The Meaning of Works Cited

                Throughout this semester, I have been working on researching an article regarding the relation between the Otherworld in Irish folklore and the poems of W.B. Yeats. In the past I have had to do research papers, but never anything this in-depth. I think that one of the differences between writing something for an undergraduate class and writing something that may (hopefully, eventually, if the publication gods smile upon me) be published is the responsibility to familiarize oneself with the entire field that is being studied. It is no longer enough to be familiar with a primary text and maybe a few articles that help to strengthen one’s argument. There must be understanding of where your work fits within the larger scope of the criticism. Only then can you actually work to advance the field that you are writing about, as opposed to being an echo chamber for old ideas.

                Because of this research project I have developed new appreciation for that old companion of essays—the works cited. Or foot notes. Or end notes. However you cite your sources. Previously I thought of works cited pages primarily as an annoyance, that one last thing that still had to be done when I had finished typing out my essay. Though I understood their purpose in avoiding plagiarism, as word that from my youth I have been taught to fear, I nevertheless thought of works cited pages primarily as an inconvenience. I now see that, much like the people in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I was only seeing the shadow of what citing sources could really be about. Or perhaps it was as if I was a musician and, having been taught to play scales, I imagined that there was nothing else to music. Just as essays written for undergraduate classes are a shadow of actual scholarship, works cited pages for those essays are a shadow of what actual citations can be.

                For my part, this realization has already come to be useful for my writing, as I have been able to find a good amount of useful articles and books simply by the old trick of citation mining—looking at the sources referenced in other essays in order to further my own research. As I continue to work towards the final draft of my own paper (it’s due next Monday, so for better or worse it will be complete soon) I’m taking care to weave together my literature review and other references in such a way that my readers can follow where my article fits within the larger scope of Yeats scholarship, as well as within the scope of Irish Otherworld scholarship. My argument is contingent upon weaving the two together in a way that is both fruitful and coherent, and I’m glad to say that it seems to be coming together well.

“Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear”

-W.B. Yeats, “The Scholars”

Thoughts on "Underlife and Writing Instruction"

Since I will not be writing an article for this course, I've decided for this week's blog post to comment on Robert Brooke's article "Underlife and Writing Instruction".

Before this last week I was unfamiliar with the idea of underlife. In an abstract way, though, I have been familiar with the concept for years. I believe that anyone who has been a student has experienced underlife in the classroom. What started as occasional note passing, a prodigious amount of doodling, and sneakily reading novels under the desk in grade school (no surprise that I wound up in the field of English, I suppose) has in more recent progressed to any number of possible distractions thanks to the presence of a laptop on my desk.

Of course there is always the ever-popular witty comment to whoever happens to be sitting beside me. This type of comment usually has something to do with the material, and so is perhaps more noble and positive than simple distraction and escapism. Brooke writes about this behavior in a class he observed, saying “Their retreat from class participation was a retreat which took a class concept with it, and which applied that concept in a highly creative and accurate way.” (725) I agree with Brooke’s optimistic assessment of this type of behavior. If someone is able to joke about the material, then they clearly understand it and are processing it in some fashion. It’s kind of the same idea as that which says that taking handwritten notes helps students to remember material better. You take in the information and the put it back out into the world in a way that you can understand.

While there are any number of reasons for a student to be distracted during class, I know that at least for me my distraction has in the past been partially an attempt to preserve my individuality. In high school I was not exactly the picture of a rebellious youth, but I did have some idea of resisting what I saw as public school’s desire to indoctrinate me into their system. Everything is more dramatic when you are fourteen.

In recent years, having at last the opportunity to study more or less what interested me, I was much more likely to pay attention and seek to contribute to class discussions. Doubtless this is also due to my growth in maturity since I’ve been in high school, but I think it would be foolish to discount the fact that if a student is interested in the material they are more likely to pay attention. In my own experience the times I have paid most attention in class is when I have been actively seeking to comment on something. To a certain extent this goes back to what Brooke says about information games—we are all communicating certain information in order to be perceived in a certain way (722). If I feel I have nothing valuable to contribute, I will generally remain quiet. Abraham Lincoln famously remarked “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” So I think that it all goes back to the teaching—ideally the instructor will be able to communicate the material in such a way that it can be understood by students and lead to a fruitful class discussion.

The Objectives

Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job?

