How to Write in a Book
I enjoyed reading this post by Laura Miller on different methods of writing in a book or taking notes for a book. As someone always struggling to come up with a good method, I am impressed with hers, though also somewhat intimidated, as it is far more organized that I can ever imagine being.
“Fired from the Canon”
Over at the new website Second Pass, they have a blog post up called “Fired from the Canon” about 10 “classics” (rather loosely defined as novels other people try to convince you everyone should read) that you don’t have to bother with. It’s a fairly bold list — you could pretty easily come up with a list like this that no one would really argue, but they’ve chosen a few quite popular and loved books. Read the post here, and then come back here and tell me what you think. I have personally only read four of the ten, but here are my thoughts on those:
-One I loved when I read it, but agree you can only read before you turn, say, 22, and if you haven’t by then, you shouldn’t bother.
-One is a book I only kinda read. Like, I read it for a class, but I can barely remember anything about it, and one of the reasons is because the “idea” is more important than the characters, if you know what I mean. So I agree with that one as well.
-One of them I giggled aloud when seeing it on the list just because it makes me feel like I’m not alone, and because it seems to me the boldest choice on the list. I don’t agree that you should skip it necessary, it just made me laugh that it was there.
-One is my least favorite book by one of my favorite authors, and I completely agree with the assesssment.
If you know me at all, you will probably be able to figure out very quickly which of these is which when you see the list. Come back and argue or agree with the list, please! Fun!
Megan Fox and Jennifer’s Body
This is the only photo I could find of Megan Fox that didn't totally objectify her. But maybe she finds that empowering?
I was going to write a thing about Megan Fox, and how I was confused and surprised because in a recent Entertainment Weekly article she called herself a feminist, and the reason I was confused is because it was part of this exchange:
How did you feel about being sexualized like that [by being in a bikini in the movie Bad Boys II] when you were 15?
I thought it was awesome. I was going to a Christian high school and I wasn’t a feminist yet. I hadn’t sat back and analyzed society yet. I was 15! I just did what I was told to do.
and I didn’t know why this was actually different from what she does now — because she has analyzed it and decided it’s ok?–and how in the same article she also says this:
“I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That’s what our purpose is in this business. You’re merchandised, you’re a product. You’re sold and it’s based on sex. But that’s okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded.”
and that seems really conterintuitive to me, and I don’t really see how you can be “empowered” by being a product, but then I don’t know whether I should just be happy that a young and famous woman is calling herself feminist, since that’s so rare, but then what exactly does she think feminism is? And do I think she’s wrong? And who am I to tell her she’s wrong? And why am I seriously in an imaginary debate about feminism with a 22 year-old movie star? But then I read and saw more interviews with her and she’s kinda funny and sarcastic and she is making fun of Transformers II to the extent that super-dude director Michael Bay who’s got to be one of the grossest guys in Hollywood felt the need to retaliate by claiming full responsibility for her entire career, along with the careers of Nicholas Cage and — get this — Will Smith, and so I started to be on her side. (More on Michael Bay in a clever Bitch magazine blog post here.) And then I read a rumor that Michael Bay claimed Megan Fox’s audition for the first Transformers movie was to wash his Ferrari, and I don’t know whether to believe that, and if it’s true, whether she did this before or after she discovered feminism? And is there any possibility Michael Bay could get any more disgusting?
Will there ever be another "Ginger Snaps"? (I don't count the actual sequel.) Should I try to write it?
And then I was going to also write about how Megan Fox is in the upcoming horror film Jennifer’s Body, written by Diablo Cody, and how I have mixed feelings about Diablo Cody as well but generally I have a soft spot for her somehow and think she gets a lot of crap, possibly because she was so praised for one movie, which is not her fault, and it was a cute movie, no matter how overexposed it got or how you feel she handled the abortion issue, and how I am cautiously excited about how Jennifer’s Body looks like it could maybe, just maybe, be a new Ginger Snaps (though not as good, nothing could ever be as good), or maybe it’s just going to suck and really piss me off. But then the Bitch magazine blog beat me to it. So I didn’t write what I was going to write. But somehow it’s still here anyway.
Here’s the preview for Jennifer’s Body, if you’re interested. Thoughts?
