what the hell is water

at best i'll be asleep when you get back

i have been unproductive for the past week, i haven't slept well in several days, and in the past two days i have eaten three meals. commence nightmares.

brett is telling me about my writing. it is not good anymore, he says. i was a better writer in college than i am now. in fact, he tells me, he is a better writer than i am at this point. i cry.

A wants to know if, when we take our trip to see B, i want to start working as a 'sub' so we can stay longer. i am hesitant. i don't even know what it means to work as a sub and i don't know if i want to stay longer because maybe it will be too expensive and so she gets mad at me for being reluctant. i know she is going to talk to B about me. i realize that all of them talk about me to each other and i have stopped talking to them about each other because they always tell. i realize that they will all know i don't want to work as a sub and they won't be friends with me anymore. at this point i don't care.

B tells me she knows i told A i don't want to work as a sub. she knows everything and she is mad about everything. we are leaving a place and she is trying to sneak a styrofoam mask out of the building in her suitcase, but she isn't allowed, because it's a mask. i suggest that she go out with her suitcase and then come back and put the mask in something less conspicuous than a suitcase. people from spain are there and i am crying because i don't want to leave. i tell them in spanish that it will be a whole year before i see them again.

there is a man with magical powers to cure a toothache and there is a dark cake that makes me feel good, so i eat three pieces.

then i am trying to catch the bus. i've got my bike. i pick my bike up over my head and run to the bus and load it in the bottom, but i've left my helmet next to the light post along with something else of mine, and i assume i will have time to go back and get it, but instead the bus driver starts driving. he always does this.

+

first i guess i should say that i had a really good couple of weeks with several small but meaningful accomplishments. last spring, inspired by chelsea m., i made one of those "101 things in 1001 days" lists. i was going to start a little sideblog to keep track, but instead i made an excel spreadsheet of more than 101 things and i'm not keeping track of the days.

a lot of it was house-related, so i focused on that primarily (and ended up moving to a new and much nicer apartment altogether); in the meantime i crossed a few other things off the list: went to a summer writing workshop (with a fancy special scholarship!), bought a new cookbook, cooked with orzo, bought a nice new bathing suit that i love (it'd been 4 or 5 years), bought a big floppy hat for summer, organized my craft supplies, planted flowers and herbs on my porch, put up a scratching board for fred so he wouldn't scratch the sofa, fixed up my bike (nice seat, wicker basket, more comfortable handlebars, lights), bought new bras (3 years), took a trip with lisa, and started taking voice lessons.

the nice thing about making a list of 101 things is that it's hard at first to think of so many things you want to do. so you have to kind of dig deep and include silly easy things like buying a hat and also some things that you consider kind of improbable or extraneous. like, for me, voice lessons are clearly an unnecessary expense. i don't have so much cash flow that i 'should' really be considering voice lessons on top of my monthly dance tuition at two different studios. but i have always, always, always wanted them. it didn't surprise me when i made the list; what surprised me, i guess, was that it took making the list to give myself permission to just go find a teacher. (i also made sure that i could pay for lessons and still meet my savings goals; i am only taking lessons every other week because that's what i can reasonably afford.) when i told my mom about it, she said, "you are so smart to do the things you want to do" and the revelation, for me, is that the list-making helps me identify those things - and that i need help to identify those things - not what i should be doing with my time, but what i want to be doing with it - on both the small and large scale. 

anyway, there are some old bears on the list too, conquering fears and failures and hangups. there are a lot of writing- and dance-related goals on the list. a couple months ago i finished my first new story since college, which is a huge deal. and in the past three weeks, i auditioned for a dance performance (last time was spring 2005) and was cast in a role that requires pointe work (first time since i was 13); i learned how to shoulder-roll over both my right and left shoulders (for modern class - have been trying to learn how to do this since spring 2002); and i can do single pirouettes on pointe, on both my right and left sides (first time since i was 13).

so that's all i want to say about that. i really got on here this morning to write about the dreams i had last night but i thought these things were important to mention.

fake it till you make it

yesterday two nice things happened.