For this post, I'll be discussing the objective "audience awareness", which is stated on the syllabus as follows:

• Audience awareness. Students will analyze audience and purpose in rhetorical situations and make appropriate choices. Measurement: observation and analysis of artifacts produced, including active participation in classroom discussion and blogs.

Throughout this course so far, I feel that we've discussed audience awareness fairly extensively. Before this course, I was of course aware of the idea of audience, but I do not think I understood its full implications. To me, an essay was written for the professor. Anything else was written to, well, anyone who would read it. It seemed to me that a piece of writing was sent off into the world and, though it might follow certain conventions, it was not necessarily written to a particular group of people.

This class has helped me to realize that the idea of audience is considerably more complex that I previously believed. Being aware of a writer's audience helps to better analyze certain pieces of writing. In my opinion this has the most application regarding things published in specific papers or journals, although if audience awareness can be considered to fall under the heading of analyzing historical and cultural circumstance then it certainly has implications for literary analysis.

Before this class, I was unaware of the idea that every piece of writing has an audience. Certainly, I thought, that when writing in a journal there is not an audience. Or even in the case of a short story or novel, which certainly the writer hopes to have read, it did not much occur to me to take audience into account.

Theoretically, I will one day be a professor of creative writing. As a professor I think that audience awareness will be incredibly important. There are a variety of people that you need to avoid enraging in order to get tenure and, after that holy grail is gained, to continue to be successful in your field. In order to do this I think it will be very important to be aware of who I am addressing as I seek to publish and to teach.

Even in applying to PhD programs, audience awareness is important. One's personal statement should be tailored to fit the needs of each specific program, In a broader sense, it's important to be able to write something that would appeal to an admissions committee in general. This audience is different than the audience one might have in mind when writing an article for publication, and worlds away from the audience of students that one has as a classroom instructor,

On the whole, I am now more aware of the concept of audience and the need for it to be taken into account not only in analysis of texts, but in my own writing as well.

What could possibly go wrong?

Identify where you think students may fail in an assignment in your syllabus, and how you will use that at a teachable moment by design. If you didn't produce a syllabus, discuss the relevance of this week's readings to your future workplace.

I included a Current Events presentation in my syllabus in the hopes that it would help both the student giving the presentation and the students listening to the presentation the opportunity to become more aware of the current state of the world and things that are going on, as well as the controversies we are faced with. I wanted them to read about an event from two different sources and analyze the differences. The description I gave in my syllabus is as follows:

Current Events Presentation (5%) Presentation dates will be assigned

Choose any current event that is being discussed in the news today. Select two articles that cover the same event but are from different news sources. The news you consult can be paper or online. Note the differences in the way the event is portrayed in both sources. What does each seem to emphasis? Does one leave something out? For class, prepare a five minute presentation on this topic. You may use a PowerPoint but this is not required. Take into account the audience of each news source and what the purpose of the journalists was.

Ideally students would be able to find a controversial topic and analyze it objectively, but I can see the assignment going wrong in several ways. Perhaps the greatest danger might be a lack of objectivity among the student giving the presentation. Depending on the topic they choose, there might be a tendency to let their presentation become emotionally charged and speak in absolutes regarding either the event they were covering or the news source they were analyzing. Given the conservative bent of many students at Texas Tech I can see more liberal news sources tending to take a beating, but the opposite could easily be true at an institution with a more liberal population of undergraduates.

The students also might find their emotions getting in the way of the presentation of a particular news event, depending on what they chose to cover. So the presentation might become less about analyzing the rhetoric of the two different news sources they have found and more about them speaking their mind regarding whether one or the other was “right” or “wrong” in what they said, not meaning that one news source was inaccurate but rather that they gave the story a slant that the student did not approve of.

I hope to use this, should it occur, as a teachable moment in that it would allow me to talk about the importance of stepping back and viewing things objectively in order to properly analyze argument. It might therefore provide the opportunity for discussing the differences between rhetorical analysis for the sake of analyzing an argument versus analyzing something to find out if you agree with it. I might even be able to talk about the believing and doubting game and how to consider someone else’s ideas even if you know you don’t agree with them. Ultimately I think that I would still be able to accomplish my initial goal of encouraging my students to broaden their worldview and decide for themselves whether or not an argument is valid.

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list

List 5 terms you don't quite know yet how to define from our final keywords list. Next identify three in other students' blog you do know how to define, and comment on them there in those blogs.

