iwritethingssometimes-blog1

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

So, I’m about to start my senior year of college and the beginning of the school year never fails to make me anxious. Thinking of going to new classes, seeing people I haven’t talked to all summer, attending club meetings at 10pm and a number of other things makes me want to curl up in a ball and sleep through the semester. So I needed some motivation. I needed something to tell myself, “you got this!” Because if we’re being honest, I probably do. I work hard to get good grades, I stay on top of my obligations (for the most part), and I’ve learned how to give myself some “me time,” but I still needed something.

Here’s what I did this morning. As I was unpacking stuff at my new apartment I stumbled upon some handwritten notes people have written me over the past couple of years. Some of these people I haven’t talked to in months, but others I saw a week ago. Some notes are from classmates, dorm-mates, coworkers, or family members, but each one of them - even the shortest one - has a special meaning to me. It tells a short story about someone who is grateful to see me and believes in me. I took these notes and tacked them to my wall, so that when I’m feeling discouraged I can read the names on the notes and tell myself, “These people believe in me. I can do this.”

I’ll add to it if I get more notes, but I’m happy with the way it looks so far. It also reminds me about how much power words can have, and it’s inspiring me to write more handwritten notes to people.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

Did you think that I would cry, on the phone?

Do you know what it feels like being alone?

I’ll find someone new.

Swing, swing, swing, from the tangles of my heart 

Is crushed by a former love.

Can you help me find a way to carry on again?

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

Guess who’s back at it again with the stickers

It’s me, I’m back at it again with the stickers

This is the kind of shit I do when I don’t feel like writing

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

me writing dialogue: “what is man but a vessel through which a higher entity may see? what is his purpose? must he find a purpose? we are but stardust; the universe comprehending itself.”

me writing action: they ran real fast from the bad men aand legs hurty

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

One of my favorite places to go for inspiration is outside, especially the hiking trails near my house. Here’s something I wrote while I was walking along those trails.

Untitled, by Therese

We’re a lot like the trees. All we really need in life is a place to live, some firm roots, sunshine, food and water, and a little bit of love…

And, of course, to not get torn down. People are always trying to tear us down, us and the trees. They don’t realize what they’re doing. They don’t realize that they’re destroying something beautiful, something that brings beauty and life into the world, something with seeds that can spread far and wide.

But even when a tree is torn down, its seeds will spread. Through those seeds, the tree’s legacy lives on after it dies.

We, too, have legacies.

We, too, have seeds.

For some of us, our greatest legacies will be our children, but we also spread our seeds by touching people’s lives. So grow as much as possible and touch as many people’s lives as possible, because cultivating our seeds can make us immortal.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

Good news

I recently submitted something to my school’s student literary journal and it got published! I’d like to share it here as well.

Part of His Heart, by Therese

He gave me his watch.

I held out my wrist and he put it on for me. The watch was beautiful in its simplicity. It had a white face with a picture of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh doing a handstand on it, surrounded by Roman numerals. Its brown leather strap wrapped gently around my wrist. He said it looks better on me.

Does it light up? I asked.

It used to, he replied. Now it just ticks and tells time.

He loves watches. He collects those plastic Swiss watches, Swatches. He’s almost always wearing one. His Swatches tick loudly.

When I hear my watch tick I think of that night in a dark movie theater waiting for the show to start. We sat in complete silence, all I could hear was the ticking of my watch and his. They ticked in unison, like heartbeats.

When I hear my watch tick I think of resting my head on his chest, hearing his heartbeat, my heartbeat, his watch, my watch, and it seemed as if time stood still.



[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Experience in Performing Arts

My two siblings and I have always been involved in the performing arts. We all have experience in choir (at church and school), musical theatre, and improv. After being a part of the performing arts for years, here is my biggest complaint about it.

