He is sooooo not my type

I recently took a guy as a date to a formal event who was 6′3, blonde and had all the trappings of a jock. When I described him to my mother over the phone her first response was “he doesn’t sound like your type.” My best friend abroad had a similar reaction via gchat. When [...]

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Edumacation

I’ve said this before — I’m really, really bad at pre-planning my essays. This lyric essay thing is even more daunting because I have to consider TWO things: subject matter AND form.
Just about the only thing on my mind these days is my pending doom (graduation). I want to use this [...]

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A few days ago my acting class was instructed to exit the classroom and go observe people, in assigned environments, and then come back for the second hour of class to assume the identity of these people. We had to each find a person who “did” or “did not” belong. I found myself in a [...]

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They tried to make me go to rehab and I said, Fine.

I spent this past summer in rehab. Food rehab, as the patients liked to call it. It was 8 weeks of intensive inpatient care in an eating disorder treatment center set in Wickenburg, AZ, population 6,423. The town’s only defining feature was the center. It was literally in the middle of nowhere.
The center was set [...]

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House Fires and Fights.

This will sound crazy. It may be, but I like it, and I am unafraid to try and fail (this is what school is about yes?)
I have two things I would like to discuss. That have literally always been related in my mind, and I have never really had any reason to associate them beyond [...]

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My Relationship with Religion

This is an extremely tentative topic choice, but as of now I’m considering writing about my relationship with religion. This was sparked by the class where we read one of my blog posts out loud and everyone seemed fixed on my statement that I am a Christian. I didn’t intend for the statement to have [...]

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Shallow Vanity?

First off, I should say that last time I closed the course packet, I had pretty much written off the lyric essay as a worthwhile genre of writing. I thought that despite sporting a host of interesting facts and anecdotes, Son of Mr. Green Jeans, was somewhat dated and had to reach in some areas [...]

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My Favorite Facts

I’m tentatively writing my lyric essay about some facts I like to say.  When certain things are mentioned in conversation, and especially when I’m drunk, I usually have some piece of trivia that I can add.  In this way,  I suppose the essay will be similar to “Son of Mr. Green Jeans”, in that it [...]

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Moore as an example

I read “Son of Mr. Green Jones” and wondered about Moore’s method.
Here, he strings together 26 bits of loosely related motifs about fatherhood, with each piece leading to the next and linking back to the last effortlessly. The result is a substantial, interlocking matrix of observations on the subject of fathers and, often times, their [...]

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Limits

When you look at Son of Mr. Green Jeans, you begin to see the structure formulating his work. The ABC’s form a restrictive guideline to his work. Can some of your best work come from limits that are within or out of your control? Think of George Lucas and his $11 million dollar baby Star [...]

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Drift

I’ll start this by saying that I, too, struggled with Dumas’ piece.  It’s certainly not an easy read, though I found I liked it a bit more the second time around, having a sense of what to expect.
What I appreciated most about Dumas was that she really plays with sentence structure, which I think is [...]

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The Second Person

I was always taught that writing in second person was for children’s adventure novels or trivial things. This of course, excludes letters and things that are actually only addressed to one other person.
I found Duras’ use of the second person both intimate and distance. At first, I questioned whether she was trying to draw her [...]

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Creativity

I agree with both Tom and Chris about the merits of these two works. I think that both Duras and Moore biggest strength is the creative approach they take in engaging the reader. Honestly, there have been plenty of essays that we’ve read that I haven’t liked at all. After a while, reading essays becomes [...]

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Puzzle Pieces

In reading Son of Mr. Green Jeans, I am reminded of Kathryn Chetkovich’s Envy, when she reads “those pages of his I wished I had written.” I wish I wrote this: it’s brilliant. Seemingly random, fully independent snippets mesh together ingeniously to create a cohesive whole. Moore leaves us with a unique, [...]

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The Reader

Marguerite Duras uses the second person quite a bit.  “The Atlantic Man” is addressed to some unknown person (although we know from the forward that it’s Yann Andrea), and stands as a list of commands, qualities, and effects that she wants to explain to him.  However, during the course of the reading, I can’t shake [...]

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Intertwining Connections

I think it’s pretty fantastic the way that Moore weaves together tidbits about animal mating habits, sitcom actors, scientific studies, and personal anecdotes—despite being seemingly random components—while remaining anchored to his theme of missing fathers. This establishes a rapport with the reader, as living without ones father is a common experience. The parts about animals [...]

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“Goodness” changes

Today, I’m a rather messy person – dropping clothes and towels on the floor, misplacing irreplaceable items left and right, letting dirt pile up until it discolors the carpet. But once upon a time in the past-tense realm of childhood, I was a neat freak. Any handwriting expert would tell you this.
My perfectionist’s drive manifested [...]

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Shirley Temple Dreams

When I was a toddler, I had an uncanny likeness to Shirley Temple. She’s the famed singing/dancing child star of the 1940s, with cherubic sausage curls and a round dimpled face that could melt the heart of the Grinch. My mother grew up watching Shirley Temple, and she bestowed her love of all things having to [...]

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Vampire

I’ll be honest, it took me a while to come up with something for this post.  I’m a fencer for Northwestern, but I’m flattened so routinely by some of my much more skillful teammates that I hesitate call myself “good.”  I played piano for eight years, but I was horrible about practicing and it took [...]

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Potato Sacks

At the end of each year, my grammar school held an outdoor celebration, aptly entitled Field Day. The school was divided into eight teams, each of them having members from grades K-5.  The competition involved a long series of athletically oriented events, and we maneuvered through them in small groups, competing against groups from other [...]

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Making Silly Jokes

It was last period on a Wednesday during the last month of Junior year.  My friend Nevin and I were sitting in study hall when we came up with the idea to run for office.  The election was on Friday, and people had been campaigning for weeks.  “Let’s make a bunch of silly posters”, we [...]

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I’m so good I’m doing it right now

The procrastinator’s logic in putting things off is best explained in the following quote from season two of Grey’s Anatomy:
“Maybe we like the pain.  Maybe we’re wired that way.  Because without it, I don’t know; maybe we just wouldn’t feel real.  What’s that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer?  Because it feels [...]

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Narcissism can be fleeting or permanent

My mom tells me that I was always a talker, even before I could “talk” (or well, speak  English) I would ramble in my own language. Eventually words began to form. To this day, my mother isn’t quite sure what my first word was. I’ve never let her live that down, because I’ve always hoped [...]

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Forever Young

I consider myself a pretty talented person. I was smart enough to make it into Northwestern, athletic enough to play varsity basketball in high school, and musically gifted enough to play violin in my school’s orchestra. But none of this compares to how talented I feel I was when I was little, and this makes [...]

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Old Dreams, New Dreams

I come from a family of athletes.
My dad played Little League, my mom was on the swim team, and my brother was the captain of two varsity sports — and let’s not forget the time he was approached to be trained for the Olympics.
My parents like to refer to me as a genetic mutation.
It’s not [...]

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To know failing.

I always liked directing. I have been good at it. I have been bad at it. Realizing you are good at something lasts until you start to try it.
I started directing in an acting class because I couldn’t memorize lines. The teacher was shocked to see that I had a little bit of talent when [...]

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