A Change in Topic!

So guys. It is fast approaching the start of a new school year. As such, I think I should let you guys in on my life. I am applying to MFA programs, so, for now, I am going to be letting you guys follow me on my journey to applying to various MFA programs. I might post writing samples and ask for critiques, I might post different statement of purposes, and if you ask me a question I will be more than happy to answer it. This is going to be 100 percent transparent. You missed out on me mulling over PhDs vs. MFAs and the ultimate decision as to what MFA programs to apply to. So I will present you with the following list of MFAs:

UT-Austin (Michener Center)
University of Iowa
University of Michigan
Johns Hopkins University
Ohio State University
UT Houston
School at the Art Institute of Chicago
Northwestern (It’s an MA, not an MFA)
University of Florida
University of Maryland
Brown University
Washington University in St. Louis

Total Schools: 12

12 applications. That’s a total of 35 recommendation letters, 12 statements of purposes, 12 writing samples of varying sizes, 24 transcripts, and 12 resumes. Also 1 interview.

My GRE scores were good enough to get me in to these places (600 V, 800 M).

My biggest concern at the moment is the Statement of Purpose. Not because I’m arrogant about my writing or know I can destroy that shit (although I hope I can), but because it’s what I’m working on at the moment.

I was given a copy of the most recent Poets and Writers Magazine by an admissions counselor I work with at UChicago who attended Vermont College (#1 in low residency MFA programs in the recent rankings), and in it, they have an article on what to say and what not to say on your Statement of Purpose, which seems to address a lot of what I was afraid of doing.

Write a well-written story, but not about why you wanted to become a writer. Address each school individually, but not individual teachers. Typical stuff. But damn is this hard. Right now I have a couple ideas: My premed life transitioning to my life now (with tie-ins), my obsession with the number 2 and how it runs my life, and comic books as my bed time story.

Any favorites? I can jot down some rough drafts if you guys want.

Why Scott Pilgrim is the Best Damn Movie Ever.

First and foremost, counter examples of “X is a better movie” won’t dissuade me from my opinion. This is my opinion: Scott Pilgrim kicks ass (Did you see what I did there? Combine those two movie titles based on Graphic Novels? Did you? Okay maybe not…shut up). But seriously – it does.

The “facts” are these:

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does the best job I’ve seen in…ever…at adapting from another text. I wanted to jump up in the theaters (both times I saw it) and scream “SUCK IT M. NIGHT.” Or something along those lines. But seriously! It’s so tremendous at getting everything important down. Yes, they left out the subplot about Knive’s father trying to kill Scott, and yes they may have increased or decreased the parts/stories of various characters. But the adaptors got everything that was truly important down, and they did it while staying true to the actual feel of the books. I expand now, yes? Yes.

Expansion 1:
Music.
The entire series is filled with music, references to music, bands, discussions of bands, references to discussions of bands.
Damn did they get it down perfectly. In terms of pre-existing songs, they found the perfect songs, both in terms of content, sound, and just general attitude. Especially Metric’s “Black Sheep” as covered by Brie Larson; if you listen to the lyrics, it becomes hauntingly clear that the original band KNEW – they just KNEW, okay? – that their song was going to be in this movie when they were writing it.
The original songs – the producers or whoever went all out in finding some fantastic musicians to write songs for the different groups. Beck wrote Sex Bob-Omb songs, Broken Social Scene wrote the Crash and the Boys songs, and even professional musicians played in the Clash at Demonhead (I’m looking at you, Tennessee Thomas). Seriously? Every song is fantastic. Music. Rocks.

Expansion 2:
The books aren’t meant to appeal to everyone. Neither is the movie. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it, but to be honest, stop saying if you’re over 30 you won’t like it. That’s not true. The adults were laughing right along with the kids when I’ve seen it (again, both times). It’s not your average movie, but then again, that’s one of the great things about it.

Expansion 3:
Edgar Wright is the best director for this movie and he really delivered. He managed to keep it fast paced, never letting it drag, directing very heavily, like he did with Shaun of the Dead, but making it work and flow beautifully. It kept the feel of a graphic novel by making your eyes constantly jump from point a to point b.
It works so well. The graphics, the style, the pacing, everything was just a symphony of awesome.

Expansion 4:
Michael Cera is awesome.

Expansion 5:
No seriously.

Expansion 6:
Actually the entire cast is awesome.

Expansion 7:
Every single person fits the part brilliantly.

