Guide To Writing English Papers, by F. Porpentine, age 20 1/2

Been visiting my parents over spring break, and have uncovered more undergraduate snark. I reproduce it without comment, except to note that the Elvis Studying Karate Department was more commonly known as Literary and Cultural Studies, and I spent three years mocking it, having spirited arguments with the professor who created it, and ultimately double-majoring in it. What can I say, they had good parties.

I have noticed that a striking number of the hits on this blog seem to come from students who are seeking advice on writing English papers, most often ones about "The Vine" or Lady Windermere's Fan. So, here it is. Go on and take it, I dare you.

Guide to Writing English Papers

1) Avoid Cliffs Notes. Are you really willing to entrust your grade to a company that can't punctuate itself properly? This does not, of course, apply to cases where you have to write about an extremely serious and difficult book, such as Sila's Marner or Ulysse's.

2) If you can't think of a topic, try a comparative paper. Compare the most disparate works you can think of, and give your paper a punchy title: "Dante, meet Bronte" "Quentin Tarantino and the Quest for the Grail." Such papers practically write themselves if you have a good imagination.

3) Do not use the word "postmodern." That's like wearing a sign that says "Kick Me, I'm Retro." At the better Ivy League schools, the hot new critical perspective is environmentalism. ("The Song of Roland, which is printed on recycled paper, exemplifies the medieval Christian epic.") If you're looking for something really fresh and origianl, try Neo-Freudianism ... with an ironic edge.

(Ignore this advice if your paper is for the Elvis Studying Karate department. They are clueless.)

4) If you have to write a paper about a truly evil work of literature (defined as "a book about fishing" e.g. Moby-Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, Trout Fishing In America) make it easy on yourself. Have a few stiff drinks, watch a good movie, and write your paper at the same time. Don't concern yourself with the actual content of the paper. Your professor will probably do the same thing when he grades them.

5) It is okay to make statements that have no bearing on reality. For instance, if you maintain that fathers in a patriarchal society have to sacrifice their children because otherwise the ambiguities in the contextual fabric of the family would be too much for the human soul to bear ... I promise your professor will not go home and ask her husband, "Honey, do you ever think about sacrificing our child?" She will merely praise the ingenuity of your argument. This goes double if she is a member of the Elvis Studying Karate department.

6) If your professor (not to mention names, of course) is in the habit of frequently checking his gold pocket watch, consider writing your essay on Oriental rice paper with a fountain pen.

7) Don't capsize the professor's personal boat. If he keep saying that English Renaissance plays don't have characters, for instance, it is not your place to disagree. Write about linguistic patterns or something. If you must mention the Duchess of Malfi, call her a "figure."

it is a snow day and I am bored

Direct quote from this year's AP reading housing form:

In order to place you with the appropriate roommate please check all of the following that apply:

__ I snore loudly.
__ I prefer to stay up late.

One wonders precisely what they intend to do with this information. Do they put the snorers together? Do they put them with the people who prefer to stay up late? Do they, perhaps, have a special file of people who LIKE having roommates who snore loudly? Inquiring minds want to know!

I guess this is no sillier than the form I had to fill out as a college freshman, which included such items as "I prefer that my roommate not use drugs" (they did not ask about one's own habits, so my mom pointed out, quite sensibly, that some percentage of the people who ticked that box probably wanted to keep all the drugs for themselves). Times change, and every dorm claims to be substance-free these days, so I expect they don't ask that any more. They probably still don't ask the questions that matter: the Unmitigated Disaster that was my relationship with my freshman roommate could probably have been avoided if only there had been a box that said, "I am rather immature for eighteen and something of a judgmental snot." (OK, both my roommate and I could have honestly ticked it, so maybe it wouldn't have helped.)

So yeah, I think this was a completely mundane post, but as the subject line says, it is a snow day and I am bored. I'm very pleased that we get a snow day on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays are usually my least favorite day, but at the same time I can't help noting that it is a balmy 68 degrees in University of Basketball Town, and remembering that I could have had a postdoc if I hadn't decided to go chasing dreams halfway across the country. I guess I don't regret it. It has been a good year, in spite of everything, but I wish I had a clue what happens after this, and whether these are the last weeks of my academic career, or just the beginning.

a funny story

Because there has been ENTIRELY too much doom-and-gloom on this blog lately:

First papers in the Shakespeare class are due on Monday. It's a pretty standard close-reading assignment: pick a speech of at least ten lines, make an argument about how the language works and why the speech is thematically important, no sources allowed except the OED. A student, one of the best in the class, stopped by this morning with a draft that she wanted me to look at. Awesome. She picked Puck's epilogue from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and she's making quite a sophisticated argument about the layers of illusion and reality in this play, and how the audience fits into this equation. Doubly awesome.

Then I hit the paragraph about the line "And Robin shall restore amends." She's making the claim that the word "amends" could refer to singing in Shakespeare's day. And, of course, because she really is a fabulous student, she spins this out into a complicated bit of analysis about music and harmony.

"Really?" I said. "I've never heard of this meaning for 'amends'."

"That's what it said in the OED."

So I go to the library web page and look it up in the online OED.

"Uh, Laura*? That stands for 'singular'."

"Oh no! There goes my whole paragraph!"

(By way of comforting her, I told her about the time we read The Bloody Brother, in Malone Society facsimile edition, in one of my graduate seminars. I became fascinated by a Richard III-esque scene in which the title character, having killed his brother and usurped his throne, forces the crowds to acclaim him.

"How great a prince is this?" says one of the bystanders. Question mark.