the first was that i was trying to learn - finally, after six years - how to do a shoulder roll. i'm taking m____'s class at tulane and she likes floor work but she's also very patient and is willing to break things down. plus i like her style - if there were a ballet version of floor work (post-graham), this would be it. she's very clean and deliberate and lyrical without being gushy. there's a kind of quiet calm at the heart of the movement. it makes me want to be able to do the stupid floor stuff even while it literally strikes fear into my very core. i actually started coldsweating while watching her demonstrate an exercise tuesday. (it wasn't as bad as i thought. this is better than j.a.'s class, where it's always as bad as i thought, or worse.)

anyway, last year m____ had offered to work with me on shoulder rolls but we could only do it after class (she was taking along with me, not teaching) and neither of us really had time. this week i told her my goal is to be able to do a shoulder roll (without freaking out about it) by the end of the semester. so yesterday after class i went up to her and asked for a tutorial.

she's like, ok, so start off in plow pose (a yoga position where you're lying on your back and your feet are over your head, touching the floor behind you). she said she wanted to see if there was a flexibility issue with my back that might be making the roll hard for me.

'but i don't think that's it,' she said, 'because i know you're like really flexible.'

i'm lying on the back of my neck with my feet over my head, which is very uncomfortable, and i'm like, 'uh, what? no. i'm actually really tight all over. like, embarrassingly so.'

'really?' she says. 'i thought you were super flexible.'

i'm struggling to get my toes planted on the floor behind me. 'that's sweet of you,' i say.

'you do have some tightness in your back,' she says, 'i guess that makes it a little harder, but..'

and all i can think is HOW CAN SHE NOT HAVE NOTICED HOW STUPIDLY INFLEXIBLE I AM? i am the girl who is like, when the class is doing straddles and everyone else has their chests and faces on the floor, i'm basically sitting straight up. it's very conspicuous.

so it's kind of awesome that she was fooled!

.

and that night in ballet class, j____ was teaching - she taught some classes this summer but now she's doing monday nights and i'm not taking class on mondays. so i haven't seen her in a while.

i was feeling crabby and i had been looking forward to class with i__, the usual tuesday night teacher. i was thinking i might leave after the barre and go read a book or something. the whole barre i was thinking this, and then we got to battements (the last barre exercise).

she came around to my side of the studio and i'm battement-ing and she's like 'whoa. you look really strong.' and i whisper 'thanks' and keep doing battements. and she's like 'have you been taking class? you look really strong.' and i nod.

and all she means really is that my leg is higher than usual. i noticed last thursday my extension is a little better, which i chalked up to the 3+ classes per week.

anyway i stayed till the end of j___'s class. i mean, since i'm so strong and all.

.

ok but then today happened. and today i've been feeling crappy because i have to write a new short story for tuesday and i have a sort of fleshed-out idea but no sense of the plot and not enough time (i only found out i was up yesterday - half the group is going to be gone next week so i got bumped) and this means i pretty much have to work for a long time every night for it to get done for tuesday. and it probably won't get done in time and it'll be half-finished just like the last one and i'll be disappointed and frustrated.

and then i went to pointe class. i've been wearing my shoes at the barre and it is time to start taking center on pointe. the studio just started offering pointe class again (they took a break for the summer, despite my pleading). i'd been hoping to use the weekly pointe class as my slow strength-gaining opportunity for center work, with an eye towards being prepared for nutcracker auditions, but no fucking dice. they scheduled nutcracker auditions two weeks after starting pointe class back up.  i talked to g___ last week about wanting to audition but knowing i won't be ready, pointe-wise, for auditions. and he was super nice and encouraging and complimentary (my physique is perfect, my line is perfect, even the fact that i don't have crazy flexibility is perfect for corps work, and i should just try the audition and they'll push me to be ready and if i'm not ready by performance then it's ok and i can do it next year).

so i didn't wear my shoes in class yesterday, thinking i should save my shoes (which are on their way out) and my feet till pointe class today. and i didn't wear my shoes at the barre today, so that i could try center work without being fatigued by barre. for my first attempt i wanted to be totally fresh.

and oh god it was a nightmare. like, a nightmare.

