Reflective Essay

For this course I need to write a final “Reflective Essay” and post it on this blog. A part of me wants to rebel against the notion. A part of me always wants to rebel, but this time the urge is stronger. Perhaps it is the lazy bone in me, but I’ve always been against the “he has to do it, so do you” mentality. Please, allow me to explain. 

In my English 328 class, the “Language, Literature and Writing for Teachers” majors need to write an extended reflective essay for the course for their teaching accreditation and, because there are so many of those students in the class, I have to write it as well. I think my need to dissent may stem from my time in the military where we lived or died as a team. In basic training, if someone in my platoon was goofing off we all had to do push-ups. It made sense, really. In Iraq, if one person was fooling around we might have all been “punished” with an IED or bullet. However, in a classroom environment, I have a hard time accepting that rationale. 

Fortunately for my grade in ENG 328, we also learned another important lesson in the Army: quit bitching and just do it. You see, in the time I’ve been complaining about having to do the essay I could have already completed it, or at least powered through half of it. So, without further ado, here is my reflective essay:

Often writing an essay may seem like a chore while other times a writer cannot wait to begin the process. The essays written in the course “Writing, Style, and Technology” are prime examples of this as they ran the gamut. While I have always loved writing, as did the majority of the students in the course, the writing I did for Cheryl Cassidy seemed to change with each passing week. My style had to be adaptable to a wide range of audiences and I needed to write for varying specific purposes.

An example can be drawn in comparing my writing from the “Analyzing a Text” assignment to the aptly named “YouTube Project.” At first glance, the assignments seemed similar. In both we were required to determine the intended audience and purpose of the pieces we chose as well as note any stylistic and rhetorical devices we read, saw, or heard. Where the assignments differed, aside from the sources, was the delivery of our analyses.

In the “Analyzing a Text” assignment I chose to examine a recent article in GQ Magazine examining the rise of radical right wing conservatism. The four page essay looked specifically at how the writer of the article tried to convince his audience in subtle ways to see his point of view. I pointed out the imagery the writer used as well as the arguments he made for his cause. The analytical essay was intended to show examples of literary forms found within the article and how effective they were. While the essay I wrote had its dry moments, it certainly was informative for my intended audience: my professor.

The “YouTube Project” had a different goal: I needed to keep my audience’s attention for up to ten minutes with a verbal and visual presentation. The intended audience for this project was my fellow classmates, not solely the professor. While there needed to be an accompanying three page essay to present my thesis and analysis, I needed to deliver that analysis to a classroom with the help of a partner. For the presentation, I could not just write a three page paper and recite it to the class. Instead, we chose to show a YouTube clip in its entirety, approximately 90 seconds, and then discuss the oppositional framework we noticed occurring throughout the video. We noted the choice for music, the imagery used, and the lines spoken.

In preparing for both assignments, an outline was instrumental. For the first assignment it was used as a framework to support an entire essay, but in the YouTube assignment I relied almost solely on my outline while in front of my peers. While the outline used in analyzing a text could be sparse, as I would fill in the gaps in my essay, the outline I used for the presentation had to be “fleshed out,” so to speak. If the outline had been as meager as some of my other outlines I am afraid I would have missed key points in my presentation.

With these two assignments, as well as others in the course, I learned two primary lessons: know your audience and write for that audience. It is easier to write what I want to write but more difficult to write what others want me to write. The point that writers need to write for others, not themselves, was brought up time and time again throughout the course. It is a message well heeded as my other writings in other classes are no longer approached in a manner I would find appealing but in a way my audience (usually a professor) will find pleasing.

 

Too young for YouTube?

Recently, the use of young children on sites like YouTube has raised concerns of appropriateness. It seems that where parents used to post videos of their children merely for family members on YouTube, now parents are exploiting their children for instant internet fame.
 While television programs like "Kids Say the Darndest Things" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" have been a part of the American entertainment culture for decades, it is only recently that parents have had direct access to making their children international stars.

Even if the threat of online predatory pedophilia could be ignored (it can't), what happens when these kids reach puberty? Or High School?

Did anybody else have a mother that showed pictures of them in the bathtub to their high school girlfriend? I did, and it was embarrassing. However, it helped me learn what girls to bring home to mom and which ones would not be able to handle her. Mostly, I learned not to bring any girls home to mom when she had access to family photo albums.

