I’ve been to St. Louis more times than I can count so I wasn’t too concerned about navigating my way around the city.
But the Popular Culture Association conference? That was new.
This is one of the oddities of academic culture, one for which I am not sure I am entirely cut out. These conferences, these peer-reviewed papers. These exercises in, I want to say futility but I know that isn’t fair. Because I have friends who have been in this institution for some time, who do quite well.
My own problems with this system are neither blanket condemnations of this process nor particularly new.
Builders and creative types have always struggled within this environment.
What’s particularly difficult to swallow is the strangle-hold that academics – and by that I mean people who have come through traditional PhD programs – have on this process. There is, as far as I can see at the moment (which is understandably not very far), little acceptance for actual practitioners.
Which means I wander. Quite a bit.
***
As I wandered aimlessly around the convention center area, unsure where I was supposed to go, I had a South by Southwest moment of clarity.
A tiny one, anyway.
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I’m four years into my new career.
Or my old career if you consider that my undergraduate degree was in teaching and one of my professional jobs out of college was teaching. Middle school at that.
But I diverged for several years, pursuing my writing career and all of that. Until 2006. When I began teaching college full time.
It’s hard to fathom that much time slipping by without noticing, but as we go sliding into the end of yet another year, I can’t help but count backwards.
Evaluate where I’m at and where I’m heading.
The reality is that I’m not sure I fit into the particularistic mold of academia. I’m certainly not classically trained in the writing styles and presentation styles of those around me. I feel, quite often, like a fish out of water.
And I have to continually ask myself a few questions regarding this, parsing through the feelings to determine whether I’m simply unwilling to learn these styles or I’d rather spend my time perfecting my own writing. Because if I am going to stay in the academy, it’s unlikely the entire university system will bend around my desires to write.
***
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There are no digital natives.
There, I said it. I feel better. Not that I haven’t said it before. In fact, it’s been a battle I’ve been having for nearly a decade since the term first appeared in Marc Prensky’s 1991 piece Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, which makes an interesting theoretical argument about modern students.
(One that has been dis-proven to be an accurate portrayal of college students and their studying/learning habits. The reasons are great, but the “dis-proven” nature of the argument doesn’t mean that the general theory of modern education is wrong. In fact, both can – and in this case, do – exist. I have built much of my teaching scholarship on this.)
Unfortunately, this idea – and make no mistake, this is simply a theoretical construct – was taken as reality by those in the consulting world, those who believe a 6-page paper could be translated into sellable activities.
So here were are.
In 2010. I am barraged by people who claim some magic technological savvy bestowed upon a generation of children who, because they grew up surrounded by digital technologies, somehow magically understand how all of these things work.
As if simply being immersed is enough.
***
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How’s the water?"
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
– Commencement speech at Kenyon College, delivered by David Foster Wallace on May 21, 2005
***
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There’s not much in my tank tonight, which means precious few words are dancing in my head. Then again, I never put a word length on the 90 in 90 challenge. Still, it feels wrong to simply post a few random thoughts. Disingenuous because the goal of the project isn’t simply publishing every day. It’s publishing something of merit.
Yet I find myself completely tapped out. Tired. Spent.
My body reaches for the reserves to power through and there isn’t anything there. Like a marathoner who reached the Wall, my body is eating itself.
Metaphorically speaking.
***
My classes are stories. They are seventeen week journeys through a topic, strolling through the nooks and crannies of the information, building on conversations, lectures and presentations. I demand much from my students, an attention to detail and a level of participation that they are not accustomed to.
That’s what I have been told by them.
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I’m staring at the screen, as I do in the evenings, trying to figure out what to write. I’ve reached the limit where I’m starting to feel redundant, the repetition of my nightly ritual drowning out the thoughts I have throughout the day.
The danger of writing all the time is that you begin to think about the stories happening around you in writing terms. You look for beginnings, you look for middles, you look for ends. You become arbitrary.
Or you can. Or I can.
For years, I’ve laughed that I move through my life as if it’s a novel. I seek cliff hangers, ending points and re-starts. I move through what feels like a living story. I seek out metaphors to understand what’s happening. I endlessly pepper my friends (and sometimes strangers) with probing questions. I want to understand so I can tell stories about it later.
I have no idea why I do this. But now that I’m writing again every day, I find myself doing it more. I don’t know if this is a good thing, only that my mind does it.