on the plus side, my balance is better than ever and my shoes look really nice on my feet. i did relevés instead of pirouettes, per usual, and i managed to stay up for a while. i felt in control. it was nice. but as soon as i tried to turn (and this is positive too, that i even tried to turn - though honestly it's so obvious that i am strong enough to get up on one foot and balance in passé that it was clearly ridiculous not to try turning) - as soon as i tried i couldn't get all the way up and came down immediately. it's just totally scary to go up en pointe while changing my facing. it's disorienting. so (also positive), i shifted to a go-back-to-basics thing where i did four quarter-turns on my right side, just to get the feel for changing direction when going up. and those were fine. i didn't have time to try half-turns but i'll do it tomorrow. that pirouette bullshit is totally mental.

also positive is that i have always been able to do piqué turns on pointe, and i can still do them.

so then everything else was fucking horrible. we did this awful exercise where we were supposed to do high développés while relevé-ing on the same foot over and over and also shifting our facing and i just could not do it. i tried it once and came around to the back to try again and i was panicking so bad i thought i was going to pass out, which is a first for ballet class. the panicking has happened before but not feeling faint from it. when i say i couldn't do it, i mean, like, i really was not even close. i'm not being too hard on myself, or self-deprecating, or whatever. it was a disaster. i did it a second time, trying the développé at forty-five degrees instead of as-high-as-possible, and it was better, but still horrible.

then we did fouetté-arabesques and i thought well, i can do these, this will be ok. and it still wasn't ok. i was jumping to get en pointe instead of relevé-ing, and so i had no control at all. it seems like in general i don't have a sense of how much force i need to get up to pointe - either i don't give it enough (e.g., pirouettes) or i give too much (e.g., fouetté-arabesques).

so ok, i can work on figuring out how much force i need to use. that's a reasonable thing to need to figure out. and this was my first class doing center work in almost a year. and i have little experience with pointe work anyway. the fact that i totally fucking blow is to be expected.

it's just that it's so unfortunate. my refusal to work on pointe has kept me from years of performance opportunities in baton rouge and now at least one year of performing in new orleans. and i've had pointe shoes for the past four years in an effort to get back (or start trying in earnest, unlike the twelve-year-old me) but this is the wall i hit. it sucks to suck in class. i am straight-up flailing around in front of girls who have much less technique and experience than i do. it's embarrassing that they are watching. but honestly that's such a small part of it. it's more frustrating personally that i am so competent on flat and such a beginner on pointe. so then i'm thinking, i should just go to the earlier pointe class for beginners. but i don't want to take their beginner barre - even though i have the pointe experience of, like, a twelve-year-old, i have the strength and general technique of someone much older, and that does make a huge difference. i don't need a beginner class. what g___ said last week about nutcracker auditions was sort of an epiphany to me - i have the technique, i just don't have the time on pointe.

so i get in the car after class and i want to die and auditions are saturday and the studio has only even offered two pointe classes since like, last april, and this was my last chance to try center work before the auditions. and it's so unfair. and how can i audition when i am so unprepared. they aren't going to let me perform with them. i put so much work into these various disciplines but never get good enough to actually do anything with them. i'm a mediocre writer full of fear and assorted other hang-ups. i'm a mediocre dancer full of fear and assorted other hang-ups. well really it's just fear. i've been thinking all day about it, how afraid i am and what am i going to do, what is there to do other than just doing.

i talk to brett briefly on the phone, trying not to cry, and then i meet sarah at the coffeeshop for our writing date. the story i'm starting is about dancers, and i have never written about dancers before, and what a fucking night to start. do i even want to write about this since i suck so badly at it?

but the writing date goes ok, i start a scene and then suddenly am full of things i'm interested in writing about.

and on the way home i decide:

i won't take the beginner pointe class. i just need to slow down. those exercises were too fast for me. if i had done them at half time i would have been more in control. it's probably a good thing to be given intermediate-level pointe work right now - i should just modify the exercises so that i can actually give them a shot. i'll ask the teacher about this; i'm sure she will say it's ok.

and

i always hit a wall with pointe work because i am unwilling to suffer through technique class in pointe shoes. i argue to myself that i need technique class to, you know, keep up with my technique. if i am only doing single pirouettes all week long on pointe, maybe i will lose my doubles on flat. this is a fine argument but really it's just that i don't want to be totally miserable and struggling on pointe. but if i don't struggle for a while i'll never get better.

