Believing is Seeing

I should know better ~

On Wednesday a reporter from The Exponent emailed me.

Rabecca Longster,

Hi, my name is Lauren and I am emailing on behalf of The Exponent. I am writing a piece for Friday and I heard you teach the Harry Potter books for your english course. I was wondering if you would be wiling to do a phone interview or meet with me sometime today or tomorrow. Please let me know. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.

To which I replied:

Hi Lauren ~

I’m sorry, but I’m not in town currently (or even in the country ~ I’m in Quebec) but I would be happy to answer any questions you have about the series, etc. via email or ichat ~

Best wishes ~

Rebecca

To which she replied:

Hi Rebecca,

Okay, well I have put the questions below. Thank you so much. Also, this story is running tomorrow so if you could get back to me as soon as possible that would be great. Thank you.

Fine. No problem, right? So I spent an hour or so composing these answers, and the “article” that came out today? “my” statements in the article bear almost no resemblance to what I really said and emphasized as important.

In case you’re interested, what I actually said was as follows:

Hi Lauren ~

Sure, no worries ~ I know all about deadlines 😉
——
Why did you chose to teach Harry Potter for your class?
I initially chose Harry Potter for my English 108 classes because I admired the series so much ~ not just the content of the series itself, the engaging storyline, the well drawn characters, and so on, but also because I had seen for myself how the series caused a resurgence in reading for pleasure not only for children in the target age group but also for adults who, before Harry Potter, did not read as a leisure pastime. Also, the students were enthusiastic about the idea, some of them having “grown up with” Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Why a book series, specifically Harry Potter, for an advanced composition class?
It’s difficult to teach only one book from a series, and that is especially true of the Harry Potter series because ~ while each book has its own story arc, providing a definitive beginning, plot, complication, rising action, climax and dénouement ~ the overarching plot and story arc take place across all seven of the books, with the series itself being uniquely structured like a book.

By that, I mean that the first three novels build in intensity up to the fourth book which one can think of as the “spine” of the story. Book Four: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is, indeed, the axis upon which the series turns from a fairy tale/child’s fantasy to a darker more adult fantasy tale. In fact, significant literary criticism has been written on the fact that many components of the final three novels mirror events, places, objects, and character interaction of the first three (hence, the 4th book, in the center, is the spine in both a figurative and a literal sense within the world of the story).

How did you incorporate that into your advanced composition course?
In advanced composition class, the emphasis is upon learning to write well about most any subject, even those that are unique and out of the ordinary. I’m also of the opinion that students, including adult students, learn more and retain what they have learned longer when the material is presented to them in a way that’s fun. Harry Potter is nothing if not fun.

The Harry Potter series lends itself particularly well to the contemporary composition classroom inasmuch as there is not only a wealth of content in the books themselves for students to draw upon but also a wealth of literary antecedents to write about, opportunities to create projects that are “composed” in media other than print, illustrating visual rhetoric, for example (the first project in my class was a visual rhetoric project, and the last one q multimedia project ~ and I don’t mean PowerPoint presentation).

What themes or motifs did you find important in the series for college
students?
Since I taught from a “writing through literature” perspective, identifying literary strategies and devices, like the author’s use of themes and motifs, and tracing them through a particular novel or the series as a whole was in itself important to my students’ experience in critical writing and composition. In fact, I had several final papers from  students in my Harry Potter classes that could easily have been shaped into publishable articles, the students had put so much time and thought into them. I also had several students who presented visual rhetoric projects, most of which were not about Harry Potter, at the Spring 2010 iCaP Showcase (one of whom won the “Judges Choice,” I believe it was, for a video he created).

I know you taught only the 4 through the 7th books in your class, why did you choose to do that rather than the whole series?
Actually, I taught books 1 through 4 through the first two semesters, and then changed to teaching books 4 through 7 during the last semester that I taught 108, again choosing to include Book 4 in both cases because it is the “center” of the story. I would have loved to have taught all seven books in each class ~ and if it had been a literature class, I would have done ~ but in a composition class there is so much else one needs to teach in addition to the texts themselves, “composing” in unconventional or nontraditional media, for instance, that there just isn’t time for the students to do a close reading of seven novels. In fact, I would love to design a literature course that focuses on the entire series, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen for me, at least not here at Purdue.

Anything else you would like to add?
Anything else I would like to add ~ hmmmm. Well, as the eighth and final movie debuts this weekend, I can only hope that the movie does justice to the characters, events, and revelations of the final book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling was able to fulfill the promises made by the series to two very disparate audiences ~ the adults who saw Harry’s death foreshadowed so many times and the children who were expecting (and rightly so) the fairy tale ending of “and they lived happily ever after” ~  in the final book, and did so in a way that was eminently satisfying to both audiences. I simply hope that the movie honors that.
——————-

Well, there you go. Sorry it’s so long ~occupational hazard for writers and teachers, and I’m both :-).

You’re welcome to use the Q & A verbatim, if you like ~ but if you need it shorter, I hope you’re able to distill it down into whatever length you need without losing the message ~good editing practice, right? 🙂

I also hope you enjoy that movie ~ I hope we all do! 🙂 have a most excellent weekend.

Best wishes ~
Rebecca Longster

That’s the second time someone from the Exponent has taken what I said out of context and completely changed the tone and, indeed, the meaning ~ the significance ~ of what I actually said into some inane nonsense they could have made up themselves.