Here are five terms I could use help defining, especially within the number of characters given us for the exam. I understand some of them in a nebulous way, but putting down their exact definition is another matter. Thanks in advance to those who comment.

1) Discipline

2) Making of Knowledge

3) Power

4) Style

5) Social construction

What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

As I reflect on the topic of technology and collaboration in the classroom, I am drawn to thoughts of my junior year of high school. I took AP English, which I suppose is the closest thing that I’ve taken to the English 1301 classes that our students are taking. We had an excellent teacher, one I still remember as having an impact on my later decision to study Englsih. For that class, we were assigned the infamous Movie Project.

This was a collaborative project. We were put into groups of eight, and then given four options of classic movies to adopt into the present day. This involved writing a new screenplay, as well as filming, acting, and editing all ourselves (my group did an adaptation of Macbeth).

It was an extremely stressful project, as perhaps you can imagine. However, I must admit that I did learn a lot more than I would have by working on a simple essay. How many people can say they put together a fifty minute movie when they were seventeen years old?

Thinking about my own syllabus, I can’t justify putting my freshmen through the trauma of being put in a group with seven people they probably don’t know. I like the idea of making a project involving a video, however. The Texas Tech Library has video cameras that are available for students to check out for forty-eight hours at a time, so access to technology shouldn’t be a problem even for students that might possibly not have video cameras on their phones.

Since in undergraduate classes it’s common not to really know your fellow classmates, I think I would assign them to groups of four and set them about the task of making a short film. I think it would be interesting to give them a specific time frame that their movie must fit within, maybe either exactly three or exactly four minutes (give or take five seconds). Like with the photo essays we’ve been discussing, I think that giving specific parameters will encourage students to be intentional in their choices about what to include or exclude.

As far as prompts, I wouldn’t be too specific. I think that simply telling a story will be the main point of the assignment. Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end? By the end of the video is something concrete different than it was at the beginning? Is the tension, climax, character development? Granted, that’s a lot to expect from a short video, but that’s the art of it.

Alternatively, I might give students the option of making their video persuasive, rather than creative, in which case I would evaluate whether or not they were able to effectively present and defend their argument within the time constraints.

Regardless of the prompt followed, I would require each student to appear in the video, even if just for a few seconds. I would also require each student to write up a brief statement, maybe 250 words, explaining the part that they played in bringing the project to completion. In that way I would assure fairness of grading and prevent any students from profiting by slacking off while others did the work.

But how do we make them care?

Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible.

For this week's blog post, I'd like to invite you to go on a journey with me into the perilous world of flashbacks.

The year is 2011. In about a month, I will graduate high school and make my first faltering steps into academia. But for now, I'm stuck in my hometown, counting down the days I have left in my concrete box of a high school. And I am a theater kid.

Every year, the advanced theater class puts on a student written show, composed of various scenes and vignettes written by the students in the class. Aside from the evening performances which we have for every play, we are also performing several times throughout the school day for students from classes whose teachers decide to take them to the play. It is my first experience with a captive audience, and though I am happy to get out of class for the day in order to perform, I am also nervous, wondering how my peers will receive the play. My fellow actors and I make snide comments backstage about the lack of culture in our fellow students, but really, we all want to be liked.

We make it through the first couple of performances and on break, getting ready for the next one, when one of our star actors comes bursting into the room. "Guess what I just heard in the hallway!" he says. "I heard a couple of guys talking and one of them said 'I thought it was going to be lame, but it was actually pretty cool'!" 

We laugh, triumphant, joking about how we should make that our new slogan. But really, each of us is very pleased. Our show is doing what we'd hoped it would- entertaining. We're getting through to people!

Flash forward to 2015. It's been a while since I trod the boards in my high school theater, but I'm facing the same problem as I did then. How do I get through to people? How do I get them to care?

As I document instructor this year, I am not actively teaching. Yet as I look around me at the classroom instructors, and look forward to the teaching that I will be doing next year, I see many similarities between my situation back in high school, having to perform a show for people who are not necessarily interested, and the plight of the composition instructor having to teach a class full of students who are required to be there.

We've discussed many times in class the problem of getting our students to care about their composition classes. This would be much easier, I think, if each instructor had a bit more autonomy with regards to what assignments they required. But as this is not currently an option in our program, the best solution I can come up with is the one that I've carried with me since that day in the theater.

Our fellow students liked the show because we liked it. We were invested in it, and did our best, and stayed late and showed up early in order to put together a show that we were proud to be in. We cared. And because we cared, we got other people to care too.

