word

– Evidence

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Last summer I started and made substantial progress on a draft of a memoir/essay about having a crush on one of my Wellesley College professors, *not* having an affair with him, and reading many years later of his death from prostate cancer. A first excerpt is here, and another one is here. (There’s also a reflection on writing the essay here.)

Then, I put the essay aside for the winter and did other things and wrote other pieces as well as lots of comments on student work.

Archives750RetouchedResolved to finish the draft, I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago. I hit a snag when I felt I had exhausted my memory of that time in college. Searching for something concrete, I opened up my college archives (a green cardboard box) and found three papers I wrote for that professor.

Ah, evidence. It helps. In writing about those papers and his comments, I found my way back into the essay and finished the draft. It’s funny how artifacts function, however. While they are more lasting and stable than memory, our interpretation of them is often — usually — slippery.

Excerpt #3, “Dead and Gone (draft)”:

All that I have left from Mr. K’s class (History 245) are three papers I wrote, typed, handed in, and got back with his handwritten feedback and grade. These are my only concrete artifacts of my time in that course. Who knows, though? Maybe in the College Archives, or in his own papers, there are records of that course from that semester: a syllabus, a grade book, his own notes if he kept them. (All teachers must keep some sort of notes.) But this is all I have and all I’m willing to put my hands on. Continue reading →

– Overheard and overbought

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I heard this today, as I stood in the check-out line at my local grocery store. It’s a revision of a well-known saying, and another customer was sharing it with another clerk.

When you complain, you complain alone.
When you laugh, everyone laughs with you.

That seems good to remember.

And what was I buying at the grocery store? I’ll tell you, and I’ll also tell you that I noticed, as my 14 or so items were picked up one by one and scanned, that none were essentials.

  • 3 liters of Polar seltzer (for Grace’s 3rd grade party)
  • 2 half-gallons of Minutemaid lemonade (ditto)
  • 1 box of Cheez-It Party Mix (afternoon snack)
  • 1 jar of roasted sunflower seeds (the protein to go with the Cheez-Its)
  • 1 sandwich roll (okay, I need that for my lunch — I’m home today)
  • 1 single-serving sized bag of potato chips (ditto)
  • 1 hosta (to fill in a blank spot in a shady patch)
  • 2 six packs of those mini soda cans: Diet Pepsi and Diet A & W (because)
  • 1 bag of ice cubes (for Grace’s 3rd grade party)

Not only do we live in an age of complaint, we (still) live in an age of excess. I mean, none of those things are items I need. And yet I bought them, and will again.

– It’s not the climb; it’s the cliche.

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I can’t help it — that Miley Cyrus song, “The Climb,” has been giving me goosebumps, which goes to show that the intellect has very little control over raw feeling.

I know, I know: The song is laden with cliché and bombast. It’s oversung.

However, my inner teenager has been responding in a big way: Yes <sniff>, it is the climb. That’s what… <snuffle>… matters … <sigh>.

So, what prompts this confession of uncoolness? This morning I’m digging through a box from my personal archives — it’s a big green square gift box labeled “Papers High School + College” in my printing — and I find my high school graduation speech, Leicester High School, Class of 1983. (I wasn’t valedictorian; I was either salutatorian or oratorian, which are either second or third rank.) Even with my reading glasses on, I have to squint to read it: This was the early days of photocopier technology, and the ink hasn’t held up. The full text, however, is legible enough: I see that the speech is laden with cliché and bombast. And while this first speech of mine may not be about the climb, it is about the path, which is a kind of journey. (Maybe only teenaged pop singers get to travel uphill?)

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, I’d also like to satisfy it, so I’ve transcribed the full text below. I don’t promise great or even mediocre rhetoric; it’s just a chance to read what an 18-year-old girl, only a few months away from college and some teacher’s first year composition course, thought was an example of her best writing.

Be kind! Continue reading →

– Accentuate the positive

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This week at MIT could be called “Presentations Galore.” In many classrooms, lecture halls, and meeting spaces, day and night, students are making formal presentations to their peers, profs, and even parents, if they want to invite them. My colleagues and I who are communications lecturers have been overseeing a lot of the behind-the-scenes rehearsals and being first audiences for draft presentations. We reserve practice rooms, lug laptops and projectors, cue students, ask questions, offer feedback, articulate our puzzlement, troubleshoot PowerPoint, watch the clock, talk through nerves, and inspire confidence.

And on the big day, the best thing we can do, besides be attentive members of the audience, is root for them, like devoted sports fans. Students do better when they sense our belief in them. They can borrow our positive energy.

So, I sent my presenters an e-mail yesterday morning, just a few hours before showtime. I wanted the message to be practical, positive, and sincere:

Dear [student names]:

I really enjoyed working with you on your draft presentations. I have
learned soooo much from your teams this semester, and I look forward to today’s showcase of your work.

Here is some preparation advice that is most relevant on the day of:

–Drink water. (If your mouth and voice are comfortable, you will feel more comfortable *and* confident.) Bring some with you, so you can keep sipping up until your showtime.

–Breathe. (Some deliberate breathing, in the five minutes before you go on, really helps with gaining your poise.)

–Pick a personally relevant, positive message. (Like, “I will reach my
audience,” or “I will enjoy this,” or, like an athlete, “I’m winning this
thing.” Once, before a good presentation, I said this to myself: “I own this stage.” This seems corny, but, honestly, it WORKS.)

And remember… your audience is interested in your project, and your friends and peers are rooting for you!

All good thoughts,

Jane

–—

Thanks to my friend, Jan, who sometimes signs her notes, “All good thoughts,” which makes me, the recipient, feel as though she’s sending some good vibes my way. And if you want to hear Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters sing “Accentuate the Positive” (1944), you could watch this scene from The Singing Detective on YouTube.