How I Research
How I research:
1. Look up interesting keywords on MLA Bibliography
2. Download whatever PDF full-text articles I can find.
3. Submit a flurry of ILL requests for what isn’t available full-text.
4. When those come, download them to the same folder as the others.
5. Never read more than about a page of any of it.
While electronic resources have made it easier to acquire articles, I feel it may have stopped there, for me at least. Confronted with the idea of reading the whole thing online, I simply skim a little bit and then save it for later, never to return. I could print it out, but most articles are 20-30 pages long, which is a lot of paper and ink, and now that I don’t officially belong to any department, I can’t use their printers and ink. Instead I just collect and collect but never read.
I was always one of the few grad students I knew who preferred writing to research anyway; I always wished I had the problem some of my colleagues complained about, feeling that they could never start writing because they hadn’t read everything yet. I love to read, but only novels; I never truly learned to love reading scholarship. I always jumped into the writing before I was ready. This is still my problem. And I am quick to blame technology for what is probably just a personal flaw. (Though perhaps I can at least claim that technology has exacerbated it — what do you think?)
And So It Begins (kinda, or continues, or something)
Ok, so I read the Germano (or most of it, and it’s one of those things you have to re-read). I took some books out of the library and ILLed some others. I read a short story that could be incorporated. I even read a scholarly article and dissertation abstract (one that was really interesting!) on related topics that have come out since I finished.
You guessed it; I am working on turning the ole diss into a new book.
The reasons I am trying to do it:
1) I actually think my idea might be interesting.
2) Maybe it will help with my job search.
3) I don’t know, what else am I going to do? I thought about that dissertation for so long that I don’t have any other ideas left now.
Here are my biggest worries:
1) That I will end the summer with nothing concrete to show for it.
2) I am too lazy to do the necessary research.
3) That my idea is stupid, or that I’m too stupid to fully explore my good idea.
(You would think that getting the PhD would help with these self-confidence issues, but I still have the nagging feeling they just gave me the degree to be nice.)
The Death of the Book
When I was in college, I majored briefly in English before I switched to theatre. What would possess someone to make such an impractical move? Could it be the stench of a decaying profession calling to me? Because, as you may have heard, theatre is dead, and it was certainly already dying when I was 19.
Now it would seem that books –that is, the physical incarnation of text on pages with a bound cover, not text itself — are going the way of the dinosaur. What is it about me and a love for the impractical, the unfashionable, the hopelessly out of date? Could this be linked to my interest in the gothic, in tales of the undead and ghostly?
Today (instead of writing the aforementioned book that is supposed to come out of my dissertation), I read this article on the BookExpo America publishing convention, where books were essentially lamented as dead — or dying, at least. I also read a Chronicle article called “Reading Dickens Four Ways,” in which the author reads Little Dorrit in book form, as an audiobook, from her Kindle, and from her iPhone.
The Chronicle writer is really interesting in how open-minded she is to all these experiences. She documents others’ heated opinions about each way of reading, but only dislikes one of those ways (the Kindle, but mostly because it’s just not as good as the iPhone).
She also asks this question: “do I like reading, or do I like books?” She concludes that she “love[s] books as much as anybody. But [she] love[s] reading more.”
I like that sentiment. It’s so optimistic and practical. And I suppose it explains why I am able to read so much online, even though I pretend to hate reading on screens. However, I think I am just more dedicated to the idea of books than she is. Who knows — I’ll probably be proven wrong. I have been known to deride quite a few technological trends or breakthroughs and then come to like them. Maybe I’ll be reading Little Dorrit on my (currently nonexistent) iPhone someday too.
But dammit, I really love books. I love the way they smell, and how they look, and how they feel in my hands. I can read online every day, but the things I read aren’t novels. Novels need to be held. It’s part of the full experience.
I will be really sad if they die.
Something Funny
Here’s a funny article for you. It’s called “The Different Kinds of People That There Are.” I laughed the most at the absurd parts. It is not accurate, just funny. You should read it. Really!
I need to laugh, because otherwise I’ll just be dwelling on the fact that I am supposed to be turning my dissertation into a book and have actually claimed to be doing so already in about 50 job applications this past year.
