Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013

(from http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013.php):

“Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college.”

Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.

• For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
• Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
• The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
• They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
• Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
• Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
• Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
• Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
• They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
• Rap music has always been main stream.
• Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
• Someone has always been building something taller than the Willis (née Sears) Tower in Chicago.
• The KGB has never officially existed.
• Text has always been hyper.
• They never saw the “Scud Stud” (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders.)
• Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
• They have never had to “shake down” an oral thermometer.
• Bungee jumping has always been socially acceptable.
• They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P.
• American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
• Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled.
• State abbreviations in addresses have never had periods.
• The European Union has always existed.
• McDonald's has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
• Condoms have always been advertised on television.
• Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
• Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap.
• The American health care system has always been in critical condition.
• Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves.
• Desperate smokers have always been able to turn to Nicoderm skin patches.
• There has always been a Cartoon Network.
• The nation’s key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Their folks could always reach for a Zoloft.
• They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
• Women have always outnumbered men in college.
• We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
• Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code.
• Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
• It's always been official: President Zachary Taylor did not die of arsenic poisoning.
• Madonna’s perspective on Sex has always been well documented.
• Phil Jackson has always been coaching championship basketball.
• Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
• Kevin Costner has always been Dancing with Wolves, especially on cable.
• There have always been flat screen televisions.
• They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix.
• Disney’s Fantasia has always been available on video, and It’s a Wonderful Life has always been on Moscow television.
• Smokers have never been promoted as an economic force that deserves respect.
• Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
• Nobody has been able to make a deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
• Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
• Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
• They have never been Saved by the Bell
• Someone has always been asking: “Was Iraq worth a war?”
• Most communities have always had a mega-church.
• Natalie Cole has always been singing with her father.
• The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.
• Elizabeth Taylor has always reeked of White Diamonds.
• There has always been a Planet Hollywood.
• For one reason or another, California’s future has always been in doubt.
• Agent Starling has always feared the Silence of the Lambs.
• “Womyn” and “waitperson” have always been in the dictionary.
• Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
• There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
• CDs have never been sold in cardboard packaging.
• Avon has always been “calling” in a catalog.
• NATO has always been looking for a role.
• Two Koreas have always been members of the UN.
• Official racial classifications in South Africa have always been outlawed.
• The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
• Vice presidents of the United States have always had real power.
• Conflict in Northern Ireland has always been slowly winding down.
• Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them.
• Nobody has ever responded to “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
• Congress could never give itself a mid-term raise.
• There has always been blue Jell-O.

Done!

 

Three months have passed in a blink of an eye, though I suppose my family may have a slightly different perspective.  Since the fall term began back in September, I’ve spent more time writing and investing myself in schoolwork than I did through the entirety of my first year back.  Truth be told, I think I’ve written more in the last twelve weeks than I’ve written in the past twenty years.  Not all of it has been great; if anything, most of it has hovered somewhere between acceptably mediocre and acceptably okay. 

One of the key things I learned in the process, however, was how to kick my chronic perfectionism to the curb and to just enjoy the act of writing.  I adopted a shift in my thinking, and began to see writing as not necessarily a destination to be reached, but as a journey.  Many times, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself someplace unexpected, but often, the time spent writing was like taking a leisurely scenic drive on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  It didn’t matter if anybody else saw what I saw – it just mattered that I saw it.

Now my fall classes are over at last, and I have an entire month before I begin the next big step forward – the assessment of my prior learning.  That’s a whole other blog post in itself.

In the meantime, I’m not going to put away my proverbial pen, but I’m going to keep on writing, even if only for myself.  I still harbor a dream of becoming a Writer with a capital W, a dream that had languished in a coma for too many years, refusing to die, but also not showing many signs of life.  Since resuming college last year, those dreams have begun to stir, a twitching finger here, a fluttering eyelid there… but it’s only been within the last twelve weeks that they have awoken, rising from their slumber, and tentatively stretching their atrophied muscles.

"God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them. " ~ Unknown

I’m going to keep writing, to shake off the dust and to continue the ongoing process of perfecting my craft.  Most of all, I’m going to persevere in the knowledge that God, who is the Giver of all good gifts, will lead me along this journey to precisely where He intends for me to be.

I’m just enjoying the view along the way.

Why Do I Feel Like I Just Wrote A Novel?

Twelve weeks after beginning my Creative Writing class, I am finally done with my portfolio, a collection of the ‘Best of the Best’ and the ‘Best of the Rest’ of my work written over these long days and nights.

I was up late last night printing almost eighty pages of fiction, poetry, introspective ramblings (much like my blog posts), along with a few scattered odds and ends.  Seeing all those words printed in 12-point Times New Roman filling up page after page was a surreal experience to say the least. 