This week, I’ve been living the story of teaching. Of all the things I’ve done in this life, it’s simply the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
Which is odd that the thing that brings me the most happiness is all predicated on failure.
***
This is my absolute favorite time of the semester: weeks 7-9.
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Q: Do you encourage your students to blog on whatever topics they want day-to-day or do you want them to blog on a theme or process of their chosing? How do you grade those? Thanks !
A: I have different uses for blogging.
For instance, I run a student reading and writing group. These are former students (or current students with some directed talent for writing) who meet with me once a week as a group. Out of that, we launched the 90-in-90 challenge, to see if they could do what writers do: write every day. For that, there is no grade because there is no class.
In my social media class, we uses Wikis for response and feedback. They are given very loose instructions: respond to the reading and respond to at least one other person. They have a basic structure for responding, but I simply grade them on whether they have completed the assignment (which means a complete and well-written response).
I generally don’t use blogs in my news and magazine writing classes. It’s important for them to learn the basic skills of reporting and I’ve found, having tried to integrate these other tech skills, that my students get over-whelmed by learning a new writing form and a new kind of technology.
In my ethics class, we use Wikis for group work (they write papers and make presentations each week). These are un-graded spaces (although I can watch how they evolve) because I am not interested in grading their thinking. Just the final product. However, we do discuss their “learning spaces” in class to help others get ideas for how to better use the technology.
I was talking with an old graduate school friend last night. We’re recently back in touch after a long, prolonged absence filled with lots of life happening to each of us. I will see her in just a few weeks when I head out to Arizona to work on So Far Appalachia.
Truthfully, we weren’t very close in school. Berkeley is a grind. And it’s segmented. People in the news track spend very little time with documentarians and filmmakers. You spend hour upon hour with the people in your sequence. Seven days a week. For two years.
All that is to say we were not in the same track. And our personal lives had little reason to cross.
Still, we found each other briefly just before we both parted ways: she for the East Coast, me for Austin. We would meet with our friends in Oakland, share a few drinks, talk of stories and films and plans. She is – from the outside looking in – the kind of women who sweeps by, who makes you want to grab Gatsby and head to the gardens of England.
She told amazing stories. And she shot a beautiful movie. And she was gentle with words.
At least this is what I remember of her. It’s been almost 8 years and the mind plays with facts and feelings. But I look forward to meeting her beautiful family and drinking coffee under the Southwestern sun.
***
I forget that I am watched. I have lived my life publicly and online since 1984. I have spread myself across the fabric of the Internet far and wide, which is to say that hidden in the very tiny cracks of this massive communication network are bits and pieces of me from 26 years ago.
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Each eleventh is a goal.
It’s more than that. It’s a target. I count down to and count away from. That number looms in my life, always nearby. I have it posted, conspicuous to me. Not so much to you. It is one part of my “reminders,” the elements of my life that I keep strategically placed to keep me in check.
Because I need to be kept in check. Otherwise, I start thinking. And when that happens, there’s usually a whole lot of not good that follows.
I’ve done okay so far. Twenty-one times I’ve counted down to and counted away from.
***
I’ve set about the Year of Change, the focus on my writing and the things in my life that make those goals worthy. I keep this picture nearby as well, to remind myself to get off my ass and go out into the world.
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I am staring at David Foster Wallace tonight, surrounded by my newly filed writing projects for this semester.
I am staring at him because tomorrow I will be once again teaching his writing in my magazine class, wondering if the students really feel the warmth of his words as they spill across the page. Manic. Frenzied. Beautifully constructed in the way that a mind that can’t stop or can’t compress or can’t simply associate or can’t breathe is constructs beautiful-ness on the page.
I wonder if tomorrow they will understand that writing isn’t something that you do but something that you are. The words are not simply tools to convey some Universal Truth that you have that we are awaiting to hear, for the betterment of all Mankind. Thank goodness you finally arrived to tell us this one thing that we did not know before your accidental cosmic existence occurred because your parents, or the parents of the person sitting next to you, forgot to UnPlan you.
I wonder if tomorrow they will begin their journey into the un-forgiven world of metaphorical discussions, the un-relatedness of ideas that are crashed together and the simply solitude of the trying to both understand the fabrics of the cosmos without forgetting the minutia that makes us human.
I am staring at David Foster Wallace tonight, wondering if my students will find greatness in their words or simply paychecks.
***
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