Hey, Lady
If you ever really want to get students riled up, have them read “The Common Guy” by Audrey Bilger from Bitch magazine. The article is about the use of the phrase “you guys” when talking to a group, whether the group is all female or not. The argument goes that this is a perpetuation of the way masculine=generic/”ungendered” (such as the old “man” for “human”), and that it’s become so pervasive that it’s nearly impossible to stop. Wow, students do not like this argument. “What’s the big deal?” they ask. “She’s making too much out of nothing. I’m not sexist, and I say ‘you guys’ all the time. It’s not offensive; it’s just a casual way of speaking.” You get the drift.
Now, I myself am guilty of using “you guys” all the time, so I’m definitely not trying to say I’m a less sexist speaker than anyone else. In fact, one of the schools I teach at is a women’s college, and I still say “you guys” to the group. This doesn’t mean I’m not bothered by it; personally, I agree with Bilger’s argument. It shows how pervasive sexism really is, and how extremely difficult it is to purge from language.
One of the ways you can tell “you guys” is (arguably) sexist is that while two women might be referred to as “you guys,” one woman would never be called a guy, while one man would be. This leads me to my next question: what, if anything, is the female equivalent of “guy”?
My husband says that equivalent is “lady.” I discovered this recently when I was teasing him for using the word “lady” so much. Every time he refers to a woman, he says “lady” instead, as in: “I’m going to meet with this lady from work today.” He claims that “lady” is a casual term, much less formal than “woman.” My assumption, though he will not confirm this, is that he uses “lady” because “girl” (which is, in my opinion, the closest equivalent to “guy”) is insulting to females over the age of about 18.
I find the idea that “lady” could be a casual term hilarious, and this has resulting in a number of laughingly passionate debates between us on the matter. (Please understand, this is really all in good fun.) For the sake of argument, I called “lady” a derogatory term, which he thinks is absolutely absurd. He says I have held on to a notion of the word “lady” from “those old books” I read, and that the term has changed. I stand by my belief that “lady” only has negative connotations, most of which surround the idea that women are weaker and less human than men. Here are the ways I believe the word “lady” is used today:
1) To refer to a woman who is assumed to be physically feeble (as in: “I helped a little old lady across the street”).
2) In place of the word “bitch” if you are angry at a woman (as in: “Hey, lady, get out of my way!”)
3) To refer to a woman who needs rescuing (as in Lionel Richie’s song “Lady,” or in the hotel situation in Gainsville where “so many ladies” needed a taxi — only Amy knows what I’m talking about here).
4) Used by a man, usually in a rap song, to refer to a group of women, probably as a nicer version of ”bitches” or “hoes” (as in the song “Hey Ya,” where women are addressed as “ladies” and men as “fellas”)
5) Similarly to 4, used by a woman to refer to her female friends (as in the Beyonce song “All the Single Ladies,” in which she tells male listeners, “if you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it,” a lyric that makes me a little sick every time I hear it).
4 and 5, I think, are the reasons “ladies” is seen as an equivalent to “guys,” because it’s used that way and it’s supposed to be a nice way of referring to women, especially a woman’s female friends. However, to me, perhaps because these references are often used in songs, I still think of these “ladies” as women who wear makeup and high heels and have manicured nails. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s not the same as a “guy,” who hangs out in sneakers and jeans. Guys are comfortable, while ladies are pretty. Not only that, but those “ladies” will become “bitches” at the drop of a baseball cap if they do something their boyfriends don’t like.
The trouble is, I really can’t think of an equivalent term to “guy.” Ladies are too fussy for me, but girls are too young. Both terms take away some element of humanity and dignity to me. “Woman” is the only term that doesn’t, but it’s true that it doesn’t sound casual — you would never address a crowd as “guys and women.”
Any thoughts? Oh, and before you suggest using a new word, don’t forget how hard Sarah Silverman tried to come up with a new word — or how dangerous language can be!
A few notes for the end of the semester: tough love edition
1. If you haven’t gotten an A on any of your assignments, why would you think you can still get an A in the class now? And, uh, don’t tell me you will work harder on your final paper if you have a chance at an A; that will not persuade me to tell you there’s a chance at one. Also, if you’ve gotten Cs on almost everything and I’ve reluctantly told you the best you might be able to pull off is a B, why would you try to talk me into a B+? It’s not a negotiation.
2. Dropping your mother off at the airport and picking up your sister at the train station are not valid excuses for missing class.