For many years, I had feared that the best of my efforts were long behind me, a distant memory of life and fertility, as I walked through the long, dry desert of writer’s block.  I’ve since learned otherwise.  While I wouldn’t claim to have written the ‘perfect’ body of work by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve found a sense of redemption of my love for writing, and a rising hope that perhaps the best of my work is still ahead of me.

The portfolio is due by Friday.  I mailed it out this afternoon via overnight mail, and now I wait…

Almost There………

I’ve written so much over the past couple of weeks that I feel as though I’ve completely tapped out, which I suppose is a good problem to have…

… except that I still have a small mountain of revisions and editing to do to my final portfolio.  At it’s current state, the page count is just under 90 pages.  Suddenly, the prospect of writing a novel someday doesn’t seem quite as intimidating.

It’s there in me somewhere… I just have to find it and draw it out.

Where Was I?

At the risk of stating the obvious, I haven’t written in this blog in a while again.  That’s okay, though, because if one doesn’t have much to say, it’s much better to say it sparingly than to spew volumes of empty words just for the sake of speaking or writing.

Given the sheer amount of writing I’ve had to do over the past ten weeks, I have actually enjoyed these prolonged silences.  The itch to write, to communication, to express, to articulate is ever present, but sometimes the words that emerge upon the page feel so contrived.  They are still a part of me, of course, but that doesn’t justify giving every single thought or fleeting perception a permanent voice.

My Creative Writing class is winding down to a close.  My final portfolio of completed work is due by December 11th.  While most of the difficult work is behind me, I am faced with the task of selecting and revising a number of pieces that I have written throughout the duration of this term.  I’m not being graded so much on the quality of my writing as much as I am on the effort I put into my revisions. 

This is a more daunting task than it would appear; I don’t even know where to begin in the process.  I’ve received very little negative feedback, which I absolutely rely upon as a focal point for improvements.  I’m my own worst critic, so I don’t trust my judgment about what would improve my writing, or if I’d be actually working against what I’ve done so far, just so I can say I revised it.

I’ve learned a lot of unexpected truths about writing, as well as about myself, through this class.  I’m looking forward to my winter break, but I will miss the class.  It has stretched me, challenged me, awoken me again to my love for writing, and has drawn things out of me that I didn’t even know were there.

Soon enough, though, the class will be over, the writing challenges done, and I will be left on my own to find a way to try to sustain the momentum.  I’m not quite sure exactly how I’m going to do that, though this blog will continue to be a part of my general ‘keep-on-writing-no-matter-what’ focus.

So, despite the week-long pauses, I am still here, still moving forward, still pushing myself to write, even if I am the only one who cares to listen.

Another Stab at Poetry

I recently had to write a sonnet on any topic, with only the rule of being mindful of rhyming schemes and syllabic structure.

Again, against my better judgment, I fling this poem irretrievably to the great “out there”:

Unwritten words lie hidden in pages,
Clamoring for meaning, their lonely plight
Germinating tender shoots seeking light,
Prisoners freed from darkened cages,
Impatient actors longing for stages.
Questioning my competence, my words slight,
Expression is elusive though I write.
Words emerging inspire, heart engaging.

Spilling forth as light in blackness of ink,
Words well from inner reservoirs, I bleed.
My heart, in language of its own, is heard
In fragile voices filtered as I think,
Few repressed to bury again as seed,
Languishing lone inexpressible word.

~ Joseph Grabowski

Silence = Busy-ness

I can’t believe it’s already been over a week since I last wrote here.  My writing class has me so busy these days that it’s hard to keep track of what I wrote, where I wrote it, when I wrote it, and what it was even about!  I feel like I am now just writing for the sake of writing, though according to my writing class, that’s precisely the secret to writing successfully!

To my defense, though, my attention has also been occupied by other situations over the past week.  I finally worked up the courage to upgrade my Tablet PC to Windows 7, which, since I was upgrading from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional, required a clean install.  The actual install was relatively painless; it was the reinstalling and reconfiguring of the critical software that I use on an almost daily basis that was tedious and time-consuming.

On top of that, my son developed a fever and a few other troubling symptoms.  Thankfully, the fever never crested above 100, though he clearly didn’t feel well for a few days.  Normally, we don’t panic over standard viruses that make the rounds, but with all the conflicting information out there about the H1N1 virus, I was hypervigilant.

As for school, I’m down to the final stretch for this term.  I still have a mountain of work ahead of me, and I’ve had my moments of overwhelming panic and hysteria.  Not for the first time, I’ve had the distinct thought of “What did I get myself into?!”  It didn’t help that all these situations, plus a few more unexpected complications, conspired together to rob me of quality sleep, thus intensifying my general anxiety and restlessness during the day.

I don’t want to neglect this blog, though.  Writing, however mundane the words I produce, has been an exhilarating experience for me.  My Creative Writing class is almost done, but I hope and pray that my long dry season is permanently behind me.