No Claim, No Support, No Warrant

Ah, English. Getting a degree in English is something that can be a really fun time. Of course, there’s a pre-requisite: namely, that you need to enjoy literature. This is something that I looked past when I attended Stony Brook University (for my second time, but that’s a story for a different essay). I enjoyed reading (certain) poetry and writing (terrible) poems, so I figured “why the hell not?” I always thought obtaining a degree in English would be “cool, but too hard.”

Well, I ended up learning a lot; a hell of a lot. I can’t deny that, and I won’t. But at what cost? Well, now, I really can’t stand the thought of literature. It’s thanks to all those years of training my mind to take a look at a piece of writing, analyze it to death, pull something out of its ass, and slap that into an essay of mine that revolved around some bullshit idea my professor blabbed about in class. I got my BA in English and felt my college-career could be summed up in what Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes, of course) said in a famous comic strip: “You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system.”

Please, allow me to explain. Please allow me this pleasure. I’ll go through how I wrote essays in the majority of my stay at my chosen University. Hopefully it’ll be a worthwhile adventure:

First, there would be a book, or an essay (how I loathed those times) which the class would be required to read. I probably didn’t read it. I probably went to class without having read anything more than the title and perhaps a quick, VERY quick skim of the first paragraph or stanza or whatever the hell the format was.

I was always silent in class. So my silence wasn’t necessarily a clue that I had not done my homework, but rather was thought to be all part of my normal in-class personality. And this is an accurate conclusion too, since I didn’t ever talk in class. I never felt the desire to jump up and shout what I thought about a specific stanza in Wordsworth’s The Prelude. I honestly could give a fuck. Because of this personality I exhumed in class, professors usually didn’t attempt to call on me. They especially wouldn’t call on me first.

Now this meant that for the first 15ish minutes of class, I could just pay attention to the discussions going on: “ahhh, so Moby Dick is dense with SYMBOLISM, eh? I’ll make a note of that.” And then if I were to be called on, I would simply regurgitate what the last person said before me. “I agree with ______. It seemed to me that _______ really was saying _______.” Then they quickly moved along, and so did I. Only I moved along into the wonderful world of daydreaming.

I’d think to myself “what am I gonna eat for dinner tonight? I wonder if anyone will want to eat with me. Who’s around tonight? Probably no one, it’s a Tuesday. I should be doing homework tonight. UGHHHHHHH I’ve got WORK tomorrow,” etc. This would continue for quite some time.

Then at some point I would break out of daydreaming. Usually just at the right point to catch my professor saying something like “yes, that’s what I always thought too. I always thought that [insert author] was really getting at [some theory I could care less about] in [name of book I never want to, and didn't, read].” I would write this down at the top of my chosen piece of paper for the day (which by this point was probably filled with doodles, dinner ideas, random poems, etc), and then put a box around it.

Fast-forward to the time when our essay is due. Actually, rewind to the night before the essay is due. I’m sitting down at my computer, obsessively checking my email (I AM SO COOL), and talking to people online. Those people are usually saying “stop talking and start writing your essay!”

Eventually, I’d be forced to listen to them.

So I’d flip to my notebook and look at that boxed-in little quip my professor said. It was random on his or her part, so it’s not like I’m just writing about some obvious theory (”I THINK MOBY DICK HAS A WHALE IN IT BECAUSE THERE IS A WHALE ON THE COVER, AND…”). I then decided to rework this theory as my thesis. I did this because (A) I could care less about the book, and (B) the professor agrees with it. And while the course should be objective, if a professor reads a student’s essay that’s spot-on with a thought of theirs, 9 times out of 10, they’ll read it and love it, since they get to go “yeah, YEAH! EXACTLY!” while they read it. And who can blame them? I’d rather read an essay about why Elliott Smith is an amazing musician than why Hawthorne Heights rulez da sk00lz.

Now with this theory “of mine” in tact, I’d start my intro. To spare you, dear reader, from having to read about how many times I would read and re-read this intro, bang my head against the desk, curse college and my degree, and then eventually hit enter and move on to the next paragraph, it’ll suffice it to say that I would eventually write my intro and spin this boxed-in theory into my own words.

Now began my first instance of, on my own accord, opening the book or essay or poem or whatever I’m supposed to be writing about. I would do this torturous deed in order to get some random excerpt from it. Usually, I had zoned in enough times in class that I jotted down some pages or highlighted some text that related to Mr. Boxed-in-Theory, so I had some work done for me. But you can’t just write about what was said in class. You gotta take it to Another Level. You gotta AL it. How do you do this? Well, by grabbing a random excerpt like I said above. Just flip to a random page and take a random quote. Now, how does that quote relate to your thesis? If you read enough text around it (I know, I know, sometimes you gotta read the whole chapter), most of the time you can say it connects somehow. The closer it sounds to being true, the more one-ups you’ll get from the professor’s mighty red pen on the margins of your paper. The further it is from logical, the more you’ll get “interesting…I never thought of this before. But it is interesting” on the sidelines. That’s not too bad. Just means your professor’s probably onto your bullshit, so be sure to pack this random guy in-between some well-thought-out claims.

Most of the time, I would get these essays back, and they’d be in the A range. Sometimes B. This never really impressed me because I didn’t honestly care what I wrote. I felt like I was wasting my days doing this. It started to change the way I wrote when I wrote for myself. I started to incorporate some of this structured eloquence into my normal “haha, we gotta get drunkz0rz this weekend!” IM-speak (which wasn’t really that bad, but I hyperbolize for effect).

Then, something interesting happened. One of my professors, who was very nice (all of my professors were very nice, luckily. So this is not a hate-note towards any of them) for a class I took on World War I poetry asked us to write a little page after the essay about our essay. Basically we were critiquing it before we gave it to her.

Well, because this essay had put me in an irritable mood (as did any forced piece of writing with a works cited page jammed on the end), I ended up being rather sarcastic in my critique. I don’t recall most of what I said, but I do remember in the portion about “How would you change this essay if you could?” I wrote something to the effect of “I wouldn’t change anything because I wouldn’t want to rewrite this. I felt like I wasted my time writing about a bunch of poems I’d never read on my own. I would hand this in and take whatever grade I get, because giving it a second chance is akin to me telling my future self ‘hey, you’re gonna not have fun again for another 6-hour span. Get ready for that.’”

Well, rather than actually be annoyed at this (which she would have every right to be), she loved it. She actually commented on it saying “This is how you should write your essays!”

“Sarcastically and with a bad attitude?” I thought.

And then it hit me: my essays may be some kind of random train-of-eloquent-thought, but they’re missing passion. The bitter critique of my essay had passion in it. I was trained to write, and now when I wanted to write for myself, my arsenal of eloquence and grammar was better-stocked. As a former-student, and a current reader and writer herself, she probably has felt the way I felt after this essay countless times in her life. Perhaps she found it refreshing to read someone’s HONEST opinion. I mean, hell, I did the work she asked. So she couldn’t get annoyed that I handed it in instead of the essay.

Her positive attitude on my critique always stuck with me. It gave me hope that I can write more than a bunch of crap about more crap I never wanted to read while I claimed, supported, and warranted a huge pile of bullshit. It gave me hope that writing can be what I want it to be.

And now here we sit. With you having read that, with me having written it. We sit here knowing that even though I have cursed my education a multitude of times while I was going through it, it has obviously had a positive impact on my writing. We sit at the end of the first post for this essay-oriented blog I call A Small “x.” Was it worthwhile to read? I can’t answer that.

But if I ask you, just say “I really thought your ideas on writing were interesting.” It’s a good save.

More to come, gang. Keep the love alive.

- Mike