I ran across an intriguing story today, the "by the bootstraps" project of Adam Shepard. Starting with $25 and a change of clothes, Shepard set out to use the system to get on his feet. He lived in a shelter, received foodstamps, and did a lot of grunt labor, but he managed to . . . well, you can read what he did in a year's time.
Anybody can think through various reasons why Shepard had advantages in his effort, but the basic point that I take from his story is simple: If life deals you a bad hand, you have to make good plays in order to get out of the hole. Self pity and self indulgence don't help, in school, at work, or in life. End of sermon.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
From Thought to Essay
For those of you dealing with my "Who Am I?" assignment, this essay may be particularly useful.
What's going through the mind of the reporter who writes the article about what goes through the mind of the police officer who pulls over a motorist? Are you still with me? Kevin Ransom wrote an article regarding the mindset of cops performing traffic stops for AOL Auto. While Ransom's work is interesting in helping us to understand the mindset of the officer, I thought it might be interesting to consider how that article popped into Ransom's head.
Did he wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I'd better write an article or they won't pay me this week?" That may have happened. After all, Samuel Johnson tells us that "no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." But, having decided that he would write an article, how did Ransom come to this topic?
Unfortunately, I can't find an email link for Mr. Ransom, so we'll have to attempt to infer his motives from what he wrote. I'd like to suggest a couple of routes he might have taken in order to reach this article.
First, and most obvious, Ransom might be the recent recipient of that most unwelcome of slips of paper: the traffic ticket. While sitting in his car as the officer ran his plates, our intrepid reporter may have considered how he might make these particular lemons into lemonade. "I wonder what's going through that guy's head right now?" he may have asked himself. And then he knew how to proceed.
Or, perhaps Ransom found himself in a social setting with a police officer. "You know what I've always wanted to know?" he may have begun before drawing out of the cop a long explanation of the psychology of traffic stops.
Maybe, if we'd manage to talk with this reporter, we'd find that his mind took an entirely different route to this article. It really doesn't matter. My point here is simply that you, as a student writer, can use the events, oddities, and exceptions of your day as the jumping off point for interesting papers. Rather than knocking out the same old tired topics in the same old tired way, pay attention to your life, the news, and the vicissitudes of existence for the seeds of a good essay. In a subject-matter course, say history or psychology, look for places where the news and the course reading overlap. Look for places where your curiosity is piqued or you're irritated. Those are the departure points for meaningful writings. If you'll do this for a while, you'll soon find that you have far more good ideas than you could ever effectively develop.
What's going through the mind of the reporter who writes the article about what goes through the mind of the police officer who pulls over a motorist? Are you still with me? Kevin Ransom wrote an article regarding the mindset of cops performing traffic stops for AOL Auto. While Ransom's work is interesting in helping us to understand the mindset of the officer, I thought it might be interesting to consider how that article popped into Ransom's head.
Did he wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I'd better write an article or they won't pay me this week?" That may have happened. After all, Samuel Johnson tells us that "no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." But, having decided that he would write an article, how did Ransom come to this topic?
Unfortunately, I can't find an email link for Mr. Ransom, so we'll have to attempt to infer his motives from what he wrote. I'd like to suggest a couple of routes he might have taken in order to reach this article.
First, and most obvious, Ransom might be the recent recipient of that most unwelcome of slips of paper: the traffic ticket. While sitting in his car as the officer ran his plates, our intrepid reporter may have considered how he might make these particular lemons into lemonade. "I wonder what's going through that guy's head right now?" he may have asked himself. And then he knew how to proceed.
Or, perhaps Ransom found himself in a social setting with a police officer. "You know what I've always wanted to know?" he may have begun before drawing out of the cop a long explanation of the psychology of traffic stops.
Maybe, if we'd manage to talk with this reporter, we'd find that his mind took an entirely different route to this article. It really doesn't matter. My point here is simply that you, as a student writer, can use the events, oddities, and exceptions of your day as the jumping off point for interesting papers. Rather than knocking out the same old tired topics in the same old tired way, pay attention to your life, the news, and the vicissitudes of existence for the seeds of a good essay. In a subject-matter course, say history or psychology, look for places where the news and the course reading overlap. Look for places where your curiosity is piqued or you're irritated. Those are the departure points for meaningful writings. If you'll do this for a while, you'll soon find that you have far more good ideas than you could ever effectively develop.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Publish or Perish
An article in the New York Times recently explored some aspects of the academic publishing system that you ought to be aware of as a student. At most research universities--either the big state schools or prestigious private ones--a junior faculty member has to come in and perform. You might have thought that performance would be measured in how well the professor taught, but that's not the case at all. Instead, new professors are largely evaluated on their publications. How many books and journal articles do they guide into print? How many papers do they read at prestigious scholarly conferences? Sure, if the professor goes in and drools all over the place in class, that doesn't bode well for their gaining tenure, but if the drooler manages to publish enough, then that might work out.
This article describes how Harvard is tinkering with some of the economic aspects of the current system. Notice that they're not trying to dismantle or even seriously reform the whole publish-or-perish mindset, but at least they're admitting that there are problems.
You can't change the mindset at your school. If you're at a community college or a so-called teaching college, then you should have professors for whom teaching is the main thing. Otherwise, you'll find that research leads the parade and teaching, while it might be good, follows behind the band. You can't change that, but you should know about it. Know what motivates your professor. You could try to change them, but more importantly you should endeavor to understand them.
This article describes how Harvard is tinkering with some of the economic aspects of the current system. Notice that they're not trying to dismantle or even seriously reform the whole publish-or-perish mindset, but at least they're admitting that there are problems.
You can't change the mindset at your school. If you're at a community college or a so-called teaching college, then you should have professors for whom teaching is the main thing. Otherwise, you'll find that research leads the parade and teaching, while it might be good, follows behind the band. You can't change that, but you should know about it. Know what motivates your professor. You could try to change them, but more importantly you should endeavor to understand them.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
What's so great about $22.54?
Visit my friends at Forensic Genealogy--dumb name, but an intriguing site--and take their quiz. This week's quiz challenges you to figure out the claim to fame of a lady holding a check beside her mailbox.Weird eh? Try it out. You stand to win . . . I'm not sure you stand to win anything, but it's kind of fun to participate.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Union University
It’s tough for me to watch the news this week as I see the results of the nasty weather from Tuesday night. While Kansas City was experiencing virtually nothing to complain about, a row of tornados sliced across several states. People in Arkansas rode out these snow twisters in bathtubs, but my mind is drawn to Union University, a Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee, where a couple of dorms were pretty well obliterated during the night. My former college roommate used to be a librarian there, while a current writing teammate, Joanna, retired from the university and still lives in Jackson. Several editors and other writers I’ve worked with have kids and other family members in school at Union. Miraculously, no students at Union were killed. I guess there’s some sort of message here, but I don’t know what it is.
Mind Control and Education
Your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me!
Sure, students sometimes think they can work amazing mind control feats on professors, but it rarely works out very well. Here's a great example that happened to be caught on tape.
Sure, students sometimes think they can work amazing mind control feats on professors, but it rarely works out very well. Here's a great example that happened to be caught on tape.
World Wide Words
Where does the term "The Elephant in the room" come from? I ask this because I just asked it myself earlier. I heard students in my fiction class suggest that Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants" evoked that saying. That's a great theory, but, according to World Wide Words, a language web site, it can't be true. By their research, we learn that the phrase goes back not into the 1920s when Hemingway was writing this story, but only into the 1970s. Check out World Wide Words if you're into language oddities and word/phrase origins.
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