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"

New Article in the Eastern Echo

 

(Image is property of The Eastern Echo)

I just wrote another article for the Echo about the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) at Eastern Michigan University and, though I haven't verified this, it appears to be on the front cover! The article is a bit contentious and there were some issues in the editing process, but my editor stood by me and that is all anyone can ask for.

Normally I might offer some additional information about the article and the people I interviewed but I think I might play this one close to the vest. Rest assured it was not an easy article to write but I think it was a great experience to cover a story for something I did not agree with 100%.

Have fun reading "Socialism club protests U.S. response to Haiti."