My ingmorance of past participles remains intact.

[jackshoegazer]

Two down, one to go.

My English class should be great.  A lot of writing and no sentence-diagramming or tedious grammar lessons.  And best of all - no text book.  My teacher is a no-car, anti-textbook industry, liberal Wisconsinite.  The semester will consist of writing, discussions, and workshops.  I've never workshopped anything, so this will be a first for me.  And I don't take criticism well.  What can I say, I'm stubborn and lean toward the view that if they don't get it, it's their own inadequacies and not the inadequacies of my writing.  Of course, I also know that's crap and I'm probably wrong.

The ice-breaking exercise for this class was to write a short paragraph about yourself, but to include one lie.  We broke into groups and read our paragraphs and the group had to guess the lie.  Two people in my group wen't with obvious lies, like being a midget (he was quite tall) or being a direct descendant of Jesus Christ.  (Who isn't?)  The Hispanic girl tricked us by claiming she was born in Mexico when it was really Texas, and the last fellow, a cook at the restaurant Magnus, lied about being born in Canada.  My paragraph is as follows:

My name is Jeremy.  I was born in Wisconsin, but raised in rural southern Indiana.  I graduated high school with honors, excelled in track, yet undermined the status quo with an underground newspaper lampooning the bad teachers.  I am now raising my son, who is twelve, while I go to school and drive taxi and write about the crazy people I drive around.  My interests are varied, from psychology to graphic design, to religious studies, to bicycling.  My plan is to be a novelist and failing that, a teacher, following the adage that those who can't do, teach.

Right off, my group said, "You don't have a son!"  Yes, I do.  "Then he's not twelve!"  Yes, he is - in the 7th grade at Cherokee.  "How old are you?"  I turned thirty this summer.  "Man, you are well-preserved.  I would have guessed twenty-four.  Wait, so what's the lie?"  I didn't excel at track.  (Which is only partially a lie.  I never went out for track, but I probably would have excelled at it since I could run a five-minute mile back then.)

We then had to take turns introducing a member from our group to the class.  The Magnus cook introduced me as, "This is Jeremy.  He was raised in souther Indiana and is a novelist."  I introduced "...Travis, who likes skateboarding, plays the guitar and will be transferring to OSU when he graduates." who in turn introduced, "Shawn.  He's in the Army Reserves... and... he likes to drink."

The whole class erupted in laughter while Shawn tried to defend himself.  "Hey!  He took that out of context!  There's a whole paragraph of good stuff in there and THAT'S what you take out!  Breakin' my balls, man!"

The instructor said, "See, and that's an very telling lesson about context."

Intro to Film in one hour.  This semester, thus far, seems like it is going to be a fun one.

Comments

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

I never understood that adage - because isn't "teaching" - well - teaching. Maybe it's not "doing" the object of study, but it's certainly doing something!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I think that adage refers to people who didn't set out to be teachers. People who set out to teach and then become teachers are doing what they said they'd do, but many other people set out to do and don't so they teach others how to do which of course makes no sense since if they couldn't do how can they teach other to do, except through the don't do what I did or you'll have to do what I do routine.

[facinado.livejournal.com]

i like your paragraph i couldn't have guessed what was a lie or not.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I did that on purpose :)

[schmecky.livejournal.com]

I like that teacher a lot.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I as well, thus far. Oddly enough, she, like Jacquelyn, has terrifying tornado dreams.

[schmecky.livejournal.com]

Ok, that IS odd...

[alebazi.livejournal.com]

So reading about your schooling makes me want to go back myself. What are you majoring in and what school are you in?

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I'm going to Madison Area Technical College and am enrolled in the Liberal Arts Transfer Program. I'm no exactly majoring in anything at the moment, merely getting some prerequisites out of the way. The rough-draft goal is to be a novelist and failing at that, get my MFA and teach somewhere.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Yay! This is what I was really hoping LAST semester would be for you. I'm glad that last semester's mediocrity didn't prevent you coming back for what seems like more of what you'll actually enjoy. :)

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

The good Lord hides the good stuff. If us human beans never penetrated the thick skin of a banana, we'd never made a banana split.

[explodingalice.livejournal.com]

Even though I was a business major in college, my literature and creative writing courses were my favorites every time. Especially the ones that were free-form, no textbook affairs. I think my favorite was a Children's Literature class with a professor who reminded me in looks, attitude, voice, and humour of George Carlin.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Nice. I've always loved writing classes for the sheer enjoyment of writing. Except I once had a Business English class, which sucked the proverbial ass out of a dead donkey. I wrote a long essay in that class on how much I hated it and how disgusting I found the uses for which they perverted the language and how I despised having to pussyfoot around the truth to spare feelings. It's like I usually use language to find and communicate truth and that's what I love about it and yet this class was teaching that one must use language to hide the truth.

[explodingalice.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, business english. What a croc. That and Marketing were hard for me to swallow - let's all learn how to manipulate the masses - Woohoo!

[weishaupt.livejournal.com]

Show me someone in the army reserves who doesn't like to drink.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great class. I *loved* my workshop in college-- largely because we had a good prof, and the students got along well.

After my writers' group meeting, I was thinking about workshops and what makes them function well. I think a lot of it is being friends first, or at least friendly with each other, and supporting each other's writing. If I get my act together, I might post some more specific workshop tips in my LJ.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I guess I'll have to see how it goes. I really have no idea how a workshop works. *must learn to accept constructive criticism*

[lagizma.livejournal.com]

That's actually the one ice breaker exercise that I love at any conference or meeting.

[helpimarock.livejournal.com]

Where'd you live in Indiana? I grew up in Cincinnati and went to Depauw in Greencastle and knew a lot of people from and spent time in Bloomington, Evansville, etc.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I lived an a lot of little places around Columbus, IN. Hartsville, Westport, that sort of thing.

[helpimarock.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's not terribly far from Cincinnati actually. In fact, my family used to have a cabin on Lake Santee by Greensburg which is right in that neck of the woods. Wow, your experiences there compared to Madison have to be so different. At least, I suspect as much based on my years of experience in Oxford, OH right across the border from southern Indiana.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, these were towns with populations of 200, with a bar and a general store and that's about it. In a ot of ways it was sort of idyllic, a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn adventure, exploring the woods, following rivers, swimming, fishing, catching turtles and crayfish, falling through the ice, swinging from vines on high hills. If my family life wasn't so completely fucked during this time period, it would have been amazing.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

P.S. I never really felt comfortable in that atmosphere in a lot of ways. The people in these towns were small-minded, often bigoted, many drunks and delinquents. Sometimes I wonder if some odd aristocratic British gene from my ancestors got activated in me and rebelled against my surroundings.