So I am sitting here in my bedroom, pillows propping my back up against the headboard, and I know I should be grading papers, specifically the sheaf of revised introductions written by my developmental writing students that is waiting for me in my backpack. I am trying to move them section by section through an essay–introduction, body, conclusion–by asking them to write only one section at a time so that they can focus on the specific rhetorical and other considerations that are privileged in each section. So, when I taught them introductions, for example, I spent a lot of time getting them to unlearn the advice that so many high school writing teachers give and that is so radically misunderstood by the overwhelming majority of students, especially developmental students, that I have taught: start your introduction with a statement that will grab the reader’s attention. What these teachers mean, I am sure, is that a good introduction communicates something of why the topic of the essay in question ought to be interesting to the reader. What these teachers don’t mean is what an awful lot of students understand: start your introduction with a pronouncement so grand that the reader will be wowed into awestruck silence at how profound you are.
This misunderstanding gives rise to introductions that start with sentences like, “There are many different cultures throughout the world,” or, to use the topic that my students this semester can’t seem to get away from whenever I ask them to give an example, “There are many different opinions about abortion,” or, perhaps my favorite one of all time, “There are many similarities and differences between men and women.” Each of these statements, of course, is true, and each of them points in the direction of very interesting discussions and debates, but the statements themselves are so obvious–and I am so tired of reading essays that begin with statements like them–that I sometimes have consciously to restrain myself from writing, “Really? No kidding?”
I don’t blame my students for writing introductions that begin with sentences like that, and I don’t blame the writing teachers they had before me for those sentence either; but I do get tired of reading them, just like I get tired of reading technical writing and creative writing assignments–two different classes–that students have clearly not bothered to edit and/or proofread in even the most cursory of ways; and just like I get tired of those freshman composition students who complain, and I hear this every semester, that I ask too many questions or that I just like to make things hard for them when I ask them to be precise with their language and to take responsibility for their own ideas.
None of this is new, of course, but this semester it seems to be hitting me harder than it usually does, in part because my classes are–like most classes now–ridiculously overcrowded, simultaneously increasing the volume of such material that I have to deal with and decreasing the amount of time and energy I can give to each individual student to deal with such issues. I feel this decrease most especially in the developmental writing class, where individual attention from the teacher can really make the difference between a student getting and not getting whatever “it” it is that I happen to be teaching at the moment; but I feel it as well in the creative writing class, where being able to sit with individual students at least once a semester to work in detail on a particular piece of writing can also make the difference between the semester’s work “falling into place” or not. In freshman composition, which is for many of the students who come to my school one of the classes in which they first start learning how to be a student, a student-teacher conference is a wonderful way of introducing them to what it means for them to take responsibility for their own ideas and work far more completely than most are ever asked to do in high school; and in technical writing, those conferences can help to focus students–most of whom are in engineering and don’t like to write and who also have only the faintest of glimmers that writing might actually be important in their chosen field–in ways that classroom lectures just can’t.
It bothers me that I don’t have this time to spend with my students because I feel like I am shortchanging them, because I feel like they deserve some kind of individualized attention and I just can’t deliver it. Of course, the reason I can’t deliver it–the overcrowded classrooms–is directly connected to the budget crisis my school is facing; and it is a real budget crisis. I was at a meeting where the college’s “numbers guy”–that’s what he called himself–laid the situation out for us, and it’s that we are facing a simple shortfall. Because neither New York State nor the county where the college is located have been funding the college at the levels they are legally obligated to fund us, according to how SUNY community colleges are funded in NYS, the only source of positive revenue we have is tuition; and because funding from the state and county will continue to be either flat or reduced over the next several years at least, the college is facing a situation where costs will keep rising and there is just not enough revenue coming in to keep up with those costs.
This situation obviously has implications for the contract negotiations my union will be entering into in 2013, and I have no doubt we will have to compromise on things, or give things back, that will not make us happy, but it is also true that the state and county have been underfunding the college for quite a long time, since well before the current economic crisis. That retreat from the funding of public education, and it is happening nationwide, is a huge problem. What it means for me personally, however, and that’s really what I am concerned with right now, is that my role as one of the organizers of the resistance to the way in which our administration wants to address the budget crisis just adds to how overwhelmed I feel.
There is just so damned much to do that I feel paralyzed, but beyond paralyzed, I feel numb, as if nothing really matters, and that’s hard, because there’s lots going on that I in fact care very deeply about. It is hard even to pick up my own writing, even though, in some ways, that is precisely what I need to do to help myself start to feel better. I feel it physically when I am unable to write–not writer’s block, but when my life makes it difficult or impossible for me to attend to my own work. I get cranky and depressed; I get angry and resentful; and I get sloppy about the other work that I have to do; and I find it hard to be fully present in my home and in my relationships.
I don’t like feeling this way, obviously–who would?–but the part of this state of mind that has taken hold of me over the past few weeks is the part that worries if I don’t write, if I don’t finish that essay and send it out, or those poems and try to get them published, or if I don’t work a little harder on finding a publisher for my second book of poems, or write the book proposal for the book of essays on manhood and masculinity, or the book about classical Iranian literature–if I don’t get that work done, then somehow I am a failure. Objectively, of course, I know that I am anything but a failure. I have a job that I like–even though I’m now in the mood to complain about certain aspects of it–a wonderful marriage and family life, and I have published books that, while they might not have made me any money and are unlikely to make me any money, have made a real difference in people’s lives, and I know this because my readers have told me so.
