What do you know?

I've been pondering this question lately. Knowledge, unlike physical stuff, accumulates without taking up any space--and is, therefore, easy to forget about. I would like to believe, that is, that it is just forgotten about and not actually lost. But I know that is a dream.

As I approach my semi-significant birthday (or that year in which I have to accept, once and for all, that I am an adult :(), I can't help but think back to how I have spent my 20s. What have I been doing? By and large, the answer is easy: I have been sitting in class. So I thought it would be fun if, over the next week or so, I reminisced a bit about my educational history. With ten years of class sitting behind me, I should know a lot of stuff, right? I wish. Really, knowledge accumulation is on my mind lately because I am feeling that tinge of conscience that says: You should be pretty good at this by now... so what's the problem?

In 1997 (I know this is a bit more than 10 years ago, but this is where it starts) I enrolled at Pima Community College in Tucson. That first semester in school, I don't recall exactly what my plan was--or if I even had one. I just knew that I needed to take some general courses and so I enrolled in some general courses. I took Writing 101, Western Civ 101, and Sociology 101. My writing instructor was a very quiet woman--and though I did well in the class, I wasn't particularly inspired--certainly I didn't think: "I think this is what I would like to do as a part of my own career." Western Civ was taken as a part of a history or liberal arts requirement. The class was simple. All I remember of the instructor was that he was he looked like Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and said the word "modernity" a lot. I enrolled in sociology because my dad's BA and MS (MA?) were in Sociology and I kind of considered myself a chip off that block, so maybe I would be into it. My instructor was a part-time teacher, full-time biker, often wore leather to class (oh--and don't forget the Harley doo-rag) and had a long bushy beard. I remember that when he spoke, I thought that the stuff he said was smart. His biker-ness gave him a certain down to earth approach to teaching that I liked.

But I remember nothing knowledge-wise from that first semester. I would wager that I forgot it all the moment that the final test was done. Granted, my mind was on other things. Second semester wasn't much different. Writing 102 also failed to make much of an imprint on me, I took Western Civ 102 from the same instructor for the easy A and also took an intro to guitar class so that I could get some practical knowledge to go along with the self-taught stuff. Again, nothing really stuck. I read Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" for the first of what would be dozens of times and wrote a final paper comparing my favorite Bradbury novels, Something Wicked this Way Comes and Dandelion Wine.

This first year is significant for a number of reasons, though. First--it represents one of the sad truths about post-secondary education: most of it doesn't sink in, is taken just to pass, and is quickly discarded. At least it was for me, but I have a hunch that I am not alone. Granted, I was at a community college. My instructors were likely underpaid adjunct faculty. None of them were really trained to inspire or guide students in one particular direction or another. Student apathy mixed with good ol' 18-year-old ignorance and garnished, perhaps, with consumer culture ideologies makes education another thing to be purchased, used, and then discarded. Knowledge gathering is barely on the radar and therefore is rarely, at first (if ever), a priority. It is ironic that I am now on the other side of the desk, so to speak. I teach students with similar ideologies. Most are in my 103 an 104 classes just to pass-- to check it off--and why shouldn't they? Why should I expect them to be any different than I was? Because this is a major university and that was just a community college? I don't like that argument. But still, in a culture where education is consumed instead of accumulated and guarded, introduction classes are the most disposable of all, are they not? And while I now realize the importance of the knowledge to be gained in the introductory course--indeed, I am a practitioner of it, my students likely don't/won't/can't.

So part of me wants to blame this consumerism ideology on my difficulty with accumulating or "laying up in store" the knowledge that I desire and now need to be successful in my field. I know it is more complicated than that... but its got me wondering about how I might subvert the tendency as I approach my own students and teaching. Can they be taught to care more about what they know? I don't know.

Stay tuned for the next chapter: "Two Associates Degrees, or How to Waste your Time Expensively with Little to Nothing to Show for It"

Out of town guests...

...are fun.

.docx why dost thou torment me

bane? Yes. Apparently it is a better, more stable, smaller file... but good grief.

Get this: A .docx file saved with Microsoft Office '07 will NOT open in Mac Office '08.

I can't think of anything more frustrating when it comes to collecting papers from my students.

(I know--.doc will work pretty much universally, but why have .docx on both versions of the software if it doesn't work universally? Apparently, there will be some sort of conversion available later, but in the meantime-- all I can say is blec.)