A Response to the Extended Analysis—Email Etiquette

For this week’s blog post, I read through Iracema’s Prezi presentation on email etiquette, specifically email etiquette as it relates to emailing your professors. She gave the presentation to one of the freshman seminar courses, which I think was a fantastic idea. I know that when I was a freshman I found my professors a little frightening, and the idea of emailing them was intimidating to me. If anything I probably leaned more towards the side of formality than I needed to, though I can easily see how a freshman used it informal means of communication might be too casual in their emails. I wish that someone had gone over this with me when I was eighteen, if for no other reason than that I would have been more confident in communicating with professors, knowing that I was addressing them correctly.

Ira started her presentation off with an example of a bad email to send to a professor—offensively informal and clearly written while the student was drunk. I think that this was a good way to begin, as a bit of humor can often help capture audience interest. I also appreciated her advice on subject lines, which came soon after. I personally am often not sure exactly what the subject of an email ought to be. I think that the advice to be brief and precise is good, though I would add that if you are making some sort of request it might be better to write a slightly vaguer subject line. For example, if I were to write an email asking for an extension on a particular assignment, I would probably not make the subject “paper extension”. Instead I would likely make the title simply the name of the assignment, for the reason that I want the professor to read through the email and see my reasoning before making a decision about whether or not they will answer the request. However, I acknowledge that this may simply be a personal preference.

Ira went on to discuss the appropriate greetings and sign-offs that one could use, as well as the proper style for the body of the essay. I think that she was wise to include the note that sent email is permanent. Of course, everyone knows this, but it’s a good reminder to a freshman who might be tempted to send something in haste or without really thinking it through, especially when they are angry or upset about a grade.

The presentation goes on to cover a list of example emails, along with a slide of tips and tricks. Among these I found the advice to be careful with sarcasm and humor especially good, as humor often does not come across correctly in writing, and sarcasm may be perceived as disrespectful in the context of an email to a professor. After these last tips, the presentation is over. On the whole I thought that it was a well thought out and successful presentation. After receiving the information in the Prezi any freshman should be able to put together an effective and appropriate email to their professor.

Learning, Adulting, and the Combination of the Two

What is andragogy, and how might the approach help in teaching FYC?

Andragogy, in its simplest terms, is the teaching of adult learners. It is a subset of pedagogy, which we can consider to be teaching in general. As such, andragogy deserves a somewhat different approach than what might be appropriate to teaching children.

In the first year composition program, we are faced with students who are, legally, adults.
However, for many of our students, they have only been eighteen years of age for several months. For freshmen in their first semester of college, they are very much in a phase of transition between childhood and adulthood, not only in their personal lives but in the academic careers as well.
However, as instructors it is our place to challenge our students to progress in education, and so while I believe that it is right for us to consider their backgrounds and possible limitations they may have coming out of high school I do not think that we ought to oversimplify our curriculum or reduce workload simply to pander to what we perceive to be their limitations. In my own experience I know that I learned most both in high school and college when I could sense that my teacher or professor believed in me and my ability to learn and took pains to really challenge our class, to stretch our limits and see what we could achieve.

With this in mind, I am drawn to reflect on our discussion this week on contact zones. I agree that it is good and effective to make the content relative to our students. If we are able to bring in debates and issues that are part of their lives and that they are passionate about, then we should do so. However, here I think it’s important that we walk the line between coming up with interesting and relevant content for our classes and simply pandering to students that we perceive as uninterested. At the end of the day there is certain content that simply has to be covered. However, I think that when it is possible to bring relevant content into the classroom, it should be done. Especially as we seek to teach the art of rhetoric, addressing arguments and controversial issues that affect the students can help to spark their interest and foster class discussion.

I think that at this level it is possible to focus more on concepts and ideas as opposed to the more bare bones of grammar and mechanics which may have dominated our students’ earlier English education. Although all students are forced to take first year composition, and therefore the level of self-motivation varies widely, it is still right to expect a greater initiative on the part of our students as adult learners as opposed to students in high school. There comes a time when one must take responsibility for one’s own education. As teachers of adult learners, I see it as our responsibility to guide and inspire, but not to hover and certainly not to babysit. To do so would be an insult to the students.

The Good Man Speaking Well: My Teaching Philosophy

With Quintilian, I believe in “the good man speaking well”. I believe in instilling students with the confidence to express their opinions and question the world around them. And I believe in providing them with the ability to do so effectively.