Still, I find myself wanting a shot at a bigger audience, both because I might actually be able to make some real money from my writing and because I think some of the things I have to say are worthy of a bigger audience, and this desire has run me smack up against a choice about what it means for me to be a writer that I hadn’t even realized was looming in front of me. Do I want to be a writer who is known for what he has to say about writing or do I want to be a writer who is known for what he writes about? Where this choice comes from and why it presents itself to me in this form at this moment of my life is something I need to explore more fully, in part because I am not entirely sure precisely what I mean by the first part of that question, but it is the choice I need to make, the question I need to ask, and what is most frustrating about feeling so overwhelmed with work is that I don’t really have the time or mental space that I need to live actively with the question, to let it grow and change and find whatever is in me that will answer it.
And so the cycle starts again. Because that frustration makes me angry and that anger makes me numb and resentful, and you know where all that will lead. Eventually, I will find the time, I know; I always have in the past; but right now I don’t have it and that just sucks.
Just want to stick my head up from the massive pile of overwhelm that I am already buried under in week 3 of the quarter, a quarter where the People In Charge surprised us with an extra 5 students per class a few days before the start of the quarter, to say: I hear you.
I am so wordless except for hugs, hugs, hugs.
I don’t know if it’s helpful, but maybe “writing for an audience” or “writing for yourself” isn’t an all or nothing proposition? You have some projects you are in love with that have small audiences and they are really the projects of your heart. But are there things you’d be interested in doing that have appeal for large audiences? Things that might not be your first choice in a totally unconstrained world, but that you can still love? Like, I think you could do a straight-up memoir book in the Boys of Our Youth mode, and it would be amazing, and have audience potential (unless memoir has Moved On; I haven’t kept track). I know you have limited time, but if it’s important to you to reach a larger audience, maybe give yourself a year to work on that before going back to teh smaller projects and see how that feels.
Just some ideas from someone who struggles with that.
Thanks, both!
Elusis: An extra five per class just before the beginning of classes?! That is almost criminal. Our cap increases average around 4 per class, but we at least knew they were coming long before the semester started.
Mandolin: It’s not so much writing for an audience vs. writing for myself. Rather, it has to do with the difference between being a writer to whom other writers look up because of what you have to say about writing–and why I describe it that way is something I just don’t have the time to go into right now–and being a writer who is known for the subject matter you tackle in your writing. I will say this, though, this distinction–which I am willing to accept may not be as useful as I think it is–grows out of my own perceptions and experiences within the poetry world as a poet who has, in some ways, a pretty well-defined subject matter.
Your suggestion, though, is a useful one, and I thank you for it. As I said in my recent translation post, though, the choice of which project to work on next is made much easier by the fact that I am applying for sabbatical and the next translation is the only project that is obviously sabbatical-worthy.
I hope things get better for you and your school. What you describe is a lot like what happens when I get depressed – the isolation keeps you from the things that you need to do, and it is a cycle.
As far as the writing, why can’t you be known for all of those things? I don’t think of you as only a poet, or a commenter on sexuality; I think of you as a deeply compassionate thinker. Perhaps you’re putting yourself on a path when you need to be running the side roads that lead back to that path, wild haired and dirt-smudged, ready to add more depth to what seemed simple on the surface.
At any rate, *hugs*
I’m so sorry. Reading beginning writers over and over is indeed mind-numbing. And from what you say you are seriously overworked.
However, that said, the time-worn but still valid maxim in legal writing (this would be contracts, legal briefs, court opinions, almost anything really) is, “Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, tell ’em what you told ’em.”
The beginning sentences you quote pretty much follow this rule. I know it’s not scintillating prose, which maybe you are aiming for (this rule doesn’t usually produce scintillating prose, but it does produce clear and informative writing), but it’s better than perhaps 80% of highly-paid lawyers can manage, with untold and very expensive adverse consequences in real life. I’m guessing from what you say that clarity is going to be more important for your students than scintillation.
If you can get your students to write according to the maxim I have quoted you will be doing them and the rest of us a very seriously great service. Even if it’s not scintillating.
Susan:
Actually, I don’t think those sentences at all follow the maxim you quote, precisely because they don’t say anything at all; they don’t tell the reader what the writer is going to tell them in any way that is at all useful. To say, for example, that there are many similarities and differences between men and women is, because the statement is so obvious, essentially to say nothing at all. More to the point, to write something that adequately addresses the claim made in that sentence would require a series of books, not an essay of about 500 words, which is where I am with my developmental writing students.
There is a great deal more to say on this topic, I know, and I know I am leaving my own argument in this comment half-finished, but I need to go back to planning the next five or six weeks for the very students we are talking about. If I can, I will be happy to come back and talk about this more, since it is an important subject.
Simple Truth: Thanks for that!
Richard, well, it’s hard for me to tell since you don’t give us the rest of the essay.
Saying, for example, that there are many similarities and many differences between men and women might indeed be a fair summary of an essay which discusses these differences without making much of a conclusion about them. It’s “obvious” to you and to me, but it might not be to everyone. In fact, there’s quite a controversy on-line and elsewhere about whether there are indeed differences between men and women (or, on the other side, similarities) or whether this whole discussion is all in our heads.
The statement you quote might not be universally accepted, in fact.
I’m uncertain about what your goal is in teaching these students. I suspect from what you say that Deep Thought On These Topics might be out of reach, and perhaps not part of your charge. If the writer who made the statement about men and women could lay out what he or she thought were the differences and then the similarities between the genders, he or she might be something of a success in this endeavor.
There is so much horrible writing out here that an essay which could do so much would be a shining star.