(the) david press.com

I’ve cut down on my classes this semester in preparation for my work load increasing and I don’t want to go stir crazy when finals comes around. Its nice having Tuesday off this semester as it gives me an opportunity to get stuff done for grad school that I previously wouldn’t have had last semester. For example, I knew from last Wednesday through the weekend I was going to be seriously busy with NYCC stuff, and knew that I just wouldn’t have time to get to my grad school stuff. So having yesterday off, was a huge deal in getting my stuff done for class last night.

So far, I’m taking Teaching Writing Composition, which will qualify me to teach creative writing for first year college students.  That class is a trip, my teacher is into quite a bit of the new-age mentality when it comes to teaching. She likes to meditate during class to calm the frictions between controversial methods in which know-it-all grad students like to argue with one another about how to teach writing.  The class is fun and I enjoy it immensely.  I can’t help but think about that Rolling Stone article on the last days of David Foster Wallace, and how much he cared about the students he taught creative writing. I want to feel that way. 

My second class, Nineteenth Century American Literature is a fucking snore-fest.  My teacher, has a hard time focusing his train of thought and often meanders into  this kind discussion, that usually starts with the phrase “though there is one question I’d like to raise,” where he talks for ten minutes, lulling me into a comatose state, which by the end of his ten minute question within himself I’m not sure whether he’s questioning his own ability to teach or asking us a question. I tuned out literally within half an hour in to that class yesterday, and tried to draw an XKCD-like cartoon to describe the atmosphere in there to no avail–you have to be there to understand it, and not even my lack of stick figure drawing ability can describe the feeling quite accurately.    Though I did manage to take this down:

This is fascinating. In the fact that we’re talking about cultural religion as an excuse for war. Though its being separated in the sense that your own views interprets the way you interpret the text; for some it leads to violence, but for others peaceful discourse.  Why this is fascinating is the three Muslim ladies in the class, especially the one with a “Free Gaza,” pin on her bag, looking on saying “that’s right,” with their eyes.

Besides that little moment, I’m still relatively convinced that I need to move my grad school experience in another direction because the overall comatose state that grad school MA English lulls me into is just not what I’m interested in.

I fully realized something recently, something I’ve always known about myself ever since high school, stuff as an English student that I never cared for, and probably why I focused more on journalism and the craft of writing rather than the study of the work. This reason is the grotesque vaguery and overall bullshitty mentality of English teachers and their students.  

The graduate level classes at Brooklyn College are set up discussion style with the teacher engaging in a discussion with the students on the impressions of a work. Allowing for the students to engage in a dialogue that is both snobby, know-it-all and self-indulging dismissive without actually saying anything of substance.  I find myself constantly clashing with the vague bullshit that is slung around at master’s level english literature courses.

I find it especially evident in my classes that this is not my style, though I continue to excel at my written work, I dislike the vagueness.  I like getting to the point rather than beating around the bush. There are a number of people I don’t care for when it comes down to the classes.  The kind of people who like to wax their poetic carrot by circling around a point gaining, “yeah, yeah, right, right,” hit points from the teacher who then engage them in similar vague dialogue agreeing with the self-indulgent bullshitter student.  Giving me this sense of: “yeah, I agree with you, and see your point, because I’m just like you.” And since I only see these bullshit artists as being largely full of shit who say nothing of any kind of merit, causing me to feel like the program doesn’t mesh with my personality.  

These students and teachers engaging in this circular dialogue makes me sick with annoyance.  I’m not about talking end from end on how bright I am, and it seems its inherent in English majors that they love to talk in generalities that seem to never have a point. Its because of this nature of class, that I see my old Journalism prof, Denny, screaming in my brain and I utter these words at my graduate school colleagues: “I’m sorry that’s vague. Can you be more specific?”

All I get in response is dirty looks and more generalities which causes my internal Denny to scream: “What the fuck are you talking about?!”

Maybe I’m just not smart enough, or not Advanced enough as Klosterman defines it, or maybe I’m not full of shit.

I’ve been getting that question alot the past month.  To sum it up: its been jarring. I’ve gone back to grad school for my masters in English Literature.  I’ve been following this track of thought for a while now (dunno, maybe two years) and I’m really glad I’ve done it.

It was at first quite shell-shocking; walking through campus again, five years removed from doing it under-grad style, seeing people hanging out on the lawn reading, the smoke cloud you have to push through on your way into class, has very much been a blast from the past. Now with the 700 billion bailout plan, the campus Socialist party feels renewed confidence by advertising throughout campus and into Flatbush.  I’m taking three classes: Modern American Literature, Literature and Society and 19th Century English Literature.  Below, you’ll find some of my impressions on my classes.