At the core of my teaching philosophy lies the belief that each student is worthy of being an effective communicator. For some, their first year composition course may be the only writing class they ever take at a college level. Others, however, may go on to major in writing-heavy subjects such as journalism or even English itself. And in between these two extremes are the majority of students, who will navigate courses with varying levels of writing intensiveness before being shot out in the working world, where they will be forced to rely upon clear communication in order to be effective at their respective jobs. I believe that each student, regardless of natural talent, deserves a chance to learn strategies of argument and of crafting the written word. My goal is to help students become people who are able to convey their ideas onto the page, confident in the knowledge that their message will get across as they wish it.

I believe in students who know how to think for themselves. I think that the composition classroom is a place for exploring arguments, and for breaking down the idea that just because a work is considered to be great, or because it was written by someone in authority, it must therefore be flawless. I want to provide students with the tools to analyze, to make an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses, and so be able to form an educated opinion of their own.

I believe in producing empathetic students. The educated person ought to be able to see things from the perspective of others. For rhetoric to be effective, it must start from some sort of common ground. I believe in teaching students to look beyond themselves in order to be able to entertain the ideas of others and, when necessary, to hold their own against them. I believe that in order for effective discourse to take place we must be willing to listen to the views of others without necessarily changing our own.

I believe in a flexible curriculum that can be changed to fit the need of the students. There is more than one way to communicate a specific point, and I believe in listening to student feedback in order to find the best way for any specific group of students to learn.

I want to help students to view writing, not merely as a tool or as a means to an end, but as an opportunity. I want to help them to understand that the more technical aspects of writing are necessary so that meaning can shine forth unimpeded by obscurity or confusion. I want to help them to love writing, and to see its importance for everyday life and for civilization itself.

Essays, Essays, Essays

 Based on your teaching philosophy (which may change over time), what are types of assignments which you would include in a FYC syllabus?

In order to answer this question, I think we must first consider what we want the point of first year writing to be. Since all students are required to take first year writing, it is impossible to tailor the course to fit the needs of a specific major or group of majors. Therefore we must consider the question—what writing skills do all college students need?

At the risk of stating the obvious, they need the skills to succeed in their college courses. As the first year writing program is designed to be taken as a freshman, many of our students will go on to write many more college papers beyond what we assign them. So they need to be able to successfully write an essay.

In my time as an undergraduate, I found that a five page essay was pretty standard for most of my courses, with the exception of some research papers in more advanced classes. As the quality of high schools from which our students come vary, it is doubtful that many of them have a solid understanding of how to go about writing such a paper. For this reason, I believe that it is valuable in a first year course to go through the steps of writing an essay, ideally breaking it up into smaller and more manageable assignments.

From my own past experience I know that it is easier to tackle a longer project when it is broken up into smaller parts. For example, one lesson might focus on having the students write a workable thesis. The next might focus on having them write an outline. I think this would be especially valuable, as I noticed in my grading of BA 1 that a fair number of students said that one of their weaknesses was an inability to be organized in their writing. They seemed to think that they had plenty of ideas, but were simply unable to communicate them in a way that made sense to others. Once the students had a working outline, they could turn their attention to building up a complete essay by the end of the course.

That is not to say, however, that I think our current emphasis on rhetorical analysis is not valuable. On the contrary, I think that rhetorical analysis can be valuable not only for our students’ remaining college courses, but for any reading or writing they do in their lives. Rhetorical analysis, when done well, allows students to become more aware of the choices that are made in a piece of writing. When they learn to look at writing objectively, they learn to better evaluate others’ arguments. At the same time, they learn how to better argue their own points. Regardless of the career they mean to pursue, the ability to communicate one’s points articulately is invaluable. For this reason, rhetorical analysis also fits with the goal of the course to prepare students from all majors for success in college, as well as in future life.

To Teach a Writer

What is the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing, and how do you go about teaching that?

Earnest Hemingway once said to an aspiring writer "You shouldn't write if you can't write." Good advice, but not particularly helpful to those of us who are in the business of teaching writing. Of course, this raises the question: what exactly does it mean to be able to write?

The idea is ephemeral enough in itself. Surely anyone who is able to put words on the page (or on the screen, as the case may be) is able to write. And yet one will find many, including some of our students, who will shrug their shoulders and admit "I can't write." What they really mean is that they can't write well.