Expansion 8:
If your life had a face I would punch it.

Fin.

I know it’s technically Wednesday, but…late Teaser Tuesday?

“Does it have anything to do with the fact you can read minds?”
What? How did she know that? How could she have possibly figured that out? I didn’t think she had been paying attention when I rescued her. Maybe she was bluffing. I had to play it cool.
“I don’t think you heard, but all of the heroes are dead. No one has powers anymore.”
“How do you know all of the heroes are dead? And even then, you could be a new hero.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I didn’t actually say anything just then.”
Dammit. God-fucking-dammit. I had messed up big. A thousand thoughts raced through my head, all of them staying firmly in there. She was going to tell the rest of them, they were going to kick me out, they were going to take their rage towards heroes out on me and rip me at the joints, completely obliterating me, erasing me forever. They were going to take the rest of my food and water and send me out. They were going to hurt me and send me out to die of starvation or pain. Nothing good could come of this.
“It’s alright. I won’t tell anyone. I just wanted to make sure. I thought you were, but I wasn’t positive.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“When…well…before.”
“Oh. I thought you were-“
“What did I just tell you, man? Don’t talk about it!”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry.”
She disappeared for a minute and came back with a cup of water and an apple that looked a little too ripe. I didn’t care though. It was the sweetest apple I had ever tasted, overflowing with juice. I let it dribble down my chin a little. I didn’t care how sticky I wound up, or how disgusting I looked. You stop caring about anything like that. For the first time in a while, I legitimately smiled.
“Okay, let me take a look at your ankle.”
She rolled up my pants leg. There was a sharp intake of breath, which was always encouraging.
“This is really infected. Like really bad. How are you even walking on it?”
“If I stopped, I wouldn’t start again.”
She glanced up at me, pausing to brush her bangs out of her eyes. This was the first time I’d actually stared at her face. It looked tired and scared. Here eyes were a light brown – about the same color as her hair.
“I guess that’s fair.”
She held out her hand over the gash. She got this weird look on her face and her eyes crossed. I started to wince in an anticipation of her touching my ankle, which I was afraid to even look at. I waited for a little while before looking down. She wasn’t touching it. Instead, there was a blue light emanating from her hand, going down to the gash that was slowly shrinking. New muscle formed, the blood vessels reconnected, the pus vanished. Finally, a new layer of skin formed over the cut. It was new and looked it. It was bright and pale and had none of the age or dirt that lay on the rest of me like a pall.

This is from my current WIP: From the Ashes. Post-apocalyptic Superhero Book!

Why I Don’t Like Word Counts

Let’s review the two reasons (or the only two things I can think of – feel free to elucidate more in the comments and I’ll try to address those. Not that there will be many of you, but still ) behind enlisting the use of a word count when assigning an English Paper:

1) To ensure that a paper is long enough to be well thought out.

2) To ensure that a paper is short enough to be organized and focussed.

Okay. That was fairly easy.

Now let’s address why I don’t believe that Word Counts are a necessary (or even beneficial) aspect of papers.

If you’re assigning a student an essay on William Carlos William’s poem “The Orchestra” (which I will include a recording of at the bottom, because it’s literally one of my favorite poems ever). The assignment includes a vague prompt meant to spark the students’ minds rather than give them an essay topic. Perhaps it is “how does Williams incorporate sound into his poem?” or something like that.

Now a student comes up with a topic. Perhaps they want to talk about the way sound conjures up actual imagery (the use of sound to create visual images, for example ‘the sun, the sun’). How long should they talk about that? What if they only have one idea? what if that “the sun the sun” example is all they can think of? The logical response from a teacher is “well then they should think of another topic which has more examples or they should go through and search for more examples within the text.” The latter is legitimate, and I can’t argue against that. Yes. You should probably find more examples, hypothetical student. But if there aren’t any more? If that’s the only example? Well, that may hurt the support of your claim, but by no means should you be forced to find another topic. If that’s the topic of your choice – if that’s the one that you’re passionate about (or as passionate as you can get about the assignment in general) then that’s going to be the best example of your work. You’re going to write the best about what you care about the most.

