Fast Times at Butler University

...because the day just seems to fly by when you're having fun.
by Brendan Cavanagh

Despite being an English major, I think I've only been assigned one or two papers all semester in my one actual English class (American Literature).  Therefore, I spent the last four hours or so working on my final essay of the year, due tomorrow. We had to choose from one of four prompts, so I chose this one:

     The image of post-revolutionary America as a diverse land of free, independent, individuals prospering through hard work and self-reliance is a break from the Calvinist ideals of community in New England.  This “new pastoral” or “republicanism” seems to have more to do with secular, Enlightenment principles than with Christianity.  In this essay, define the Enlightenment and explain how it influenced the concept of American identity.  In what ways did the national identity develop from these modern and secular influences and what, if any, influence did the Calvinist principles of the Puritans have on this new, modern nation.  Discuss at least three texts and use direct quotes to defend your argument. 

Alright! Now you guys are going to get a dose of what a typical English paper was like for me this semester. And who knows, you might come out of this just a little bit more educated. Quoth Judge Reinhold in the above video: "Learn it. Know it. Live it."

The American Enlightenment: A Reexamination of Existing Social Structures

            As individual American prosperity flourished in the late 18^th century, American citizens began to relinquish themselves from a traditionally strict adherence to communal, religious values and heartily embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment movement taking place in European countries like France and England.  Among the many components of such a vast intellectual revolution, three main tenets best describe the American attitude and approach to writing at the time: First, humans are rational creatures who can employ their inherent privilege of free thinking to logically explain the world and consequently experience unprecedented intellectual freedoms; Second, through the process of obtaining a valuable education, human rationality is ideally universal; And third, with the ability to rationally explain the universe, humans may understand the true form of all things.  After adopting the aforementioned beliefs of the Enlightenment, three well-renowned Americans at the time, Judith Sargent Murray, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, reconsidered the negative ramifications a once-dominant Puritanism had on an increasingly progressive American society.

            However universal the ability to reason freely, the necessary means to obtain an adequate education, and thus celebrate the intellectual fruits thereof, were not offered to everyone.  Primarily affluent, land-owning white men had the capacity to attend reputable schools, while the destitute (of either sex), Native Americans, African-Americans and women were, for the most part, unable to do the same.  In 1790, esteemed author and proto-feminist Judith Sargent Murray, who came from a liberally educated family, published a multi-faceted appeal in defense of the female mind.  “Are we not deficient in reason?” she challenges her male readers, “We can only reason from what we know, and if an opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence” (727).  In keeping with the Enlightenment ideal of reexamining the world around her, once interpreted solely from a clerical point of view, Murray confronts the repression women had long suffered at the mercy of a traditionally male-dominated, once-Puritanical society.

            Simultaneously demonstrating an Enlightenment-era argument and exemplifying how women, too, are capable of rational thought, Murray employs a thoughtful reinterpretation of the well-known Genesis story of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.  Murray argues that men erroneously assume that Eve willfully chose to sin at Satan’s provocation, when in fact, she was tempted by Satan in his once-shining beauty into acquiring a perfect knowledge of the world around her.  Adam, in turn, sinned as well not because he, too, desired such knowledge, but because “he was influenced by no other than a bare pusillanimous attachment to a woman” (732)!   Therefore, by utilizing a biblical story familiar to a formerly religious region, Murray not only effectively conveys her dissatisfaction with female subjugation, but also tests the long-held belief that women are inferior to men, which the Puritan faith only perpetuated.

            Like Murray, American president Thomas Jefferson composed a rational essay to express his frustration with a current human rights issue in America.  In true Enlightenment fashion, Jefferson employs logical reasoning to challenge the historical lack of religious freedom in America, which was founded on the pursuit of individual liberties.  Published privately in 1784-1785 in response to a series of questions posed to him by the French Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia” comment on a variety of subjects concerning Virginia, with Query XVII focusing on religion.  In order to combat prior animosity between distinct religious denominations in colonial America, Virginia’s declaration of rights in May of 1776 “declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercise of religion should be free” because, as Jefferson posits, “Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error” (661-62).  In a society that not long ago had been almost uniformly Puritanical, Jefferson’s idea of free enquiry was certainly polemical, as well as an illustrative example of the intellectual freedoms bestowed upon those who invested in the ideals of the Enlightenment.

