To Serve a Greater Good
I began reading a book for my EDRD-150 class early this afternoon. Dr. Thomas was out, and I wanted to take advantage of the extra time offered by a shortened class to get a leg up on the amount of coursework ahead of me. I did fairly well; picked up a list of possible articles of interest to use for annotated bibliographies, got both required textbooks, and sat down to knock out the first two chapters of Robert Nash's Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative in one of my favorite cushy spots in the Furman library.
Interesting title, I thought at first glance as my fingers ripped off the cover-to-cover plastic that identified the book as "new." Just as well; not a used copy to be found (I considered ordering from Amazon, but that would have put me at least a few days behind. If I haven't been clear yet I'm not a time waster). Personal narrative? I always enjoyed the rare opportunities to write PNs in grade school. They were part of the impetus for my keeping a written journal from 5th to 12th grade, and moved to blogging my sophomore year - we didn't write them often enough. They were but one of many other modes of writing we had to cover within the span of an all-too-short year (a model I've been guilty of using in my own teaching). Not that I didn't enjoy the persuasive essays, research papers, or literature reviews - they all had their own respective purpose, and I like to think I learned something from each.
But they did not carry the appeal of personal narratives for me. PNs were, and still are, as close to free-form as you get in writing. It's the one mode in which you are truly limited only by the power of your imagination, your experiences, your feelings and your insights. PNs were my way of understanding myself. I took the fact that it was a "personal" endeavor to heart. In many ways, I am far too complex to understand sometimes (so you can just imagine how other people perceive me!). My thoughts don't always make sense in my head. I don't know why I feel the way I do, or even what my feelings are on occasion. Writing them down in my own voice helps me to try and make sense of myself, to bring clarity to my complexity, to give my thoughts tangibility, meaning. When I see them in written form, I can begin to sort through them, to play with them. They are no longer formless schema bottled up in my cranium like Woodruff Road traffic at Christmastime. They are in a form I can see and begin to understand.
Nash's opening insights about PNs (or scholarly PNs) raised my eyebrows repeatedly on multiple levels. I thought I would read a charming, occasionally witty account of how to compose scholarly writing. I did not expect to get that alongside an in-depth and revealing glimpse into the man's personal life. This is a writer who practices what he preaches. This is a man who holds passionate beliefs and makes no apologies for having them. This is a man who takes chances with what he does - not in a way so as to be outwardly reckless in his profession, but to make his voice "heard." I grew fascinated. I wanted to read more about his family life, his background - in other words, the raw "stuff" that made him the writer he is.
In doing so it occured to me that I was verifying the claims he makes about a writer being inherently more approachable in a vulnerable spot. Nash felt real, alive to me and less like another in a long line of published writers, experts, and researchers that have crossed my eyes in the last few years. With every word he wrote, I felt as though he were seated on the cushion next to me in the library pouring out his heart on why SPN mean so much to him. He touched me, and in doing so I felt that much more inclined to "listen" to his insights. While it is still early in the book (though I have no doubt I'll be reading more later tonight), his first points about the impact of SPNs made me rethink a few things about why I write personal accounts.
Personal narratives don't have to be just for me. They can benefit others. They can serve a greater good.
If I can be moved by Nash's anecdotes and distinctive flair in his writing, then he is accomplishing something much bigger in scope and much more powerful than merely spilling out thoughts at random. He's doing it to show the draw that SPNs have. The perspective that he offers is that scholarly papers need not be completely deprived of the writer's human side - such a feat is impossible to begin with. As humans, we are subjective and objective creatures, both at the same time. One may submerge the other more often than not, but we need not short-change ourselves by taking up shop in one category and remaining there always. We're much too complex for that.
Maybe that's why I keep blogging (though I've gotten horrendously slack as of late). A part of me hopes that someone out there, maybe a friend who knows the address or a random passerby, will read the entries and feel moved enough to post a comment. It's not why I blog - I don't worry about how people will react or try to craft my blogs in a manner that will deliberately entice response because to do so, I think, taints my voice in such a way that it ceases to be uniquely mine. It smacks of pandering to the masses.
Maybe that's why I took a leap of faith and shared a few accounts from my written journal with my middle school students this past year. A part of me wanted to show them I practiced the same concepts we talked about in class. At least that's what I told myself. But the real truth is that I wanted to relate to them. To show that I was a human being just like them, a card-carrying homo sapien who could feel just as mixed-up, lonely, excited, joyful, and confused as them. Being an adult and a teacher didn't change that.
The results of such actions aren't anything ground-breaking. No lightbulbs went off in my kids' heads on how to write personal narratives. They didn't ask to read more of my journal entries (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But I hope it planted the first seeds of trust between me and them, and that it helped me come across as less of a teacher and more of what they were. Practicing writers. All of us tapping into the same field.