The most obvious inequality that I see in theatre is also the most painful to me: the gender inequality. There have almost always been about five females for every one male who auditions for a show. I understand that this isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault, but the dramatic difference between the number of female performers and male performers in every single show I’ve been a part of has made auditioning feel almost like a wasted effort for me as a female performer. My older sister and I are both pretty talented, but in any show we tried out for in middle school or high school, we would be lucky if we got a role with two lines. Meanwhile, our male friends who had the same amount of talent as us got leads. And I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been in shows where the male lead really isn’t that talented at all. It’s painful – they get leads almost exclusively because of their gender.

This has been a problem I’ve faced ever since seventh grade. Seventh grade was the year that my middle school did The Music Man, and since I was young enough to pass for a boy I tried out for the part of the little boy Winthrop. I sang my heart out at the audition. I was even good enough to get a callback. But then the director decided that “passing” for a boy wasn’t good enough – she wanted a real boy to play the part, and since none of the middle school boys who tried out could sing high enough, she held auditions for fifth-grade boys from the nearby elementary schools. Among those fifth-grade boys was my younger brother. He has always been so talented. He became their Winthrop, and I became an unnamed townsperson.

Since then, my brother has been a star consistently. This past year, his senior year of high school, he was even Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. When I was in high school, I was in the chorus in every show.

I’m not bitter that my brother got the part that I wanted all those years ago, but I can’t help but wonder what may have happened if I had been Winthrop. Would I have gotten leads in other shows after that? Would I not have gotten stuck in the chorus time after time? Or would any of my acting pursuits have really turned out differently after The Music Man? After all, I’m just one girl out of the fifty who tried out.

It’s frustrating and discouraging, but it’s really nobody’s fault. I’m not really sure that there’s any sort of clear-cut solution either. All I really feel that I can do is hope that things change.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

ECWCA

Last weekend some of my coworkers and I went to the East Central Writing Centers Association (ECWCA) conference, an annual gathering of high school and college writing center representatives who get to share their research, discuss best practices in writing centers, and engage in dialogue about writing center theory. A writing center nerd’s dream come true.

As you can imagine, I learned a lot at this conference. But that’s boring stuff. I want to talk about how cool my coworkers are.

A full weekend is a lot of time to spend in Michigan with 8 of your coworkers, but even at the end of the conference none of us wanted to strangle each other. Well, I kinda wanted to strangle one of my coworkers on the car ride home, but that’s a story for a different time.

Anyway, I had fun with all my coworkers, even the one I ended up wanting to strangle. I have a lot of stories I could tell. For now, I’ll just tell one fun story.

On our drive back to the rental house from our first full day of conferencing, my coworker KJ told us about one breakout session he went to that day where the leaders said that the tutors at their writing center sort of consider themselves to be like “big brothers” to the students they tutor.

“That seems a little, like, weird and patriarchal, doesn’t it?” KJ asked us. We all agreed.

KJ’s story reminded me of a question I wanted to ask to my boss. “Hey Mark,” I called to get his attention from the back seat, “I noticed that some writing centers don’t use the word tutor to describe their employees -- they use other words like consultant. So why do we use the word tutor?”

“Well, the name was kind of a hard decision,” Mark replied. “We considered a lot of different names: consultant, wordsmith, proofreader...”

At this point all of us decided to start throwing out random ridiculous names for tutors.

Gabby said linguistic hygienist.

KJ said big brother.

I said daddy.

As soon as the word daddy came out of my mouth, the whole car cracked up. Mark almost crashed the car. “Ah yes, the Marian Writing Center Daddies,” he said once he caught his breath.

KJ added, “Imagine someone coming in to the writing center and asking us, ‘Do you have any daddies available?’”

Aaron chimed in, “Or imagine starting a tutorial with ‘Hi, I’m Aaron and I’ll be your daddy today.’”

We laughed the whole car ride home.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

Hey everyone! 

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but there have been so many exciting things going on! I’m going to be the next president of the environmentalism club on campus, I submitted one of my prose poems to the campus literary journal, I got a summer internship at an HR company, and I’m going to a writing center conference in Michigan. 

