finding a solution.

Finding a Solution
What is the point of critical writing anyway? It is all just a bunch of different people’s opinions about a subject that will never be resolved! I am sorry to say that these are the things that keep running through my mind as I sit here and read through all these papers we have been reading in class. Half of them I have had a rather rough time understanding what these authors are even talking about the majority of the time. I fail time and time again to grasp what the point is in those papers.
I love, love to read. It is one of my passions. When we read literature it opens up our imagination and allows you to escape through the pages. Reading critical papers, not so much, if you could not tell already. Maybe, and I stress maybe, if when I was in high school we had wrote or even just read more critical papers I would enjoy them more. So I would suggest that when in high school students should be exposed to more critical writing and literary criticism papers. If students were exposed to these subjects earlier on then when and if they go to college they would be better prepared and also be more well rounded individual human beings in the quality of their lives.
When I was in high school every one of my fellow students would have a little temper tantrum whenever our English teacher would tell us to pull out our literature books. I on the other hand loved hearing that phrase. This love of literature started when my father first brought me home a hooked on phonics kit before I started kindergarten. It did not take long after that day before I was hooked, no pun intended. Once I learned to read I was reading anything I could get my hands on. It was this love for literature that I wish could have been shared by my classmates in high school. I could never understand why they would rather being doing the tedious tasks of picking out verbs and adverbs over listening to someone read in class or reading themselves and letting their imagination get put to work. Whenever a movie would come out that was originally a book and I had read it I would tell my friends that if they liked the movie they would love the book. They never listened and I could never understand why they did not want to use their imagination for once. I don’t know, maybe some people are born without the ability to use that part of the brain. A miraculous thing did happen a couple of months ago though when the movie Twilight came out. My cousin went and seen it, so I told that she should read the book then and she did and loved the whole series and she does not like to read! Amazing, I wonder how many other people would discover the same thing if they took the time to read and expand their minds once in a while. I might be being a hypocrite though because when it comes to critical writing, I am not sure you could learn to like critical papers if you never liked them to begin with.
Gerald Graff states in his paper What We Say When We Don’t Talk about Creative Writing: “I’m not questioning the need for a specialized division of functions in departments—such specialization is essential in any complex organization. I’m questioning the failure to connect the specialized functions, something that would require that we not only talk to each other about the connections but actually work together in our teaching, as apparently we can’t imagine. Leaving it up to the students to figure things out on their own is apparently a lot easier than working together or having sustained conversations with our colleagues about what our goals are and how well we are achieving them”(272). I fail miserably in seeing the up said to what Graff is trying to argue for here and I hate to say it, but I don’t think I will lose any sleep over it. Maybe this is all due to my newness and lack of experience in the English department that I am unaware of this conflict between creative writing and criticism. From my understanding of Graff’s paper my opinion is that it would not matter even if you could accomplish getting English department teachers to work together in their teaching not only because teachers have different ways of teaching, they also may not cover the material required in this imaginary situation for the next class and then where are students left? Either in a worse spot or in the same. So, why mess with the system? I just do not see it as a benefit to anyone. It would just cause disruption, confusion, and headaches not only for students but for teachers as well.
Graff goes on to say later in his paper after giving a quick over view of literary criticism: “As this quick sketch suggests, the creative writing and conventional critical tracks of the English major reflect an opposition between creativity and criticism that lies deep in the roots of modern culture. Yet, except for the occasional honors or capstone course, perhaps, literature departments do little to activate and take educational advantage of this rich history. Because it fails to become part of the object of study, the tension between creative writing and criticism (or theory) is expresses symptomatically, in the turf wars between academic factions, on the one hand, and, on the other, in some students’ election of creative writing in order to avoid or limit their encounters with scholarship and criticism, which they’ve experienced as dry, arid, and lifeless” (274). How is knowing the history between the opposition between creative writing and critical going to make students find critical writing more enjoyable and less “dry, arid, and lifeless”. Graff does not make a very strong case for it advantages. Graff goes on to say: “In short, as long as we avoid addressing this long-standing conflict between creativity and criticism, we seem doomed to repeat it in less heroic forms. The longing for the wholeness of the Greek tragedians, which writers such as Schiller, Hegel, Goethe, and Mann ached to replicate but saw that they could only view from beyond the historical abyss, is replayed by the high school student who finds writing stories an poems “cooler” than analyzing or making arguments about them” (274-276). No wonder! Why doesn’t Graff present a solution to making critical writing more interesting? If you could make them more interesting and less like BLAH BLAH BLAH, then maybe students would think they would be “cool” to analyze and make arguments about them. Until then, I am afraid it is always going to be the same issue of students always enjoying and preferring reading and writing poetry and fiction over critical papers.
I remember reading Shakespeare for the first time, it was probably my sophomore year in high school, and thinking how wonderfully beautiful the wording was in his stories. To most of my classmates however it was just a bunch of gibberish and they had no idea what was going on in the story. So if most high school students do not enjoy literature, and can not understand Shakespeare, then how could they be expected to understand critical writing unless it was presented in a more understandable and enjoyable way earlier on in their academic life? Just like I learned from trying to get my friends to read the books that were made into movies, it just is not going to happen every time that they are going to say ok I will. It is just the same when it comes to critical writing. You are not going to force students to want to read critical writings unless teachers and writers of critical essays can find a way to make them more interesting and pleasurable. How would you make them more interesting is beyond me, but you could only improve them in my opinion. However, it is clear that a solution should and needs to be found since it is such a big and controversial subject in the English field. I am not and will and never would claim to be an expert in any form in the critical writing field of literature, I will just stick to the creative side, and the side I enjoy and am most comfortable in.

