Writing Thoughts

In my writing workshop last night, we had an engaging conversation about the differences between the American education system and eastern education systems. With a Korean student and a Vietnamese student in the class, we were able to talk about the differences between writing pedagogy in the U.S. and eastern education systems. The Korean and Vietnamese students were of the opinion that writing in their homelands meant repeating things they read or that other people have already said. They said that they were never required to create their own theses or arguments. Their input really put the American way of writing into perspective. We like to be original.

Sometimes I think, though, that American writing style is too direct. I appreciate the freedom to argue whatever you want as long as you support it, but I often think that there is not enough room for showing the humanity of the writer. A lot of the time the writer portrays the persona of an expert, like they arrive at their conclusion without any struggle at all. To me, some of the most interesting arguments are ones that divulge information about all the steps (for better or worse) that the writer had to take to arrive at their conclusion. This also makes the writer seem more human and as a result, the material seems more important.

I understand why high school teachers often tell their students not to use "I" in their essays, but like how Joseph Williams calls countless grammar rules "folklore," this piece of advice turns into a rule that student writers think they cannot break. I've been in a number of classes in which students raise their hands and ask, "Do you want us to use 'I'?" when talking about a paper assignment. The teacher usually has a good answer, explaining that you can use it, but you should not use your personal opinions to make your argument. When I meet with students (some of them college seniors), they still don't understand when they should and shouldn't use "I" in academic writing. It's not easy to know when it's appropriate and when it's not, but more experience writing pieces that require both personal and academic voices might help students learn how to negotiate their voices.

Problems in public school systems bring me to tears

I heard yet another astounding story on This American Life. This time it's about how the NYC public school system holds hundreds of teachers in a reassignment center as a form of punishment for misconduct. It's actually pretty comical. Imagine hundreds of teachers hanging out in a room with nothing to do for years. Sad, too.

The Rubber Room
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPMtYjhnRqc&NR=1

NY Times story
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html

I saw this in San Francisco.

Whose Mom Is Here?

Most college-age women choose to give Halloween some sex appeal with costumes that are ordinarily seen on toddlers. I’m never sure if they actually purchase toddlers’ costumes and stretch the tiny garments around their busts, waists, and nothing else, or if they paint their brassieres black and yellow and tape black paper polka dots to their red panties. In an attempt to stay true to my efforts to live in opposition of the norms of college life at a Big Ten university, however, I avoided the whole dilemma. I never chose to be sexy for Halloween, nor did I choose to be scary. I chose to be ugly.

I got the inspiration for my first costume from the character Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) on the short-lived TV series Strangers With Candy. Jerri Blank is a forty-four year old drug and alcohol addicted ex-convict who returns to high school to find that things are not any easier than the first time around. Everyone makes fun of her and the boys are just as hard to woo. In a fat-suit designed to mimic the pear-shaped body of a chubby middle-aged woman, Sedaris dresses in earth-tone turtlenecks and high-waist pants. She wears her short, streaked brown hair swooped to one side and contorts her face to express disappointment, shame, and sexual intrigue and arousal. Having practiced mimicking Sedaris’ facial expression, I saw dressing up as Jerri Blank for Halloween as an opportunity to showcase my amateur acting abilities. Also, having idolized Sedaris for her odd yet hilarious gigs in entertainment, I saw this costume as a testimony to her work.

The response to my costume, however, was less reverential and more confusing. Shortly before Halloween, while visiting my parents’ house I asked my mom if I could borrow a few things from her for a costume. “Oh sure!” she said, too excited to even ask what kind of a costume I needed them for. Overjoyed as always by the act of giving things away, she pulled out the perfect pair of jeans and a turtleneck from her closet, handing them to me with a smile. I ordered a wig called the “You’re Fired!” wig off the Internet, which I assume was intended for the Donald Trump or "big mean boss" costume. On the night of Halloween I stuffed the back of my over-sized jeans with two small, square pillows and the front of the jeans with a bunch of rolled up socks. I put on the turtleneck, the wig, some blue eyeshadow, and some tennis shoes.