But what if any student at my high school had direct access to family videos of me as a kid? How could I ever quash that? I wouldn't be able to, and fortunately my parents never posted flyers of me in the tub around my school.

Parents that share too much of their child's life online are endangering themselves as well. Just ask the balloon boy's parents. The threat becomes parents exploiting their children for their own fame, and then having it blow up in their face.

Or worse, it could create a need within the child to forever feel the love they gained while on YouTube. Maybe we shouldn't be concerned though. I mean, surely these kids are growing up in well-adjusted environments, right? Right?

Idiots or Geniuses?

You should really watch this video.



Seriously, it's the moment you’ve been waiting for... if you're a misanthropic man-child that can't move past the late 90's. The Insane Clown Posse just came out with a new song.

It’s called “Miracles,” and it isn’t just any old cut of the mill rappers with makeup music video; it’s something special. This is an opportunity for the ICP to celebrate all of the mysteries of the universe, like magnets.

You can tell these guys have not had the opportunity to attend so much as a community college with lyrics like these:

Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed

Violent J: Yo, ninja, how dese here magnit's work, yo?

Shaggy 2 Dope: It's easy, yo! It's turtles all da way down!

Violent J: Fo realz?

How does anybody correct that? How could anybody explain to these guys that their "miracles" are not simply lies from men of science. These guys can't be serious, can they? Well, an article on State by Jonah Weiner suggests that ICP may be pulling our leg here. He, and other bloggers, note that the video reeks of Saturday Night Live's Digital Shorts. That is, it's so off-the-wall funny that it may be a satirical look at public education.

I don't know if what ICP accomplished was intentional or not, and part of me hopes not, but I do know one thing: the video has raised awareness of the band and is helping to prevent them from slipping into obscurity. They're even the butt of a meme!

Its possible that the majority of children attending Detroit Public Schools, where members of ICP went, do think that rainbows, waterfalls, pyramids, and pelicans are all magical miracles, but not likely. More likely is that ICP listed a multitude of "miracles" in the same way Alanis Morissette listed ironies in 1996. That is, intentional or not, they can both always claim they knew what they were doing. The joke is on us, the public.

Until then, behold the magic!

Ever Feel Like Someone Was Watching You??

In the battle for proper uses of technology, it seems a certain school district has crossed the line recently. The Lower Merion School District, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, has allegedly been spying on its students in their own homes via the student’s webcams. The school district provided their students with free Macbooks and, when the insurance was not paid by the parents, they activated the theft-tracking system secretly lodged in student’s computers. According to lawyers, the school system allegedly had thousands of pictures of hundreds of students. This all begs the question: what the hell was the Lower Merion School District thinking?

The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district.

Back at district offices, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into “a little LMSD soap opera,” a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program. “I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

Except that these computers were not stolen. The school district says it turned on the cameras in these kid’s computers because their families had not paid the $55 insurance fee and the kids were not authorized to take the laptops home.

Well, then why weren't there phone calls to the kids parents saying “we need the laptops back until you can pay for the insurance?”

If this software was solely to track missing computers, once they knew where it was, why keep taking pictures? And those two quotes above make it plain that 'tracking stolen laptops' may have been the excuse, but it's bullshit: they enjoyed peeking in on these kids and kept doing it.

Regardless, it only goes to show that this situation is rapidly unraveling for school district officials. While many parents of students at in the Lower Merion school district are surprisingly supportive of the administration and have urged the Robbins family to drop the lawsuit, I cannot help but wonder if their opinions will change once some are shown photos of their own children in various stages of life–and undress, for that matter–in their own bedrooms within their own homes.

Thousands of images. Multiple students. School district officials gossiping about the access as though it were their own twisted version of “All My Children.” It’s shaping up to be a very interesting summer for the folks in Lower Merion.

The Only Advice You Will Ever Need

I have been a follower of Slate's advice columnist Dear Prudence for five-plus years because the current writer, Emily Yoffe, is funny, unpretentious, reasonable, and, above all else, a great writer. Yoffe also writes a semi-regular feature on Slate called "Human Guinea Pig", where she takes reader suggestions for strange activities or hobbies and tackles them (somewhat) fearlessly. Like the time she became a drag king:

Image borrowed from Yoffe's article "Man Made: My short life as a drag king"

How can you not like that smile? That perfectly creepy smile...