Next time, they can just skip the interview entirely and do that ~ sans attaching my name to it.

I got a great gift yesterday. I got spend almost the entire day with one of the people I love more than anything in the world. We spent the entire day talking about things and people that are important to us, and the time went by much too fast.

While she was spending the day with me, her daughter and the rest of her family were preparing a birthday party for her, a milestone birthday, so naturally that’s what we talked about.

She said her mom had told her about the freedom that comes with reaching a certain age. At some point (according to her mom it was this particular birthday) you stop trying so hard to please everyone else, stop letting what others may think matter so much, and, hopefully, begin valuing yourself and your peace of mind higher.

There’s an old adage about how you can’t please all the people all the time. It goes on to say you can’t really even please most of the people even most of the time. And yet many of us, from the time we’re small, try to do just that ~and often drive ourselves crazy in the process. We get depressed, frustrated, angry ~ and for what?

Somehow we can just never be “enough.” Thin enough, tall enough, pretty enough, dress well enough, work hard enough, make enough money. We don’t like our hair, skin tone, body shape, voice, face, eye color, fill in the blank.

The truth is, most of these perceived deficits are only real to ourselves. Those around us don’t see these imperfections, and in fact, often envy those characteristics we most despise.

Yet it doesn’t matter how often someone tells you you’re beautiful the way you are–what matters is what we tell ourselves.

What has this got to do with that “certain age” I was talking about earlier? Well, when you reach a certain age, if you are wise, you learn to seek out more positive things to tell yourself and try to avoid negativity as much as possible.

And at that certain age, you begin to realize that all of these things that you think are so obvious to other people and that you think they might disapprove of or angry with you because of don’t, in fact, exist anywhere outside your own mind.

This is something I’ve been trying to learn for a long time ~ it’s a truth expressed in one of my favorite books: The Four Agreements. And I recently discovered ~ this morning actually ~ yet another expression of the same truth in a book I’m currently reading: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. He has this to say about what other people think of us:

“I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They’re thinking about themselves–before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until 10 minutes past midnight. They would be 1000 times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.”

He was talking about worrying about unjust criticism, but the principle remains the same across the board: probably 99% of what people say or do (or don’t do) that makes you worried or upset has nothing to do with you.

More importantly, probably 99% of what you’re afraid people will say about you or think about you, will never happen — because people are not thinking about you and me.

That’s a very freeing realization. One that comes with age and experience ~ and that is the gift of that certain age, whatever that age may be for you.

I just wish it was a lesson that some of us (uh, that would be me) didn’t have to keep learning over and over.

It’s been an interesting few days, weeks, months… in that kind of Chinese curse, “you shall live in interesting times” kind of way. The most recent interesting thing that’s happened was that I stepped up on a curb sidewalk that wasn’t a curb sidewalk but actually turned out to be the edge of a (unpainted, poorly lit) concrete handicap ramp, turned my ankle and took a tumble (to put it mildly).

Long story short, I ended up with a twisted and bruised left ankle, a scraped up right ankle and shin, several missing layers of skin from my right knee, a strained and bruised left-hand and wrist, as well as a broken thumb and two jammed fingers on my right hand.

The cuts, bruises, scrapes, sprains and strains–not fun but I can deal. The broken right thumb and the lovely almost-up-to-the-elbow cast it has necessitated–not so much.

You’d be amazed how simple things like, oh, say, taking a shower, washing my hair, shaving my legs, etc. etc. become a whole new experience in flexibility (or lack thereof) when one can only use one’s left hand, and that hand is bruised and strained enough that if the right weren’t in a cast, it (the left) would be in a brace or an ace bandage. And that’s just personal hygiene stuff.

Things I need to do on the computer/laptop tend to take anywhere from 2 to 5 times as long to do, depending on the task. As for most housework–yardwork–gardening–swimming etc.–fuggedaboudit.

Fortunately for me, I have MacSpeech Dictate, one of the Mac versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, to do a lot of my “writing” or at least initial drafts.

And that’s where the rattlesnakes come in.

I’ve been reading this book by Dale Carnegie and, while some of the information and expressions and so on are dated, the basic principles remain the same. When life hands you rattlesnakes start a rattlesnake farm, selling canned rattlesnake meat, rattlesnake skin for boots and bags and whatnot, and any other usable part of the little beasties. This was his example for the (chapter title) old “if life hands you lemons . . .” adage. I liked the rattlesnake farm–less cliché, more sexy. 🙂

My rattlesnake farm is that my current circumstances are forcing me to get more adept with my MacSpeech Dictate program. And, after all, that’s what I bought it for several months ago–to speed up at least first drafts of all the writing I do.

It’s a little weird, inasmuch as when I’m writing I usually have this voice in my head that is reading, critiquing, editing, and revising as I’m typing. Writing using my MacSpeech Dictate is distinctly different as I’m not hearing that little voice or not constantly–maybe because it’s coming out of my mouth? I don’t think so because the voice coming out of my mouth is a lot slower (in more ways than one).

Still, it’s early days yet–my lovely new right arm accessory will be with me for the next five weeks–and who knows, between now and then maybe my little brighter editorial homunculus may come back. Or maybe the voice coming out of my mouth will get brighter and pre-edit, as well as write (or draft) faster.

Or maybe I’ll just go can some rattlesnake meat… 😉

Rebecca