With low expectations I hauled my new self off to my friends’ party. On my walk, I received a number of hollers from college guys in passing cars. I didn’t quite know how to react yet. I hadn’t gotten in character. When I walked into the house everyone started giggling, but when I turned around to sit down in a chair, they started laughing hysterically. It was a hit.

When my boyfriend and his friend arrived, though, I experienced a new perspective on my costume. At first they laughed like everyone else, but when my boyfriend and his friend saw my backside, their expressions turned to horror.
“It looks really…realistic,” his friend said, staring.
“Yeah, yeah it does,” said my boyfriend, laughing uncomfortably.
Throughout the night I caught my boyfriend’s friend staring at me with the same look of horror on his face. Finally I approached him.
“Do I scare you?” I said, joking.
“Yeah,” he said, snapping out of it. “Yeah, you do.”
I laughed.
“Why? Don’t you know Jerri Blank?” I said, making the face.
“Yeah, it’s just—“
“What?” I said.
“Don’t ever get fat, Annika. Or old. Please.”
I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if it was an insult or not, so I started laughing. I hadn’t realized my costume looked so realistic.

The next year I didn’t have as grand of a plan, but I knew I wanted to continue to counteract the sexy Halloween costume trend. The night of Halloween, I pulled out a black fur hat that I found in my grandmother’s apartment in Sweden a few years before. It was the strangest looking hat. My mom always seemed nostalgic about the hat, repeating over and over again that she wore it to school when she was maybe ten, smiling every time, but I never understood it. There was no doubt that the hat would be warm—it covered every inch of the head including the ears, jawbone, and underneath the chin with thick, black animal fur—but I couldn’t take the way it looked seriously. It looked like a gorilla head.

So that’s what I dressed up as. I put on a pair of black pants and long-sleeve black shirt to which I taped part of a paper bag that I had cut out so that it looked like a monkey’s chest. I drew nipples on the chest and put on the big, black fur hat. Nobody knew what I was. Actually not many people even asked. I seemed to disappear in the crowd. I obviously wasn’t sexy, but I wasn’t ugly either. I looked like a black blob.

So the next year I decided to put more effort into making a statement about Halloween costumes. For the past two years, I had been thinking about the year I dressed as Jerri Blank as one of the best times of my life, so I decided I would do something similar. Since the big ass was the best part of the costume, I looked for a costume that would allow me to stuff my pants again. Browsing at a second hand store, I noticed that most of the clothing looked like something a grandma would wear, so I decided to go for it. I dressed as a grandma. It made things easy since I could pick up almost anything from the racks and it would work. I selected a pair of bright peach Capri pants and a white t-shirt with small red palm trees on it. To top it off, I picked up a bright purple visor with a palm tree pattern on the brim.

At home I got to work immediately, pulling out the old “You’re Fired!” wig, rolling a bunch of socks into balls, and releasing the square pillows from their handmade pillow cases. I borrowed a pair of white tube socks from my roommate and put on my running shoes. Within five minutes, I was ready. I knew what to do, and it looked great. My ass looked huge and just as realistic as two years ago, and the wig fit nicely under the palm tree visor. “Florida Grandma,” I named myself.

At the party I got a similar reaction to when I first arrived as Jerri Blank. Everyone started laughing.
“That is the best costume I’ve ever seen,” someone said. This time my boyfriend was less horrified. I think he knew what to expect when I told him I was going to dress as a grandma, so he acted more proud than anything else that his girlfriend had such a hilarious costume. With this attitude I felt like I was going to be able to live my role as a grandma to the fullest that night.

As more guests started to arrive, though, my costume slowly started to lose its thrill. Good friends of mine reacted positively, laughing and complimenting me. As the party progressed normally as most parties do, however, (into groups of people standing around drinking and talking), I kept finding that I had no one to talk to. It wasn’t that I didn’t know anyone at the party. I knew who plenty of the people at the party were—I wasn’t necessarily friends with them—but when I tried to get their attention, they either failed to notice me or diverted their attention. I felt like everyone was acting like they didn’t know who I was. A few times I tried to join the conversation groups in which my boyfriend was participating, but no one acknowledged my presence. When I tried to get a word in, the conversation kept going as though I never said anything. So I gave up.