so it's time to struggle. i have to suck it up. in both senses of the phrase. i'm aiming for class four days a week (which means i'll mostly get three). i will wear my flat shoes at the barre and my pointe shoes at center for every technique class. i will allow myself one technique class a week in flat so i can have some fun and feel confident. this means i have two more opportunities (thursday and saturday technique classes) to try center work on pointe before the audition. i might not get cast in nutcracker since i'm, uh, obviously not ready right now. but if i work at this shit now, wherever i end up next year, i should be strong enough on pointe that i will be able to perform somewhere.

and i was thinking how i never push myself and i want everything to come easily and that's why i'm so mediocre at everything, but it's not really true. i'm taking these damn modern classes and i dread every single one. it is so uncomfortable and scary but i'm doing it anyway.

K+4: alive and kickin'

published.

moment

i just finished my first new story draft since may 2005 and the sofa is sweaty where i was sitting for three hours. i had the a/c on low cool. there is a treble clef drawn in pencil on the side of the a/c, i was meant to live in this apartment, i want to be in here all day long, i play piano every hour, just a couple songs till i get aggravated, i have prodigious muscle memory, i sat down and played the first verse of billy joel's 'lullaby' i even started in the right key. i even remembered the bridge which is the hardest part. i can sing medium-loud in here because i don't share walls with the neighbors but i do sing directly into the wall that is the stairwell for the upper apartments. i have a glass of wine and season 1 disc 4 of madmen, which has four episodes on it, not three but four, because the gods are smiling. they're not particularly smiling because of the short story, which does not feel like an accomplishment. it feels like a piece of shit. it is a piece of shit. but it is twenty-five pages long and 6,618 words. the words don't make sense together, but i wrote all the parts. i am starting to think it would make more sense as a one-act play, honestly, because it's almost entirely dialogue and not in a nicholson-baker vox kind of way. my goal was to finish it, and it doesn't feel finished but i got through it, which is basically the same thing. my goal was to finish and not care about it being bad because it had to be bad. and it is bad. but it is long, and i got through it faster the longer i wrote. i'd written five pages over several months, then i wrote ten pages in about a week, and i just wrote another ten since thursday. ten pages in five days is basically the speed i was writing at in college. so it's safe to say i'm not blocked. but very out of shape. whatever, whatever, whatever. i have a non-celebratory glass of wine. i get to watch madmen and stay up as late as i motherfucking want.

q:

is there anything more sickening than workshopping a story that isn't ready?

a: no.

...

i finally started writing a new short story. it's been since may 2005. that's four years. that is a long fucking time. i'd done some productive revision work, so it's not like those were four utterly wasted writingless years. but still. 

the story idea started with an anecdote from october 2004. then i graduated and totally freaked out (hence the not writing) and my friends who graduated were also freaking out and i decided to turn the anecdote into a story about graduating from college and freaking out. the way you freak out when the basic structure of your life as it's existed for 18 years is taken away - this is ordinarily (from what i've seen) not a very ostentatious thing. you don't commit yourself to a mental institution (though my friends and i talked about it) or anything dramatic like that. it's just a big change and loss and it corresponds to other big changes and losses, like home hasn't felt like "home" in so long that you can't even pretend to be comfortable there anymore, or your parents are totally over the empty nest shit and actually get out of the house and pursue new interests instead of always being around ready for you to visit, or you have no idea how to pursue work in your "field" so you take some crappy job barbacking or waiting tables or being a landman and you numbly go through every day trying not to think about the future because you have no idea how anything works or how anything good will ever happen. this is the year that you drink too much every night at the same shitty bar with your also-scared-to-death friend. this is the year that you do a lot of things that you'd always thought were a hallmark of bad judgment but you have altogether stopped caring. etc etc etc.

so obviously i think the story of what happens when you graduate and have no idea what happens next is a worthwhile story to tell. writing it is hard because the mood is sort of listless or numb or apathetic, and if you're not careful you run the risk of making the reader feel listless and apathetic about the story rather than empathetic toward the character.

