In the most recent issue of Real Simple magazine there is a great article about things you shouldn't say to a college graduate. I mostly bought the magazine because of the one page article and I think it was worth it. So inspired by them I've come up with five things you shouldn't say to an English major.
1. Have you ever considered minoring in business? Yes, I have. No, I don't want to. If I wanted to minor in business I would and could but I've found a different path and it doesn't involve killing myself with a microeconomics textbook. Also, the business department is not the be all end all college.
2. So you want to be a teacher? Thousands of people get English degrees every year and obviously not all of of them end up being teachers. Some people like the idea of standing up in front of thirty pimple faced brats and attempting to explain why To Kill a Mockingbird is so great. I, for one, do not.
3. Recite some Shakespeare! I'm not sure where people get the idea that English majors sit in rooms and memorize lines from Shakespeare but someone asked me to do this once. I've never even taken a class on Shakespeare. I mean I've read Shakespeare for class, but only for a couple of weeks. I think this is just the first author most people think of.
4. So what do you want to do? Most college students don't know what they want to do but everyone seems particularly concerned about what English majors want to do. I don't really understand this. I usually want to ask them if they're offering me a job. There are a lot of majors out there that seem less applicable to the real world than English. Ones that immediately come to mind are American Studies, Leisure Studies, and Italian-- and I'm sure all of those people find jobs eventually. With all the typos I see on restaurant signs I think we could use a few more English majors in the world.
5. Why don't you write a book? A lot of English majors want to write books. A lot of English majors will write books or are currently working on books. But writing a book is not the solution to the "problem" of being an English major and truthfully there are a lot of English majors who I hope never, ever write books. Some English majors just like to read. Some of them are great technical writers. Some of them have no interest in writing at all. You're shocked I know.
So what do you say instead? Ask them what kind of classes they are taking, what they like about their major, what they don't like about it. English majors are great at talking and I'm sure you'll find a great conversation with them somehow.
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The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.
Essays Read this Week:
1. Same design: differing outcomes
2. On schoolmasters' learning
Favorite Quotations:
"We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." (Seneca, On schoolmasters' learning)
"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."(On schoolmasters' learning).
General Thoughts:
I had an intense connection with On schoolmasters' learning. I'm nearing the end of my third year in college and I've had a lot of frustration towards the university experience. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to go to college. I'm lucky to have great parents who help me pay for school and encourage me. I've had some great professors at the University of Iowa. And, after all, if I wasn't an English major this blog might not exist and that would be a shame.
That said, I don't know if I feel I've learned that much in college. In school we are required to learn a lot of information so we can take a test or write a paper, which is what Montaigne talks about in this essay. As Seneca said, "We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." When I leave with my diploma will I really walk away any better off than I was when I came here? I will, but I'm not sure any of those things I've learned come from the classes I've taken or if they come from the experiences I've had. Life experiences. Experiences I might have had with or without college.
"We allow ourselves to lean so heavily on other men's arms that we destroy our own force." Is this the burnout I've experienced over the last year? Maybe. I feel like I'm constantly told what to think about something, what to see. I used to have my own opinions but now I have to prove everything I say using someone else's words. It's mind numbing.
Questions:
1. If you're in school do you feel like we are fed knowledge without learning anything of value?
2. If you're out of school what do you think you came away with besides a degree?
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The New York Times is looking for essays on modern love by college students for a contest they are currently holding. I read last year's winner, Want to be My Boyfriend? Please Define by Marguerite Fields. It's a charming, real essay about the questions our generation has about love. Questions about monogamy and exclusivity. Fields describes her experience in the middle of everyone going against monogamy and rooting for multiple experiences, while she finds that this is not what she wants for herself.
She has a great sense of self, which is something I feel a lot of young nonfiction writers lack, and she is humorous without going overboard,"For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll say I’ve dated a lot of guys. It’s not that I’ve gone out anywhere with a lot of these guys, or been physical with most of them, or even seen them more than once. But there have been many, many encounters.
I’ve met guys in the park, at the deli, at galleries, at parties and on the Internet. The Internet idea came from thinking that if I could sift through people’s profiles, like applications, I could eliminate the obvious lunatics."
I think this section does a good job outlining the way love functions for young people today. We are constantly surrounded by reminders of it. If it's not a couple holding hands on the street it's the couple getting engaged on Facebook. We all know how Facebook has taken the importance of your relationship status to a catastrophic level. This isn't something Fields addresses, just one other factor to consider in the role of relationships in today's world.