Lots of news! I’ve been a little busy, but I can’t wait to share some new stories with everyone.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

An Untitled “Short-Short” Story by Me

“I can remember it all so vividly: the white dress, the flower arch, the bright blue sky above me, and the soft green grass beneath me. I can see my father walking beside me down the aisle toward where Sebastian was standing with Father Brendan beside him. Both Dad and Sebastian were wearing the biggest grins I had ever seen on either of them. God, I can remember how handsome Sebastian looked that day. He was always so beautiful to me. Even decades later when he became sickly and pale from all the treatment, I never stopped marveling at his deep, dazzling brown eyes and that rare smile that I swear he could use to get away with murder.

When we reached the altar, Dad leaned in to kiss my cheek, but first he whispered in my ear, Your mother would be so proud. After the light kiss, he pulled his head back from my cheek and I looked at his eyes – they were quickly filling with tears. Dad, I muttered as I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. Sebastian told me later that he and Father Brendan both got choked up after seeing that too.

It was hard to let go from that hug. For 10 years Dad had been my rock. He had always been there for me in my darkest times because he knew how hard it was to lose a parent, and he missed Mom as much as I did. The last thing either of us wanted was for the other to have to suffer through it alone. I didn’t want to leave Dad, but I knew that getting married didn’t mean I was leaving him. I was just spreading my wings…”

 Unbelievable. I did it again. Why do I keep making this about myself? I crumpled up this most recent draft of the eulogy and tossed it in the trash. I’m so selfish, I can’t even write something meaningful about him. What’s wrong with me?

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

Some of My Favorite Books

(In no particular order)

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

City of Thieves by David Benioff

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel 

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand 

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

I am ALWAYS open to book recommendations, too. 

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Reading Habits

They’re pretty bad.

I think I’ve always known that reading is good for you - even in elementary school I noticed that the smart kids were always the ones who liked to read books. Somehow, though, I had a lot of trouble finding the appeal of books. In hindsight I can say that I may have held that attitude for multiple reasons, but there were definitely two main contributors to my attitude on reading. 

First, I was big into TV and computer games as a kid. Back then, if it wasn’t on a glowing screen then it wasn’t worth my time. The second reason, and I’m sure this is true for a lot of people, is that reading books felt like a chore. Especially as I advanced in school and the books we read got both more scholarly and more challenging, they became less and less enjoyable for me. The ways we were told to analyze them didn’t help either. I mean, why should I care about what Piggy’s glasses represent in Lord of the Flies? They’re just glasses!

(Just so that everyone understands, I want to emphasize the fact that I’m not trying to blame everything on school. My reading habits aren’t anyone’s “fault” except my own, but my experiences in school definitely contributed to my attitude towards reading.)

In high school I tried to care about books, but it just felt like I had so many other things going on that I didn’t have the time or energy to even read assigned readings. I say “felt like” because it was a perception - I don’t exactly know how accurate that perception was. If I couldn’t even read what I was supposed to be reading then there was no way in hell I was going to add to my work by trying to read for fun. However, there were some books that I did manage to read and enjoy on my own during those years, including Fight Club and The Life of Pi as well as a couple of nonfiction books written by the author of The Tipping Point. So at least I made some effort.

Today I’m starting to enjoy reading a lot more, and oddly enough I find myself looking for symbolism and deeper meanings on my own. It was kind of weird when I realized I was doing it. I found myself asking why the characters in Cold Mountain seemed so fascinated with crows and what was the significance of the people’s pets in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. That would probably make my former English teachers proud.

As a writer, I know that reading is an important habit to form if I want to continue to improve. I still struggle to make time to read books, mostly because I’m a pretty slow reader, but a few people have recommended some fantastic books to me and I’m super excited to dive into them when I decide to make time for them. 