A word count is going to hinder that. It’s going to make you write more than you want to, if all you have is a single example. A well written paper is going to depend very heavily on that example, and if you can make it last 1,500 words (which I know there are people who can, and I’ll discuss that a bit later), well then kudos. But if you can’t stretch it out that long, then your argument is going to become spread too thin and you’re going to get redundant. Points will be repeated, and it’s going to weaken your case because the person reading it will get sick of what you’re saying and be open to your suggestions less than if you had simply written everything out in the amount of space that fit your argument. Lengthening a 500 word argument to 1500 words doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make you a better writer, it just winds up filling your essay with bullshit, or makes you repeat stuff, or even grasp at straws.

So requiring a word count to ensure a lengthy and well written argument only gets you one of the two – and they’re not of equal importance.

Having there be a maximum word count (“Must be 1500 words, +/- 100″) is intended to prevent lengthy arguments. My understanding of the belief behidn this is that if an argument is too long it is unfocussed, or the writer must cut down on rhetoric. Or use less quotes. Or embrace brevity. But there are some arguments that you simply can’t cut down, and restricting them worsens the quality of writing. Say, for example, that you’re talking about the use of the “A!” in The Orchestra. Say that you have a well formulated hypothesis about it and it’s supported by 10 different examples. Only spending 150 words on each of these examples won’t do them justice.

“Use fewer examples” someone might say.

“But what if each of those examples supports a different part of your hypothesis.”

“Then have a more specific hypothesis.”

“What if that’s as specific as you can get”

“Then write less.”

“What if I’m being as brief as I can?”

“Then eliminate unnecessary sentences”

“What if the only sentences that don’t contribute to the argument are transitional sentences that make the argument flow smoother?”

You see? There’s really no winning in this case. Yet I know teachers who adhere extremely strictly to that word count, whether it’s founded on this belief that their helping their students learn editing skills (maybe they are, but still – not in all cases), or helping them focus (again, maybe, but not always), or sheer lack of desire to read a 15 page paper on a single word of a single poem.

Whatever the reasoning is, it doesn’t work. Try as a teacher might, word counts don’t cut it. Let students write – if they could have written more, tell them. If they could have focussed a bit more, tell them. But don’t preemptively execute a strike on their analytical creativity.

P.S. As Promised: The Orchestra, By William Carlos Williams

Why We Need the Humanities

A bit of background, because it’s necessary. Well, there are two bits of background, so I’ll include both of them.
Background One: There is a book in the bathroom of that girl that I date which is titled “Lost in the Meritocracy.” I haven’t even come close to reading it all, but I will reference it because I’ve read enough to make a point.

Background Two: I am TAing a class on biology right now, which involves me grading papers.

Having included that bit of background, I would like to tell you a story. There is a girl in my class who we shall call Felicia Daisy Gerthwanderlink. Or Sue for short. She emailed me complaining about the grade she received on a paper (she even complained to the professor teaching the course). She said that my grading was wrong, and that I shouldn’t put as much emphasis on the writing when it’s a science class. I proceeded to explain to her my reasoning, which I will now explain to you:

1) This is a class designed for non-science majors. You learn science, yes. But it’s to fulfill the core requirement in the biological sciences. Therefore, science is not at the forefront of the students’ minds, so it shouldn’t be in my grading.

2) I am still checking to see that you have a good demonstrated knowledge of the material. I’m not ignoring science.

3) What good is having knowledge of a subject if you can’t actually share that knowledge? This doesn’t just apply to classroom information – this applies to damn near everything. Actually it applies to everything.

That last point is the one I would like to expand upon. So frequently these days, we are faced with an onslaught of budget cuts in education, more specifically the arts and, on an increasing level, the humanities. We also see an alarming emphasis placed in high school, in college, in grad school, on grades. Numbers. Standardized test scores. And yes, I realize this is probably a bit of a hackneyed topic to discuss and an overargued standpoint, but I’m doing it anyway, because it’s my blog.

Society has, on an increasing scale, looked to science – technology, research, new techniques to do things about stuff. Everything is about moving forward, moving onward, quickening, enlarging, improving, adding bling. Which, by no means, is a bad thing. I’m all for progress. But it’s gotten to the point that having an English major is equated with having a degree for nothing or everything (See Girls with Slingshots and Avenue Q). And the other humanities – those too seem to be increasingly shunned in favor of hard sciences. Funding bodies tend to exist and promote hard science labs. But what of the humanities? Why shouldn’t society start ignoring us (and by us I mean humanities-philes).