            Furthermore, Jefferson encourages free enquiry by overtly rejecting forceful uniformity of religious convictions, a system which had prevailed in certain regions from the time the first fledgling Puritan communities were established in the early 17^th century until America’s declaration of independence from Great Britain.  Since the beginnings of Christianity, myriad innocent people have been punished for their religious beliefs, “yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” But, Jefferson asks, “Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature” (663).  In his belief, not only does the Enlightenment illuminate the universal freedom to subscribe to any religious denomination, but also it guarantees an individual the liberty to be one of many, rather than one in many.  In other words, Jefferson admonishes societies, like those formerly established by the Puritans, for emphasizing the importance of communal values rather than secular beliefs and convictions.

            At about the same time Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia” were published, fellow diplomat Benjamin Franklin was in the process of writing his detailed autobiography.  In relating the events of his young adulthood in Philadelphia, Franklin implicitly describes his disgust with formal religious worship as a primitive act of embracing Enlightenment ideals in North America.   Although he professes to hold particular religious principles, he expresses misgivings about his minister’s sermons, which follow a formulaic, almost superficial approach to being a good Christian, rather than simply informing his parish how to be upright people of morality.  According to Franklin, the Presbyterian minister, as well as those of differing Christian denominations, spoke about religion “without any Tendency to inspire, promote or confirm Morality [and] serv’d principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.”  While their biblical explanations of how to be good people may have had some validity, Franklin argues, “they were not the kind of good Things that I expected from that Text” (525).  Rather than blindly follow every word his minister uttered about morality, Franklin chose to individually find a rational method of attaining morality.

            In true Enlightenment fashion, Franklin embarked on the rational pursuit of moral perfection by designing a series of thirteen steps which, if meticulously followed, would logically allow him to “live without committing any Fault at anytime…[and] conquer all that either Natural Inclination, Custom, or Company might lead [him] into” (526).  Initially careful not to include any step that might be solely associated to one particular religious sect, Franklin finally settled on: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity and Humility.  True to his resolution to remain resolute in his affairs, Franklin continued adherence to his precepts for the remainder of his life.  Over time, he reluctantly discovered that some virtues, like Order and Humility, were more difficult to master than others and that naturally, humans are bound to err.  Although his attempt to achieve moral perfection was not entirely effectual, Franklin demonstrated the highly rational and increasingly secular mindset adopted by many Americans during the era of Enlightenment.

            By the end of the 18^th century, strictly Puritan settlements stressing communal values and stringent adherence to the Christian faith had been all but overcome by generations upon generations of economically-motivated landowners, artisans and common citizens of various denominations and beliefs.  With such secular motives in the people’s minds, a movement like the Enlightenment was guaranteed to enjoy widespread success in America.  For those who were fortunate enough to obtain a modest education, like Murray, Jefferson and Franklin, reevaluating the evolving nation’s previously established social structures was imperative.  Not to take advantage of the ability to rationally discern right from wrong is a mutilation of one’s intellectual privileges.

If you actually read this, for the love of God, give me a call or a shout out. I want to pat you on the back. Real gently.

College: Some Thoughts from a Guy Who's Trying Real Hard to Become a Professor-type Person

[Note: Conor called me at 10:39 on Friday evening asking me to pinch hit for him for his Friday Classic Brian. But, since the last time he called me and said, "So...do you want to do me a favor?" he asked me to stick my hand in a toilet, swish it around, and flush it, with the phone near enough that the sounds could be heard, this seemed like a relatively minor task, so here goes.]

Considering that most of the people writing and (I think?) reading this blog are in college, I thought it might be interesting to give you a few thoughts about college from someone who's been through it as a student and is now going through it again as a graduate student/teaching assistant. As an undergrad, I majored in English and minored in music and theatre at Truman State; as a PhD student, I teach freshman writing and TA at Loyola University Chicago and will start teaching low level lit classes next spring as well. Here are some thoughts based on those experiences.

