I've gotta be honest. When I finally got the official notice about my spring internship placement last October, I was a little freaked out. Not about the location - I had known for a long time that I would be at LHS because of my ESL practicum. No, it was a different proper noun that initially set off alarms in my head:
"William"
Wait... my new cooperating teacher is a guy?!? I looked at Katie (my first cooperating teacher) with an expression of mild panic. She and I had gotten along so *fabulously* well, and it was because we had so much in common! Working together was a breeze because we liked the same music, squee'd about Glee while we planned lessons, and talked about all sorts of girly things whenever we wanted. For two months, we were BFF, and life was great. While I hadn't imagined that the spring could ever be exactly the same, I hadn't really considered the possibility of working with someone so fundamentally different from myself.
As I tend to do, I worried. For 3 months. I worried when emails went unanswered ("Oh no, he's an old guy who's computer illiterate!"). I worried when I did get an email and it didn't answer all of my neurotic questions ("Oh no, he's a disorganized slob!"). I worried about having things to talk about. I worried about how to work femininity into a man's environment. I worried about differences in classroom management and interacting with staff. I worried about having to put on my shiksa feminista pants and hold my own in some sort of Good Old Boys' club.
I worry a lot.
And as is usually the case, I didn't need to. From the very first time my high heels crossed the threshold, I have felt nothing but comfortable in room 231 and with all those who inhabit/frequently visit that space. As it turns out, William isn't old, computer illiterate, or a complete disorganized slob. Bill's just a busy guy who is a lot more laid-back than I am. (Therefore, he knows when to ignore my neuroses, which has actually been a blessing.) He's the polar opposite of Katie, yet we somehow still have just as much in common. I've been reminded of my loves for indie/folk music, reading great literature/poetry, and most importantly, writing.
Sure, there were awkward moments and issues with students who couldn't appropriately navigate the differences between a male and female teacher, and not every day was perfect, but I've loved the whole thing, and it's going to be difficult for me to not be a girly mess on Friday. And as for the Good Old Boys... there have been plenty of occasions on which I have been the only one present without a y-chromosome to my name, but those fears were unfounded as well. At a time in my life when I needed good male role models more than I even realized, the men of the LHS English department swooped to my rescue, made me feel welcome, and reminded me what it's all about.
So, as a somewhat cheesy but entirely heartfelt token of my appreciation, here is my parting gift:
(Blogger doesn't allow me to channel my inner e.e. cummings, so wherever you see a list, imagine it tabbed out and looking like stairs.)
Real Men
(for Bill, Jeff, Jon, and Mike)
It’s easy for a girl to lose sight of what a real man is;
images of Disney princes with kingdoms by the sea
and boyishly handsome TV stars with lovesick eyes
are incongruent with the
cold,
self-absorbed, and
immature game players she’s exposed to daily,
and they all seem artificial.
But Real Men do exist.
I’ve seen them.
Real Men talk about books.
Not just because they have to for their jobs,
or because they want to impress other guys
or themselves
or women.
No, Real Men talk about books because they need to…
because Real Men are poets.
Their insight and clever word play
makes you feel smarter (never dumber) for listening and reading.
No poetry is excluded from their anthologies:
music, film, and television are cherished friends.
Keeping company with the likes of Berryman, Whitman, Zimmerman, and Hoffman,
Real Men are brilliant.
Chivalry is not dead!
Real Men hold doors open
and practice “ladies first.”
But unlike those fake tools, their simple kindnesses
make you feel valued,
not weak or inferior or insulted.
No, Real Men are graceful and genuine with their manners.
Real Men boast of vanquishing an entire fleet
of cholesterol-laden sandwiches,
but they aren’t ashamed to admit
the inherent humor and stupidity of such a quest,
and their assertive posturing is confined to lunchtime conversation.
Real Men have no use or abuse for foolish pride.
Real Men can be “squishy.”
Whether it’s the sexy lead singer, the mysterious poetess,
or the patient wives in their own homes,
Real Men aren’t afraid to be rendered vulnerable
by a strong woman from time to time.
Real Men do not wear masks of hard indifference.
They are passionate about
their work,
their art,
and justice therein.
Societal standards of detached “manliness” don’t restrain them:
confident in their own skins, they care for their
friends,
wives,
children,
students,
and even student teachers.
Real Men inspire hope –
hope for the Real Girl looking for her Real Boy.
She can keep searching now,
knowing her quest is not in vain, because
Real Men do exist.
I’ve seen them.
April 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
In Memoriam
I recently heard myself described as a ball of "glowing light... but solid," which is so amazingly awesome but made more sense when spoken out loud and accompanied by a fantastic gesture/facial expression combo, but anyway... for my first four months in Lawrence, that light was more like Tinkerbell when nobody believes in her: fading away and all the kids are supposed to clap to bring her back.
I was nearly unrecognizable that first semester.
I was quiet. Unnaturally so. I don't remember laughing much at all, and if I made any friends that semester, I don't remember who they were or what we did (No illegal substances were involved, either... I just wasn't there.). I've always had introverted tendencies, but not like this. I stayed in my dorm room a lot, praying every second of every evening that my roommate would stay out all night getting wasted and grinding up on questionable men instead of bringing them back to our room while she passed out on the communal bathroom floor. I threw myself into my overloaded schedule (6 courses, 2 had extra discussion sessions, plus marching band and my new job at the library), kept myself purposefully busy at all times, and relied on my iPod and the final season of The West Wing to shut out the world. I was so miserable, a blizzard literally had to chase me back to Kansas after Thanksgiving or I never would have left my bed, and by the time winter break arrived, I was seriously considering a transfer to Northern State University back in Aberdeen.