3. No, I’m not coming in on Thursday. Yes, I feel a little guilty about it, but you’ve had all semester to come see me and you haven’t, so you can go to the writing center now. Plus I don’t feel like making a two-hour trip in so that you can not show up for the appointment we made. I will be taking a breather before grading 60 papers and calculating final grades, thanks.
4. No, I can’t “give your paper a read” if you email it to me before it’s turned in. I already read your draft. Now you need to take charge!
PS: It is hot as hell in my office — no AC — and my business school students are wearing cologne in honor of their final presentations, which is making me choke.
What do we grade when we grade participation?
Finally, my long-awaited post on participation. I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath.
Let me start with this. Here are two contradictory statements, both of which I believe:
1) Students who do not speak in class are often contemplative learners who have difficulty speaking on the fly and therefore should be graded only on their written work.
2) Shy students who do not speak in class should be expected to contribute verbally in class, because they often fall back on their shyness as an excuse not to push themselves out of their comfort zones.
Part of the reason why I believe both of these statements is because I am a shy person myself and feel both of these things about myself. It’s slightly amusing that I am in a teaching position, because of the obvious fact that it requires speaking in public, but usually when my position is clear (i.e. when I am the one in charge), I don’t have a particular problem. However, leading discussion has been the hardest part of my teaching performance and something I’ve only recently felt I’ve become good at. This is because it’s not exactly speaking in front of people that’s the problem; it’s having that spontaneous conversation part. I tend to be contemplative rather than spontaneous, so inserting myself into conversations is hard for me (though, as I say, in the teaching environment I have improved on this).
I mention all this because I completely understand what my quiet students are experiencing. Ok, there are always quiet students who are quiet because they didn’t do the reading. But many of them are contemplative; they prefer listening to speaking, and then writing once they’ve thought about it some more.
I don’t know if I’m just forgetting something, but I do not remember being graded on participation when I was an undergraduate. Now, it could be that some of my B grades were a result of my never, NEVER speaking in class and I just somehow wasn’t aware of it. Maybe I didn’t read the syllabus closely, or maybe we were being judged by some professors on our participation but weren’t being told. (Or, you know, maybe my papers weren’t A quality. I’m not proud.) The thing is, I really don’t know, and I really don’t remember being told either overtly or covertly that verbal contributions were expected or required for our grade (even though we did have discussions), and I don’t remember ever speaking in class (though maybe I said something once in a great while by the time I was a junior or senior).
So is it hypocritical that I often get frustrated with the students in my classes who just will not speak, no matter what I do? That sometimes I secretly think of them as stubborn or even lazy because they don’t seem to even try to speak up? Or is it me recognizing something about myself?
I have this one student, M. She is one of the ones who has really been making me think about this. She never speaks in class, not even in small groups. I can’t remember her ever talking to me after class. She made an impression on me at the beginning of the semester because, for the first (ungraded, short, personal) essay, she wrote about a particular cult TV show I happen to love, and I gushed in her paper about how she could write her research paper on it. Now, this must have made some sort of impression, because she did end up writing her research paper on this. But when I read and responded to that first short essay, I thought, “oh, I’m going to have some connection with this girl.” You know? But then she fell off the radar. Honestly, I kinda forgot about her. Until her first formal essay, which knocked my socks off. Then I looked at her in class one day while she was doing some freewriting I asked everyone to do, and I knew watching her that she was freewriting about this TV show we both like (since this was a freewrite about the research paper), and I thought, “This girl is me. This is who I was at 18.” She never talks. She doesn’t seem to socialize with the others in the class. She is clearly engaged, does all of the reading, is consistently attentive, has never missed or even been late to a single class, has worked really hard on her research, and is a thoughtful and articulate writer. And yet, despite the fact that I honestly think of her as “me at 18,” I have failed to forge a relationship with her (beyond any kind of influence I may have had on her that I don’t know about). And honestly, it’s because I have 59 other students to think about, many who are openly demanding of my attention. This makes me sad, and yet I know my own limitations.
Wow, this has turned into something I didn’t mean it to be, and yet I don’t feel like editing or changing it.
What I really meant to address here is: what do we grade when we grade participation? Why do we have a participation grade? What does it really mean?