Fields goes through the whole essay cooly, clear-headed, unaffected, until you reach the end and realize that she is not as unaffected as we thought. I was surprised by how well she pulled off that trick, for the majority of the essay I was frustrated with her, I didn't see the point in the essay if none of these encounters meant anything to her or changed anything about her. Then I reached the end and realized what she was trying to say all along.
You can read the whole essay at The New York Times, and if you're a college student with an essay on love you can enter this year's contest.
What would your story of modern love be about?
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Right now I'm still having that experience you always have at the beginning of the semester where everything is new and exciting and awesome. Today has been extra great because my first class is about comic books, my second class is taught by a professor I love, and my third class is piano. And I got home at 3:40 which is earlier than I ever got home last semester (I actually get to make dinner for my fiance for once!) so I just have good feelings all around. I didn't even mind buying textbooks this afternoon, see pictures below for happy faces with textbooks.
To be fair, I had to buy The Best American Comics 2010 and Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book
for my comic book class and I actually wanted the books, so I didn't mind forking over the cash for them. I will be less enthusiastic about purchasing my entrepreneurship books tomorrow. I'll probably be pretty cranky about the whole thing.
This is also the post where I say my brain is still scrambled from my trip, so I probably won't be on my normal schedule again until next week. I need a few days to write posts, get organized, figure out how exactly my post schedule is going to go this year. All fun stuff I know. But now I'm off to enthusiastically do my homework before the excitement wears off!
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I'm currently sitting at the library in Amsterdam, which is beautiful and amazing. It's white with hardwood floors and very streamlined and techno. I could defnitely get lost here for awhile. We stopped here because we found out today that they have free Internet for anyone. Jason and I both agree that this is Amsterdam's best kept secret. If you're ever here and need to use Internet it's one of the easiest places to get some-- and you don't have to buy anything. Fantastic.
Today we went on a bike tour with this place called Mike's Bike Tours. It was a great way to see the city and get some ideas for places we want to go. Since so many people ride bikes here it was obviously nice to see the city in the way a local would, except with a tour guide pointing things out along the way. Jason and I enjoyed it since we ride bikes at home quite frequently, although the style of bike we rode here is very different from what we are used to. The bike tour took up most of the day and when we got home we had leftover Indian food from last night, which was delicious.
Tomorrow we are going to try and take a day trip to Zandvoort because that is where my family is from. I'm not entirely sure what we are going to do there, probablys just see what happens. There is a sort of nature resevoir there we might try to visit. We'll still have two days left in Amsterdam after that and we only have one day of definite plans. We will try to visit Anne Frank house, go to this bar with a windmill, and a market in the area our tour guide recommended. Some of these things a little far away from where we are staying so we're considering renting bikes for at least one day yet. It's a great time to try and cycle right now because there are fewer tourists and fewer locals cycling than there are during the summer, so it's relatively safe if you're used to cycling in congested areas, which we are.
As far as reading, I fnished a whole book on the plane ride over here. It was actually a short story collection I got at the Twin Cities book festival called If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home, which was really fantastic and quick read.
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I had a lot of good intentions about posting a review today and doing lots of blogging stuff. But... I'm leaving in three hours and I have a feeling that over the next couple of weeks this blog is going to turn into more of a travel blog. I'm just too excited about this trip to even consider writing about books right now. Maybe once I'm out there I will be in the mood since I'll probably be doing a lot of reading on planes and trains, but right now my brain is either moving at super speed or way to slow to think. It's kind of hard to tell which.
I've been to Europe before, but this is going to be an entirely different experience. No parents, no chaperones, no hard set plans. Just a backpack-- that's all. I've wanted to go backpacking ever since I was a twelve-years-old. Right now I'm somewhere between "What the hell were you thinking, Ash!?!" and "Holy shit I can't wait to go." I haven't been this simultaneously nervous and excited about something since I started college. And maybe part of me thought I wouldn't do this in college, this whole trip actually stemmed out of me wanting to study abroad, but I opted to go backpacking instead. It would be great to leave for another country for all of next semester, which was my original plan, but this seems like a better fit for me, for some reason.