It would be easy to brush this off and assume it was typical homesick behavior for a college freshman living 584 miles away from home for the first time, especially when said freshman was deposited in a 12x14 box alongside the greatest waste of human life she'd met until that point... but that doesn't tell the whole story.
On August 12th, 2005, my debate partner from senior year was killed in an alcohol-related single car accident near Richmond Lake just outside Aberdeen. He was 17; just weeks away from his 18th birthday and the start of his senior year.
Matt was a special kid, so indulge me in telling a few stories. He was a great storyteller - whether he was rehashing the events of an intense round or reading the embarassing confessions from the latest Cosmopolitan out loud, the attention of the entire bus was captivated. In that last wonderful year, Matt was the comic relief and heart of our team. Sure, he could be infuriating (like the time he put an entry slip covered in obscenities into a *clear* raffle box at a Taco John's in Minnesota and got himself - and therefore, me - suspended from debate tournaments for two weeks), but by and large, he made everyone laugh, even our opponents.
He was constantly a mess. It took me until January to decipher his handwriting reliably, his hair was always unkempt, and his frequently neglected glasses were woefully crooked. He only had two modes of fashion: suit and tie for debate, sweatpants for everything else. (You can understand my surprise when Matt came out and became my first openly gay friend.) He took ceramics for his fine arts requirement his junior year, and on the last day of the quarter we each got to choose one of his pitifully deformed projects to take off his hands. The guys made cracks about using them for target practice, but I still have mine - it holds quarters for laundry in all its misshapen, unevenly polka-dotted glory. Another piece still survives in the debate room: the "Pomo Pot." Matt had painstakingly painted the names of postmodern thinkers (Foucalt, Heidegger, etc.) onto the sides of what looked like a caveman's cereal bowl as a form of protest for being forced to waste his time on ceramics when he could be researching.
Matt lived and breathed for debate. He saved my ass in rounds more times than I can count, and he dreamt of being a national circuit debater, despite being confined to a non-circuit team and a partner who obviously cared more about Oratory than Policy. He loved the strategy of it all: during prep time or while we waited for judges to show up, he would predict the winners on every schedule, overanalyze each match-up to determine whether the tab room was using straight, random, or high-low pairings, and doodle lists of circuit tournaments (or the richest people in the world according to Forbes - he had the list memorized).
Thankfully for me, Matt loved Extemp as much as he loved debate, so we struck up a deal that made our partnership work: we knew we both had better chances to qualify separately in our I.E.s than together in debate, so we worked hard to keep him improving, and we had a lot of fun along the way knowing that we could both go to Philly and he could grab a ride to nationals in debate the next year. So there were crazy rounds where Matt convinced me to kick our entire Affirmative case and go for the kritik just to piss off our coach, rounds where timers flew through the air when his piece of crap timer (which I now own and still curse at regularly) would give out and just beep incessantly, and rounds where he wore my glasses for entire speeches because he refused to wear his own and we had the same prescription. He used the word "extrapolate" too much and was always trying to convince the judges to "buy" his impacts, and in turn, I abused "conducive" and was always certain that my flawless analysis on Topicality should win the round every time. We had successes as well as a good deal of failures, but for every weekend of failure, Matt just let it roll off him and gave me a big bear hug to let me know that everything would be ok, although it must have been torture for him to watch other members of our team bring in armloads of Policy trophies.
I won't lie and say that he was my best friend in the world, or even that we were particularly close beyond the unique relationship formed by working in close proximity to each other. We took care of each other, learned to read each other's minds, and made the best of a partnership formed by outside forces. (For those of you who need a reference point - the student teacher/cooperating teacher relationship is the closest thing I've experienced since.) Now, I like to think we would have stayed in touch despite the fact that we seldom socialized outside debate-related activities, and we knew relatively little about each other's personal lives. But at the time (and to this day), Matt's death affected me in a way that no one, including myself, could have predicted. I think this is partly because his age and the circumstances of his death made it heartbreakingly tragic, but also because it was the first time anyone I actually knew had died.
Combine this with my inability to return home to attend the funeral or to simply grieve with my debate family, and that lack of closure (I've still never even visited his gravesite - something I plan to change this summer) explains it all. August 12th was the day I arrived at KU, so as soon as I got my phone charger back from Grandma's on the evening of the 13th, the semester was already doomed. Who wants to be friends with that quiet girl who's always gone for band and when she is here she looks like she's been crying all the time, and she seems to be having some kind of existential crisis? Freak.
As they tend to do, things got better. I decided to give KU one more try with a new roommate and a more cohesive schedule that spring, and boy am I glad I did. It hasn't all been easy; friends and roommates have come and gone, but I wouldn't change a thing from the past four and a half years. I've learned a lot about myself and about other people, and this year alone has been worth every bit of the crap that preceded it.
I'm ready to move on to new and exciting things now, but I think I needed to do this - to write this - before I truly could; a bookend, if you will. So if you're still with me, thanks for reading this novella, please stay just a bit longer for the poem I've been wrestling with over the last week, and thanks for providing an audience for what I should have done to cope with this years ago.
