When I came to the university, I thought I was totally prepared for college life. I was a little scared because it was a completely new experience, but I felt I had a good background-especially in writing. I knew my direction in life; I wanted to be a music major (that hasn’t changed). I had the background in music too. I took choir all three years in high school. I took AP Music Theory, Music Appreciation and Percussion my senior year. I went to State for Solo and Ensemble my senior year, so needless to say, I felt very confident in my ability.

Then I came to college. I already knew the music theory language, so that and choir were cake classes. But, sight-singing and ear training was a completely different story. I never had to write a paper for this class, but I did have to learn the language. The professors here used a completely different language than what I learned in high school. It was very difficult to show the professor that I knew what he was teaching because I didn’t know. I had to make up the language for part of the time, but he obviously knew that I did not know my solfege.

The only other classes I took my first year in high school were honors courses, English and math. Math has always been a different language to me, but I don’t think that my math situation doesn’t really apply to Barthomae. For most of my other classes, I didn’t have to write papers. I had to write two vocal critiques, but I knew that language already, and the language of music has many acceptable choices of vocabulary.

My first English class was Intro. to Fiction. This was my first frustrating experience with inventing the university. I turned in simple papers. I wasn’t required to do research, but I had to turn in the equivalent of reading responses. I thought I was doing great on my papers. I checked grammar, syntax, and transitions, and I thought my ideas were solid (partly because I had studied most of those stories in high school). I’m not saying that I received bad grades on my paper, but I was not getting my expected scores. And, I could not figure out what I was doing wrong! I even received a paper with an A-. That’s not necessarily a bad grade, but there was not a mark on the page! As far as I knew, I didn’t do anything wrong, but I couldn’t get a perfect score.

Then I had my Honors English class. Again, I did well in the class, but the process of discovering how to invent the university (or this branch of it) kicked my butt. I could not understand how to get the larger picture into my papers or how to write outside of the typical five-paragraph essay. In fact, as you can see from this blog, I’m still in the mindset of the five-paragraph essay. I was able to discover how to avoid the five-paragraphs in our more difficult papers, but the “So what?” of my papers, I could not get. I could summarize and organize, but I did not know how to find the connections. I probably still don’t know how to do that. But, by the end of that composition class, I had been through that process three different times, and I found out a little more about inventing the university each time I wrote.

Dis-course Runs its Course

In all honesty I arrived in college with a firm conviction that I would be doing most of the talking due to my inherent genius. The only talking that the faculty would be doing would be in agreement or adulation of my own greatness, or to spend the first week or so telling me what I didn’t know (which of course was very little) and the rest would be as aforementioned. I suppose this isn’t much different from a hyperinflated teenager ego, but what can I say, I confess to falling into the same pitfalls as my predecessors. Or at least the same pitfalls as some of them.

However, I had some inkling of how to participate in discourse from my father. He told me, when I was quite young, a saying concerning college: “During your first year, you learn to say ‘yes.' During your second year, you learn to say ‘no.' During your third year, you learn to say ‘it depends.’ ” And he would always leave it at that. I, of course, completely misunderstanding him, thought I’d start with “It depends” from the get-go, without any of the steps necessary beforehand and “out-think” the system. This, of course, didn’t work, due to several varying factors. But, I suppose I had a dim understanding of how it worked to begin with.

In any event, after a long and debilitating period of personal problems, I came to the final realization that there is rarely a right or wrong answer to many things. There is one right answer to some (2+2 will always = 4), and there are some which have as many “right” answers as people you ask (What is justice?). My years spent in college also taught me how to tell the difference between the two, most of the time. These years also taught me that, for many things, there is no answer available, and sometimes you need to search for the truth alone.