The reason I come back again and again to Yoffe's writings is the casual, yet calculated, manner in which she writes. In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post back in 2007 she questioned the fear that Al Gore's campaign against global warming was generating. She opens her piece with an anecdote about sitting in the outdoor patio of a restaurant in January when her friend said "This terrifies me." Yoffe convincingly points out the absurdity of being terrified of beautiful weather in January (she lives and works in DC). Yoffe does not question the validity of Global Warming; she merely writes that the fear and anxiety people experience, mostly children, is not sustainable. Yoffe is attacking the fear-mongering Gore is perpetuating, not the message itself. Well, a little bit of the message toward the end, but mostly the delivery.

The casual way in which she sets up her piece belies the seriousness of the rest of the article, and that is what make it interesting. Yoffe can present the gravest of concepts in a relatively light and easily understandable manner. She does make references to her anecdote later in the piece as well as a few sarcastic comments. Her funniest:

"Thanks to all the heat-mongering, it's supposed to be a sign I'm in denial because I refuse to trust a weather prediction for August 2080, when no one can offer me one for August 2008 (or 2007 for that matter)."

Agree with her or not, Yoffe writes in a casual, yet organized, way. She uses sarcasm in many of her "Dear Prudence" columns yet doesn't rely on that humorous cynicism. No, her answers are well thought out and, usually, on point.

Insensitive or Clueless Professor? Both?

Gloria Gadsden, please promptly place your foot in your mouth. I'll wait...


see more dog and puppy pictures

Apparently,/ yet another / teacher has been / suspended for forgetting that / what she posts online is not private. Yes, there are five different links in that sentence to five different teachers that forgot the same thing.

Gloria Gadsden, a sociology professor at East Stroudsburg University, posted "threatening" comments (as interpreted by the dean of ESU) on her social networking site on two separate occasions. Read the original story, my sources, here and here.

On Jan. 21, Gadsden wrote, "Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it's been that kind of day..."

Yes, witty commentary to be sure.

Then, this past Monday, she said "Had a good day today, didn't want to kill even one student.:-) Now Friday was a different story ..."

She deleted that comment later, but she was too late. A student alerted university officials of their unhinged professor and Gadsden was suspended.

"No, no! She looks well-adjusted! Not crazy at all..."

Obviously Gadsden has been living in a cave and never heard of Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama professor who had been arrested in the shooting of six faculty members on Feb. 12. of this year.

I realize that most universities have gone overboard with punishing their faculty for online networking, but Gadsden was not merely posting pictures of herself drunk. No, instead she exhibited actions parallel to Bishop (loose parallelism, I know).

The point is, Gadsden should have known the three things every teacher knows before ever opening a Facebook account:

1) Nothing put online is ever truly private
2) Once it is online it remains there FOREVER
3) You don't joke about shooting your students. Ever.

Gadsden deserves her suspension and if EMU, my university of choice, ever catches wind of something similar I hope it reacts the same way. Universities would do well to ignore the drunken and bikini-clad professors' pictures and focus on those professors that choose to "joke" about shooting their smart-ass blogging students.

A Different Language

(Image from "Late for the Sky" blog)

 

In an over-simplified context, painters use different strokes and colors, composers use diverse instruments and notes, and writers vary their imagery and word choice in order to best express themselves and to break away from their contemporaries. Preteens and teens have found another way to express themselves: intentionally brutalizing grammar and abusing traditional spelling.

 

Language changes constantly, I know this. I’m grateful I don’t have to use “tis” and “thee” in 2010, but I would feel even better if I could effectively communicate with my pre-teen and teenaged family members.

 

An example of the youth in my family completely disemboweling the English language can be found on my Facebook page. I recently said, in my status update on Facebook:

 

Me: “I hate 'The Loveshack' by the B52's. There, I said it.”

 

Little Bro 1: HIPPIEEEEE

 

Little Bro 2: and i luv bed rock by yung money

 

Little Cousin: ooh yea i can makee yoo bed rockk. LOL love tht song

Little Bro 1: yupper its the bestie....and so ish frigin goofy goober and frigin...idk some other songs besides that frigin sond

Little Bro 2: some1 help pat with spitting, he seems 2 have somthin in his mouth!!!!!!!!!!

