Confessions of a Speech Communication Professor

Dexter Class War Again (Spoiler Alert)

2011-12-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

In Dexter, Season 6, Episode 7, "Nebraska," once again Dexter kills someone he doesn't know for sure is a killer. Certainly, this guy finally threatens Dexter with a gun before he's pitchforked, and yet it's still interesting what type of guy this is. He's scruffy, he's growing pot in his cornfield, but most importantly, he is clearly a member of the ill-bred, ill-educated American underclass. He's not the type of person, in other words, who watches Dexter.

This episode also has a parody of Grant Wood's American Gothic, but with Dexter and the "ghost" of his brother standing in front of a picture of a house. I've pulled the picture below from one of several other blogs that pulled it. Certainly, Dexter is an example of an American gothic endeavor.

"Hey, Chica!"

2011-08-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm down in Los Gatos for my 40th high school reunion. I walking across the big North Santa Cruz, Hiway 9 intersection. There's a heavyset woman with long black hair walking in front of me. Because of her hair style, clothing, and the way she walked, I figured she was younger than myself. (She wore blue jeans and dark t-shirt and her hair didn't look "done.") As we are crossing, a red Cadillac convertible with some youngish men rolled by and one of the guys hollers, "Hey, Chica!" I say "youngish" because the late afternoon sun was glaring against my dark glasses and I couldn't see them all that well.

So, what does it mean?

First, because there was a group of young men in the car, I assume that the targets for this shout were not only the long-haired woman and myself (wearing black t-shirt and black pedal-pushers) but also the other men and anyone else in a car with a window down. Therefore, this shout could have meant any or all of the following:

1. I am a rich young man who has the power and right to make noise in this rich town.
2. You are a Hispanic woman and therefore of lower class than I so I have the right to shout at you.
3. I am really a cool guy because I'm riding in this red Caddy and I want you all to see me.
4. Look, I have the power to intimidate women from a moving vehicle.
5. I must have a lot of testosterone because I'm so hot for anything that moves that I have to shout from a moving vehicle.
6. I am actually from a poorer section of the Valley and this behavior is part of my cultural heritage.
7. I'm petite bourgeois but I want you to think that I'm poor because poor people have street cred and god knows I need some.
8. I'm a gay boy and I'm behaving ironically.

It's impossible, of course, to know how the shot was intended. And, of course, communication is a transaction. I found the shout annoying and disconcerting and perhaps that was it's message. "Hey, middle aged woman! Men in red Caddy convertibles are annoying and disconcerting and I just wanted you to know that!" (9)

Dexter Season 5 SPOILER ALERT

2011-07-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

There are two class-based killings in Season 5 of Dexter. These killings give us insight into the demographic that supports Dexter. The first killing is the "tearing apart" with an anchor of a guy who says, "Well, your wife can suck my dick." He is ugly and doesn't use language well. He is the class opposite of your well-educated, lower middle class, "my dad was a cop" Dexter.

Dexter needs to fit with whatever demographic downloads it, rents it, buys it, or watched it on HBO the first season. I've relied on Netflix until Season 5, when I turned to one of the free "Watch Dexter Free Online" sites.

So what do we see in the Guy in the Restroom? He insults women, he speaks in a dialect, he sneers, he's not attractive, his clothes don't quite fit him. Yeah, it's ok to kill him. If the viewer is a middle aged woman.

What about the creepy ex-cop who makes use of the video and tapes Dexter showing Lumen how to make a downward kill-thrust? Well, we dislike him because he's crass. The tv show, however, also wants us to dislike him because he is "dogg'ed." This is more difficult. It's only by being persistent that people from the wrong class can work their way into the appropriate sphere.

Upshot -- the viewers of Dexter are "hailed" by this pop cult test into the position of believing it's okay to murder men because they are crass, crude, and tough.

NCIS

2011-05-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

Another reason I value NCIS is the mentor/mentee relationship between Gibbs and his subordinates. He is gruff, demanding, quietly loving, and absolutely loyal. We see the model of Gibb's leadership in his own association with Mike Franks. These men remain psychologically close even though they rarely see each other or speak. Each knows that the other is there if needed. This season's (the 8th) finale featured the great ritualized event of Mike Franks' funeral. (See Wikipedia's entry on Jethro Gibbs.)

If the paragraph above sounds like a turn in an ongoing conversation, it is. I've been thinking about NCIS for a few seasons and presented a PowerPoint on the program last year at the Pacific-Northwest Division Conference of the Community College Humanities Association. In my presentation, I started with the axiomatic assumption that all popular texts both support the dominant ideology AND support the minds of individuals seeking to manage the challenges of their lives. The nastiest bit of ideological work that the show performs is justifying the "total surveillance society." What it offers in return is a vision of a family of workplace friends who accept each others' foibles (as long as such quirks don't involve workplace incompetence) and grant each other absolute loyalty. What I've been thinking about the past few weeks is how I've also hoped for a relationship like the one between Gibbs and Franks. Loving, protective, admiring.

But such a relationship can't really exist in my profession. The bond among those whose work involves the management of death is simply different than the one that is forged among those who don't face life's ending with regularity.

What does being 12 years old mean?

2011-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

You see, we were talking about the parlous nature of our past relationship.