Do not underestimate the importance of the first impression you make on your professors. Your punctuality, attentiveness, preparedness, and quality of work in the first month probably shouldn't be more important than those of the third month of the semester, but realistically speaking, they most likely are. I don't know any professors who actively count those sorts of things more at the beginning, but all the 'firsts' of the first month or so of the semester are what a professor uses to develop their picture of you - the picture which will form the context for everything else you do in their class. If, in month three, something goes wrong in terms of attendance, turning in a paper, etc., you want the professor to think, "Oh, that's so unlike them," not "Here we go again." Make sure that they see good habits as the rule with you, and slip-ups as the exception. Again, this is an intangible, because I don't know anyone who is actively biased in this way, but I suspect that, to varying degrees, a first impression can have a significant impact on your overall credibility with your professors. If you have a really stellar first month, and slip up a few times in month three, I'm willing to bet that it'll hurt you less than if you have a sloppy first month and do fine in month three (when the prof probably already feels they 'know' you and is paying more attention to other things). Note that this is probably less true of papers than of, say, punctuality, attendance, and reading preparation. I recommend that you always be prepared all the time, but realistically speaking, if you're going to try extra hard sometime, do it early.

If you miss a class: 1) Do NOT tell the professor something really stupid, like "I just had so much going on that day" or "Don't worry, I'll always be on time on Wednesdays because I have to get up at 6:00 for my fraternity" (both of which are excuses given to professors I know this semester). Saying nothing is better than saying something that makes you look like a moron. 2) It's a toss-up whether it's better to give a true, albeit unhelpful explanation ("I just overslept") or say nothing. Either one maintains your integrity, so I'd say it's up to you. 3) If you do think you have a pretty good reason for your absence, feel free to explain it to your professor, but don't do so in a way that makes it sound like you think they OBVIOUSLY should ignore their own syllabus to excuse your absence - many professors might cut you some slack (or might leave some slack in the syllabus), but approaching anyone with power over you with an attitude that reeks of entitlement can only hurt you. A humbler approach is more likely to work in your favor. 4)If your professor has a few 'free' skips built into the syllabus, then generally you don't need to excuse them, and silence is fine. But keep in mind that if you use them as blow-off days and then you get sick when you're out of skips, you may well get burned.
Also, if you're leaving a day early or coming back a day late from a break (Thanksgiving, Spring Break, etc.), DON'T give some lame excuse about some other unlikely thing that has come up at the last minute that, honestly, for reals, has nothing to do with the fact that this is the last class period before break. It just makes you look dishonest. If something like this actually DOES come up, you might consider silence or you might consider saying, 'Look, I realize this sounds unlikely, but XYZ came up. I understand if you still need to treat it like any other day-before-break absence, but I just wanted you to know it wasn't intentional' or something like that. Again, judgment call.


Think hard about what you want from college - a lot of things that aren't advertised or offered are possible if you pursue them assertively (but without an attitude of entitlement). When I was in undergrad, I REALLY wanted to take a playwriting class that had been offered a couple of years before I was around to take it. I went to the professor and told her that I was very interested in playwriting and hoped very much she might be able to offer the class again before I graduated. She was flattered by the interest, and also interested in teaching the course again, I think, and as it turned out, she was able to get it on the schedule for my last spring semester. That semester, there were two courses I really wanted to take - 1) Advanced Creative (Fiction) Writing and 2) Playwriting. I was worried that they might be at the same time, so the semester before, when the schedules were in the process of being made, I spoke to both professors and they were able to find out the tentative course times for me - lo and behold, they overlapped, making it impossible to take both. I asked if the times were set in stone - the ACW class was, as it turned out, but the PW class wasn't (yet), and the professor told me if I could find a time that worked in her schedule and the department's schedule, etc., she'd consider requesting they move the time. I found a time that she actually liked better than the original time, and everyone was happy. However, this would not have been possible if I hadn't been proactive. Now, this exact situation would probably not be as easy to arrange at a larger university like OU or U of I, but the general point still holds - a lot of things are possible that aren't obvious if you know what you want, educate yourself about them in advance, interact respectfully, and pursue your goals. No one has time to do this with everything, though, so you have to think about your priorities and then pro-actively protect them. Similarly, this semester as a grad student, a class I was supposed to teach got cancelled for administrative reasons at the last minute; long story short, having to rearrange my semester on three days notice meant I might fall 3-4 months behind in my time-to-graduation (by having to prolong my coursework by a summer or semester), but by being assertive but respectful and working with the department administration and, through them, the graduate school administration, I was able to get the issue fixed without losing any time. This was after what had looked like (and been presented to me as) a couple of dead ends, but I figured I had nothing to lose by thinking up my own solutions, and happily, one of them worked out for everyone. In summary - know what you want, respectfully go after it, and some of the time, at least, things will probably work out better than if you just go with the flow of what the system presents to you.