One: Those numbers? Grades and test scores? They don’t actually tell you how much information you learned. You can study for tests – you should study for tests – but what if you focussed on A B and C, but the test covered B C and D. Then there was something you were knowledgeable of that didn’t get covered and something that you weren’t comfortable with that was. So you still learned something, yes? Your grade doesn’t reflect that. Your grade will reflect your failure to accurately predict exactly what will be on that test.

“But then you’re supposed to study everything equally.” Says you! You can’t honestly think to cover every single aspect of an 18 or 10 week course. You simply can’t. It’s not possible. Especially not when you have so many other finals to do and papers to write. And how is it possible to condense those 18 weeks or 10 weeks of learning into a 2 hour exam? Stuff gets passed over – stuff YOU found interesting. Stuff is gone into in much more depth. Stuff that you hated and never wanted to see again.

I’m not against tests. I think they’re the most efficient means for gauging how much information you retain in a class.

But it’s not the best way. It’s seriously not the best way for gauging how much you learned. Or how much you understood. Or, most importantly, how much you can explain. What you learn and understand are sort of self explanatory, I suppose. This is the stuff that you will keep with you even past exam week – even if you lose some of it, some of it will stick with you.

As for how much you can explain, let’s look at these two sample questions on a 1 question test about eggs:
1. Eggs are:
a) yellow when scrambled.
b) elephants.
c) the main ingredient for the moon.
d) a punk rock band from the 1980′s known for kicking Ronald Reagan in the face every time they saw him which was a total of 10 times an hour since they lived in his basement.

2. Discuss eggs. Cover their shape, preparation techniques, colors, and history. Feel free to include whatever else you find interesting about them.

What is the difference? Question 1 has a single right answer that only applies to one particular trait of eggs. Question 2 requires you to explain and go into detail about a wide variety of topics and even lets you showcase information that might not have fit into that list of topics. Of course I’m giving you a slanted example, but shut up.

And then there’s the fact that question 2 would require you to write efficiently and explain your ideas. And here’s where the humanities are necessary. You need to know how to write. You just do. In any job, you will need to know how to write. Even if you’re one of those scientists that everyone is frothing over (I’m looking at you, MIT), you will need to know how to write. To explain your ideas to others. You need to write clearly. You need to write eloquently and make sure that others understand your ideas. Otherwise, you can be misunderstood, misrepresented, or just plain old have people NOT follow you, which can lead to incredibly BAD things.

So don’t bash the humanities, okay? Because in all honesty, without some knowledge of english, writing, social sicence, studies on communication, NONE of you would be able to understand a DAMN thing anyone else said.

Teaser Tuesday!

Hey Guys. It’s my first ever Teaser Tuesday. Because other people seem to be doing it, and therefore, that makes it cool. This is from my current WIP. Any comments you have, I would love to hear. Without further ado, I present the first snippet of Flood.

********

Historical records will tell you that the flood started at 4:29 PM on the afternoon of May 12th, 2005. That’s bullshit. The flood happened to different people at different times. I mean, yeah, the flood literally occurred when, at 4:29, a landslide knocked the fuck out of the dam that held back the waters of Lake Tsibote. Oh – and about the name of the lake – I just want to say why the hell are all of the bodies of water in this country named for some random ass Native American spiritual word? Anyway, so yeah, the actual flood itself happened when the waters of Lake Tsibote came rushing down past the broken dam and the offending rocks and gushed down into the valley where the town of Habbelfield is. My town. Well…it was my town. Then it got flooded like a bathroom with a stopped up toilet and a three year old with too much time on his hands.

We first figured out something was wrong when we couldn’t find Kyle – my younger brother. He’s 8, and when he’s not within earshot, something is bound to happen. I’m not saying it’s always his fault, I’m just saying it’s…well…it just happens that way. One time he disappeared for an hour and while he was gone, the power went out. It didn’t come back on for a week. The fridge was filled with mold – as in not even the usual “oh no there’s some green fuzz on the strawberries” type of mold. We needed a new fridge. Yeah – it was that bad.

Within twenty minutes of us not noticing that he had been gone for a half hour, there was a giant tremor that ran through the house. My dad, being my dad, started to step outside to take a look to see what was going on, despite my mom’s screams at him to get back from the goddamn door. The minute the door was open, there was a mammoth gust of air, which blew my dad back and the door wide open. Just as my dad had righted himself, a wall of water blasted through the dry wall and timbers that was the side of our living room. Bubbles and splinters raced past my eyes and the ground was no longer an issue. It’s weird that the only thought I can actually remember is “Gravity’s now my bitch.” You know, because of the whole weightless thing. I don’t know – don’t ask me – it just sort of happened that way that that’s the only thing I can remember thinking. Oh yeah – that and the fact that if I was going to die it probably would be by a wall of water.
*********

So there you have it. First snippet. Thoughts?