bartholomae vs. elbow

Elbow believes that credulity should be the governing ides in the undergraduate writing course and he wants his students to "trust" language. While Bartholomae is on the side of skepticism and wants his students to mistrust language or criticise it. when asked the questions: Are freshmen ready to think first and primarily about the problems of writing when they write? Is criticism an appropriate point of entry into the college curriculum? is it the job of college English to teach students to learn to resist and be suspicious of writing and the text? Bartholomae argues that Elbow would say no while he says yes to all the questions.
Bartholomae argues against a course that would not begin by being dismissive but would start by encouraging students to work opening essays to perfection. Elbow and Bartholomae differ on just how much time students should devote to reading in a writing course. Bartholomae believes that a series of required texts are central to his teaching method while Elbow doesn't focus on that so much.

Scissortail festival

I attended all the featured writers and I enjoyed them all way more than I thought I would enjoy the festival. I particularly enjoyed Elmer Kelton out of all of them though. Here is a man who is 80 something going on 90 and he is still getting around and enjoying speaking about his life and his works hes done in his lifetime. He made me realise that your never to old to do the things you love to do and you should never give up on them either and that is one way he inspired me. I have never read anything of his but now that I've heard him speak at the festival I plan to read his book on his life. He makes writing sound so effortless with that easy rhythm he has and that is something else he inspired me to be able to do one day.

Frame Lock

Bernstein says "Professionalism and career advancement are the bogeymen of frame lock." I am not convinced I believe that. Maybe it is because i haven't done a dissertation but my experience so far is that the teachers i have had are very open to your perceptions. I haven't had one teacher so far tell me my interpertation of something is completely wrong and that if i don't change it i'll fail. but like i said maybe i've just been lucky so far.

on reading Montaigne

Well i can only see that he was called the father of the essay because of the things he wrote after 'Of Books'. I found 'Of Books" to be very boring, therfore difficult to get through. In "Of Books" i am not sure i have ever read anything else where "I" was used so much, which just made me think he is full of himself. I also found it difficult to understand his point, maybe it was do to me being distracted by all the "I's". I did however like this perticular sentence, "Knowledge and truth can lodge in us without judgment, and judgment also without them."I found that concept very intriguing for some reason. Just as he said if a book wearies him he picks up another, i find myself wanting to do the same when it comes to this essay. When i am older i shall try to read it again and by then maybe i'll be able to.
"Of a Monstrous Child" altough short i found his discription of the child to be very good since i could imagine it in my mind and the sorrow it invoked in me for that child. I loved how the story of the deformed child lead into the point he was trying to get across which i think he very elequently stated in the last two paragraphs. I perticularly love the use and flow of the words in the last two paragraphs.
"On Some Verses of Virgil" the first four to five paragraphs i found very intertaining and made me fell sorry for him when he is talking about how he is old now. The first two paragraphs would be my favorites though. After that i lost interest and was not able to get very far. I will try to finish it someother time perhaps.