On a related note, if you want something from college that your school doesn't offer, think about starting it yourself. I heard about 24-Hour Theater from a friend at Bradley University, so I started it at Truman. My wife Michelle really wanted to do some children's theatre work, so she petitioned for an independent study course, got a professor to agree to oversee it, talked to a local elementary school and partnered with a teacher and his class, and did a really cool semester-long theater project with 20-odd fifth-graders and maybe 5-10 theatre students. On a larger scale, Chicano Studies programs, Women's Studies programs, and many other university classes, programs, and departments now available to you were first formed after students demanded them (in various ways and at various decibel levels, figuratively speaking). Again, the message here is, decide what you want, and decide how to get it - the way things work right now isn't the only way they can work, though institutions often change slowly, if at all.

This goes for professors as well. Not all professors are equally clear about their expectations, grading criteria, attendance policies, etc. Think about what you want to know, and go after the info in an assertive but respectful way, but think about how you'll come off first. You don't want to be the guy who says "How many free skips do we get?" in class - that will never help you. Also, asking "Will this be on the test?" will probably never help you. Sometimes you might learn that it's not on the test, but sometimes that question will get it put ON the test, and it always makes you look like someone who wants to do the least work possible. Most of us do, at some level, want to be efficient with our time, but you have to think about image, too. Ask "How would you recommend we study for the test?" rather than "Will this be on the test?" It gets you essentially the same info without making you look bad. If a professor's term paper prompt (or other assignment) is unclear, poorly written, etc., consider tactfully asking for more specifics in class, after class, or in office hours. If their response is still unhelpful, consider asking if you can look over a good example from a previous class or something like that, so you can be sure you have an understanding of what kind of work you're being asked to do. If that fails, too, your obvious options are limited, but I might suggest trying to track down someone who's had that prof in a previous semester to get their opinion on what the prof is looking for. As a teacher and a writing center tutor, I can tell you that easily half of what is wrong with student papers is failure to actually address the assignment called for in the prompt. Sometimes it's because the student hasn't carefully read (or properly understood) the prompt, and sometimes it's because the prompt is bad or unclear, but it's always bad news for your paper if you don't address the issue soon in your writing process.

If you're emailing a professor, ALWAYS format the email formally, and make sure if you have a 'signature' tacked on to all your emails, that it isn't super casual. Consider any written communication with a professor a professional communication - not all professors care, but most prefer to have "Dear Prof. xxxxx" at the top and something like "Sincerely, namenamename" at the bottom, and it can occasionally hurt your image with the professor to send them a really sloppy email. On a related note, especially once you start thinking about internships, jobs, study abroad programs, etc., make sure that your voicemail recording is professional and informative. My sophomore year I studied abroad in London. one day I checked my voicemail and had a message from someone in London about the program; they sounded a bit annoyed, and I realized it's because before they could leave their message, they had to listen to a 30-second recording of 'Springtime for Hitler and Germany' from the Producers soundtrack. Change your message before that happens.

