[Week 3] Essay - Writing about Writing

(image from Nic McPhee on Flickr)

               As most students, I’ve been assigned writing work since elementary school. When I was little, everyone would praise me for how good I was at creative writing. I had a crazy imagination and, although my technical skills weren’t good, my teachers all seemed to enjoy what I wrote. Until high school, I had only been praised for my writing and had never received any actual constructive criticism. I think because of this, I started to think that writing was easy for me and I didn’t need to try harder or improve more. So when I got to high school, I was down about how I had gone from being a good writer to a bad one.
                I took mainly advanced/AP English classes in high school. We mainly wrote critical essays on books, or analyzed poetry and wrote about the meaning of them. I was never very good at figuring out the deeper meaning behind things, so I was already bad at doing this. On top of that, I had never had to write so formally before. My papers were always pretty miserable. Because of the assignments we had to do, the amount of books we had to read, and the papers that I was always bad at, I started to dislike books and especially poetry.
                I managed to skip English Composition 1 in college by passing the AP test. My composition two class was laughable. The professor had us write small papers throughout the semester, but no matter how good our technical skill was, if we presented an argument that he rejected we would automatically get a bad grade. I was the only one in the class who managed to get an A because I realized this early on and stopped writing my opinions and wrote his instead. I have to do a lot of writing for my linguistics classes, and those kinds of formal linguistics research papers have a certain academic tone and conciseness to them that I have gotten used to writing in. More casually writings (like this one) have become a challenge to me.
                After studying abroad in Japan and generally putting more and more foreign words into my head, I can honestly say that I’ve become more forgetful when it comes to English words and grammar. It’s not that I’ve forgotten the language, I’ll just forget simple words. This has been frustrating me lately because there are a lot of times that I want to use a certain word in my storytelling posts, but I just can’t remember what it is. Hopefully as the semester goes on, I’ll become more comfortable with writing casually and creatively while regaining my English speaking abilities!

[Week 3] Storytelling - Sara and Mahaffey

Author’s Note: This story is based off of Arachne and Minerva from the Ovid II. As I’ve been doing all along, I wanted to make the story lightly more realistic. In the original, Arachne refuses to praise Minerva unless she can beat her in a weaving competition. Tragically, Arachne ends up hanging herself and turning into a spider. So instead, there is a competition in my story but the girl who is based off of Arachne (Sara), leaves in a less dark, metaphorical sense. That is, she leaves her class instead of killing herself.

I was inspired to write this about a teacher and a student because I feel like one of the most unfortunate things that can happen to young people is for them to have to deal with a bad teacher. And of course, I picked Japanese because it's my second language! I do want to say, though, that I generally love my teachers! Truly terrible teachers are rather rare in my experience. But I think that in such situations, it’s important to fight for your education.

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(Photo of Japanese writing system by mkhail on Flickr)

                It was Sara’s first day of college, and of all her classes she looked forward to Japanese the most.  She had studied the language by herself for four years and was excited for the chance to be properly taught and tested. Unfortunately, it was only fifteen minutes into the class and Sara knew she wouldn’t be able to tolerate her teacher.

                Because she studied so hard, Sara managed to test out of the first year of Japanese classes at the university. The second year classes seemed a bit easy, but she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss any important content. The teacher for this second year Japanese class was a woman named Angela Mahaffey, and she was also new to the school. While many of the students were disappointed that they would be learning from a non-Native speaker, Sara was excited to be taught by someone who would be more empathetic to the students since she would know about the difficulties of the language.  This optimism was quickly snuffed when Mahaffey sensei’s(teacher) true nature was revealed.

                “First of all, I expect all of you two obey me one hundred percent.” said the teacher. “There will be times when you have questions. You’ll wonder why some aspect of the language works the way I told you. Well, the key for this class is not to question me. Just know that everything I say is right. If you do question me, I’ll annoyed. And if you annoy me then I’ll kick you out. Simple as that.”

                Sara, who had picked a seat at the front of the class, scoffed loudly. This teacher had to be joking, right? Nobody could possibly be like this, much less a teacher.

                Mahaffey’s head immediately snapped to Sara. “Find something funny, girl?” she asked with a sneer.