– If you teach

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… you may be interested in this short article, written by me and friend & colleague Lowry Pei and published this week in Tomorrow’s Professor.  It’s on ways to use informal writing and peer response in any class you teach, in any discipline.

Excerpt, “Ways to Teach Peer Writing and Response“:

Writing’s role in critical thinking and learning has been well documented, and it has important social and pedagogical functions as well. Collaborative writing and peer responding helps to create the network of relationships that makes a class succeed. Informal writing and small group work varies the classroom experience and transfers more responsibility to students. Even in large lecture courses, in-class writing and response time fosters ideas, problem-solving, and playfulness and makes a space for everyone to say something to someone. From our own practices and from colleagues’ across the disciplines, we’ve assembled a kit of basic principles and tested exercises that could help teachers consolidate and improve the ways they teach peer writing and response in any course, with any size class, at any level of student mastery.

This one — like another piece on teaching writing we published in October 2007 — also goes to eleven.

– Reading comprehension: the joy and the pain

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It’s MCAS season, and all three of our children — a 3rd grader, a 7th grader, and a high school sophomore — are taking them. They seem unbothered by a few days of testing: Lydia announced, “They don’t matter,” and Grace said, “No homework this week!” Eli is his usual cool and collected self and has altered his behavior only a little, to get the recommended good night’s sleep.

This morning Grace emptied out her school bag from Friday, and after they all left the house — I’m grading papers at home today — I looked at the worksheets from last week. There must have been 25 of them. (I would say that the idea of a Paperless Classroom has been about as successful as the idea of the Paperless Office.) I was completely riveted — and I am not kidding — by one of the reading comprehension worksheets from the MCAS review curriculum.

It’s a social history piece, written by children’s book author Lucille Recht Penner and called “Don’t Throw Your Bones on the Floor,” on the Pilgrims and their manners. Here are some good (wonderfully disgusting) facts, verbatim: Continue reading →

– More or less functional

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bicycleMany years ago, some Kokernak family conversation was being had, and this exchange between my father and my sister Emily occurred:

Dad: Do you think our family is dysfunctional?

Emily: Well… it’s more or less functional.

I don’t remember which function was the topic of concern (perhaps all the times my father threatened, when we were misbehaving in the car, to pull over and make us run alongside?) or if that’s exactly what Emily said (perhaps she said, “Like most families, we’re more or less functional.”) or even if I was there (perhaps I was only told of this exchange, and my imagination promptly filmed it and added it to the memory storehouse). However, I have long considered Em’s comment brilliant.

And two days ago her comment returned to me, when I realized suddenly how it applies to my family, the one I live with. Continue reading →

– Free advice for the would-be freelancer

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A year ago, my friend and fellow teacher, Lauren, wrote and asked me for advice on establishing herself as a freelance editor. She recalled that I had worked for a while as a freelance… something. Indeed, from 1994 to 2003 I worked independently as a writer and researcher for nonprofit organizations.

Lauren liked my advice, and I believe she put some of it into practice. I dug it out today, after I found myself talking near the photocopy machine to another teacher about the many ways to make a living. When you’re in education, it seems, it’s not enough to have just one way; you must have supplementary ways.

Here’s the advice, copied and pasted verbatim from my e-mail archives. If you’re looking to make some money with words, this might help you on your way. And if you have any suggestions to add or even corrections to make, please comment on the post or write to me directly.

Jane’s Guide to Getting Started as a Freelancer

1 — For yourself, figure out what [editing, writing, coaching, etc.] services you’ll offer and who your client might be.  Figure out what you’ll charge — look at mediabistro.com to see what industry standards are, and  keep in mind that you won’t get paid for every minute you work (about 1/3 of your time is spent on getting gigs and dealing with the client and paperwork).

2 – Establish some sort of visible presence in the world. A website is probably how you would do it now, but when I started in ’94 I had a brochure.  On it, I would include a brief bio of yourself that establishes your credibility (regarding the service you’re offering), a description of your services, and a statement about what separates you from the pack. Continue reading →

– A begat

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This half-pound bag of Blue Bottle Coffee is a begat.

coffeebag2 According to my father-in-law Ed, who knows a bit of Yiddish, many things that are bought may fit into the category he calls “begat.” And even though “begat” begins its life as a verb — beget, which means to sire or cause to exist — here it’s used, in its past tense, as a noun. Most simply put, a begat is a purchase that begets another purchase. Like, the new couch that begets the purchase of a new area rug. (Indeed, according to Ed, a new couch is the classic begat.)

Sometimes, we make purchases so innocently: “Oh, all I need is a chair for this corner, and then the room will be complete.” A day after the chair arrives, we find ourselves pacing the aisles of Home Goods, looking for a few pillows that will “tie in” the new chair to the old furniture. The new pillows, in turn, may function as a begat and lead to a new lump of pottery on the table. Which could make us rethink the floor lamp in the corner. The new lamp is an opportunity to try the innovative, energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs. Why not buy a dozen? And so on and on and on.

Back to the meager bag of coffee. Continue reading →

– Lice removal machine

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Jimmy found some archival videos from an earlier time in our children’s lives when lice seemed to be visiting in regular waves. I hosted them on my head, too, more than once. I itched, and the girls diagnosed me. Here’s one of those lost moments:

Incidentally, the video captures a scene in “Little Creatures,” an essay I wrote about head lice, which is really about love. Last week I got word from PMS poemmemoirstory that they will publish it in the upcoming issue. Hooray.

Dear reader, did you land here looking for lice advice? Top searches that get visitors to this blog have something to do with lice, lice treatments, and lice removal, because I’ve written about this subject before. To answer the questions implied in these searches, Continue reading →