Know that your professors are busy, and it's sometimes easy to slip through the cracks in their attention or annoy them by wasting their time. Don't email with questions whose answers are on the syllabus - that hurts you. You have a right to use their office hours to get help, but make sure you're doing so in a time-efficient manner, and if you make an appointment, don't blow it off. Everyone appreciates a person who makes it evident that they take your time seriously and don't want to waste it.

Note from a writing teacher: if your paper doesn't (implicitly or explicitly) answer the questions "So what?" and/or "Who cares?" with regard to your topic and thesis, it's probably not a very good paper and you should rework, at the very least, your intro and conclusion. Also, the conclusion of your first draft often functions well as the introduction of your second draft, allowing you to finish with a more complex and insightful conclusion the second time around (that takes the first conclusion as its starting point).

Be as careful with credit cards (and debt in general) as you possibly can in college. I know way, way, way too many people who got in more debt than they needed to by thinking "Well, I'll just put it on a card and pay it bit by bit - it's only a couple thousand dollars, that's not too bad," and who are still paying now and/or are trying to avoid bankruptcy and/or spent ten (or more) miserable years sending most of their disposable income to credit card companies. They are, if not evil, at least highly dangerous corporations that have make many a person's life a living hell for quite some time. Be careful around them. Also, if someone at a desk in the Student Union says you get a free pizza (etc.) if you fill out your info for a credit card application, but that doing so doesn't mean you're approved and get a card, so don't worry, DO NOT DO IT. They are not telling the truth (whether they know it or not), and you WILL end up with a credit card you probably don't want and that is hard to get rid of. Worse, if you don't know it's coming and just throw it out as junk mail, someone could find it and use it to rack up money under your name (I know people to whom this has happened). I know college = debt for most, but handle your debt with the utmost care.

Read your professors carefully, figure out what kind of prof they are, what they prioritize, what they don't care as much about, what they're good at, what they're bad at, and use that information to ensure that your experiences with them go smoothly. Professors, like all teachers, have very different skill sets (and competence levels) and you need to be able to work as effectively as possible with all kinds, even the bad ones (though avoiding those is a better idea when possible). This is also good practice for bosses later on.

Writing teacher talking again: plagiarizing well takes about as much effort as writing well. If someone fails at plagiarizing well, they're screwed. If they fail at writing well, they do okay-ish. Plagiarizing is not worth it. They might get away with it from time to time, but it only takes getting caught once to really, really screw someone, and frankly, they have it coming, because everything they do to cheapen their degree also cheapens your degree in the eyes of everyone who looks at their lazy, corner-cutting work later in life and thinks, "They graduated from _____?? I thought that place had standards," and then values your degree a little less as a result.

Take your end-of-course evaluations seriously. Most professors value and adapt in response to detailed, thoughtfully-written student evaluations; evals that are one or two sloppy sentences are easily ignored and frankly not that helpful to you or anyone else, whether they're positive or negative. This is a chance for you to tell the professor and their superiors how they're doing - use it! I know of situations in which a professor has had their course load shifted away from a course they taught particularly poorly twice in a row (as the thoughtful student evals indicated). If you didn't like how a prof did, your eval will be taken more seriously if it is fair and well-explained and less seriously if it is vindictive, personally attacking, and generally mean-spirited.

Well, I think that's probably enough for now. However, if you have other college-related questions for someone who's on my end of things, feel free to post them in the comments and I will be happy to respond!

Sean O'Brien (for Conor O'Brien)

Dead Poets' Society Blues

Not my English class

by Brendan Cavanagh



Well I'm in college now. Free to choose my own classes, and those that I have a particular interest in, mind you. I'm about to cast off the constricting shackles of an "Exploratory" major in favor of that of "English Education." This semester I've chosen to sign up for more classes that revolve around literature, language and teaching and fewer "core," or general, classes. For the first time since I've come to Butler, I'm genuinely excited to go to my classes because I take personal stock in most of them, and I rather enjoy the material, which consists of much lengthier reading assignments (Hot dog!). Finally I can stop slacking and instead heighten my attention and focus in class! Right?