If those seeds sprouted during the year, with more guidance from me, who knows how far we got? That in itself, more than any personal outlet, is a far greater good.
Interesting title, I thought at first glance as my fingers ripped off the cover-to-cover plastic that identified the book as "new." Just as well; not a used copy to be found (I considered ordering from Amazon, but that would have put me at least a few days behind. If I haven't been clear yet I'm not a time waster). Personal narrative? I always enjoyed the rare opportunities to write PNs in grade school. They were part of the impetus for my keeping a written journal from 5th to 12th grade, and moved to blogging my sophomore year - we didn't write them often enough. They were but one of many other modes of writing we had to cover within the span of an all-too-short year (a model I've been guilty of using in my own teaching). Not that I didn't enjoy the persuasive essays, research papers, or literature reviews - they all had their own respective purpose, and I like to think I learned something from each.
But they did not carry the appeal of personal narratives for me. PNs were, and still are, as close to free-form as you get in writing. It's the one mode in which you are truly limited only by the power of your imagination, your experiences, your feelings and your insights. PNs were my way of understanding myself. I took the fact that it was a "personal" endeavor to heart. In many ways, I am far too complex to understand sometimes (so you can just imagine how other people perceive me!). My thoughts don't always make sense in my head. I don't know why I feel the way I do, or even what my feelings are on occasion. Writing them down in my own voice helps me to try and make sense of myself, to bring clarity to my complexity, to give my thoughts tangibility, meaning. When I see them in written form, I can begin to sort through them, to play with them. They are no longer formless schema bottled up in my cranium like Woodruff Road traffic at Christmastime. They are in a form I can see and begin to understand.
Nash's opening insights about PNs (or scholarly PNs) raised my eyebrows repeatedly on multiple levels. I thought I would read a charming, occasionally witty account of how to compose scholarly writing. I did not expect to get that alongside an in-depth and revealing glimpse into the man's personal life. This is a writer who practices what he preaches. This is a man who holds passionate beliefs and makes no apologies for having them. This is a man who takes chances with what he does - not in a way so as to be outwardly reckless in his profession, but to make his voice "heard." I grew fascinated. I wanted to read more about his family life, his background - in other words, the raw "stuff" that made him the writer he is.
In doing so it occured to me that I was verifying the claims he makes about a writer being inherently more approachable in a vulnerable spot. Nash felt real, alive to me and less like another in a long line of published writers, experts, and researchers that have crossed my eyes in the last few years. With every word he wrote, I felt as though he were seated on the cushion next to me in the library pouring out his heart on why SPN mean so much to him. He touched me, and in doing so I felt that much more inclined to "listen" to his insights. While it is still early in the book (though I have no doubt I'll be reading more later tonight), his first points about the impact of SPNs made me rethink a few things about why I write personal accounts.
Personal narratives don't have to be just for me. They can benefit others. They can serve a greater good.
If I can be moved by Nash's anecdotes and distinctive flair in his writing, then he is accomplishing something much bigger in scope and much more powerful than merely spilling out thoughts at random. He's doing it to show the draw that SPNs have. The perspective that he offers is that scholarly papers need not be completely deprived of the writer's human side - such a feat is impossible to begin with. As humans, we are subjective and objective creatures, both at the same time. One may submerge the other more often than not, but we need not short-change ourselves by taking up shop in one category and remaining there always. We're much too complex for that.
Maybe that's why I keep blogging (though I've gotten horrendously slack as of late). A part of me hopes that someone out there, maybe a friend who knows the address or a random passerby, will read the entries and feel moved enough to post a comment. It's not why I blog - I don't worry about how people will react or try to craft my blogs in a manner that will deliberately entice response because to do so, I think, taints my voice in such a way that it ceases to be uniquely mine. It smacks of pandering to the masses.
Maybe that's why I took a leap of faith and shared a few accounts from my written journal with my middle school students this past year. A part of me wanted to show them I practiced the same concepts we talked about in class. At least that's what I told myself. But the real truth is that I wanted to relate to them. To show that I was a human being just like them, a card-carrying homo sapien who could feel just as mixed-up, lonely, excited, joyful, and confused as them. Being an adult and a teacher didn't change that.
The results of such actions aren't anything ground-breaking. No lightbulbs went off in my kids' heads on how to write personal narratives. They didn't ask to read more of my journal entries (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But I hope it planted the first seeds of trust between me and them, and that it helped me come across as less of a teacher and more of what they were. Practicing writers. All of us tapping into the same field.
If those seeds sprouted during the year, with more guidance from me, who knows how far we got? That in itself, more than any personal outlet, is a far greater good.
posted by david @ 1:02 PM
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