Standing against the wall with no one to talk to, I heard an unfamiliar male voice say, “Whose mom is here?”
I saw a few masked faces turn in my direction, and then I heard a cohort of chuckles. I retreated to the kitchen and indulged myself in the snacks.
What is going on? I started to wonder. People didn’t normally treat me like this. And why wasn’t my boyfriend helping me out? He wasn’t even including me in the conversation. Maybe it’s because I’m ugly tonight, I thought. My anger started stewing.

I dashed down to the basement. I stopped and observed the groups of costumed people. I couldn’t catch anyone’s glance. Not even my boyfriend’s roommates’ or his sister’s. Not even his. I stormed up to my boyfriend and pulled him out of his circle. I pulled his head down and yelled into his ear over the music.
“You’re not including me in conversation because I'm ugly, right?” I said.
He pulled his head back and stared at me.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
I was too upset to make a better argument.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Forget it.”
I walked back upstairs to the snack table.

The night started to improve. I finally got the attention of some of my friends and had good conversations. It felt so normal and natural that I forgot I was dressed like a fat grandma for most of the rest of the night.

Near the end of the party, I was standing in the kitchen by myself finishing off the last of the snacks. I was really enjoying eating whatever was there—some veggies and dip probably—when I looked to my right and saw myself in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall. I almost jumped. I was standing with my mouth agape and a dip-frosted carrot about to enter a bulb shaped body. The peach, and the purple, and the red colors glared back at me, hurting my eyes. My feet were like little white pins compared to my middle. Dark strings of messy hair protruded from underneath the bright purple visor. I didn’t even recognize myself. I wanted my blond hair back.

I ripped my wig off and ran outside, gripping the tangled brown and purple mess in my hand, carrying it high in the air like a torch.
“I don’t want to be ugly anymore!” I yelled as I ran to where my boyfriend was saying goodbye to a few friends.
He turned, and then his friends did the same.
“I don’t want to be ugly anymore,” I said once more as I stopped in front of them.
They smiled and turned back around, saying their final goodbyes. I caught my breath and lowered my palm tree patterned torch. That’s it? I thought. They completely ignored my epiphany. It seemed like they already knew what I had just realized. I yanked the pillows out of my pants and threw them on the ground.

My boyfriend walked away from his friends and bent to pick up the pillows.
“Why are you throwing these on the ground?” he said.
“Look!” I said, throwing my arms up in the air to show my figure. “I’m not ugly anymore!”

Retirement

My father asked me a few days ago over the phone, "So what's retirement like?" "Boring," I said, laughing. "But it can be fun." I'm not retired. I haven't even started working yet. I'm a 21-year old college student, and I've been studying in Northern Sweden for the past five months. Everyone knows that studying abroad is not usually the most academically rigorous semester you'll ever have. After all, the purpose of the whole thing is to experience a different way of living, a new culture. Some students choose to go to the bathroom in a outhouse in a third world country for six months, others choose to live like royalty in English-speaking countries. Many study abroad programs, though, lie somewhere in between the outhouses and the royalty, but none sell themselves under the title, "Retirement." The following are reasons why my study abroad experience in Sweden was like being retired.

I had nothing to wake up for in the morning but still set my alarm clock for 8 am everyday. Even though I knew I had nowhere to be, I wasn't going to let myself fall into the pattern of sleeping late and staying up late. If I reached that point, I would enter the category of lazy teenager, one which I have long hoped to abandon. So my alarm clock would go off at 8 am every day, and I would push the sleep button 6 times until it stopped going off half an hour later. At this point, I would fall fully back to sleep and not wake up until 9:30 or 10.