Dreaming of Fear

I will have trouble falling asleep tonight. I know this, and, yet, I can not stop myself from thinking these things. It is terrifying to recall that sense of dread, of anxiety; of raw fear. To know that when I fall asleep tonight might be the night I have to feel those things all over again, and it makes me sick to my stomach. The only comfort I have is to know that at least one other person has experienced these things and she agrees it is fear. True. Raw. Fear. Strange that that should be a comfort.
It all began twelve years ago. My family and I had just moved into our new house in the country on our cattle ranch. The house was the finished product of two long years of hard work and planning of my parents dream house, but to me and my brother it was the beginning of new adventures and the end of moving. At the end of the five miles of dirt road lays our beautiful home and our property and nothing else, for that is where the road ends. It is a two story light brick house with dark green shingles, six huge white columns on the front porch, and three windows looking out the front of the house on the second story. The window on the right was to be my room, the middle one was the bathroom and the left my brothers. When we moved in the upstairs still needed to have its walls painted and the carpet put down, so until that had been done my brother and I slept in our red bunk bed in the playroom above the garage.
I still remember the day my room was finished. We had just gotten off the bus from school and my mother was waiting with the front door open for us as she always was with her always brilliant smile. When I got inside she and my dad told me they had a surprise for me and took me upstairs. When I opened my bedroom door I found my four poster bed fully assembled and made with my brand new comforter set my mother had bought just for my new room, my room. For the first time in my life I had my own room. No longer would I be sleeping in the same room with my brother and two cousins, I finally had a place all to myself. It was only a short while after that day, maybe three or four months, before I had the dream the first time that would make me hate my room at night.
I have had this dream that makes goosebumps creep up my arms and legs many times since moving in. Maybe sleeping in a room all by my self for the first time in my life is what brought the dream on. Up until the day we moved in I had always been accustomed to someone else being in my room. Whether it was just my brother or my brother and two cousins I had never been alone at night. You see my father is a twin and he and his twin married sisters, so I have grown up very close to my cousins. Before we moved into our new houses, for my dads twin also built a house just down the road form ours, we all lived in a three bedroom two bath house until the houses where done. Forcing my brother, cousins, and I all to slept in a room together on bunk beds but we didn’t mind. To this day I am still not sure what the dream was supposed to mean. If there was supposed to be some hidden meaning to it I may never know.
Even though I have never had this dream outside our house I am reluctant to think about it much less type it down now in my apartment for the fear that I may dream it tonight. Call me a stupid girl or whatever else you like but unless you have ever had a dream like the one I am about to attempt to describe you can never appreciate how terrifying this dream is. I am not sure I will be able to do it justice for the fear it evokes in me so you probably will call me a stupid girl if I fail.
It always starts out the same way. I am walking up the stairs to my room and as I reach the landing of the second floor I turn to the left and face the short six foot walk to my room. The first thing I notice is that there is another door that is not there in real life. It is to the left of my bedroom door about eight feet roughly. Now the first time I had this dream this did not seem odd or send the tide of dread over me the way it would the next time and the times after that when I would dream this. As I reach my bedroom door it is dark inside my room. I reach to my right to switch the flip on the wall but when I do nothing happens. It is then that I put two and two together and realize that I have yet again forgot to pull the cord on my ceiling fan, because at night I used to turn the light of from the safety of my bed by pulling on the cord and I sometimes forgot to pull it again when I woke up. So in my dream I walk in and I notice that the storage room door is open but I still keep going to pull the cord and when I do the light still does not come on. It is at this point in my dream when I realize I am not alone, but by the time I realize it is to late, it has me. The door is slammed and I am trapped. I feel it watching me. I can only describe it as pure evil I don’t know how else to explain it. I run back to the door and twist and turn on the knob but nothing happens. I start beating on it franticly and scream for my mother and father to come save me before it gets me. But to late, I can feel it rite behind me and I know my parents will never make it, it is to late, it has got what it came for, it has me. That was when I woke up crying alone in my room in the dark. I remember being terrified that it was still in the room but was to afraid to move for fear it might notice I was there. Eventually I got up enough courage to bolt out of bed and across the landing to my brothers’ room where I curled up in a little ball at the head of his bed.
After having the dream so many times I have realized the significance of that second door. That second door is where the evil thing comes from but it does not come out that door and into my room, it comes through the little door that is in my storage room that goes to the attic. I have a storage room attached to my room and to this day if it is left open I have a little panic attack and the feeling of dread washes over me.
I always know when I am about to have that dream though by the time I see that second door and no matter how hard I try to wake up I have never been able to. That wave of dread immediately washes over me when I see that second door because I know that pure evil is waiting for me. I have even tried to convince my self it isn’t going to be that dream, but sure enough when I go to flick the switch nothing happens and I know I was wrong. When I got a little older the dream changed up a bit almost like it knew I had gotten used to the signs of it being that dream and changed so it could terrify me in a whole new way. The dream changed but was still the same in the sense that pure evil was still waiting for me in my room and it only wanted me and no one else. When I walk up the stairs in this dream the door is gone but still by the time I am standing on the landing and facing the door I know it is in there. I run back down the stairs to tell my parents something is in my room but of course they don’t believe me. That is about the point I would wake up when it changed to that form of the dream. Other times I had made it all the way to my bedroom door and flicked the switch before I realized it was that dream. It changed again when I was about sixteen. The dream would start out to where I was already in bed and would wake to find that storage room door open. It is hard to describe the feeling that comes over me, it is just fear.
For a couple weeks after having that dream I would be terrified to go to my room at bed time. I would wait for my mother to walk in there first and turn on the light before getting close. After a couple of weeks I would forget about the dream and would be able to go into my room before my mother did, but not long after I would have it again. I remember the first time I thought the dream had finally came true. I got to my door and flicked the switch and nothing happened. This had happened before because like I said I sometime forgot to pull the cord. So after calming back down and convincing myself “you just forgot to pull the cord” I stepped into my room and pulled the cord. Nothing happened. The sanctuary that was the light did not occur. I bolted like a cat thrown in water because I knew that that dream had finally come true and that my door was about slam shut. It never did and after running to my mother and telling her all about it she went upstairs to check it out. It turned out that the bulbs had just burned out.
It has been about three years since the last time I dreamed it. The sight of the storage room door being open or if my light doesn’t come on when I pull the cord is enough to make me have a panic attack. Just recently I discovered that my aunt, my mothers sister, started having almost the identical dream, just change the layout of the house, shortly after moving in. She is not sure what the dream is supposed to mean either. And just like me the dreamed stopped about three years ago. I find that very odd, but unfortunately will never know what or why it started and stopped around the same time as m aunt. I wish I knew because that dream has impacted my life more than a dream ever should.