Richmond Road Farewell
I.
Under a clear, bright, South Dakota sun
minivans purge themselves of their heavy burdens.
After ten long days filled with longer hours,
a team navigates the awkward transition
from ever-present family (for better and for worse)
to scattered individuals
for the last time.
The moment has a weight felt but denied by everyone present.
A well-known hug and a stubbled cheek stand out amongst the others -
“take care of yourself.” A final command
from one partner to another –
a particular pleasantry never to be spoken again out of superstition and anger.
II.
Cell phone charger forgotten in the excitement of a new beginning,
voicemail overflows silently as a Kansas dorm room is filled, territory bargained for.
Listen to messages before the third Wal-Mart run
-hurry, rehearsal starts early tomorrow!
Familiar voices sound foreign,
weighted by distance and a guarded, ominous secret,
too monumental to be revealed via recording.
Heart simultaneously pounds and sinks as I hit ‘call’ and stare at the door.
News of an accident is cautiously conveyed.
This brand-new tiled floor is uneven – glad it’s not on my side.
The truth – my depression less than 24 hours old – erases innocence.
III.
Acceptance is a lesson learned alone,
dictated by distance.
Not all farewells are tragic. I know this. I’ve remembered this.
But each one carries for me a subtle, unconscious reminder.
Every time a dear friend walks away, I am compelled to gently assert –
imploring the powers that be to let it be true:
“I’ll see you soon.”
I’ll see you tomorrow… Monday… next weekend… in June…a month from the day after tomorrow’s yesterday… it doesn’t really matter when, but I will specify.
Because I will see you soon.
April 23rd, 2010
From left to right, top to bottom: Nisha, Shana, Tessa, Brenna, Molly, Paul, Me, Tyler, Matt, Chris
April 2005
I was nearly unrecognizable that first semester.
I was quiet. Unnaturally so. I don't remember laughing much at all, and if I made any friends that semester, I don't remember who they were or what we did (No illegal substances were involved, either... I just wasn't there.). I've always had introverted tendencies, but not like this. I stayed in my dorm room a lot, praying every second of every evening that my roommate would stay out all night getting wasted and grinding up on questionable men instead of bringing them back to our room while she passed out on the communal bathroom floor. I threw myself into my overloaded schedule (6 courses, 2 had extra discussion sessions, plus marching band and my new job at the library), kept myself purposefully busy at all times, and relied on my iPod and the final season of The West Wing to shut out the world. I was so miserable, a blizzard literally had to chase me back to Kansas after Thanksgiving or I never would have left my bed, and by the time winter break arrived, I was seriously considering a transfer to Northern State University back in Aberdeen.
It would be easy to brush this off and assume it was typical homesick behavior for a college freshman living 584 miles away from home for the first time, especially when said freshman was deposited in a 12x14 box alongside the greatest waste of human life she'd met until that point... but that doesn't tell the whole story.
On August 12th, 2005, my debate partner from senior year was killed in an alcohol-related single car accident near Richmond Lake just outside Aberdeen. He was 17; just weeks away from his 18th birthday and the start of his senior year.
Matt was a special kid, so indulge me in telling a few stories. He was a great storyteller - whether he was rehashing the events of an intense round or reading the embarassing confessions from the latest Cosmopolitan out loud, the attention of the entire bus was captivated. In that last wonderful year, Matt was the comic relief and heart of our team. Sure, he could be infuriating (like the time he put an entry slip covered in obscenities into a *clear* raffle box at a Taco John's in Minnesota and got himself - and therefore, me - suspended from debate tournaments for two weeks), but by and large, he made everyone laugh, even our opponents.
He was constantly a mess. It took me until January to decipher his handwriting reliably, his hair was always unkempt, and his frequently neglected glasses were woefully crooked. He only had two modes of fashion: suit and tie for debate, sweatpants for everything else. (You can understand my surprise when Matt came out and became my first openly gay friend.) He took ceramics for his fine arts requirement his junior year, and on the last day of the quarter we each got to choose one of his pitifully deformed projects to take off his hands. The guys made cracks about using them for target practice, but I still have mine - it holds quarters for laundry in all its misshapen, unevenly polka-dotted glory. Another piece still survives in the debate room: the "Pomo Pot." Matt had painstakingly painted the names of postmodern thinkers (Foucalt, Heidegger, etc.) onto the sides of what looked like a caveman's cereal bowl as a form of protest for being forced to waste his time on ceramics when he could be researching.
Matt lived and breathed for debate. He saved my ass in rounds more times than I can count, and he dreamt of being a national circuit debater, despite being confined to a non-circuit team and a partner who obviously cared more about Oratory than Policy. He loved the strategy of it all: during prep time or while we waited for judges to show up, he would predict the winners on every schedule, overanalyze each match-up to determine whether the tab room was using straight, random, or high-low pairings, and doodle lists of circuit tournaments (or the richest people in the world according to Forbes - he had the list memorized).
