Thursday, January 21, 2010
How I got this way
In first grade, I write a story about being a cheetah policeman who will give them speeding tickets for running too fast. In third grade, I write a story about a deer who is smarter than the hunter, but the hunter ends up shooting the deer anyway.
In sixth grade, I run for class vice president, attempt to ad lib a speech to the student body, and bomb horribly. It will take me another ten years to get over my fear of public speaking and to learn to prepare at least the gist of my remarks in advance.
In ninth grade, the chair of the English department, who dislikes me because I didn't try hard in her class in seventh grade, puts me in the stupid class and refuses to switch me to the advanced class. We watch a lot of movies.
In eleventh grade, I read Ozymandias and first have the experience of loving a poem, not counting Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, etc.
In twelfth grade, I write notes for my fantasy novel during AP calculus and copy my friend's homework every week. I end up with a 5 on the AP exam anyway.
Mr. Couchman, my AP English teacher, has us read poems by Albert Goldbarth and Sherod Santos. He writes poetry as well and dreams of being published in The New Yorker. One of our favorite pasttimes in class, which he indulges us in, is writing fake excuse notes in futile attempts to get out of his highly detail-oriented tests.
After one of our mock AP tests includes writing about May Swenson's "The Centaur," he half-jokingly suggests that you will always do well on the AP test writing about sex. On the real AP test, one of the essays is on a passage from Sarah Orne Jewett's "The White Heron" that features a girl climbing a tall tree sticky with sap. I write about sex. I get a 5 on the exam.
Going into college, I think I will channel my storytelling into computer game design and writing science fiction on the side. I turn out not to have the patience for the hardcore aspects of software development and wash out of the computer science major.
I start taking fiction workshops. The professor was at Iowa at the same time as Flannery O'Connor. One of his rules is "no genre writing." I spend the next two years writing genre stories disguised as "literary" stories.
In my first poetry workshop, my poems are bad. One of them is about finding a great featureless gray wall that symbolizes death. However, they are far from the worst--one freshman reads a long poem about how his family moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, so he had to give up his cat. He cries while reading the poem. I learn that, even if something is terribly sad because it happened to you, it may make for a plain terrible poem.
Kate Daniels, teacher of my first poetry workshop, recommends Mark Jarman as my advisor. For the first time, there are people pushing my creative writing development. Mark Jarman also repeatedly tells me I need to speak up more in class.
More to come in the future as I think of it...
In sixth grade, I run for class vice president, attempt to ad lib a speech to the student body, and bomb horribly. It will take me another ten years to get over my fear of public speaking and to learn to prepare at least the gist of my remarks in advance.
In ninth grade, the chair of the English department, who dislikes me because I didn't try hard in her class in seventh grade, puts me in the stupid class and refuses to switch me to the advanced class. We watch a lot of movies.
In eleventh grade, I read Ozymandias and first have the experience of loving a poem, not counting Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, etc.
In twelfth grade, I write notes for my fantasy novel during AP calculus and copy my friend's homework every week. I end up with a 5 on the AP exam anyway.
Mr. Couchman, my AP English teacher, has us read poems by Albert Goldbarth and Sherod Santos. He writes poetry as well and dreams of being published in The New Yorker. One of our favorite pasttimes in class, which he indulges us in, is writing fake excuse notes in futile attempts to get out of his highly detail-oriented tests.
After one of our mock AP tests includes writing about May Swenson's "The Centaur," he half-jokingly suggests that you will always do well on the AP test writing about sex. On the real AP test, one of the essays is on a passage from Sarah Orne Jewett's "The White Heron" that features a girl climbing a tall tree sticky with sap. I write about sex. I get a 5 on the exam.
Going into college, I think I will channel my storytelling into computer game design and writing science fiction on the side. I turn out not to have the patience for the hardcore aspects of software development and wash out of the computer science major.
I start taking fiction workshops. The professor was at Iowa at the same time as Flannery O'Connor. One of his rules is "no genre writing." I spend the next two years writing genre stories disguised as "literary" stories.
In my first poetry workshop, my poems are bad. One of them is about finding a great featureless gray wall that symbolizes death. However, they are far from the worst--one freshman reads a long poem about how his family moved to an apartment complex that didn't allow pets, so he had to give up his cat. He cries while reading the poem. I learn that, even if something is terribly sad because it happened to you, it may make for a plain terrible poem.
Kate Daniels, teacher of my first poetry workshop, recommends Mark Jarman as my advisor. For the first time, there are people pushing my creative writing development. Mark Jarman also repeatedly tells me I need to speak up more in class.
More to come in the future as I think of it...
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In my 10th grade biology class, I wrote poems during class instead of taking notes (or, sometimes, at the same time that I was taking notes). I never studied for the tests, I just relied on my memory from the teacher's lectures.
The class included frequent lab work (slime molds, flatworms, disecting sheep hearts, removing chicken embryos from the shell, etc.), and I never did any preparation for the lab work, I just faked my way through it after the teacher gave a brief description of what we were supposed to do. Nothing ever exploded.
The first half of the year I got C's in the class. Little by little during the year I got more skilled at half-listening while half-writing notes, and at picking out which stuff to remember from the lectures for the tests later. The second half of the year I got B's.
Over the years I've been idly curious how I would have done in the class, if I'd actually taken notes, read the textbook, and read the lab manual before doing the labwork...
The class included frequent lab work (slime molds, flatworms, disecting sheep hearts, removing chicken embryos from the shell, etc.), and I never did any preparation for the lab work, I just faked my way through it after the teacher gave a brief description of what we were supposed to do. Nothing ever exploded.
The first half of the year I got C's in the class. Little by little during the year I got more skilled at half-listening while half-writing notes, and at picking out which stuff to remember from the lectures for the tests later. The second half of the year I got B's.
Over the years I've been idly curious how I would have done in the class, if I'd actually taken notes, read the textbook, and read the lab manual before doing the labwork...
What a brilliant post. I'll be sure to give it credit when I steal the idea in a few weeks....
And I suppose it should tell me something about my own writing that I use to make up math problems to solve when I tune out of 8th grade English. Sorry, Mr. Conley!
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And I suppose it should tell me something about my own writing that I use to make up math problems to solve when I tune out of 8th grade English. Sorry, Mr. Conley!
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