                “Before you demand that the class obey you unconditionally, you should prove that you’re really so good at Japanese. If you are, then I promise to do as you’ve said. If not, you should probably rethink your attitude.” Sara replied with unwavering confidence. “As the word suggests, a teacher’s job is to teach. Not to intimidate students into submissiveness. So, go ahead. Let’s see if you speak better Japanese than I do.”

                Mahaffey was not amused. “Really? You think you speak better Japanese than your sensei?” She then began to insult and berate Sara in Japanese. Her accent, while not terrible, was not good enough to set an example for the students. But compared to her use of vocabulary and grammatical structures, her accent was heavenly. Mahaffey stumbled her way through her curses, awkwardly combining the wrong forms until she said something equivalent to, “a cow the mother of you student are being,” rather than the intended insult.

                Sara was appalled but slightly amused. How did this woman get a job teaching Japanese?

                “Well, good. Thank you for telling me not to trust anything you say.” She said with a smile as she packed her bag to leave. “I think people in power need to take more responsibility than they sometimes realize. And you are definitely one of those people.” And with that, Sara left the classroom.

                 It was later discovered on Angela Mahaffey’s Rate My Professor page that she was a notoriously bad teacher. She had jumped around from school to school, filling in positions where Japanese teachers were desperately needed and somehow lying about her skill level. Sara and other students complained to the head of the Japanese department, and Mahaffey was eventually relieved of her position. 

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)

[Week 3] Reading Diary - Ovid II

The Ovid II

Part 1:

(Rape of Prosperina: Wikimedia Commons)

Cupid and Dis: -Venus wants Cupid to shoot Dis with an arrow to help expand her kingdom
Dis and Proserpine:
-Dis rapes Proserpine while she's collecting flowers
-Her mother Ceres searches for her and is enraged when she realizes she was raped
Ceres and Jupiter:
-Ceres goes to Jupiter and asks to have Proserpine and Dis separated. Jupiter says the only way would be for Proserpine to never eat again.
Persephone's Fate:
-She broke her fast
-Jupiter divides year into halves so Persephone spends half time with her mother and half with her husband.
Arachne and Minerva:
-Minevera wants praise
-Arachne won't praise her unless she wins in a competition of spinning
-They compete
Minerva Weaves a Web:
-Minerva and Arachne both weave images of gods
-Arachne commits suicide and is turned into a spider
Niobe Rejects Latona:
-Niobe will not worship Latona because she things
The Death of Niobe's Children:
-Latona is angry and has Niobe's sons killed
-Niobe is sad but still claims to be better than Latona
-Her daughters are killed as well
Latona and the Lycians:
-Latona is thirsty but not allowed to drink from a pond 
-She curses the men who refused her and makes them live in the swamp/pond forever as frogs
Marysas:
-Marsyas' death is retold
Tereus Marries Procne
 -Pandion allows Tereus to marry his daughter Pronce
-Tereus falls in love with Pronce's sister Philomela

Tereus Rapes Philomela
-Pandion trusts Tereus with his daughter (Philomela)
-Tereus rapes her
-Philomela is mad and tells Tereus how evil he is
-Tereus is angry and mutilates her

Procne's Revenge
-Philomela has a servant take a woven message to Pronce
-Pronce goest to the palace to rescue her sister
-Itys is killed and eaten
-Tereus is mad and he, Pronce, and Philomela turn into birds and fly away

Medea and Jason
-Medea is desperately in love with Jason
-Cupid is unable to help her

Jason and the Golden Fleece
-Medea runs into Jason and he asks her for help with his task
-Jason promises to marry Medea if she helps him, so Medea agrees.
-Jason manages to fight his way to the golden fleece. 

Medea's Spell
-Jason's father is near death so Medea is asked to make him youthful again
-She leaves on a chariot pulled by dragons to get herbs for him

Aeson Rejuvenated
-Medea collects herbs and other ingredients to help Aeson
-She replaces his blood with it and he is rejuvenated

Medea and Pelias
-Medea helps Pelias' daughters kill him
- She ends up at Corinth where Jason's wife Glauce was killed and then kills their sons
-Medea then ran from Jason and Aegeus gives her shelter and marries her