Thankfully for me, Matt loved Extemp as much as he loved debate, so we struck up a deal that made our partnership work: we knew we both had better chances to qualify separately in our I.E.s than together in debate, so we worked hard to keep him improving, and we had a lot of fun along the way knowing that we could both go to Philly and he could grab a ride to nationals in debate the next year. So there were crazy rounds where Matt convinced me to kick our entire Affirmative case and go for the kritik just to piss off our coach, rounds where timers flew through the air when his piece of crap timer (which I now own and still curse at regularly) would give out and just beep incessantly, and rounds where he wore my glasses for entire speeches because he refused to wear his own and we had the same prescription. He used the word "extrapolate" too much and was always trying to convince the judges to "buy" his impacts, and in turn, I abused "conducive" and was always certain that my flawless analysis on Topicality should win the round every time. We had successes as well as a good deal of failures, but for every weekend of failure, Matt just let it roll off him and gave me a big bear hug to let me know that everything would be ok, although it must have been torture for him to watch other members of our team bring in armloads of Policy trophies.
I won't lie and say that he was my best friend in the world, or even that we were particularly close beyond the unique relationship formed by working in close proximity to each other. We took care of each other, learned to read each other's minds, and made the best of a partnership formed by outside forces. (For those of you who need a reference point - the student teacher/cooperating teacher relationship is the closest thing I've experienced since.) Now, I like to think we would have stayed in touch despite the fact that we seldom socialized outside debate-related activities, and we knew relatively little about each other's personal lives. But at the time (and to this day), Matt's death affected me in a way that no one, including myself, could have predicted. I think this is partly because his age and the circumstances of his death made it heartbreakingly tragic, but also because it was the first time anyone I actually knew had died.
Combine this with my inability to return home to attend the funeral or to simply grieve with my debate family, and that lack of closure (I've still never even visited his gravesite - something I plan to change this summer) explains it all. August 12th was the day I arrived at KU, so as soon as I got my phone charger back from Grandma's on the evening of the 13th, the semester was already doomed. Who wants to be friends with that quiet girl who's always gone for band and when she is here she looks like she's been crying all the time, and she seems to be having some kind of existential crisis? Freak.
As they tend to do, things got better. I decided to give KU one more try with a new roommate and a more cohesive schedule that spring, and boy am I glad I did. It hasn't all been easy; friends and roommates have come and gone, but I wouldn't change a thing from the past four and a half years. I've learned a lot about myself and about other people, and this year alone has been worth every bit of the crap that preceded it.
I'm ready to move on to new and exciting things now, but I think I needed to do this - to write this - before I truly could; a bookend, if you will. So if you're still with me, thanks for reading this novella, please stay just a bit longer for the poem I've been wrestling with over the last week, and thanks for providing an audience for what I should have done to cope with this years ago.
Richmond Road Farewell
I.
Under a clear, bright, South Dakota sun
minivans purge themselves of their heavy burdens.
After ten long days filled with longer hours,
a team navigates the awkward transition
from ever-present family (for better and for worse)
to scattered individuals
for the last time.
The moment has a weight felt but denied by everyone present.
A well-known hug and a stubbled cheek stand out amongst the others -
“take care of yourself.” A final command
from one partner to another –
a particular pleasantry never to be spoken again out of superstition and anger.
II.
Cell phone charger forgotten in the excitement of a new beginning,
voicemail overflows silently as a Kansas dorm room is filled, territory bargained for.
Listen to messages before the third Wal-Mart run
-hurry, rehearsal starts early tomorrow!
Familiar voices sound foreign,
weighted by distance and a guarded, ominous secret,
too monumental to be revealed via recording.
Heart simultaneously pounds and sinks as I hit ‘call’ and stare at the door.
News of an accident is cautiously conveyed.
This brand-new tiled floor is uneven – glad it’s not on my side.
The truth – my depression less than 24 hours old – erases innocence.
III.
Acceptance is a lesson learned alone,
dictated by distance.
Not all farewells are tragic. I know this. I’ve remembered this.
But each one carries for me a subtle, unconscious reminder.
Every time a dear friend walks away, I am compelled to gently assert –
imploring the powers that be to let it be true:
“I’ll see you soon.”
I’ll see you tomorrow… Monday… next weekend… in June…a month from the day after tomorrow’s yesterday… it doesn’t really matter when, but I will specify.
Because I will see you soon.
April 23rd, 2010
From left to right, top to bottom: Nisha, Shana, Tessa, Brenna, Molly, Paul, Me, Tyler, Matt, Chris
April 2005
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
A song you should know
KU is stealing away my fun time tonight, so I don't have the time to give this the grand introduction and discussion it deserves (I'm sure there will one day be a lengthy essay on my love for Billy Joel... just not today.). But as I type artificial words about a highly artificial discussion (Why do I have to document conversation with my cooperating teacher when we talk every day? Oh yeah, because some people aren't quite as awesome as we are. And that's only slightly tongue-in-cheek.), iTunes gifted me with some authenticity by shuffling to my favorite Billy Joel song. It never fails to astound me in its poetics, so while some of my work spends some more time in the oven, please enjoy:
"Summer, Highland Falls"
They say that these are not the best of times,
but they're the only times I've ever known.
And I believe there is a time for meditation
in cathedrals of our own.
Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes,
and I can only stand apart and sympathize,
for we are always what our situations hand us -
it's either sadness or euphoria.
So we'll argue and we'll compromise,
and realize that nothing's ever changed.
For all our mutual experience,
our separate conclusions are the same.
Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity;
our reason coexists with our insanity.
Though we choose between reality and madness,
it's either sadness or euphoria.
How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies;
perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies?