Blec.

the future of compostion

If you have 6 minutes, take it to watch this cool presentation from Rutgers. It really lays plain some of the reasons that it is exciting to be a part of the English field at this very unique time in history.

How had I not heard anything about this...?

I'm losing touch. (click the title)

apply this...

There are very few things I like less than filling out job applications. I find the process mind-numbing--an exercise in the kind of rhetorical cookery detested by Plato: "Hire me! Look how awesome I am at saying good things about myself and searching for many precious minutes for archaic contact information for my references which you will likely only glance at and not really actually use."

I am filling out applications for summer work. Someone save me.

a hunerd

July 30, 2005.  That was the day of my very first blog post.  I had a weblog that I kept prior to moving in at "blogger," circa 2002-2003 (a wretched thing if any of you remember it--back when blogging was neeeeeew)--which makes me a blogger for over 5 years. 

This is a blog celebrating this blog's 100th blog post.  blog blog blog.

It's taken almost three years to get 100 posts up.  That's way under one post a week.  I just read a much more prolific blogger's post who was on his 100oth in about the same time (I don't even know the guy other than that he is in my field. I read his blog so I can figure out what it is people in my field do. I will spare you a link).

This entry represents blogging at its finest. When the blog has become the topic of the blog itself.  ick. 

just to be clear...

I had a great discussion with my students today about the video I posted yesterday. We were talking about what persuades us (or hasn't yet persuaded us) to vote. This question of "effect" is one that kind of puzzles rhetoricians. Do people really act as a result of persuasive rhetoric, or is rhetoric just one of many influences that eventually causes action. We (my class and I) looked at a bunch of posters on this site, talked a little about Mtv ads, watched that video and--in the end--came to some interesting realizations.

One of those realizations--or maybe admittances--was that young people (my students are 18 and 19) don't vote. One student said that he didn't vote because he didn't really know a lot about the candidates and didn't want to just vote to vote. It felt irresponsible. So the posters weren't really that persuasive. Another student said that he liked the posters but that it really took something spoken before he was moved in any particular direction. That made me think of the video I posted yesterday.

I didn't know if I would have time to show it because I had other stuff to cover--so I held off on it until the end of class. We did have about 5 minutes after my planned lesson on library research, so we watched the video.

I didn't know who a lot of the celebrities were in the video, but I knew they would, so I asked them to write down the names of people they knew. When the video was over, I asked them whether or not they felt the video was persuasive. They did. I asked them why-- The student who said he liked oral persuasion said "I don't know why I am persuaded, but I am! I've got goose bumps!" "And we believe what our goose bumps tell us, don't we!" I shot back. "Yes!" he said. Ha, ha--I had lured them into my trap.

Then we started talking about all the celebrities in the video and why their influence helped the message be persuasive. We didn't have a lot of time, but it was here that I revealed my purpose in showing them this video that really doesn't have any clear mention of Obama's politics or views on the issue other than that he wants change and "Yes we can" get it. We talked about ethos (credibility), pathos (emotional appeal), and logos (logical appeal) and how the video was almost completely based on pathos--the least stable of all of the appeals. It was a great teaching moment where I was able to talk about being weary of rhetoric that appeals only to the emotions (which most visual rhetoric is aimed at--at least initially). We mentioned how sad it would be if they voted for a candidate based on the feeling their TV ad gave them without doing any research (ah ha! Research!) about what that candidate really believes--where they might find some drastic personal incongruities.

If I would have had more time, I could have spoken a little about using that kind of rhetoric as a springboard to investigation. If they like a certain candidate based on his or her ads on TV, start doing that research. Start doing some soul searching.

So, my own recent decision to align myself with the Democratic party (instead of flailing as an independent) and support Obama does not come lightly and without much thought (or without some help from an understanding, very conservative, friend). And I am still doing work to figure out my exact stance on the complex issues our Nation faces. But that I am thus working is a marked change from my past apathetic political life. And at least I know now which way I lean. I hope that doesn't alienate me from my friends and family who are persuaded differently. Being a religious democrat (like being a religious academic), is often incorrectly spun--as outlined in this great speech--as a paradox or conflict of interest. I just don't think that is the case.

I'm persuaded...

I've been there. It's...

Heaven.

10 legends and a comedian...

yes, that is Steve Martin jamming that banjo. How many other legends can you name?

clever...

Jedi Ginsu Knife Commercial - Watch a funny movie here

Improv Everywhere...

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. Check out the YouTube page for other work from this extremely creative group.