but writing it is also hard because damn, four years is a long time without practice. when i finished LSU i was in a really good place with my sentences and avoiding dialogue ruts and i was having fun playing with voice and point of view. i was never at a loss for a story idea and once i settled on what i wanted to write, it took less than three weeks to get a really polished first draft that i was totally happy to workshop - and i mean three weeks where two of them were spent procrastinating.

so here i am trying to write this story and not feeling like i know how to write anything at all. the first five pages took months to write and it's because i hated writing them. i was bored, the story was boring, it wasn't good writing, it was way worse than how i used to write. writing one line of dialogue was excruciating and then the whole thing was dialogue because that's what i do when i don't know what else to do. so then i'm mad about being back in the fucking dialogue rut. 

but i basically kept my head down and pushed forward. i haven't revised the beginning. it's all just how it came out, which is to say, the style is uneven and largely pedestrian, the protagonist isn't well-drawn, the scenes are weirdly proportioned, there's whole swaths of the story that are totally dull, the analogies are cliched. the story is full of problems.

at this point, though, i'm aware in a broad sense of what these problems are (the broad sense being the only sense that exists for a story in this rough of a draft) and i just want to fucking finish. i just want to get all the way to the ending that i have in mind and then see what i've got. this is not the way i've ever written before. it used to be that every sentence of the story had to be as perfect as i could make it before i could move on to the next sentence.

i used to envy people (boys, usually) who would come to workshop with a bunch of shit on a page, just a huge mess, and didn't seem worried. there was so much going on in their drafts and their stories weren't coherent but i felt that they ended up with a lot to play with in revision. i felt like my stories, in contrast, were clean but limited. i envied their freedom.

not anymore! workshopping a hot mess of a story is fucking miserable. writing a scene that you hate because it's boring and having people tell you, "i don't know, that scene was just....boring" - it totally sucks. i fucking know it's boring! i know it isn't good yet! don't talk to me like i don't know the story is a hot mess! 

except that's the point of workshop, to tell the writer what the problems are. at my workshop in amherst last week, the professor noted that you shouldn't give a draft to anyone until you don't know what to do with it anymore. i concur. when i'm done with a draft and i know it's not quite working but i don't know why - or even if i think it's working but other people don't think so - i am so willing to have people point out every little sentence they don't like, or gesture that annoys them, or whatever. i actively pursue aggressive critiques on drafts that i'm done with. i find it super helpful.

i just don't like it on drafts that aren't ready. this draft was not ready. the narrative wasn't even finished.

but. i wrote ten pages in less than a week, which is way better than five pages over several months. and as fucking annoying as it was to get comments tonight which are largely unhelpful because they reference problems that are largely obvious to me -

well, for one thing, about fifteen percent of what was said did help me figure out why i've got the story set up like i do, and how i'm going to refine it -

but mostly - i just don't give a shit. the character seems unlikable? you don't know why the mom is there? you think i added too many components to the story? i don't care right now. i'll care later. right now i just want to keep pushing through.

i suppose that is the most important thing.

dear ann (if i may):

"Your 'Remedy' is fine fiction.  Please join us.  We are happy to extend the maximum fellowship of $400 to you..."

i applied to seven - seven! - summer workshops because grad school apps were such a bust that my confidence is pretty well shot, and i have no idea how competitive these summer things are. not all of the workshops have app fees, and one of them didn't charge me the app fee because the guy is nice and read my manuscript and letter even though he couldn't open the pdf form with the credit card info. he said my letter was 'compelling.' then he accepted me into the workshop and put me in the intermediate fiction and waitlisted me for the master class. which means if i had applied earlier i could have gotten into the master class.

so far, then, acceptances from all three workshops i've heard back from. one has scholarships but i won't hear if i got money till may; one offered me a fellowship and it would be cheap as hell to go there but the faculty isn't nearly as good as the other programs; one (the guy who didn't charge me the app fee) doesn't have finaid and it's expensive. so now i'm stressed out, wanting to wait till i have information about finaid from all programs before i decide, but the longer i wait, the more the workshops close up and i'll be stuck in some beginner class if i can still get a spot at all. or at least that's what it feels like.