Little Bro 1: i dont get it, ooooldie Man. i mean really......wut in the wrld r u talkin about

That, my dear reader, is worse than “Engrish.”

I will be the first to admit that my grammar is atrocious, my imagery is often cliché (I prefer the term “journalese”), and I am not always as clear as I would like to be. Still, in most of my writing, the reader can usually get the “gist” of what I am saying. But the exchange above? I have no clue what is going on and I have a feeling no one over 25 knows.

But that is the point, isn’t it? It is a semi-secret language based on American-English used to confuse elders. No different than slang I used as a kid, just sloppier.

As my cousin explained to me, when asked, “I throw and extra ‘e’ on to things to make it more creative and… it pisses my mom off!”

Indeed.

Plagiarized Creativity

(source)

"Kids these days, this Cassandra-ish line of reasoning goes, have unfathomably different values, and their elders had better come to terms with this because children are, after all, the future. You can't tell them anything!"

The above line, unapologetically lifted from Laura Miller’s article “Plagiarism: The next generation,” found on Salon.com (16 Feb 2010), says everything that is wrong with teaching young writers about the pitfalls of plagiarism. Miller opines on 17 year old German author Helene Hegemann’s plagiarism accusations and the young author’s reaction to the once damnable offense. Miller does not necessarily defend Hegemann’s actions, but neither does she crucify the young writer. It seems that many young writers see the theft of another’s work as something to be celebrated (or, at the very least, excusable) instead of avoided.

Hegemann's defense is that she might borrow ideas from other authors but she blends them into uniquely new pieces. Ok, I'm calling bullshit on this excuse. While there is no denying the creative affect another’s writing has on me (I emulated Bukowski's apathetic writing style for years with my own poetry) I can not understand the lack of shame other plagiarists experience. PUBLISHED plagiarists, no less!

Perhaps the German culture is so different from our own in that this can be deemed acceptable, but such is not the case in America. Or is it? The problem is that plagiarism is such a gray area, if not in scholarly articles certainly in creative writing. Or is it? Regardless, plagiarism is stealing - not mixing, as Hegemann suggested, and should never be tolerated (source).

I see why people leave Michigan...

and it's due more to the winters than the economy.

Weather Drama

 I knew it would be a long day when I took this picture from inside my car...

Click on Detroit agreed with me when they posted their predicted "snow depths" across the nation:

This Article Echoes

I just wrote another article for the Echo about the Educational Theatre Collaborative (ETC) and it was in Thursday's edition. This was a harder article to write than I thought it would be. To be honest, I am getting a little burned out by the repetition of the "Student Org. Spotlight" articles I've been writing. Sure, I've only done a few but, for the most part, they are not entirely creative pieces on my part.

Something I should not share online, as it will be available FOREVER, but I felt like I "phoned in" this article; this is definitely not one of my top five pieces. Aside from my less than dazzling writing, there were a few other issues.

Image borrowed, without permission, from http://etcollaborative.weebly.com/index.html

For one thing, of the three members from the ETC that I emailed, only two responded and of those two only one had responses that were independent of the group's website; the other person just copied and pasted the majority of her answers into the email. It may be unfair to criticize her though, considering she designed and wrote everything on the group's website herself. If you were asked questions that you had already answered, in detail, before they were ever asked wouldn't you refer back to your own website? I know I would.

In all fairness, of all of the groups I interviewed so far, the people at ETC were the happiest and sweetest group yet. They were nothing less than ecstatic that their organization would be covered by the Echo - they just all got extremely busy when it came time to respond to our email interview. That could, and does, happen to anyone. My lesson in all of this is to request phone interviews from now on. I think better on the fly and the follow up questions usually lead to better responses than my original questions.

One last interesting point to mention. The chairman for the Communication, Media and Theatre Arts Alumni Chapter at EMU will most likely be reprinting the article I just spent an entire blog post complaining about in his organization's March newsletter, so it can't be that bad. Right?

Apologies to ETC, it wasn't their fault. I asked horribly generic questions and then complained when the answers were not outstanding. I just have higher expectations of myself and I feel like I failed to meet them.

Without further ado, here is the article:

"Student Org. Spotlight: Educational Theatre Collaborative offers artistic freedom to students"