The process of making discourse within a classroom environment, with the teacher and my peers, was part of the process of growing up, for me. As a homeschooler, and one obsessively focused on a few things at any given time, I confess that I was a little late coming out of the social-development gate on many different things. As a result, it took me a little longer to learn a lot of things I should’ve learned earlier. When I grew up, it was then, and only then, that I learned that the world isn’t black and white, and that the stream of conscious information does not always flow in one direction or another. Information is a two-way stream of ideas and opinions, ever shifting and as effervescent as a torrential river. Although I had known of the way things should’ve been done (the saying my father told me earlier), I hadn’t understood the deeper meaning behind it. I still don’t, but at least I know I’m not full of the “right” information. The mark of true knowledge, as is often said, is when you know how very little you know. For me, discourse was part of the coming of age process, and though I’m not necessarily any better for it, I am, hopefully, a little wiser because of it.

EDIT: Okay, well, after class today I guess I totally misunderstood the prompt, so I'll try and add some additional information to salvage it. Talking in the language of a group, the given language, so that you can be understood and have a meaningful conversation within a "discourse community" is something I understood on an intuitive level, but not until recently did I really understand it consciously. But I think I learned it from an early age, how different groups of people say different things to different people (if that made any sense), so it was intuitive for me, and so not really all that hard to grasp.

Discovering the University

Did you come to the university understanding how the discourse communities work? Or did you have to figure it out as you went along? What was this process like for you?

Slacker Prompt

Ever since I read about the aforementioned “slacker prompt,” I’ve had an irritating non-urge to post to the blog. Although I’ve now found the motivation to sit still long enough to write something semi-understandable, my thoughts remain scattered. At the moment, I’m trying to simultaneously type this post, extract the deeper allegorical meaning of the “Faerie Queene”—my bête noire of late—and monitor my curry on the stove.

Like everyone else, I’ve been tightroping between school, work, and an on-again off-again social life. My existence is pretty ascetic during the semester, but I’ve come to believe strongly in Henry David Thoreau’s advice to, every day, take a little time to do something that I want to do. An English major by profession and confession, I usually keep my sanity in the midst of scholastic rigor by reading books not required for my lit classes.

Currently, I’m in the middle of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le deuxième sexe, a book that has completely changed my approach to gender issues in literature and the “real world.” Mme de Beauvoir’s ideas have gotten me into a little trouble, however, particularly when a certain passer-by heard only part of a discussion on how western society’s pedestalization of females tends to kindle narcissism in adolescents girls. But that’s a story, I suppose, for another blog post.

If nothing else, Mme de Beauvoir has helped me realize how polemical I tend to be. For a couple years, I worked as a political columnist in both printed and new media, and although I’ve since laid aside my diatribes and more creative epithets, I’m still drawn to controversy like a moth to flame. And yes, more often than not, I get burned. I like to challenge people. As a result, when I tutor, I like to ask a lot of questions.

Question asking, however, needs to be special-fitted to each tutee; I’ve had some students who, I think, had genuine learning experiences by justifying their own writing, but at least one student I can think of was, well, miffed. Yet, as I’ve followed the older tutors’ advice and really watched a tutee’s body language, I think I’ve done better at custom-tailoring my sessions.

Overall, I love tutoring. The paycheck isn’t going to land me a flat in Trump Tower, but I always look forward to my weekly shifts. I enjoy the writing center, I enjoy the other tutors, I enjoy the tutees, and I enjoy learning from my mistakes.

Uh-oh. I smell curry.

Today, Disney songs are stuck in my head...

What’s on my mind right now? How can Cameron come up with numerous different names of countries and each one have their own flag? It’s simply mind-boggling how creative he is!

Also, I’m thinking how I might want to move to another computer, because there seems to be a draft centered on this one, and I’m already pretty damp from the weather… but I probably won’t.

But overall, the simple college-life stresses, that everyone has been talking about, is really what’s on my mind. I’m taking 18 credits, working 12 hours a week and still trying to keep my parents happy by having a fairly active social life. Then, I have my personal goals. For example, I took an Introduction to Literature class the Spring 2007 semester and realized that while I have read a good deal, I haven’t read most of the more important classics by Chopin, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway and Austen. So I decided that I’d spend the summer catching up. I did read a bit. I read The Odyssey, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Jane Eyre, and Northanger Abbey among some silly summer romance books. But I’ve started to get back on track! For serious this time! I have a book with me at all times to read while waiting for the bus, on the bus, or waiting for class to start. Right now, it’s Emma by Jane Austen.