I only had to be somewhere once a week and that was a lot to ask. My classes only met once a week or once every other week for an hour and a half. For the first few weeks, I looked forward to going to my one class in the middle of the week. I would do all the reading, make sure I had something to offer to the seminar, and get there early, ready to make an impression on the teacher because we were only given a few chances to do so. After the first month or two, though, I started to get really angry when the one day a week rolled around that I had to go to class. My corridor mate and I would whine about it all morning and on the way to campus. Most likely having not completed the assigned readings, we would sit through the seiminar with disgusted looks on our faces, waiting for the hour and a half to pass so we could carry on with our lives.

The grocery store was often where I would run into the most people I knew. Every time i walked into the store, I would look to the check-out lines to see who was there that I knew, and there was almost always at least one. I would also have long, personal conversations with friends in front of the shampoo section or the potatoes, and in line to pay for my single onion or head of broccoli. When I met up with friends outside of the grocery store, we would often tell each other who we saw in the grocery store that day. Apparently I wasn't the only retired college student.

I watched a lot of TV. In the States, I watch so little TV that I'm always hearing, "Oh my god you haven't seen that?!" about some commercial or new series. In Sweden, though, my friends and I watched so much TV that we could recite the songs of at least five different Swedish commercials, and we each had our favorite. I also had the chance to catch up on a lot of American TV, most of which was terribly outdated. Married With Children. Friends. Oprah. Made, Dirty Jobs. Next. Unfortunately, I will still be behind the times when I get home.

I was very unproductive with my free time. When you live a busy life, it seems like you could do so many things if you had more time. Big readers like to wear that t-shirt that says, "Too many books, too little time," but if they had only lived in Sweden once in their life, they'd know that more time does not equal more books. I am ashamed to admit that I did not read a single book during my study abroad time, and this is only the second piece of writing I have even attempted.

You're probably wondering, then, what I have done. Somehow, i was only truly bored for the first week or two. After that, I got used to it. It becomes normal to wake up slowly, spend forty minutes eating breakfast and watching TV, to spend the whole afternoon walking around outside with friends, eat some more and then go to bed. I have to say, though, that I would have been bored if I hadn't found a group of really close friends. Even though our boring lives didn't always provide us with new things to talk about with each other, just being around people from different countries was entertaining enough. If we ran out of other interesting cross-cultural comparisons to make, we would resort to talking about languages. And if that wasn't entertaining enough, we started drinking.

To better answer my dad's question about what retirement is like, then, I have to say, like everything else, you get used to it. And is that not the point of studying abroad? To be forced to adjust to a new way of living? If it is, then I think I have successfully completed my task, but unfortunately, the other half of the deal is that you have to return to the old way of living, where college students are never mistaken for retirees.

New method teaches foreign language students to learn from hard of hearing senior citizens

AUG 11 – Local language-learning experts, urging community schools to adopt the latest in teaching methods, held a press conference yesterday to cultivate support for their new movement. Involving senior citizens in the foreign language classroom, language-learning expert Marion Schorr told the press, rapidly heightens the students’ auditory and verbal skills.

“In the past language teachers have used audio tapes and videos, but now we have found that there is no better alternative for this type of learning than bringing the elderly into the classroom. Partaking in exchanges with people with impaired hearing allows students to grasp pronunciation and understand more at a quicker pace.”

The board of experts went on to explain the details of the method. Having completed three case studies, University of Plainside Professor Janet Diere explained that the presence of the elderly in the classroom created an environment that required elevated levels of volume.

“The students were forced to shout and repeat the answers to their daily activities and the foreign language-speaking senior citizens were forced to scream at each other. This way the students could more clearly hear syllables and inflections as well as learn through repitition.”

In a Russian class at the University of Plainside, student Harry Taryle explained that he enjoys this new method, noting that it adds a unique element to the language-learning experience.

“Everyday the old people come in super early with their walkers or their canes and take a seat in a row of desks facing the rest of the class. The second they arrive they have something to say to one another so the shouting and the, ‘What?!’s begin immediately. Almost everything that is said has to be repeated at least twice so we just sit back, relax and listen to the old people until the lesson starts.”