When one imagines the idea of a writer, they may picture a moody fellow in a darkened room, drinking coffee or perhaps something stronger, typing lines of tortured verse or stories that cut to the quick of what it is to be human. And certainly, this fellow is a kind of writer. One may also picture those who are recognized to be great writers. They may think of Shakespeare or Milton, of Austen or Twain. And just are certainly, these people were writers. Yet even the greatest teacher in the world, though they labored long and though the students worked diligently, could not produce a roomful of Shakespeares, or even of J.K. Rowlings. Writing is something that must come from the individual, and so each writer must be different. So too, it must admitted that talent plays some part.

However, we are not here only to teach those who have within them the potential to become the next Great American Novelists. Some people do not like to write. It does not come naturally to them, and as much as this grieves me I am very similar in math. I do not like it, and it does not come naturally to me. I am not the next Einstein or Newton. Yet for all that, I was taught to do math at some level. I can multiply and divide and even work equations upon occasion. For each math class I took, I was a better mathematician by the end of it. Just so, our students are capable of improving their writing, regardless of whether or not it comes naturally to them.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about teaching writing is that it is so difficult to define what good writing is. We may say Hemingway was a good writer, and read and analyze his book in the hopes of discovering his secret. But we may also say that Hawthorne was a good writer, though his style was vastly different. We must teach what good writing is in much the same way that a parent teaches a child the concept of beauty. What is beauty? It may be difficult to arrive at an exact definition, yet we know it when we see it. That sunset is beautiful. That woman is beautiful. That song is beautiful. In the same way, we learn from seeing multiple examples what constitutes good writing.

This is why I believe that one of the most crucial aspects of teaching writing lies in encouraging our students to read. In reading they can experience for themselves what good writing is, and so learn, to varying degrees, to imitate it. Good reading begets good writing.

On Rhetoric

What is rhetoric? What is the history and theory of rhetoric? What do you want to do with the content from this course?

Rhetoric is like a car for many people. They use it all the time to get where they’re going, but that doesn't mean they know exactly how it works. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Everyone, from a two year-old begging his mother for candy to an academic hammering away at his next book chapter, uses it, albeit with varying levels of skill. Not a day goes by when I’m not seeking to persuade someone of something, though some of my uses of the art of rhetoric are perhaps better compared to stick figures than to the works of Michelangelo.

While English departments themselves are relatively new to academia, only appearing about one hundred and fifty years ago, rhetoric itself has been recognized since the time of the ancient Greeks. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, those venerable old figures who were so integral to the foundations of western civilization, rhetoric has been studied and defined. It was the Greeks who first proposed the five canons which lay at the heart of classical rhetoric.

First there was invention, then arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Combined together and used properly these canons allowed for a powerful persuasive speech in a time when oratory was vitally important to communication.

Following the Greeks came the Roman ideas of rhetoric, including Cicero’s stasis theory which allows one to come up with a more powerful argument after finding the middle ground from which to argue. Growth in literacy in more recent centuries has led to the greater importance of rhetoric, not only in the oratory, but also in the written word.

Perhaps the aspect of rhetoric that most of our students are most likely to be familiar with is the idea of ethos, pathos, and logos—the appeals to authority, emotion, and logic. They are certainly the aspect that I am most familiar with, as I still remember sitting in my English class my freshman year of high school and memorizing the definitions of the three appeals in between making flashcards of the Greek gods and being thoroughly taken aback by my first reading of Oedipus Rex. I left high school with these definitions lodged somewhere in my brain, but with only a rudimentary sense of how to use the appeals I had so dutifully memorized at age fourteen.

I think it likely that many of the students in our 1301 program are in a similar situation as they start the class. They’ve probably heard of rhetoric, but just because they’ve heard of it doesn’t mean that they know what it is our how to use it. I’ve heard of ice sculpting, but that doesn’t mean I know how to do it. Therefore I hope that this class will strengthen my own understanding of rhetoric, so that when I become a classroom instructor I can better communicate these ideas to my students. I want to be able to teach them, not just dry definitions and abstract techniques, but how they themselves can employ rhetoric to succeed not only in my class but as effective communicators and writers in their future lives and careers.

An Irish Interlude

I write this on the last night of my time in Ireland. I've seen a lot since I arrived here just under a week ago. In two days I graduated college, drove home, and then flew across the Atlantic.  Monday morning saw me arrive in the Dublin airport, full of a mixture of emotions perhaps best explained as vast uncertainty.