"fine fiction" indeed. why couldn't my grad school apps have gone like this??

self-note: how to regain sanity

summer lyric:
-- schedule audition
-- buy tap shoes
-- transpose sheet music

DISCRETE TASKS:
schedule chiropractor appointment
buy bike stuff (lock, helmet, light, seat)
de-rust bike
finish unpacking bedroom
ask landlady for permission to paint apartment
paint apartment
hang things on walls (decorate)
purchase additional pots and flowering plants
repot plants
research summer workshops
sew dress
finish cowl

ONGOING TASKS:
practice piano
practice spanish
read
write stories
ballet class and pointe work
modern class
cook new meals

to feel normal and good, i must:*
-- eat most meals at home
-- go to ballet 3x a week
-- read a lot
-- write stories
-- make my home environment nicer
-- play piano
-- make something

*items in italics = "i do this most of the time"

medium-term goals:
-- cook one "fun" meal per week
-- find a good summer workshop
-- perform in something
-- have new work for each wg rotation
-- pirouettes on pointe
-- read a short story in spanish

don't beat your head against a wok: and other accidents

i.

many years ago on december 31, 2004, i joined facebook. shortly thereafter i started a facebook photo album which i titled 'you and me and everyone we know.'

some time later, while browsing the new releases in blockbuster, i came across an interesting-looking movie called me and you and everyone we know. and man, i was pissed.

no, i didn't see a preview and forget about it but the name stuck in my head. i made up 'you and me and everyone we know.' and miranda july made up 'me and you and everyone we know.' but she is famous and made a movie so she pretty much has dibs. it's annoying.

before that, i wrote a short story. i guess it was in the fall semester of 2004, because rikki and i were living together. i wrote a story from the first-person perspective of a middle-aged southern white dude. his wife was having kind of a hard time so she took to reading self-help books and inflicting pop psychology on her family. i titled it 'the only thing i know for sure,' which i didn't like too much because it reminded me of godawful wally lamb's i know this much is true.

well today i went to put bastard out of carolina on my amazon wishlist, and guess what i fucking found.

dorothy allison has another book: two or three things i know for sure.

god damn! it's a good fucking thing i retitled that story before submitting my grad school applications! though to be honest i have no idea what i called it. 'recovery,' i think.

no. haha. i just looked it up: 'remedy.'

god, between that and my recent discovery of author george singleton - who writes in, i don't know, the exact same voice as the one i used in that story - and the fact that my other submission was in second person a la lorrie moore -

i mean, i know 'there's nothing new under the sun' but come fucking on.

ii.

becca was sharing some notes with me from her art history class. the notes are mostly from one smart girl, but apparently the smart girl missed a few classes and had another classmate fill in the gaps.

this classmate is maybe not so smart (her notes often mention 'rodiron' detail - you know, the fancy black metal stuff on new orleans balconies...) but she's got a way with words.

my favorites:
-- unfeathered imagination
-- the emotional british pottery of shakespear

when i leave spain, i'm going to have to change my blog title. maybe these are contenders.

iii.

we're unlearning english.

in the previous post, i mention a rule for subjunctive tense in spanish - that if you've got an independent clause (e.g., "mom is pregnant") and you want to comment on the clause (e.g., "how great that mom is pregnant"), you need to use the subjunctive.

my workbook says you use subjunctive for "comentario o valoración." translating that to english, i wrote "comment or valoration." and i was convinced for about ten minutes that "valoration" was a real word in english. it should be a word. it sounds like a word. it makes sense to me.

in fact, valoration is not a word. wordreference recommended 'valuation' or 'evaluation.' i went with evaluation, but you know what? i like valoration better.

other words that are better in spanish:
tranquilo. pues. me falta. me apetece. the latter makes me want to say "it appetizes me" even though i could ostensibly use "it appeals to me" instead.

i consistently say 'intentar' when i mean 'probar' - both mean 'to try' - but intentar is to attempt, and probar is to taste.

i went shopping (or shopping-watching) with lisa and stevie today; we took a break at the ice cream place in puerta real. the nutella flavor me apeteció, and i stood at the counter repeating 'probar' to myself to avoid my usual error of asking to attempt a food. (al final i got a different flavor without trying it.)

i mentioned my problem to lisa, who told me she's got a spanish student who always says 'probe' in english for 'probar.'

as in, "can i probe that ice cream?"

also: today lisa suggested that we talk to a friend of mine and 'explain her' something.

new lows, my friends. these are new depths we've sunk to.

ain't it good to know

email to rick / feb 15, 6:33 PM
subject: request for advice! (but not really urgent)

Hola Rick!