My Take on Church and State

I should include a disclaimer here: I am an atheist. Culturally and in terms of birth, I am Jewish. However, despite an affinity for latkes and matzah ball soup, I am still very much an atheist. I still will recognize that there is a majority in the United States that does not share my (lack of) beliefs and choose to follow a church of their choosing (and by church, I am referring to church as a synonym for religion, due to its pervasive use in such a manner).

Some of these people (of which you may consider yourself or may not) insist that the separation of church and state is important, nay vital, to maintaining the sanctity of government and preventing the creation of an exclusionary ruling body designed to force its society to conform to any sort of particular religious standards. To use an extreme example, their fear is that if Orthodox Jews took over the government and did away with the separation of church and state, then every Saturday, anyone caught using electronic devices would be sent away for breaking the Sabbath. Thus, the principle of the separation of church and state is vital to the maintenance of the union and all it holds dear.

But wait! Wait wait wait!

First of all, let me address an argument made by the opposing party – the ones who say that church and state need to be unified. They claim that the founding fathers had religion in mind when they wrote the constitution. I mean, in all honesty, the United States were emigrated to as a result of religious persecution, so, in that respect, they’re right. Yet the founding fathers were not the pilgrims (as some of you may remember). So let’s talk about them.

In this respect, I will concede that the founding fathers probably did allow some of what they said to be influenced by religion. They are humans, after all, and a good bit of humanity’s moral compass comes from religious teachings, be they judaic, islamic, christian, etc. Yet it is impossible to say that the founding father’s intentionally placed religious agendas into the constitution. For example, the legal system – the system of crime & punishment – is entirely contradictory to the idea of “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” or however that passage goes. Essentially, it states that man cannot judge another for he too is sinful. Yet if that were the case, the whole “jury of your peers” thing – goes straight out the window. Why? Cuz it’s a jury of men judging…man. (Also, I’m referring to people, when I say men. Work with me, here).

The structure of the government is an attempt to display the free will of man kind to make a choice – every person is intended to receive a vote in today’s society, who is considered mature enough to make an adult decision (although some would say some people never make an adult decision and allow themselves to be swayed with parlor tricks, but that’s another story). This idea of the free will of man and the belief in the goodness of the individual person and their ability to form their own rational thoughts is…contradictory to just about everything in the Torah/Bible. Job – a victim of God’s fickleness. Abraham – forced by God to slaughter his son JUST KIDDING HERE’S A GOAT. Revelations? SORRY – everything you’ve done up until now is completely and utterly pointless. SURPRISE.

The entire idea of religious texts is centered around this belief in a supernatural force – a deity or deities, and their historical relationship with mankind. This can include fathering a son, destroying towns, and creating mankind and the world. This supernatural entity watches over us like a much much meaner, bloodlusting Santa Claus. He/She/It/They can do whatever the hell they want to us and we can’t do jack shit to prevent it. That idea of constant fear of an omnipresent unseen entity carries with it the implication that you have no choice – everything you do is futile. Even the very principle of free will is an illusion because EVERYTHING CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU AT A MOMENTS NOTICE.

So yes, the founding fathers had the idea in mind that “hey. i was taught this. This is right. This is reasonable.” and they put it in the constitution. And yes what they were taught in terms of moral instruction may have originated from religion. But to say the founding fathers were like “I’m Christian this is a Christian nation RAWR” while signing the document that founded the United States of America is just absurd.

Now. The practice of government is different. I can summarize it pretty briefly: representation means representation. By this I mean that, as citizens, we elect officials to represent us in congress. We may or may not be religious. Those representatives are responsible for best representing the wishes and desires of the regions they…represent. So they are responsible for illuminating, by way of their votes, the opinions and moral decisions they feel their constituents would make or express. This includes decisions based on religious reasons. They can also represent their own religions, intentionally or not, through allowing their own moral upbringing (if it was religious) to guide their votes.

It’s impossible and irresponsible to attempt to separate church and state, but not because it goes against the beliefs of the founding fathers, but because it would be detrimental to the idea of representation to ignore that aspect of society and culture.