So we stand upon the ledges of our lives
with our respective similarities.
It's either sadness or euphoria.
From Turnstiles, copyright Billy Joel 1976
(punctuation and line breaks are mine... I typed it out from memory because typing is soothing.)
Be sure to listen to the Songs from the Attic version - this song is meant to be played live. He broke my heart three years ago when he offered it as a choice but went with the rest of the audience and played "Vienna" despite my frantic, second-row screaming for "Summer, Highland Falls." I've held a grudge against "Vienna" ever since.
"Summer, Highland Falls"
They say that these are not the best of times,
but they're the only times I've ever known.
And I believe there is a time for meditation
in cathedrals of our own.
Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes,
and I can only stand apart and sympathize,
for we are always what our situations hand us -
it's either sadness or euphoria.
So we'll argue and we'll compromise,
and realize that nothing's ever changed.
For all our mutual experience,
our separate conclusions are the same.
Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity;
our reason coexists with our insanity.
Though we choose between reality and madness,
it's either sadness or euphoria.
How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies;
perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies?
So we stand upon the ledges of our lives
with our respective similarities.
It's either sadness or euphoria.
From Turnstiles, copyright Billy Joel 1976
(punctuation and line breaks are mine... I typed it out from memory because typing is soothing.)
Be sure to listen to the Songs from the Attic version - this song is meant to be played live. He broke my heart three years ago when he offered it as a choice but went with the rest of the audience and played "Vienna" despite my frantic, second-row screaming for "Summer, Highland Falls." I've held a grudge against "Vienna" ever since.
Monday, April 19, 2010
For Mom
I'm pretty sure this is still in my mom's top five favorite things I've ever written, and that includes award-winning essays, "published" poetry, and oratories that qualified me for nationals.
This is a limerick that I wrote in the seventh grade.
There once was a monkey named Fred
who had a very big head.
He slipped on a peel
and let out a squeal,
and now poor Fred is dead.
(Unknown date somewhere in the neighborhood of 1999.)
I think the accompanying illustration was really what did it for her. I could call her right now and read this to her and she would start laughing so hard she'd start wheezing. I bet she still has it stashed away in a rubbermaid container somewhere, because our family has just a touch of the hoarding. Although, I have to admit that I still have the awesome comics I drew that same year when I was bored in Language Arts. The Adventures of SuperBlob lives on in my file cabinet, and occasionally in the margins of my notes.
Anyway, I hope I can mine such brilliant gems from my writing students next year (who will obviously never have time to doodle awesome comic book characters because they will be completely engrossed in every earth-shatteringly amazing word I say). It's a high bar to clear, but I think we'll make it into a few more rubbermaid containers.
This is a limerick that I wrote in the seventh grade.
There once was a monkey named Fred
who had a very big head.
He slipped on a peel
and let out a squeal,
and now poor Fred is dead.
(Unknown date somewhere in the neighborhood of 1999.)
I think the accompanying illustration was really what did it for her. I could call her right now and read this to her and she would start laughing so hard she'd start wheezing. I bet she still has it stashed away in a rubbermaid container somewhere, because our family has just a touch of the hoarding. Although, I have to admit that I still have the awesome comics I drew that same year when I was bored in Language Arts. The Adventures of SuperBlob lives on in my file cabinet, and occasionally in the margins of my notes.
Anyway, I hope I can mine such brilliant gems from my writing students next year (who will obviously never have time to doodle awesome comic book characters because they will be completely engrossed in every earth-shatteringly amazing word I say). It's a high bar to clear, but I think we'll make it into a few more rubbermaid containers.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Procrastination Psychoanalyzation
Today is a whiny day, so I won't be writing an extensive post - I don't want this to become a place for me to come and vent/rant/rage, but that's all I feel capable of today thanks to...
The KPTP.
For all of you who are already licensed teachers or are not teachers at all (which is pretty much the entire readership of this blog), be thankful today that the KPTP is not a part of your life, holding you hostage when you'd rather be out aimlessly driving around singing showtunes too loudly with the windows down.
*ahem*
To close, and to bring it back to stuff I've written, here is a haiku I wrote during a three-hour training dedicated to having a handbook read aloud to a room full of college graduates (people who we hope can read, especially since they'll be teaching your children how to read).
The KPTP:
So much bullshit, it astounds.
Flaming hoops to jump.
January 13, 2010
***UPDATE***
After playing cat and mouse with this wily beast of a document all day, I think I've head-shrinked myself into figuring out why I really can't make myself finish it.
Finishing the KPTP means finishing my internship.
When I left on the last day of student teaching in the fall, I cried for the whole 40-minute drive home. That ended up being ridiculous because I was back just a couple of weeks later to substitute, and now I'll be back there with a classroom of my own... but this time, I know none of those options are possible. It really will be the end of something special. Hopefully, through the inevitable tears, I'll keep sight of all the inspiration I've gathered from these people and this place. I think in the end, more will be gained than lost... but that's easy to say with two weeks left.
The KPTP.
For all of you who are already licensed teachers or are not teachers at all (which is pretty much the entire readership of this blog), be thankful today that the KPTP is not a part of your life, holding you hostage when you'd rather be out aimlessly driving around singing showtunes too loudly with the windows down.
*ahem*
To close, and to bring it back to stuff I've written, here is a haiku I wrote during a three-hour training dedicated to having a handbook read aloud to a room full of college graduates (people who we hope can read, especially since they'll be teaching your children how to read).