Here is a two-part question about writing comments on student essays.

I'm working on an application for [a teaching] assistantship at [Random University]. Part of the application is to read a student essay and offer comments. I did something similar for [University Somewhere Else]; the student essay was, predictably, poorly written and the argument was all over the place. So it was easy to offer suggestions.

The student essay for [Random U], on the other hand, is written pretty well. There aren't any problems with grammar or punctuation. My notes on the essay are mostly about tone (it often veers into melodrama) and clarity of argument/idea overload. I think those comments are pretty straightforward and appropriate.

However, it's an essay arguing that modern media is ruining writing/ thinking/ art. And there are parts of the argument - not just the execution - that I disagree with. Or, I'm having a hard time separating my problems regarding his argument with my problems regarding his execution. Or maybe I can't separate the two - if he were executing it better, I wouldn't have these problems with his argument.

So, Part One of my question is: if this is supposed to be a sample of how Teacher Ann would comment on student work in an expository writing course, would it be appropriate for me to comment critically on the student's actual argument? I am a little reluctant, because I figure the point of the course is that a student practices positing and substantiating an argument. Whether or not I agree with the argument seems to be irrelevant.

I do think it's safe to ask this student to better distinguish his argument from the cliched romanticization that the good old days were better, that modern technology ruins everything, and that in the past people were better educated.

But, for example, the student contrasts a "good" day, spent with "good books, thoughtful emails, and home recordings on my laptop of my songs in progress," with what apparently is a bad day, spent with "my television and a few beers." I find the puritanical tone of that to be off-putting and not even credible. He opens the essay with a description of a lazy morning he spent checking facebook and watching HBO. But in describing each activity, he includes what a total waste of time it was - so that it comes off as not believable - like he's criticizing himself the way he imagines people who are "above" such Mindless Entertainment would criticize him - and simultaneously including himself in the category of people who are above it all.

So can I say stuff like I find the tone of the 1st person POV to be off-putting? I would definitely say it as a fellow student doing peer-edits, but I'm not sure how a teacher would approach (or not approach) it. It seems mighty subjective. But I also think his tone is detrimental to his argument - basically because he discredits himself by sounding smug and disingenuous, though I wouldn't phrase it like that. And there is, to some extent, concrete stuff he could change to alter the tone... although I guess there's not much to be done regarding the fact that he thinks he scores "cool points" in name-dropping Bjork, David Byrne, and his own home audio recordings...

I guess Part Two of the question is: what do you do with student essays when the student sounds like a jerk?

Hope your semester is rocking out...

Un saludo!
-- Ann

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email from rick / feb 15, 7:41pm
subject: re: request for advice (but not too urgent)

Ann, you've done a good job of X, Y, and Z in this essay, and you make a valid argument about how intellectually, socially, and morally superior reading is to watching TV.  It's an argument your readers are likely to know and agree with....

(A)  That makes it challenging to find the right tone....  (or)
(B)  Is there something you could develop here to make your point a
little different from the one they already know?... (or)
(C)  Is this the relationship you want to establish with your audience?...(or)
(D)  At least some of your readers, though, might wonder...(or)
(E)  We've talked in class about addressing objections.  Why not anticipate and address the likely objection that...(or)
(F)  I basically agree with your point, but it makes me uneasy to do so.  Why do you think that is?  Is it just me, or is there something that might make many readers uneasy agreeing with you,  maybe something in the style or tone?...(or (not))
(G)  You're really much more likeable in person.

Just brainstorming, but I think my basic instinct would be to use a fictional reader's response (the kind he has to learn to imagine when he writes) instead of your own, though your responses are helping him to learn how to do this on his own.  And I suppose that's what you're doing by  invoking a reader (me) from another continent to check whether you're just reacting to someone who strikes you as a jerk. By the way, this sounds like an unusually interesting application exercise, and it's fun to hear you thinking through it, since grading is usually such a lonely enterprise.

Hope things are going well, and keep me posted about your plans.

Rick