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

This short scene from Dead Poets Society taught me a specific lesson about writing that I use every day: the word “very” normally adds nothing to the word it’s describing. So when I’m working with another writer and I see the word “very” in their writing, I almost always tell them to find a stronger word. It’s not hard to do:

Very important --> Critical

Very hungry --> Ravenous

Very funny --> Hilarious

Very angry --> Furious

I could do that all day.

Even if I can’t find a stronger word to replace the phrase “very ____,” I’ll just take out the “very” and leave the original word there, because I think “very” actually makes the word it’s describing weaker. I think it’s better to leave the word alone.

(And another thing about this clip: I think that language can be used to woo men just as easily as with women... or if nothing else it can be used to intimidate men. Same thing, right?)

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Favorite Writing Professor: Part 3, The Conclusion

Some people have told me that I’d be a great teacher. There are plenty of reasons why people tell me this – to name a few: I’m a good public speaker, I have decent leadership skills, and I enjoy giving people constructive feedback. The thing is, I don’t feel called to be a teacher. I would be miserable if I were a teacher – I’m horrible at dealing with kids, especially high schoolers. Also, English is a hard subject to teach because so many kids hate the subject, and I would not enjoy trying to shove Shakespeare down a 17-year-old’s throat. That being said, I have found a couple of ways to use my gifts that are better for me than teaching.

I’m still studying business management. I never switched to an English major like my professor told me, even though she pestered me about it for just about the whole school year. But that doesn’t mean I’m letting these gifts go to waste. After all, what’s this blog good for if it’s not a way for me to express myself in writing? Even bigger than this blog is my new part-time job: I’ve started working at my university’s Writing Center as a peer tutor! 

It’s been such a blessing to be able to work with fellow students on their writing (even though peer tutoring is a lot more complicated than my previous method of just pointing out people’s mistakes). I have grown so much more than I ever thought possible by taking this position. Working at the Writing Center is not always easy; I often have to accept the fact that I am not a perfect peer tutor and I never will be a perfect peer tutor. And that’s okay because I can still help people, and I’m surrounded by other peer tutors who are willing to support me and challenge me to hone my skills every day.

Although I try, it’s hard to put into words or even fully understand how much working in the Writing Center means to me. I just know that I’m a different person than I was when I started this position – I’m more confident but I’m also learning to be humbler, I’m more knowledgeable but I’m also more curious, I’m more positive but I’m also more reasonable. And you would not believe how much I’ve learned through the essays I’ve read… it’s truly a blessing. 

So this is where I am today, and this is largely because of one professor who believed in me. I hope I never stop learning and growing, even after my final class of my senior year.

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Favorite Writing Professor: Part 2

If I were to identify a specific turning point in my writing career, my “a-ha moment,” it would probably be after the English midterm essay first semester. Our topic was our intellectual curiosity, and when I heard the word curiosity I started thinking about the proverb “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.”

I can write an essay with that theme, I thought. And I did. As I wrote, I found that I had more to say than I’d realized, but I just went with it. It felt so natural -- my thoughts, my feelings, my ideas all flowing through my fingertips onto the page. When I was satisfied with my work, I submitted it with the hopes that my professor would like it. After all, that’s always the goal, right?

My professor didn’t like it -- she loved it. When we got back from Fall Break she showed my essay to the whole class as an example of good writing (luckily, she blotted out my name from the paper to avoid embarrassing me). She even read it out loud and explained why the essay was so well written. Nobody had ever told me that my writing was exceptional before; I thought that, if anything, I was a below average writer, but my professor proved me wrong on that day when she had the whole class admiring my work.

From that point on, I excelled in that class. I put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into each and every one of my essays because I knew my professor expected great things from me. I fell in love with writing because of her, and when registration for spring classes rolled around I made sure that I had her for my second required English class, English 115.