5 first paragraphs to essays of maybe future essays

1) They hang from the post of my bed as constant reminders. Reminders of past moments in my life. Unfortunately they do not all represent what you might consider happy moments, but important moments to me none the less. I collect objects and
I don't mean objects as in shapes like triangles or squares, but as in trinkets. I have many of these objects in my room and they span from stuffed animals to books. Those objects all bring back happy memories and remind me of good times. The most significant of these objects however are those upside down flowers.

2) It was a good day until that most unwelcome hand touched my face. To look at that hand you would think it a rather normal hand. But closer inspection would reveal, to the immense dissatisfaction of two of my senses, its slick coating of a rather horrible smelly film. Unfortunately its wielder decided to contact my face and not my arm. How I wish it could have been my arm! If it had been I would not be scared the way I am today.

3) I will have trouble falling to sleep tonight. I know this and yet I can not stop myself from thinking these things. It is terrifying to recall that sense of dread, of anxiety, of raw fear. To know that when I fall asleep tonight might be the night I have to feel those things all over again and it makes me sick to my stomach. The only comfort I have is to know that at least one other person has experienced these things and she agrees that it is fear in one of its truest and rawest forms. Strange that that should be a comfort.

4) Why do we put on an act for some people, some situations? One might say it is our body's natural reaction to uncomfortable or new situations. Others would say we do it on purpose to try to blend in and be excepted. I have another motive to put on an act though. I do it out of love. To hide that breaking going on inside me I put on an act for my papa. I smile cause I love him and could never bear to cause him any more unnecessary pain from him having to see how I feel inside.

5) If you could ask one about their existence its response might be: "I've had more butts, pieces of gum, and coats of paint on me than you could imagine." Honestly, if you think about it how fascinating would it be to hear the life story of a park bench. Just think of all the the things its seen. Granted its been stuck in one spot its whole existence but regardless its had life brought to it. It never had to seek life out, life came to it.