• Modern American Literature: Anyone who writes in a syllabus for the first reading assignment, “a selection of theoretical provocations,” is a blowhard.  Writing something like that is exactly like those guys who feel the need to brag about being able to bench five hundred pounds but replace your physical prowess with your vocabulary. This class, in a month, has acted more as a political sociology class than it has a literature class. Nowhere on our syllabus is Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, or other notable modern American writers.
• 19th Century English Literature: I read what was my first (and definitely will be my last) Jane Austen book Persuasion, for this class.  I probably didn’t endear myself to the teacher on my first reaction essay by writing: “I found virtually everything about this book to be completely vapid with totally unlike-able characters that suffer from a number of things that make them in any way enviable to me.  Though I think largely why I feel this way towards the characters resides mostly in the period they live in, and how there is no possible way that I can have any connection to it…For me, I like to find something I can relate to with the characters in the books that I read, and when that does not occur (how could they  with characters in a setting two hundred years ago, who worry about things that are just not important to me?) I find myself not being able to connect with the work.”
• Literature and Society: This is the second class I was required to read Persuasion, which as of our last meeting had me practically pulling my hair out with frustration at how we’ve managed to carry a conversation for a month in two of my classes on a book that I was on the verge of ripping end from end and throwing across the room in disgust. However, this is by far my favorite class.  I just finished a paper on The Godfather which was easily the most enjoyable paper I’ve ever had to write. Coming up we’re reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (which I read earlier this year) and Douglas Rushkoff’s Exit Strategy.

Though, my favorite aspect of being back in school is the great people I’m meeting and hanging out with.  We’re all about the same age and all trying to do the same thing, but most of all I’m surrounded by people who are so vastly smarter than me that it challenges me to do better in every class. I know, I know: how after school special of me, but every time I’m on campus I feel the confidence I had five years ago that almost all but vanished in the five years following.  This is something that I think I wouldn’t have appreciated if I went straight to grad school after graduating under-grad.  The years out have taught me what I exactly want and now being back in school has afforded me that opportunity to take it.  Also, the campus is exceptionally pretty.

I’ve been getting that question alot the past month.  To sum it up: its been jarring. I’ve gone back to grad school for my masters in English Literature.  I’ve been following this track of thought for a while now (dunno, maybe two years) and I’m really glad I’ve done it.

It was at first quite shell-shocking; walking through campus again, five years removed from doing it under-grad style, seeing people hanging out on the lawn reading, the smoke cloud you have to push through on your way into class, has very much been a blast from the past. Now with the 700 billion bailout plan, the campus Socialist party feels renewed confidence by advertising throughout campus and into Flatbush.  I’m taking three classes: Modern American Literature, Literature and Society and 19th Century English Literature.  Below, you’ll find some of my impressions on my classes.

• Modern American Literature: Anyone who writes in a syllabus for the first reading assignment, “a selection of theoretical provocations,” is a blowhard.  Writing something like that is exactly like those guys who feel the need to brag about being able to bench five hundred pounds but replace your physical prowess with your vocabulary. This class, in a month, has acted more as a political sociology class than it has a literature class. Nowhere on our syllabus is Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, or other notable modern American writers.
• 19th Century English Literature: I read what was my first (and definitely will be my last) Jane Austen book Persuasion, for this class.  I probably didn’t endear myself to the teacher on my first reaction essay by writing: “I found virtually everything about this book to be completely vapid with totally unlike-able characters that suffer from a number of things that make them in any way enviable to me.  Though I think largely why I feel this way towards the characters resides mostly in the period they live in, and how there is no possible way that I can have any connection to it…For me, I like to find something I can relate to with the characters in the books that I read, and when that does not occur (how could they  with characters in a setting two hundred years ago, who worry about things that are just not important to me?) I find myself not being able to connect with the work.”
• Literature and Society: This is the second class I was required to read Persuasion, which as of our last meeting had me practically pulling my hair out with frustration at how we’ve managed to carry a conversation for a month in two of my classes on a book that I was on the verge of ripping end from end and throwing across the room in disgust. However, this is by far my favorite class.  I just finished a paper on The Godfather which was easily the most enjoyable paper I’ve ever had to write. Coming up we’re reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition (which I read earlier this year) and Douglas Rushkoff’s Exit Strategy.

Though, my favorite aspect of being back in school is the great people I’m meeting and hanging out with.  We’re all about the same age and all trying to do the same thing, but most of all I’m surrounded by people who are so vastly smarter than me that it challenges me to do better in every class. I know, I know: how after school special of me, but every time I’m on campus I feel the confidence I had five years ago that almost all but vanished in the five years following.  This is something that I think I wouldn’t have appreciated if I went straight to grad school after graduating under-grad.  The years out have taught me what I exactly want and now being back in school has afforded me that opportunity to take it.  Also, the campus is exceptionally pretty.