I continued to learn new things about myself in English 115 because my professor continued to encourage me. She also persisted in telling me that I should be an English major, but I dug my heels in the ground at that idea. However, I did discover a new gift that was stronger than my gift of writing, and that was helping other people revise their writing. I discovered this gift because we did a lot of peer editing in English 115, and while some of my classmates would just look at each other’s papers and say, “Yeah, that looks good,” I would get out my red pen and mark anything that needed improvement, from a misplaced comma to a clunky sentence structure to a paragraph that should be completely rewritten. My professor and my classmates alike started to recognize my ability; a couple of my classmates even asked me to look at their papers outside of class, and I always agreed to do it because I found that it was oddly fun for me.

(Stay tuned for Part 3, which will probably be the end of this tale... For now...)

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Favorite Writing Professor: Part 1

I started enjoying writing about a year ago. At that time, I was enrolled in English 101, a class that I thought I would dread. Most of my English classes up to that point in my career had been full of rules that made no sense to me and writing methods that didn’t work for me, so any time the professor mentioned a writing assignment my throat would tighten. I hated writing at the start of the course, but by the end of the semester that class had flipped my world upside down.

One of our first assignments was to write about our experience in the educational system, and my favorite part was that we were actually encouraged to use contractions and first-person. It almost seemed too good to be true. I felt so free that I really went to town on that first assignment. After we had done a few drafts, the professor had us read our drafts out loud to our peers -- I didn’t think that was a big deal. Reciting things off a piece of paper was easy for me. But when class was over and I was getting ready to leave, my professor stopped me.

“Therese, I overheard you reading your paper,” she said, giving me and eager look. “What’s your major?”

I paused. “Management...?” I replied hesitantly.

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “English.” Her tone made it sound like she had never been more certain about anything else in her whole life.

She must have seen the confused look on my face, because she went on to tell me how I have a natural talent for writing and how I should at least get a minor in English or a concentration in writing. I was startled. I’m not a good writer at all, I thought. This woman must be crazy. However, as the semester progressed, I slowly learned that she wasn’t as crazy as I thought. She just saw something I didn’t.

What she saw in me was a mixture of things: passion, creativity, curiosity, understanding, and probably even more things that I still don’t see in myself. Unlike my previous English teachers who were only concerned with rules, this professor actually cared about what her students had to say. She took the time to learn about us as individuals. She wanted us to write about things that mattered to us and she wanted us to express ourselves in our writing. Her passion made all of us passionate. For me, she was the spark that lit the flame of love for literacy.

(Stay tuned for Part 2... This is kind of a long story)

[iwritethingssometimes-blog1]

My Problem with English Teachers

I don’t really like blaming other people for my problems, but in this case I’m fairly certain that my former English teachers are to blame for this. This is something that a lot of people have struggled with at some point or another. I’m just lucky that I overcame it, because some people never do.

After reflecting on my past experiences in English classes, I’m able to tell that I’ve always had a natural knack for writing, but while I was in those classes I had no idea that I was any good at writing at all. All that my teachers seemed to do was criticize my work or give me arbitrary rules that had no merit outside of their classroom: don’t use “I”, make your paragraphs 5 sentences long, don’t start a sentence with “because” …the list goes on. These rules confused me to no end. In fact, I remember a time in fourth grade when I thought that I had to write fictional stories with an introduction and a conclusion like I did for essays, so I repeated the first sentence of the story at the very end. It made absolutely no sense. That intro and conclusion messed up my whole story, and in an attempt to make sense of it, my fourth grade teacher tried to rewrite it but ended up making it say something completely different than what I had intended. She criticized and tried to fix something she didn’t even understand.

The first time I remember ever being complimented on my writing was when I was in seventh grade. Yes, that means that I went through almost seven years of English classes before a teacher said something nice about anything I wrote. My teachers always seemed to focus exclusively on what was wrong with my work. While I understand that writing does take a lot of practice and it’s possible that I might not have been any good at writing until I reached seventh grade,this still seems sadly odd to me. Up until that point I was never encouraged to write; I was only forced to write for school.

Even after my seventh grade English class, it would take years before I would seriously consider writing for fun.