Oh noes. I can't help but transfer my focus on the novel and discussion at hand to the multitudes of characters in my classes. Don't get me wrong- I'm still attentive of the discussed themes and of my homework, but today for instance, in my Introduction to English class, I set aside Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and the class notes it had once inspired and instead began jotting down into my planner notes about the numerous eccentricities of people in my class.

As I walk into the classroom at 9:30 every Tuesday and Thursday, I engage in a well-rehearsed pastime of finding the prettiest, albeit approachable girl in the class and positioning myself beside her. Unfortunately, it appears that other English majors are more anxious than I am to arrive early to class, so my options for seating are limited. Both times I arrived this week, there remained a solitary seat in the front of the room, beside the Know-It-All of course. O, but how I yearn to someday get to class early enough to find an empty seat next to Cute Indie Girl. She always seems to be obscured at first or else out-of-reach, on a far side of the classroom with a barrier of boys and girls surrounding her. I met her during the first group activity of Welcome Week last semester. She seemed shy and exhibited sure traits of a hipster, so I casually (but entirely randomly) proclaimed that I would guess her musical tastes based on the shoes she wore at the time, a pair of small white Vans. And how about this? She liked all the same "indie" or "contemporary" or "alternative" or "hipster" music I like: MGMT, Phoenix, Black Keys, basically anyone who played at Lollapalooza 2010, which we both happened to attend. Today in class I made a sort of joke, thought it wasn't intended to be one, and she gave me a fleeting look and a smile, which I think either meant she thought I was funny (like a clown) or pathetic. Either way, my five-month goal of someday getting to know her again has not been discarded. Ooh, how I'd like to sit down and have a discussion about Faulkner with her sometime.

Yet I'm afraid my identity will only be melted and consolidated into the entity I can only describe as the Three-Headed Brendan. You see, in case I'm absent from class some day in the future, there are two other Brendans to fill in for me. It was bad enough in preschool when I was so callously referred to by my teachers and peers as Brendan C. (as opposed to Brendan P.), or in high school when there were two other Brendans in my grade, and a few others scattered about the grades above and below me. Thanks God one of the Brendans in my English class goes by Alex, but that leaves the goofy one in my three-person discussion group. He's cool, but I'm pretty sure he, like me, is unwilling to give himself a nickname and be relegated to an identity that is not distinctly his, which is going to cause some serious knee-slappers during roll call.

The three-person group today was made even more incredibly awkward because the girl of the group (the inevitable secretary) just so happens to look exactly like one of my friends from home. I'm not kidding. It's uncanny. I honestly think the only thing that distinguishes this girl from my friend is that she has slightly more pronounced incisors, and she favors Uggs over boots from, like, T.J. Maxx or something. All during the discussion I kept losing my train of thought and ending my points prematurely because I couldn't get past her appearance. I'm not one of those guys who will immediately tell someone that they look like some one else ("Dude! Dude! Has anyone ever told you you look exactly like Cormac McClaggen from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? The resemblance is riddikulus!"), but finally, I had to explain to her why I might suddenly or subconsciously throw her glowing looks of endearment. Fortunately, she was understanding and thought the whole thing was rather amusing, but I couldn't help but wear a pained smile every time we conversed thereafter, for fear that I might laugh more than I should or hug her when it came time to leave class.

As much as I love to be given a chance to contribute my humble opinions about the themes of Kafka's Metamorphosis to the class, thereby making a good impression upon my teacher and sounding somewhat intelligent in front of my peers, I would much rather be interrupted by the officious, self-indulgent, brown-nosing know-it-all in the center of the front row (incidentally right next to me). Clearly, whenever everyone in your vicinity smirks or chuckles after you nervously but loudly interject in the middle of a discussion to regurgitate what you read on Sparknotes last night, your frequent opinions are well-received. You're providing a double service- not only do you save the blow-offs in the back row from the pressure of answering a question they don't know how to answer because they didn't read the text, but also you save people like me, who really only want to prove they did their homework and contain a genuine passion for literature and novel-based discussion, from wasting precious breath which we could thankfully! instead use in order to exhale loudly so as to display discontent with your offerings. We all really believe you're smart because you spit out information faster than it probably took you to skim Google for .org- domain websites featuring study guides on the Metamorphosis. And I can't say I didn't breathe a sigh of relief when you jaunted into Spanish class late, telling the teacher, "Lo siento, Senora, pero..." That sigh of relief soon turned into an impressed exhalation at your Spanish-speaking skills. You are what aggravates me beyond belief in class, but if it wasn't for you I would never get heated enough to spark a much-needed, in-depth discussion about major themes of a story. Thanks?