Maybe this trip is what I need after two semesters that just felt completely down and out. I think I need to remember that there is more to life than school or grades. I need to be challenged by something other than staying awake in class. I need to be put out of my comfort zone in a way that doesn't involve writing a paper. And I can't think of a better time to do it or a better person to do it with. Someday I'll be able to tell my kids I celebrated the New Year in Amsterdam and spent my 21st birthday in Munich. Whenever they think their mom is totally lame I'll throw that in their face. And next semester when I'm feeling sad about school and whathaveyou, I can look back on this trip and hopefully there will be some sort of life lesson there.
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Click on the image to make it bigger!
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Snow has finally blanketed the fair Iowa City, just in time to lock me inside my house to study. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I won't be doing that today as the literary magazine I'm on is having a big meeting today and it could go for several hours. Hopefully I still manage to finish at least one paper today!
I had a party last night and several friends came over to play games and eat cookies. I made 100 cookies! Including the cookies Kim talked about at Sophisticated Dorkiness. They were delicious, a big hit. I actually used hugs and kisses for mine, and I think I preferred the hugs but I'm a sucker for white chocolate. The party was especially great because there was freshly fallen snow, cookies and warm drinks, a bright Christmas tree, and lots of laughter with good friends. It was very atmospheric, I would say. If someone from the outside were to look into our frosty windows I think they would smile at the good time we had.
I also got 500 Handmade Books from my friend Michael as an engagement/Christmas present, which was lovely. Although there is a book I saw in there that had human hair on it, which I thought was odd. It was one of the first books I looked at so I'm interested to see what can top that. In all reality, I'm really excited about bookbinding right now. Michael and I are taking a bookbinding class next semester and on Friday I went to see what students in the University of Iowa's Center for the Book made this past semester. There were so many amazing books, paper, and boxes that I feel I couldn't have seen everything even though I walked through it all. I hope some of my projects turn out as beautiful as the ones on display. I'm sure you can all expect posts about that next semester!
I'm off to continue writing about Sarah Silverman and eat some breakfast (brunch?).
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After my post on Thursday about avoiding finals I gave studying on Saturday the good old college try. I got some of my paper done, but not nearly enough. This afternoon I'm going to lock myself up in the library and I won't come out until I have at least 1.5 papers done and my reading for Monday. But this morning I'm going to relax a little bit, do some reading and eat some food. Maybe after a little relaxation I'll feel better equipped to plunge into paper writing. Maybe I'll pick up a peppermint latte or something to make myself feel extra prepared.
I'm not sure how other students are, but I really have to coax myself into studying for finals. The week before finals is probably about the worst week because the end is so close. I love actual finals week because you don't have to go to class, so you can just relax and study all week! This is especially true for me this semester because I only have one big final exam (anthropology, the bane of my existence) so for the entirety of finals week I will just work, relax, and study for that stupid exam, which have to do very, very well on. Don't be surprised if I start tweeting about skulls all the time.
If you haven't yet, check out my review of Heart with Joy. I really enjoyed this book and my review doesn't do it justice. I also did a post about Gifts for English Majors you should check out for your holiday shopping. Yesterday I did an Awesome Essays post about and essay called Speaking American, which I think all of you will enjoy because you love language!
Thanks everyone for your overwhelming congratulations about my engagement. I'm obviously very excited about it! We're not planning to get married until after we graduate so it will be a year and a half, and for now I'm just excited about being engaged.
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Alas, it is the time of the semester where I make a post about why I'm not posting. The excuse, as always, is finals. But actually I haven't been getting much work done towards finals. I have several excuses for why and if you stick around until the end of the post you'll hear some very exciting news.
1. You can play Snake on Facebook now. I discovered this around 12:30 AM Thursday morning. I felt pretty good about my score of 300 until I saw a friend of mine got 760. 760!
2. True Blood. I started watching True Blood at the beginning of the semester and now I'm almost done with Season 2. True Blood fans will understand why I'm getting nothing done, because Season 2 is addictive. Also, Netflix in general will probably contribute to me failing all of my final papers and exams.
3. My house is messy and I can't concentrate on homework until it's clean. But I don't feel like cleaning. So no homework is getting done.
4. I really, really hate biological anthropology and my hatred for my anthropology class is poisoning my drive to do anything else. (My professor actually showed us this picture in class, it's not just a random Neandertal picture.
5. I got engaged. Yeah, for real. So now my head is in the clouds and I will surely find it difficult to concentrate on much of anything for at least another twenty-four hours. Also, when you post on Facebook that you are engaged you get one thousand comments and your phone goes dead from all the excitement. This has been my day so far. Love it.