Academics aren’t the only thing stressing me out, though. I’m only a month into the semester, and I’m already suffering from homesickness. I’m living alone this year because my brother moved out last year and no one really wants to move in for a year, and then have to move out. Living alone has it’s advantages: TV time whenever, washing machine is always available, and I never have to worry about going downstairs in my PJs and finding that my brother invited a fairly good looking friend over to stay the night. Great memories. But living alone can be scary and insanely quiet. You’d think absolute silence would be wonderful for studying, but it’s absolutely dreadful! I’ll be reading and my thoughts will wander “I really should be doing my laundry right now. Do I have clothes upstairs that need to be brought down? I probably need detergent. Oh yeah, I need to grab some groceries, too. What am I going to eat tonight? Should I do my shopping tonight and make dinner? Or should I wait ‘til tomorrow and get take out tonight? “ I’ll eventually get to the bottom of the page and not know a single thing I read.

Then, I’m having a problem with sleeping. Weird, I know, but I tend to have really bad nightmares in Utah. Only in Utah. They’ll be so bad that I don’t want to sleep. But I’ve found that if I go long enough without sleep, I’ll be so dead tired that I won’t dream—or at least remember my dreams. So, during the day, along with lists of things I need to do for church, school, and work, my mind is somewhat like the Chicago beer guys from Saturday Night Live. Except, instead of always thinking “The Bulls, the bulls” or “The bears, the bears”, I’m thinking “Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.”

That’s basically it. The disturbing thoughts of one Miss Kathryn Higgs.

college life

I agree with David, yet my situation is a little different. I’m beginning to feel that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. No, that’s an understatement; my mouth is too full to close it. I have a lot of credit hours this semester, and I won’t even reveal the number because it will make some of you cry. The reason I am doing this to myself is to stay on track with my major while also trying out different academic areas. I am also taking the last computer competency class (Excel L).

I also have two jobs. I work as a writing tutor, of course, and as an SI Leader. I love working with people, especially students my age, and I really feel like I am helping the students. It’s fun but also stressful. I am trying to keep track of all the meetings and activities, but I cannot even go to the writing tutor meetings because I have a class at that time. Missing those meetings makes me feel like I have no clue what’s going on or what I am supposed to do. Plus, I am so poor that even two jobs aren’t doing me a lot of good-financially. I have to resort to selling books on Amazon, selling old clothes at a consignment store, and selling my plasma just to scrape by.

On top of all of that, I try to volunteer. I am involved in Weber State Stand which is a new club on campus that helps raise awareness about genocide around the world. We are doing fundraisers, meetings and advertising all of the time, and I try to help as much as I can. This is something I really believe in, but also volunteering looks good on scholarship applications-which goes back to the money issue. I also volunteer at Safe Harbor Crisis Center every Friday evening. I like working with the women there, and I feel really appreciated by the staff and residents. Working there gives me a sense of self worth, and after all the stress in the week, it’s nice to feel someone’s gratitude and care.

It’s really hard to balance out a college kid’s schedule. There are classes that are required for your major, but you don’t want to be restricted to just that area. Trying out different classes can be fun and enlightening. But, colleges are about getting the students to graduate. They always say to only take courses that are part of your major, so that you can get out into the workforce quickly. They also remind you of the money you would be spending by taking classes that don’t count to graduation. Money is the number one thing college students complain about too. Some students complain about having to pay for classes that they don’t want or “don’t need”, and others complain that they do not have the resources to pay for classes that they want to try. And you have to work to pay for college, but you still want a social life which is impossible when all of your friends feel overwhelmed because they have the same stresses as you. It’s horrible.