Of course, there have been ups and downs. I now bear a grudge against the Dublin bus system, for one. But on the whole this last week has been an amazing adventure, and well worth the strain of being on my own in a foreign country. And I learned that I'm not the only one crazy enough to do this. More than once I've introduced myself to another twenty-something girl, usually in a hostel, and found out that she too is on a solo trip.

I saw the Book of Kells in Dublin, visited a twelfth century church/castle in Cashel, and seen the last bit of land my Irish ancestors saw before they emigrated to America, never to return home. At times it's been hard being alone, but there have also been advantages. Besides the obvious of having complete control over my schedule, I've also met people I would not have otherwise. In Dublin I hung out for a while with a girl from Chile. In Galway I met a group of four girls who were St. Louis University, and found out that one of them had been on a NET retreat when she was younger. In Cashel the owner of the B&B I was staying at, seeing me waiting in the front room alone until it was time to walk down to the bus stop, invited me back into the kitchen, introduced me to to his mother, and sat me down at the kitchen table for some coffee while his mother told me about how she had been a teacher in San Antonio for a few years back in the fifties.

Cobh was an interesting town. It's on the southern coast of Ireland, in County Cork, and was a major immigration hub in the eighteen hundreds. I visited the Cobh heritage center, which had a very good series of exhibits on the town and the immigrants who left there. After growing up hearing about my Irish ancestors and attending the North Texas Irish festival it was almost surreal to finally be in the place I had always heard about. While walking around the town I also happened upon St. Colman's Cathedral, a truly magnificent church built in the eighteen hundreds in the Gothic style. The sheer scale of it was awesome, in the Biblical sense of the word. Seeing churches like that allows me to understand the idea that a structure could point you to God. I visited twice, once just to walk around and then the next morning for Mass. The soaring arches and beautiful stained glass windows left my soul uplifted.

From there I went to Galway, where I stayed two nights and was finally able to fulfill my goal of hearing traditional Irish music in a real Irish pub. Since I had a full day there I was able to take a bus tour around the surrounding countryside, a region called the Burren, which is all boulders and low mountains and abandoned buildings of grey stone standing among the mist. We also went to the Cliffs of Moher, which stand hundreds of feet above the Atlantic as it crashes at their base. The west of Ireland has a reputation for being wilder than the rest of the country, and I have to agree. There is something yet untamed about those rock strewn miles. Many of the hills are lined with famine walls, low walls of rock built by the peasants during the infamous potato famine. They had to work to live, and since they could not farm they built long pointless walls in order that their landlord would still feed them. They stand as a testament to the desperation of those times.

I think that it was that day, among the wind and the fog, that I truly fell in love with this country. Of course, I liked it before. I have visited many places that I liked, but fewer that I really fell in love with. The Texas hill country was probably the first such place. Northern New Hampshire was one. I know already that Ireland is another. While it is now time for me to head to the sunnier skies of Spain, part of my heart now belongs to Ireland. I mourn having to leave, but I welcome the new adventure.

The Rocky Road to Dublin

"The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for me." 

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When I was younger, I used to have maps taped all over my walls. I would spend hours staring at them, wishing I visit the places on them. Picture a quiet, nerdy sort of fourteen year-old planning theoretical trips, sometime to South Pacific islands, but most of all to Europe. That was me.

I've been a lot of places in the eight years since then. I even took a year off of college to become a traveling Catholic missionary. But the Big Trip I always intended to take to another continent remained just a theory. Until last fall, that is. That was when I finally decided I was sick of waiting for an opportunity to travel to fall in my lap. So I did some research.

In a week I'll be graduating college. I've decided to spend the summer in Spain, working as an au pair and making good use of my Spanish minor. I'll be watching two little kids, a boy and a girl, for a family in Pamplona, a city in northern Spain. Then in the fall I'll return to Texas to begin my time as a graduate student in English.

First, though, I'm spending a week traveling Ireland alone. Am I nervous? Well, yes. But all my best adventures have been preceded by this sense of nervousness, the temptation to turn back, the hearkening of a good book in a familiar room where no one will ask me to talk to strangers. And each time I have stubbornly refused to give in I have grown a little braver. Besides, I know that if I didn't go I would never forgive myself. So I am going to Ireland.

America, land of my birth, God willing I will see you again with the changing of the seasons. And to all those reading this, I very much appreciate prayers for safe travels.