Penny Hero (dot) Net

…and, today was just a really (???) day.

In one of my writing sessions, I totally lost my ability to explain why it was important to emphasize and focus on what the readers of her personal statement were looking for. I knew the paper was unbalanced; too much emphasis was on empty personal narrative, and more needed to be on her experiences shadowing dentists, her volunteer work with kids teaching them good dental habits, and her academic interests in dentistry. I tried to use words like “better balanced” and “emphasize this” and “can you see how you change direction pretty suddenly here?” but she wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t accepting what I had to say, and when I’d ask her “does that make sense?” she’d respond with “no”. I just crumpled, which is exactly what not to do in front of the person you’re trying to work with.

The next session wasn’t any better, and it immediately followed that self-esteem-pummeling Personal Statement appointment. A lab report, (a format that I’m not very familiar with, and I need to look up more information about) and his biggest concern was spelling. I tried to make a light joke about how my spelling is horrible too, and that I depend on spell-checking software. I laughed, but he looked at me like I’d just punched him in the gut. He was serious. (!!) The confidence level pummeled again there.

With him, I also lost all confidence in myself because i couldn’t make him understand the concept of “tense”… I couldn’t make him recognize that all his verbs were using different forms, let alone that this was not a good idea… I realize now that he probably just didn’t know what a “verb” was, and that he’d had very little exposure to grammar jargon. I should have recognized that, and I should have had a short lesson in what a verb is.. but I think I just panicked there, and my brain just turned off. I felt so unbelievably stupid.

The biggest problem was that I just didn’t deal with it all very well. I wasn’t there in the session. I was about five feet behind and to the left, kicking myself in the kidney for acting like an idiot, and not re-engaging.

*sigh*

So, those things made today bad.

Partly because of that, I just feel pretty empty right now. Unfulfilled. I’m not depressed though. Just kind of intellectually unconscious. (you’d never know it though, the way I’m being all critically contemplative right now.) I went into defense mode around 3:30, and I let myself become extremely bitter reading an article for the Writing Center meeting today. In my head and in the margins, I criticized the author’s reductionist advice, and the ridiculously over-simplified situations he described as “problems” with the way writing centers run themselves. I viciously attacked his misuse of the “postmodern understanding of Author“, when I probably could have let it slide… (or recognized that he was probably being ironic and actually himself criticizing those who misunderstand the Author concept he was referring to). In the meeting, many of his points were taken seriously, and I really couldn’t see the merit in it. It was too simple. too irrelevant. And… (because of the theories I internalized from someone who just died) I’m devoted to complexity.

So, about the late Derrida… Here is an article that for a brief moment made me feel less like an oil slick on a rainy day when I got home and actually read it. Someday, I would like to be seen the way I see this writer. I would like to be able to articulate my hate for the things I love the most like she does here. I would like to be allowed to bang my personal struggles out in print and make them relevant to people I’ve never even passed on a busy street.

…

So, today was a day that has led me to this moment. This moment of writing in my dusty journal, exposing and exploring problems in my fledgling academic carreer… with all kinds of thoughts I want to still pour out but don’t have the time or energy just yet. All I can do is make a mental note to try not to forget them, and to explore them before applications for grad school need to be sent out.