The KPTP:
So much bullshit, it astounds.
Flaming hoops to jump.
January 13, 2010
***UPDATE***
After playing cat and mouse with this wily beast of a document all day, I think I've head-shrinked myself into figuring out why I really can't make myself finish it.
Finishing the KPTP means finishing my internship.
When I left on the last day of student teaching in the fall, I cried for the whole 40-minute drive home. That ended up being ridiculous because I was back just a couple of weeks later to substitute, and now I'll be back there with a classroom of my own... but this time, I know none of those options are possible. It really will be the end of something special. Hopefully, through the inevitable tears, I'll keep sight of all the inspiration I've gathered from these people and this place. I think in the end, more will be gained than lost... but that's easy to say with two weeks left.
Friday, April 16, 2010
My iPod is psychic
Today has been a very musical day. This is not an odd occurrence by any means because music has always been an integral part of my everyday existence, but today my thoughts have been acutely focused on and driven by music. In creative writing, I had my students listen to "Air (Dublinesque)" by Billy Joel and write some flash fiction inspired by the piece. I was genuinely curious to see what they would associate with the song because I have permanently associated specific imagery, storylines, and movements with it thanks to Movin' Out, and the kids did not disappoint. There were weddings, fancy parties, even a dramatic mouse tale (apologies to 717 for the mice reference and to everyone for the bad pun). If you're up to the challenge and the gods of embedding web content are on my side, take a listen and try your hand at it. Or just listen to the piece because it's gorgeous.
This seems like an appropriate segue to the poem I wanted to post today. Like yesterday's, it was written earlier this semester and has been read by just a few pairs of eyes. I wrote it all in one day, which is odd for me. I usually hack away at a piece for much longer if I actually care about it - I was simultaneously working on three different poems today (if they cooperate, you'll see them soon). But this one found it necessary to be completed in one day, across two time zones, on planes, trains, and automobiles (literally).
It was the last day of my spring break trip to Washington, D.C., where I had been visiting 3 of my favorite people in the world. At the time, my job search was at a point that felt like a crisis but in actuality was laying the groundwork for what turned into a perfect storm of employment opportunity. Not knowing that, however, made it very difficult to wrench myself away from these people who feel like home. I'm never good at goodbyes, but that day was particularly heartbreaking.
It didn't help, either, that my iPod was once again playing that game with my emotions where it shuffles to EXACTLY the songs that seem most appropriate/poignant for the moment (creepily enough, as I type this section, it chose REO Speedwagon's "Time for Me to Fly," which it thankfully did not pick on that awful day or I would have just had a breakdown right there on the train from D.C. to Baltimore). So I put down the Odyssey and picked up my notebook.
Here's what was revised and emailed for first review at the end of the day, back on my futon in Lawrence, waiting for an impending snowstorm:
Riding Backwards
Bumpy tracks disguise a shaking hand;
a broken fingernail provides distraction.
Outside, cars hurtle forward while I am forcibly pulled –
by the unseen forces of home.
iPod shuffles sights, sounds, and memories.
Familiar words come laced with extra meaning:
only on days like this
can Michael Franti and Annie Lennox elicit the same reaction.
Thoughts flash like the morning light between passing trees;
a flood of inside jokes and teasing grins – both past and future.
Synaptic overload leads to shutdown.
No work, but no tears, either.
Headache sets in, dull.
Merely a whisper of what’s to come.
Security hassles and pressure at 30,000 feet await;
the platform demands an about-face.
March 19, 2010
This seems like an appropriate segue to the poem I wanted to post today. Like yesterday's, it was written earlier this semester and has been read by just a few pairs of eyes. I wrote it all in one day, which is odd for me. I usually hack away at a piece for much longer if I actually care about it - I was simultaneously working on three different poems today (if they cooperate, you'll see them soon). But this one found it necessary to be completed in one day, across two time zones, on planes, trains, and automobiles (literally).
It was the last day of my spring break trip to Washington, D.C., where I had been visiting 3 of my favorite people in the world. At the time, my job search was at a point that felt like a crisis but in actuality was laying the groundwork for what turned into a perfect storm of employment opportunity. Not knowing that, however, made it very difficult to wrench myself away from these people who feel like home. I'm never good at goodbyes, but that day was particularly heartbreaking.
It didn't help, either, that my iPod was once again playing that game with my emotions where it shuffles to EXACTLY the songs that seem most appropriate/poignant for the moment (creepily enough, as I type this section, it chose REO Speedwagon's "Time for Me to Fly," which it thankfully did not pick on that awful day or I would have just had a breakdown right there on the train from D.C. to Baltimore). So I put down the Odyssey and picked up my notebook.
Here's what was revised and emailed for first review at the end of the day, back on my futon in Lawrence, waiting for an impending snowstorm:
Riding Backwards
Bumpy tracks disguise a shaking hand;
a broken fingernail provides distraction.
Outside, cars hurtle forward while I am forcibly pulled –
by the unseen forces of home.
iPod shuffles sights, sounds, and memories.
Familiar words come laced with extra meaning:
only on days like this
can Michael Franti and Annie Lennox elicit the same reaction.
Thoughts flash like the morning light between passing trees;
a flood of inside jokes and teasing grins – both past and future.
Synaptic overload leads to shutdown.
