference in interpretation. Interesting stuff, eh?

Story. Due tomorrow: writing assignment, unwritten.

Goodnight!

So it begins....

Here’s a taste of what I’m doing at school: reading, writing and more reading. And I’m lovin’ it.

 Despite the chaotic start to the semester things are unfolding into a manageable routine.  The hurricane last weekend didn’t cause any problems for me, but the forecast caused several orientation events and departmental meetings to be cancelled on Saturday, and so it feels like I’m starting the semester in the middle rather than at the beginning.

I weathered the hurricane with my roommate, Hannah, at her sister’s house in Baltimore. Hannah was planning on spending Saturday with her sister, Abby, for a baby shower and since all the events were cancelled on campus, she invited me to come along. I wasn’t sure if it was particularly wise to be heading toward the coast with a hurricane on its way, but as it turned out we didn’t have any problems. We did spend the night at Abby’s—she and her husband were very kind to put us up for the night—and my only impression was that it was a windy, rainy night.

This week I had my first official classes. We started off in my Lit and Religion in Early Modern English class with a discussion of Reformation theology as opposed to Medieval Catholic theology. I think that will prove to be a provocative and fascinating course, although the reading will be, as my professor himself admitted, “voluminous.” My other classes are required for first semester Master’s students in the English department. One is a methods course meant to introduce graduate students to the resources available for research and the expectations of professional scholarship. The professor for that class is six months pregnant and tended to lean forward and rock back as she lectured making me incredibly anxious that she would end up falling over. My third class is a pedagogy course that I’m taking along with a few first year PhD students who are teaching their first classes. I’m looking forward to learning from their mistakes ;-)

Next week I begin my shifts at the writing center; I’ll be working 17 hours all together. In preparation, I had to get around to fifteen sections of English 101 yesterday to make all the freshmen aware of the free writing consultation service the English department provides. The biggest mistake of that endeavor was stopping by Starbucks for coffee before beginning my rounds. Drinking hot coffee while running around the corridors and stairwells of poorly ventilated, hundred-year-old buildings makes for an unpleasantly warm and persperational experience.

Hannah is home in Michigan this weekend, and I have the apartment to myself (and the cats).  Hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend! I know I will.

Pictures from moving in week

So many bookcases!! 

Confused tourists?

No, my wonderful moving team 

Movers and Shakers

It isn't every day while sitting in a hundred-plus-year-old building, that one experiences an earthquake. Frankly, my first impression was to laugh; after all a room looks funny jiggling like a bowl of jello-salad. Also, the bewildered looks on the faces of the teacher & student panel appointed to orient incoming grad-students momentarily gave me a perverse satisfaction to see them looking the way I had been feeling for the last two days.

The humor I found in the situation, unfortunately, was short lived as my campus went into a state of emergency. This emergency turned out to mean that all students and staff on campus had to join the grad students in our orientation auditorium. To make room for this large number of people, all our tables and chairs were packed away. Once our seating arrangements had been folded up and made inaccessible, our swelling numbers  led the powers that be to decide it would help control the excitable atmosphere in the room if everyone sat down, and so we all had to sit on the ground. Had I known in the morning that an earthquake would have me sitting on the ground for 45 minutes, I wouldn't have worn a skirt today.

Today has been by far the most interesting day in DC, and the one which should have produced the most anxiety or emotion--afterall earthquakes are supposed to be disconcerting and leave you feeling vulnerable and out of control. For whatever reason, I experienced significantly more anxiety walking to the bus stop for the first time on Monday, than I did in the midst of a seismic wave. Perhaps after moving across the country and anticipating a demanding grad school experience has used up all my available reserves of worry. Or, more likely, an event so far out of my control that it cannot be anticipated, predicted or prepared for, cannot, therefore, be worried about.

In other news, I moved to Washington DC last week--well, no, not really. Technically I'm in the northern tip of Silver Spring, MD, a city just north of DC, but accessible by metro from the city. Mom, Dad, and bro Josh helped me get settled in last week. This is how it went: my dad and brother moved the heavy stuff and then toured my neighborhood, reporting back to me any places of interest. My mom was sociable and motherly towards my new roommate, Hannah, while unpacking my kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, clothes, and bedding. And I wandered around in a daze, occasionally inserting myself into a conversation before returning to my comforting boxes and boxes of books that I had decided was my number one priority to unpack and organize on my bookshelves. Eliza, my cat, ran around alternating between getting in the way and trying to escape.

Somehow I mustered my courage on Monday to venture out of my new sanctuary and go for an early morning run before getting myself ready for day one of Orientation. I will not bore you, readers, with the details of orientation. Imagine a degree in pedagogy being completed in one and a half days and you'll have some idea of the task the orienteers are facing and the mixture of unnecessary and crucial information the orientees are subject to.

Eliza has suddenly become very interested in sitting top of my hands right now, as I'm trying to finish this post. So, to save myself from an unhappy cat, I'll end this post. Till next time...

Pictures from August 14, 2011, "Goodbye Gathering"

In my end is my beginning

The circumstances were all too familiar: I was sitting at a table full of pulled-pork on buns and surrounded by well-wishing friends. Despite my best efforts to avoid the term "open-house" in all of the invitations to this gathering, the afternoon had begun to take on a distinctly post-highschool graduation feel. However, regardless of the red herrings: the beautiful buffet line-up of food, and the hubs of people gathered around picnic tables chatting cheerfully, I had invited no one to the park yesterday to celebrate a recent commencement achievement. Rather, I had asked that they be present so that I could say goodbye. In two days I plan to load my worldly belongings into a truck, peel the suction cup of my heart away from my loving community in West Michigan, and move to our nation's capital where I intend to spend the next half decade or so completing a masters and a doctorate in English Literature.

As I attempted to steer the conversation away from tear-inducing topics with a friend yesterday, she asked me how I planned on keeping everyone up-to-date on my comings and goings, adventures and misadventures, etc. And I said with some embarrassment that I hadn't really come up with a good plan. She advised me to start a blog for that very purpose. So, here I am, making my first post on a blog while morosely contemplating my impending departure, and wishing my spirit of adventure would switch on.

At the advice of another scholarly friend, I've been keeping TS Eliot's Four Quartets near me for the inspiration and cold comfort that they provide. Last night rereading "Little Gidding," the final section came at my mind again in full force, with the profundity of relevance to my current experiences:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

Eliot's concern with the circular connection of beginnings and endings and his insistence of the weightiness of the present moment climax in this final section. I especially appreciate his insistence on the possibilities of purposeful language: "every phrase and every sentence"functions as a microcosm of this world filled with beginnings and endings. Words connect and interweave with actions in his dance of timeless moments. Eliot walks a fine line between potential and reality, a line I will try to respect, but this template for language and the deliberate attitude toward life do fire me in the direction of excitement as I make my acquaintance with beginnings and endings:

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will b to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."