"How just?" Question mark.

"How gentle?" Question mark.

So, of course, I wrote a page or three about Subversive Punctuation and The Popular Voice in The Bloody Brother, and gave an energetic report on the topic in seminar. A week or two later, I was browsing through the library stacks and noticed a book called Punctuation and its Dramatic Value in Shakespearean Drama. Hmm, I thought. Maybe I'd better see if there's anything useful here.

This is how I found out that question mark = exclamation point in Renaissance facsimile texts. Ah, don't you hate it when the facts get in the way of a good argument?)

*Not her real name

lameduckery

It's official. I am the VAP who didn't get the tenure-track job. There isn't much else to say, really. (Well, actually there is a hell of a lot I'd like to say, but it's better said in a less public venue.)

I saw this coming, as you've probably gathered from my last post; I saw it coming as soon as I saw the course eval numbers from last semester, actually. But it still stings like nothing else has ever stung except the breakup of romantic relationships, and I don't date any more precisely because I'm lousy at dealing with the emotional fallout. Apparently it is possible to get exactly the same fallout without actually having sex. Whee.

Going to fill out job apps now. And drink.

Stuff...

-- First of all, I hardly know how to say this, but my condolences to the NIU campus community. There are a lot of people out there thinking of you.

-- More bad news, though fortunately not THAT bad, from the Beloved Alma Mater. I don't want to blog about it too specifically, for fear of becoming even less pseudonymous than I already am, but Alert Readers can probably figure it out. I will say that I'm disappointed and angry, though unfortunately not surprised, at Recent Developments, but proud of the response from the current crop of students. And I really need to e-mail some of my old professors...

-- One of my students from last semester talked me into participating in the staged reading of The Vagina Monologues that she was organizing. I was a little dubious at first, but it ended up being a really neat experience, and we had a totally packed house (by tiny-little-liberal-arts-college standards) and raised $100 or so for the women of New Orleans. Cool.

-- Another student dropped by my office this morning with her copy of The Merchant of Venice. "I haven't quite finished the reading for today, but I have what is probably a really stupid question ... is this a comedy?" Heh. Not a stupid question at all. I think we'll be talking about it for the next week. The Shakespeare class continues to be awesome and delightful. I can't believe they pay me for this. (Of course, both comp classes have just turned in their first set of papers, so by the end of this weekend I will know exactly why they pay me for this.)

-- Resounding silence on the job-search front. I had three campus visits, the last of them almost two weeks ago, and from what I know about the timelines of the various searches, I think it's now a safe bet that I'm not anybody's first choice -- including New SLAC's. And it is probably time to start applying again now that spring jobs are being posted, but ... I SO don't feel like it right now. Sigh.

Translations, Part III: The Campus Interview

In lieu of actual news...

Preparations:

"Oh, sure, there are direct flights to East Podunk."

Once a day, at five o'clock in the morning, on Billy-Bob's Discount Airline and Bait Shop. You might want to double-check and make sure your seat is bolted down.

"You'll be staying at the Dewdrop Inn in West Podunk, and one of the faculty members will meet you for dinner at the hotel restaurant."

We try not to let the candidates actually see East Podunk until after they've signed a contract.

"Teaching demonstrations will be held in Professor Sawyer's class."

Professor Sawyer has just discovered a great new way to get his fence painted.

"You should prepare a fifty-minute lecture for an audience of students and faculty."

No students will show up. But that's OK, because you'll find out that our faculty can slouch, roll their eyes, and fall asleep in class with the best of them!

The Itinerary:

"Prep time for teaching demo"

One of the faculty members will let you sit in his office. By way of being friendly, he will also keep up a steady stream of small talk, which will force you to think up appropriate replies. This will continue until someone takes you to the classroom, precisely fifteen seconds before the demo is supposed to begin.

"Lunch with students"

Brush up on your campaign promises.

"Open Q and A session with faculty"

Stealth job talk.

"Chapel service (optional)"

You are not only expected to attend, but to brush up on the appropriate responses for the denomination with which the college is affiliated.

Small talk:

"Our best students here are as good as the best students anywhere."

Both of them. We try not to think about the others.

"The cost of living in East Podunk is great!"

There is nothing to buy and nowhere to go, so the university doesn't bother to pay us anything.

"What do you like to do for fun?"

Quick, name a hobby that isn't too weird and can be conducted in the middle of a mud flat! Cooking is good if you're a man, but probably too gender-stereotypical if you're a woman. Um, how's your chess game?

Talking with Administrators:

"Here at Podunk Land-Grant U., we are very oriented toward student satisfaction. I think it's very important to have a quantifiable way to assess satisfaction, don't you agree?"

If your evals drop below 4.8 out of 5, you're out.

"Have you thought about the possible impact of quantum physics upon Shakespeare studies?"

I am a physicist.

"What do you think of Stanley Greenfunkel?"

Look at me! I know all about the big names in your field!

"Er ... Stanley Greenfunkel?"

I am an idiot. I don't know the big names in my own field.

"Er ... Stephen Greenblatt?"

I am arrogant. I don't hesitate to correct the Dean.

Driving to the Airport:

"The committee was SO impressed with your research and your teaching demo! You're such an amazing candidate! I'm sure you'll be getting lots and lots of offers!"

One of them won't be from us.

not dead, in case you were wondering

Just exhausted. And slammed with work. And in that post-interview state of paralysis where I'm afraid to breathe too hard for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of the universe. (And I have stories, but I can't post them now since members of the search committee[s] involved will immediately know who they are.)

Good luck to all who are in the same boat, and good night.