When asked about his experience as a participant in the new language-learning method, Boris Stein replied, ‘что?!’ (English translation: ‘What?!’)

The conference did not conclude without opposition though. The nature of the method spurred some unrest among AARP rights leaders. Near the end of the conference a few shouts were heard from AARP representatives Conrad Hermann and Gayle O’Connor.

“This is unjust and discriminatory! Innocent senior citizens are being taken advantage of and used for their disabilities! We will not stand for it!”

A reply about the participation being voluntary was heard from a member of the board, but the AARP representatives could not hear the response, leading to the conference’s closure.

Häagen Das Wouldn't Be a Bad Name

I remembered today that I wanted my parents to name my brother Nicholas. I was only three when he was born and nothing but unhappy about the whole idea of the guy coming into my world, but I was convinced that Nicholas was the perfect name for him. I remember climbing on top of the upstairs bathroom toilet to whine to my father about it in the same way I whined about everything from wanting something from the ice cream truck to having a bad dream. I have no idea why I liked the name so much, but I can only guess that it was either because Nicholas was the only boy's name I knew at the time or because I had already experienced the effects of having an odd name.

My father didn't want to name me Annika. Growing up as a Rudolph, he knew what it was like to be the kid with the funny name. I didn't understand why until I heard the classic Christmas carol "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for the first time. I couldn't help but laugh at my father. What could be funnier than imagining your own father as a reindeer with a very shiny nose? So in an attempt to avoid all possibly connections to unflattering popular culture references, my father wanted to stay away from all uncommon names. For whatever reason, though, some of my mother's Swedish friends had the power to convince my parents that Annika was going to be my name. (I assume it had something to do with my mother's attachment to Sweden and my father's obsession with being married to a Swedish woman).

So I was born Annika and my brother was born Alex, contrary to some people's opinion. By the first grade I hated my name. Kids, teachers and parents alike could not pronounce it correctly and being the shy kid that I was, it was utterly difficult to open my mouth and whisper the correct pronunciation. I've heard my name mispronounced at least a dozen different ways--like it's a disease of the anus, like it's the name of a Japanese-made VCR, the sister company of the outlet mall store Mikasa, and a strange diminutive of the name Nick (aNICKa).

But that's only when my name is read. After introducing myself, I've heard a variety of mispronunciation that are even harder to correct, the most difficult being when people think my name is "Hanukkah" and proceed to ask me if I'm Jewish. "No," I reply in a confused tone and then realize that they probably think my name is the name of one of the biggest Jewish holidays of the year. Eventually I or someone else corrects them before they continue calling me a Jewish holiday, but who knows if some people I've met have gone on thinking my name is Hanukkah.

Rather than just mispronouncing my name, sometimes others ask me questions about the origin of my name. The most intriguing question was posed to me by a boy probably around the age of 14 after first meeting me and my two best friends. "Did your parents mean to name you Monica but forgot the 'm'?" he asked me as sincerely as possible. I didn't know what to say. There were two things wrong with this question: first, he was assuming that my name was spelled completely phonetically and like a vacuum cleaner brand and second, he was assuming that my parents are idiots that can't spell. But there was no possible way I could portray all of this to this gangly, preteen creature in a polite, concise way, so I simply replied, "No," and everybody laughed.

But as most would assume, I've grown into my name and have the confidence to correct people when they mispronounce it. Over the past few months at least a handful of people have informed me that they know a little girl named Annika, so it seems the name is on the rise and on its way to leaving the category of weird names. But today when I told my brother that I wanted him to be named Nicholas, we contemplated the idea of it, and thought nothing of it. Not much would be different--he would probably feel like the same person and others would see him as the same person, although I would have been a happier child. When he announced that he wishes he were named Hans, though, I took it back. I imagined him going around wearing nothing but tight, black turtle necks and reminding people of Hansel & Gretel or even the foreign ice cream brand Häagen Das. It wouldn't be a bad name for him though--as long as he's okay with being forever associated with candy-eating Germans and things like that.