The Writer's Poke

I’ve taught English to college freshmen for the past fifteen years. What have I learned by being a permanent resident of the English 101 classroom? I’ve learned that while my thinking continues to evolve, I shouldn’t expect the thinking of my new students to have evolved with me. That is, first-year students tend to have first-year thoughts. No surprise there, really. After all, each batch of students is experiencing English 101 for the first time.  What I find more interesting, however, is the nature of topics that students continue to select. When we’re working on a general research paper topic, unless I specifically provide them with topics, students will naturally pick the standard topics – global warming, marijuana legalization, gun control, abortion, etc. These standard topics haven’t changed much in the past 15 years. The only standard topic that has changed somewhat is gay marriage. Students still write on the gay marriage topic, but the way they write on the...

Devon Flesor was my Freshman English teacher at Eastern Illinois University. Now she's a soda jerk running her own Candy Shop in Tuscola, Illinois. Cool.

I don’t remember the names of every professor I’ve had, but two names have stayed with me for the past 20 years. When I was a freshman in college, I had Dr. Jay Hammerski for Chemistry and Ms. Devon Flesor for English. That Spring semester, I also had classes in History, Psychology, and Botany, but I don’t remember the names of my professors in those classes. So why do I remember Dr. Hammerski and Ms. Flesor?  The second day in Dr. Hammerski’s class, he said, “Okay, get out a piece of paper. Pop quiz time. Question #1: What is my name?” I remember that students just looked at each other in disbelief, and I’m not kidding when I say that the entire class let out an audible gasp. Not only did he expect us to know his first and last name, but he also expected us to spell it correctly. Turned out that over half of the class didn’t know his name. They certainly did after the quiz, and I’m sure that most of the class, like me, still remembers his name. It was an im...

Make me care. I ran across this three-word piece of advice to writers last night, and I thought, “Of course. What else is there?” This morning, after having a chance to sleep on those three words (so to speak), I’m reminded that there is plenty of good writing out there, but not everyone cares about it. So, it may be the writer’s job to make readers care, but the writer cannot do it all by himself. It’s like an English teacher presenting grammar material to his students. He can see it in their eyes. “Make me care.” How? How can he do it? Learning grammar will never be like watching a Die Hard movie. It will never be like playing Halo . And it will never be like making a great dunk or jump shot.  Perhaps, then, the statement must be spoken by each individual for him- or herself. When we’re not interested in something, don’t think it has any direct meaning or value for us, we need find ourselves a mirror, look ourselves straight in the eye, and tell oursel...

As I was listening to the new Helloween album (a very good album, by the way), I had a thought fly through my mind. “I bet this is the sort of music that Neanderthals could appreciate.” The thought made me smile. No one will ever know what sort of music Neanderthals might like, but wouldn’t it be neat to imagine them head-banging on the walls of their caves in Northern Europe? But if one Harvard scientist has his way, perhaps we can discover what sort of music Neanderthals like to rock out to. Professor George Church is looking for “adventurous volunteers.” Sorry guys, he’s looking for female volunteers. His idea is to embed the DNA of a 33,000 year old Neanderthal into a human embryo.  Then, just put the said embryo inside that adventurous female, wait nine months, and watch the mad-capped fun of science play itself out. Remember Phil Hartman’s “Caveman Lawyer” character from Saturday Night Live? Maybe in 25 years, you can have your own caveman lawyer represent...

Last week I started watching a show from India called Shakira.   What immediately interested me about the show was the dialogue. Characters speak Hindi one moment and go straight into English the next. They switch back and forth between languages even within the same sentence. This is apparently quite natural in India, but for me, it is quite jarring. I don’t speak Hindi, and so I’m listening to the dialogue, but I’m also watching the subtitles on the screen. Stranger still, the English dialogue doesn’t always match the English subtitles. So, here I am, watching a show that’s only partially in English, and even the parts in English are being “translated” into English for me. It makes me think about how the process of thought works. I assume that most of us think in words. When we want to think in images, we can do so, but if I wanted to think about my car, for example, I would think “my car” to call up the image of my car. I wouldn’t simply bring a picture of my ca...