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Hello fellow readers! I can't believe it but I only have four more days until Thanksgiving Break and I register for classes this week. I'm extremely ready for this semester to be over with. I don't know what's up but this semester has gotten me in such a funk as far as reading, blogging, and general attitude goes. I've gotten more in touch with other things I love though, like art and music. I'm so looking forward to a week off so I can get a rest and some good reading and blogging in before winter break.
I've actually been spending quite a bit of time on blogging lately, but it's been the behind the scenes stuff you don't know about. I'm trying to figure out how to improve the sound on my vlogs using Audacity, which is why there haven't been any vlogs recently. I hate that buzzing sound the built-in camera makes on my laptop. I also recently got Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, and I've been trying to figure out design stuff and how to edit some comics I want to post on here. And I've been considering moving to Wordpress.org-- which is a nightmare to even think about but I feel I would be happier there. If anyone knows about any good guides I could use for any of the above topics please let me know!
This week was all about writing as I (still) try to catch up on National Novel Writing Month. I did a video update and shared some of what I have. I also talked about the essay Walking With an Essayist and wrote a review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
How was your week?
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I'm approaching week ten of the semester and I honestly have never felt this burnt out before. I really don't have that heavy of course load this semester, but I feel exhausted. It might partially be living off campus for the first time, or maybe I'm just feeling burnt out because I'm a junior and feel like being done. Or maybe I'm just looking forward to winter break more than I have before because I'm going on an awesome vacation. My boyfriend and I are going backpacking through Amsterdam, Berlin, and Munich and I am so excited. I've never been to the Netherlands or Germany before so I'm sure there will be a lot for us to see and do. Have any of you been to any of these places? What would you suggest for us?
As for reading I've been working diligently on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
for the readalong next week, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
for a new feature I'm going to start, and The Book Thief
simply because it is awesome. I have a lot of plans for the week I do The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay readathon, and I'm really excited to see what all of you think about the posts. The book has made me remember my own comic drawing I did when I was in high school and I was inspired to start up again. I was really into art in high school but kind of quit when I got to college. My comic drawing style isn't very complex and obviously relies on words a lot more because I'm a better storyteller than artist, but it's something I enjoy working on. I'm thinking about posting some of these comics on here once I get back into the hang of it.
This week I reviewed Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Splendor. I celebrated my one year blogiversary, talked about my recent struggles with writing, and talked about an Awesome Essay: How to Write About Africa.
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When I started blogging I was extremely frustrated with my nonfiction writing class. I wanted to write, but I just didn't feel like anything was working. I didn't feel inspired or encouraged the same way I did in the first nonfiction writing class I took at Iowa as a freshman. So, as a lot of you know, I decided to take a break from writing. Or just a break from writing classes, because I'm one of those people who will just always write. After all, I'm a blogger. After a semester off and some time to think, I found myself turning back towards writing essays, so I decided to take another writing class this semester. To push myself even further, I decided to do a reading in conjunction with the literary magazine I work on.
Four weeks after volunteering to read I am sitting in front of my computer frantically trying to get something out. I have several finished essays I could fall back on, things I've written in past classes and edited. But I just want to have something new. Something really great. I wrote one essay my freshman year that I really loved and ever since then I've just been trying to get back to that essay. Although I reread the essay over the summer, and found several things I wanted to revise. So even that essay wasn't the best it could be.
Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself. When I do read an essay I've written or have someone else read they usually so lots of really good nice things about it. But... I don't know. I'm just having a hard time writing the way I used to. I have a lot of ideas, which makes it that much more frustrating. I write down idea on top of idea on top of idea. Then I sit in front of my computer to type and... nothing. Blank stare. Flashing line. Wordless.
I don't aspire to be a writer. It'd be cool to get an essay published and so on, but that isn't really what I'm pushing towards. I don't feel as if that is what I'm called to do. So why do I have to take is so seriously? If it's just a hobby then why the obsession. I don't know.
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This semester has been absolutely crazy. I'm working at the library, I have a writing internship with a nonprofit, I'm volunteering at the Women's Resource and Action Center, I'm taking 6 classes (16 hours), and I'm living off campus for the first time. In short, I am exhausted. All of this running around has definitely been getting in the way of my reading time. Last night I sat down and read a graphic memoir, The Imposter's Daughter by Laurie Sandell
, just to feel like I'd read something. One of my friends told me I should be Wonder Woman for Halloween because she can't imagine how I manage to get all of this stuff done, and I'm wondering how I manage to do it too. I'm planning on changing my work schedule in a week though, so hopefully that will give me a little bit more free time. At the very least I shouldn't have to wake up so early every day.