No work, but no tears, either.
Headache sets in, dull.
Merely a whisper of what’s to come.
Security hassles and pressure at 30,000 feet await;
the platform demands an about-face.
March 19, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Growing up is hard to do
I promise that not all of my post titles will be bad puns off of oldies songs. Just some.
I've been grappling a lot lately with issues of age; particularly this concept of "adult." I realize that this crisis is nothing new or unique to me and people smarter than me have made entire careers in psychology out of studying just this sort of thing, but I do find my particular blend of young and old to be especially puzzling.
I've always been a bit of an old soul. Not to the extent of my good friend, Rob, who we've been able to picture in a rocking chair with a pipe, a snifter of brandy, and a family-size bag of butterscotch disks (classic old-man candy) since we were 15, but in the way that I've generally always gotten on better with folks 1, 5, 10, 20+ years my senior. Even though I might not always know what they're talking about, I understand them, and they certainly understand me better than the bulk of my peers do. It's a phenomenon I'm currently experiencing, not for the first time and certainly not for the last.
But on the other hand... I don't feel like I've entirely earned my 23 years, either. I still have childish moments in thought and in action, and I abhor the idea of squashing the inherent joy of those moments in favor of erecting the facade of adulthood. And for some reason, I continue to see myself as somehow smaller (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.) than true adults. Am I really about to be made responsible for the education and general well-being of over 100 6th graders? And wait... I own a car and rent an apartment and make my own dinners? I'm older than the speaker in "Theme for English B" now? Friends are getting engaged and talking about finding "the one" in non-hypotheticals and looking for jobs with benefits... When did all of this happen? Last time I checked, I still get excited about free candy.
So you see, I'm caught in the middle (cue Jimmy Eat World circa junior high) and I'm trying desperately to reconcile the long-established trajectory of my hopes and dreams with the here and now. Arthur Miller would say I'm setting myself up for tragedy and that I'm experiencing "the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world." It remains to be seen whether my end will be tragic, comic, or more likely tragicomic, but I have certainly connected with this and other sections of "Tragedy and the Common Man" more than most of the American Literature II students I've cajoled into writing about it have.
Anyway... (I warned you, I like to ramble)
This was supposed to be a quick introduction to a poem previously written, because adult responsibilities are calling and I figured I could easily use the space to debut some pieces that had only seen limited release while I try to wrap up the semester. Since I started this post over two hours ago... it looks like that idea is shot. But, I'll still share the poem with just a bit more introduction:
I wrote this toward the beginning of my internship based on one of our creative writing experiments - write an epistle to a future self. I wrote to the me of 2020. While the words are still true, the driving sentiment behind them has already evolved and I'm not sure this poem would have come out of who I am now, a mere two months later. Boy, they sure grow up fast.
2020-10
Do forget the giant crickets,
but not the craphole rooms they infiltrated.
They represent your humility.
Do forget the burgeoning loan balances,
but not how you accrued them.
They demonstrate your interest.
Do forget the selfish bastards,
but not how they made you feel.
They pale in comparison.
Do forget the failing grades,
but not the kids who earned them.
They teach you more than you can teach them.
Do forget the Lean Cuisines,
but not the lounges where you ate them.
They inspire and frustrate you daily.
Remember this advice.
It has given you everything.
February 25, 2010
I've been grappling a lot lately with issues of age; particularly this concept of "adult." I realize that this crisis is nothing new or unique to me and people smarter than me have made entire careers in psychology out of studying just this sort of thing, but I do find my particular blend of young and old to be especially puzzling.
I've always been a bit of an old soul. Not to the extent of my good friend, Rob, who we've been able to picture in a rocking chair with a pipe, a snifter of brandy, and a family-size bag of butterscotch disks (classic old-man candy) since we were 15, but in the way that I've generally always gotten on better with folks 1, 5, 10, 20+ years my senior. Even though I might not always know what they're talking about, I understand them, and they certainly understand me better than the bulk of my peers do. It's a phenomenon I'm currently experiencing, not for the first time and certainly not for the last.
But on the other hand... I don't feel like I've entirely earned my 23 years, either. I still have childish moments in thought and in action, and I abhor the idea of squashing the inherent joy of those moments in favor of erecting the facade of adulthood. And for some reason, I continue to see myself as somehow smaller (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.) than true adults. Am I really about to be made responsible for the education and general well-being of over 100 6th graders? And wait... I own a car and rent an apartment and make my own dinners? I'm older than the speaker in "Theme for English B" now? Friends are getting engaged and talking about finding "the one" in non-hypotheticals and looking for jobs with benefits... When did all of this happen? Last time I checked, I still get excited about free candy.
So you see, I'm caught in the middle (cue Jimmy Eat World circa junior high) and I'm trying desperately to reconcile the long-established trajectory of my hopes and dreams with the here and now. Arthur Miller would say I'm setting myself up for tragedy and that I'm experiencing "the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world." It remains to be seen whether my end will be tragic, comic, or more likely tragicomic, but I have certainly connected with this and other sections of "Tragedy and the Common Man" more than most of the American Literature II students I've cajoled into writing about it have.