Despite the fact that I do not remember ever saying a word in my undergraduate classes, when I starting teaching and creating syllabi, I didn’t really question the idea of making participation part of the grade. The idea is to encourage verbal participation and reward students for contributing in class. Sounds good, right?
But it has led to a lot of questions for me. How do we truly gauge participation? What do we do about students who are so excited about the material that they inadvertently dominate the conversation? (I’m not talking about blowhards who won’t shut up — those present their own problems — but rather good, excited students.) What about the students who are excellent, thoughtful writers who are clearly paying attention but can’t find it in themselves to speak up?
Before people start giving me ideas about how to encourage participation, please know that I do A LOT of activities designed to encourage participation, and I also give students plenty of opportunities to explore their ideas in small groups instead of having to speak in front of the whole class (even though the class itself, at 20 students, is already a fairly small group). I often explain that quiet students should take the opportunity to report small-group activities, to give them a chance to speak in class. But the real truth is that these activities rarely carry over into the whole-group experience. Plus, to be honest, if the extent of a student’s whole-group participation is to report on their small-group activity, I’m not all that likely to remember that as participation.
I have also done lots of activities where we all go around the room and everyone is forced to say at least one thing (that is, they report on something they just wrote about, or they have to pick out a passage they find important, etc). I believe in this as an important activity. But if someone speaks in a situation where she’s being forced to speak, is that really participating? (I suppose she could refuse, but usually even students who haven’t done the reading scramble to find something to say in order to avoid embarrassment.) This mild forcing is good for getting voices out there, but again, in my experience it has rarely translated into any change in an individual student’s behavior. Is this really “participating”?
Look, I know I’m a very encouraging and pretty unintimidating teacher who thinks a LOT about changing things up and doing pretty much everything I can do to get conversation going. And I achieve that — it’s just that usually, it’s the same students conversing.
In my experience, student behavior in this regard rarely changes over the course of the semester. Unlike writing — which, let’s be honest, also rarely undergoes a significant transformation over the course of a single semester, but in which I can often see some improvements — I have very rarely seen a student really come out of her shell and speak more in a full-group situation (although I’m willing to admit that this could be a failure of my own observation skills).
So what are we grading when we grade participation? Some students just find speaking in class to be easier than others do — should they automatically be rewarded for doing something that comes easily to them? Yet what would our classes be without the ones who are always willing to rescue a flailing conversation, the ones we rely on to at least attempt articulating a half-formed thought? If those students are better at oral than written communication, then shouldn’t they get some reward for that? I have a colleague that takes what he calls “active listening” into consideration in the participation grade, and part of “active listening” is thoughtful writing in a journal. But I have response papers — which is a separate grade. Should I be assessing the student before AND after class discussion? And really, isn’t pretty much everyone earning an A at that point (unless they’re really just messing up — in which case, they’ll be getting a lower grade anyway)?
Plus the actual grading is pretty bogus. Most instructors admit that they don’t grade participation harshly. I have a clear outline in my syllabus about what constitutes each grade in terms of participation, yet the truth is that I usually am softer on it than what I outline. If a student never speaks in class, shouldn’t they get an F? Isn’t that the equivalent of not turning in a paper? And yet, I’ve only once given below a C in participation (it was a very special case), and a C is itself a rare occurrance. If I don’t see it as something that should be judged on the criteria I myself have laid out, then why am I grading it?
I suppose one potential reason to have a participation grade is that you can have some way of reacting to students who are openly disruptive in the class, but if I’m going to be honest about it, I have a hard time using that as well. What grade do you get for being an asshole? B because at least you were engaged in some way? C because you weren’t engaged in a meaningful way? D because you disrupted the learning of others? And if you get a C or a D, will you be banging down my door demanding that I prove or justify this grade? I always feel like I’m being vindictive if I assign lower than a B for a pain-in-the-butt student.
Part of me wants to stop grading participation in writing classes (literature classes might be different?). Verbal contributions should simply be expected as a requirement of the course. After all, the students who find it easy to talk in class aren’t going to stop doing it because it’s not graded, and it wouldn’t change anything about how I conduct the class. But I hesitate — maybe those students who are better at oral than written communication should get some kind of reward, and maybe students who can’t or won’t stretch themselves in this regard should feel negative consequences. I really can’t decide.
Any thoughts?