One great thing about my job though is that it gives me time to read. Sort of. I started listening to audiobooks at work in addition to my favorite podcasts and I've finished two books so far, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
by David Sedaris and Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon. I really enjoy the experience of listening to an author read his or her work and so far that is the only experience I've had with audiobooks. Over the summer I listened to a Bill Bryson book that he narrated. I've decided to mix things up a little bit though, and I got the audiobook for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This is obviously not narrated by her and it's also about twice the length of any other podcast I have listened to. Fifteen hours, I actually had to download two separate files from Audible. I never really thought I'd be an audibook person, but with the job I have now I'm grateful for them because I'm getting paid but also getting some reading done.
But I must say, listening to an audiobook is just not the same as reading a physical book. When I'm done with an audiobook I just add it to my list of books read this year, write a review, and that's it. But when I finish a physical book I actually feel a sense of accomplishment. I can put the book back on the shelf, or drop it back off at the library. I get to feel the relaxing experience of reading. Of sitting on the couch with a good book in my hands. I get to watch as the pages dwindle down until I'm only 50 pages from the end, 30, 15, 5, 1. That is so exciting. On my iPod I see I have four hours left, or two, or fifteen minutes, but I just don't get that same sense of putting the book back on the shelf. I don't have anything against audiobooks, I really need them in my life right now because otherwise I would be getting zero reading done, but I do miss being able to sit down and read, read, read.
How do you feel about audiobooks versus physical books?
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I haven't gotten a lot of reading done this month because I've been so busy packing and unpacking. I just moved into my first place, my first townhouse actually, two weeks ago and I've been busy making everything look the way I want it to. There are still a few things I want to change but I'm happy with the way things look for now. I tried to make a comfortable reading place in every room of the house and I wanted to share where I'm doing my reading and blogging with all of you!
The picture is pretty dark but I've been using this spot a lot lately. No, this is not my bed, it's a day bed in my office. This is a really nice place to read because it's right by a window so I get a lot of natural sunlight and usually don't even have to turn the ceiling light on to read, unless it's night of course. Also, since this is my designated reading bed it seems like it's easier for me to stay awake in it than it is in the bed I sleep in every night.
This is the living room with, as you can see, all of my books. I haven't done a whole of reading in here and I think that's partially because there is no ceiling light so at night it's rather difficult to read and I haven't been able to use it a lot during the day. It's a great spot for watching movies though!
This is probably my favorite place to read "in the house." My porch. The chairs are actually pretty comfy and there is a nice table for me to put my tea while I'm reading. The porch looks out to a street, but there are a few trees around and I like watching the squirrels do their acrobatic flips.
This is the bed, where I naturally do quite a bit of reading. I made sure to have lamps by the bed so I can read by lamplight and then just turn them off when I get too tired to keep reading.
Not a lot of reading gets done here, but I do quite a bit of blogging here as you can tell. It's where I'm at right now!
This is the dining room where I do a lot of eating, but I also do the majority of my blogging here. At least that has been the case the past couple of weeks. I blog a lot in the morning before I go to work and I like to sit here and have my breakfast and blog.
So this is where all the magic happens! Where do you like to read or blog?
I've been a bit absent in the blogging world lately, but there are many reasons why. This past week has been nothing but rising and falling emotions, and just when I think everything has hit the lowest point possible something good happens to pull me out of my slump. It has truly been the weirdest week ever. It mostly has to do with internships, jobs, classes, and grades. I didn't get an internship I'd applied for but then I heard back about a great volunteer archiving opportunity for me this summer. Just when I figured out I could do that I couldn't find away to get home for the interview for this volunteer project. Then I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to figure that out, including getting rides and getting work off. And that's just what got the ball rolling- there have been many more since then.
This is weird for me though. For most of my life it has been my experience that the worst stuff always comes at once and there are only really little things that help pull you out of that slump. This week has not been like that. It has been like humongous things get ruined but then really, really awesome things replace it. This has been thinking (once again) that my mom was right (don't tell her!) when she said everything happens for a reason. I don't think I ever really bought into that until this week. It seems like it's true really. I haven't been getting things I thought I really wanted, but I have been getting unexpected things that are really better for me.
So what about you? Do you think everything happens for a reason? Have experienced these weird ups and downs and all arounds (in about a three day span?)