Anyway... (I warned you, I like to ramble)
This was supposed to be a quick introduction to a poem previously written, because adult responsibilities are calling and I figured I could easily use the space to debut some pieces that had only seen limited release while I try to wrap up the semester. Since I started this post over two hours ago... it looks like that idea is shot. But, I'll still share the poem with just a bit more introduction:
I wrote this toward the beginning of my internship based on one of our creative writing experiments - write an epistle to a future self. I wrote to the me of 2020. While the words are still true, the driving sentiment behind them has already evolved and I'm not sure this poem would have come out of who I am now, a mere two months later. Boy, they sure grow up fast.
2020-10
Do forget the giant crickets,
but not the craphole rooms they infiltrated.
They represent your humility.
Do forget the burgeoning loan balances,
but not how you accrued them.
They demonstrate your interest.
Do forget the selfish bastards,
but not how they made you feel.
They pale in comparison.
Do forget the failing grades,
but not the kids who earned them.
They teach you more than you can teach them.
Do forget the Lean Cuisines,
but not the lounges where you ate them.
They inspire and frustrate you daily.
Remember this advice.
It has given you everything.
February 25, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
My apologies to Judy Blume
I hesitate to venture for a second time into the world of blogspot for a multitude of reasons:
1.) Empirical evidence shows that when I attempt to write in an organized fashion (diaries, journals, blogs, what-have-you), it can become sporadic, forced, trite, or just disappear altogether.
2.) Do I really need to give myself another digital identity beyond Twitter, Facebook, Xanga, etc.? Not to mention the sheer timesuck of adding another site to regularly read/post to...
3.) Although the last three months have been a re-birth of sorts, it has been awhile since I have considered myself a true "writer." Nagging insecurities hijack my desire to be heard and convince me that what I bring to the table is narcissistic, shallow, and not worth sharing. Plus, I have a tendency to ramble, which is not always appreciated by reading audiences.
Fortunately (I think), I have decided that these reasons are all bunk. And in a typical ex-debater fashion, I will tell you why.
Off my 1: This blog will serve more specific purposes and have a much more selective audience than the other venues, which I hope will allow/cause me to be more productive. As the pirated and bastardized title suggests, this will at least partially be a place to document/discuss my first year of teaching (yep, signed a contract yesterday, pretty pumped about it). But because there are too many of those blogs, my musings as a novice educator will also be interspersed with more artistic wordplay - or at least that's the goal.
Off my 2: In a word, yes. My tweets are too flippant and fleeting, Grandma's eyes are on Facebook, and the schlock I post to Xanga is not only inane but isolated in its antiquity. Now that I've got a big-girl job, it's time to balance out the others with a big-girl virtual identity. No updates on what's for dinner or who cut me off on K-10 or who's macking on who on Glee. LOL speak will be kept to an absolute minimum (for realz), and no memes allowed. These things I promise to you and to myself.
Off my 3: I'd be a hypocrite if I let self-censorship stop me. Just last week (or maybe the week before... things are getting blurry), I advised my creative writing students (via William Stafford, via my personal Yoda, Bill) that, "a writer is not so much someone who has something to say as (s)he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things (s)he would not have thought of if (s)he had not started to say them." Translation: "Amanda, stop claiming failure before you've even tried or nothing will ever happen. Some of it might suck, and some of it might be absolutely terrible, but because it's yours to say, it has value." It may have taken a team of Williams to convince me of this, but here goes.
1.) Empirical evidence shows that when I attempt to write in an organized fashion (diaries, journals, blogs, what-have-you), it can become sporadic, forced, trite, or just disappear altogether.
2.) Do I really need to give myself another digital identity beyond Twitter, Facebook, Xanga, etc.? Not to mention the sheer timesuck of adding another site to regularly read/post to...
3.) Although the last three months have been a re-birth of sorts, it has been awhile since I have considered myself a true "writer." Nagging insecurities hijack my desire to be heard and convince me that what I bring to the table is narcissistic, shallow, and not worth sharing. Plus, I have a tendency to ramble, which is not always appreciated by reading audiences.
Fortunately (I think), I have decided that these reasons are all bunk. And in a typical ex-debater fashion, I will tell you why.
Off my 1: This blog will serve more specific purposes and have a much more selective audience than the other venues, which I hope will allow/cause me to be more productive. As the pirated and bastardized title suggests, this will at least partially be a place to document/discuss my first year of teaching (yep, signed a contract yesterday, pretty pumped about it). But because there are too many of those blogs, my musings as a novice educator will also be interspersed with more artistic wordplay - or at least that's the goal.
Off my 2: In a word, yes. My tweets are too flippant and fleeting, Grandma's eyes are on Facebook, and the schlock I post to Xanga is not only inane but isolated in its antiquity. Now that I've got a big-girl job, it's time to balance out the others with a big-girl virtual identity. No updates on what's for dinner or who cut me off on K-10 or who's macking on who on Glee. LOL speak will be kept to an absolute minimum (for realz), and no memes allowed. These things I promise to you and to myself.
Off my 3: I'd be a hypocrite if I let self-censorship stop me. Just last week (or maybe the week before... things are getting blurry), I advised my creative writing students (via William Stafford, via my personal Yoda, Bill) that, "a writer is not so much someone who has something to say as (s)he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things (s)he would not have thought of if (s)he had not started to say them." Translation: "Amanda, stop claiming failure before you've even tried or nothing will ever happen. Some of it might suck, and some of it might be absolutely terrible, but because it's yours to say, it has value." It may have taken a team of Williams to convince me of this, but here goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)