And then there are those students that are apparently English majors, but don't seem to be book-readers at all. I admit, this is entirely a shallow judgment on my part, but I'm learning that there are different types of people in this world (who knew?) and that more specifically, there are different types of English majors at Butler. But this one guy in my class, who I know as "Jalapeño" Jack from Orientation last semester (he knows me as "Beatbox" Brendan, another blog post entirely), just doesn't immediately strike me as an English major right away, for no reason at all. It's probably because he's one of those guys that seems real shifty and nervous, but every once in a while makes a loud, awkward joke in class in order to be the intelligent, intuitive class clown who can humorously tie literature to pop culture, but mostly to keep people from thinking he's an introverted spaz. For example, today as we discussed Gregor Samsa's relationship with his father, Jalapeño explained to us that Herr Samsa, in a fit of fury, started "whipping apples at his son ... [wait an untimed beat-and-a-half] ... like Nolan Ryan."

?

This, the class found funny, only ensuring that my double and triple entendres during Shakespeare's Tempest will be met with silent pity.

On the topic of my infrequent contributions in class, I just want to point out how much I hate being cut off while I explain my interpretation of various themes in English class. This is a travesty that I have been a part of since early high school, when I discovered that it requires much explanation for me to accurately get my point across. Today our teacher asked us to point out and explain symbols in Gregor's bedroom. I had been itching for three days to offer my interpretation of the handmade, gilded frame containing a picture of a woman in furs on Gregor's wall, but I only got as far as, "The gilded frame-" before my teacher thanked me, agreed, and asked for more symbols. At this point, Miss Know-It-All chimed in with her fast-paced, extraordinarily vivid animalistic viewpoint of the fur-clad woman, which brought our discussion to industrialist and dehumanizing themes in the Metamophosis. All I wanted to say was that anytime something in literature is gilded, it usually represents something ugly being obscured by a superficial shine! Agghhhh. But I'm not mad at my teacher. I quite like her. She's chic and intelligent and funny and reminds me a lot of Helena Bonham-Carter (the last few Harry Potters, Sweeny Todd, Fight Club, etc.). I feel like we have this attachment because I visited her once last semester in order to inquire about the operations of the English department and its according majors. She had plenty of posters up in her office, one in particular featuring Bob Dylan, circa 1965 during the Highway 61 Revisited recordings. Despite this unspoken bond I feel is present, I get the feeling she doesn't remember me, so now I have to once again prove my worth by performing well on various essays throughout the semester, as there's no way she's going to extract much value from my classroom contributions.

It's amazing how pretentious some of these students are. All these students throwing out interpretations faster than I can come up with one. I know I frequently fall short of staying modest, and I'm sure this post was like a bad acid trip in a public library, but I feel slightly overwhelmed in class. I'm simultaneously thrilled to be in such a literature-based course and disgusted by my peers who all seem to be scrambling for attention and competing for appreciation, like pups vying for a first taste test of Mom's teats. How about that analogy? But maybe I'm learning that there are other people like me. Maybe there are (gasp!) smarter students than I in my English class who legitimately like literature like I do. Maybe- just maybe- I'm slowly sliding off my pedestal in the clouds, falling down to earth so that I don't hold myself in higher esteem than my classmates. I take this ominous threat only as a challenge. I'm stepping up my game this semester. Sure, I had fun last semester, taking core classes in order to get my most basic college credits, goofing off and doing the little homework assigned, knowing I could still pull off a good grade. But now I'm (almost) an English/Education major. The time has come to focus on my studies and excel, so that when I'm teaching English one day in the future, I can successfully tell the pretentious Know-It-All in my class to shut the hell up and get out.