And I said, “I’m fifty-effing-seven years old.”* By this I imagined that I was indirectly sending the message that I no longer have the energy or the inclination to go all intense just to jack up my norepinephrine levels.

I don’t know what my friend’s internal interpretation of my statement was. We are two very different people.

The external interpretation was in the response given to my statement. This response suggested that my claim to being well aged and mellow (like Laphroig) wasn’t a legitimate guarantee that my relational performance in the future would be of sufficient difference from that of the past. (Yes, dear interpersonal communication students, I am NOT a perfect practitioner of all I teach. I understand the concepts. I just can’t always do the skills both efficiently and effectively.)

My friend’s response was, “(Inside?) We’re still 12 years old” in a “gestural” vocal tone accompanied by a sweep of the arm.

While I could not see my own face, I think it may have been registering confusion or disagreement because after a couple of beats of silence this phrase was added: “Well, 13 years old.”

What does it mean to be a 12 years old thought pattern inside of a 57 year old body?

How was I at 12? I was in 7^th grade which means that I hadn’t yet learned and then purposefully unlearned how to use John Kennedy’s assassination, just two year’s passed, to make myself cry. That year I spent several months talking in a faux-Liverpudlian accent that went with the three cheap plastic rings I wore on each hand. My two girlfriends, Robin and Julie, pretended to be Paul and John. I don’t think we had anyone to play George.

Were we crazy or simply 7^th graders in the throes of the hormonal disruption of adolescence?

Also, by the age of 12, I had flunked and continued to flunk the gender test.

Oh yes. One of the games kids played in 6^th grade was to ask someone to do some common behavior: “look at your fingernails” or “sit down and cross your legs.” And then, whatever you did, they explained it as either a “girl” or “boy” behavior. And if you responded as the wrong sex, of course you got picked on. Yeah, yeah. Not as rotten as kids today have it and . . . HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF OF MY LAWN! Dag nabbit!

Anyway. Oh, yes. Well, of course you must have guessed as soon as I learned what the list for “boy,” was, I performed THOSE, not the “girl behaviors.” I looked at my nails with the palm curved inward, facing me. As soon as I got into pants each day, I sat with my ankle crossed at the knee. Those are the only two tests I remember but I’m sure there were more.

Now, what was my motivation? To be different? To BE a boy? To show that there was no difference between boys and girls? To annoy the living Bjeezuz out of my Mom?

Whatever answer I give at this age and this point in time has a lot more to do with the audience who is in front of me and what I think they need to get from the story than with any accessible “truth.”

So, was I interested in boys at thirteen? Thirteen was eighth grade, when most of my girly excitement was taken up with following the careers of Bobby Kennedy and Ilya Kuryakin I had a chance to see the former on the University of Santa Clara campus in a smallish theatre and acted (with the other 8^th grade girls) much as though he were a Beatle – our cheers too much like screams. I joined the latter’s fan club.**

So. What was my friend’s experience at age 12? Deep interest in politics and government? Excessive hormonal discharge resulting in parasocial relationships? Looking forward to serving our country? An interest in becoming rather than being with the opposite sex? And what about at age 13? ***

All sensemaking is retrospective. We give explanations after we do what we do. I know that whatever story I’m giving must by its nature be an attempt at audience adaptation.

Unless of course, Kenneth Burke was right that that it’s possible, it’s conceivable, that people may sometimes, though far more rarely than we imagine, speak expressively rather than rhetorically, to the universe instead of to (an) Other(s)

________________________________________

*Note to new VPI: I don’t use profane or obscene language in front of my students (unless it’s the focus of part of a lesson or a comment to be published in The Broadside) but the blogosphere does, I believe, have different standards of speech than the classroom.

** And have thought about the actor David McCallum’s aging often since becoming a fan of NCIS and catching the episode of Madmen in which he was Sally Draper’s pre-teen heart throb.

*** Speaking of Thirteen, aren’t you glad she came back to House? I know I am.

Elevator Pitch for Wine

2011-03-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the "elevator speech," wondering if I should add it to my public speaking class activities. An "elevator pitch" is a short (one minute or less) promotional presentation selling oneself or a product to another person who is riding the elevator with you (or in a similar, trapped position in which they need to listen to your proposal).

Tom Kelly from Enoteca Website

At yesterday afternoon's Newport Market wine tasting (you'll notice they don't take their web presence seriously), I was observing elevator pitch's for wine. A handsome young man named Tom Kelley, the Northwest Ambassador of Small Vineyards, a division of August Wine Group, was pouring four delicious Italian wines. Shortly after the tasting began, he was giving a short pitch with each pour. These were memorized and usually contained two or three words about the flavor (rich, jammy, tobacco, etc.), place of origin, and vineyard. He had pictures of some of the winemakers and a picture of decorative tower with a flock of birds rising upwards. (Frankly, this particular type of picture annoys me: the cliche image of architecture with birds in liftoff.) I picked up a wonderful and very cheap bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from the La Quercia estate.

I enjoyed hearing each pitch and wondered if he'd have the energy to keep it up until six. I didn't go back to find out. But I will got back to buy more of the Montepulciano.

The Meaning of Laschcar

2011-03-11T22:01:00.000-08:00

As I walked the dog yesterday, I heard a story on PRI's The World in which reporter Mustafa Quadri talked about "lashcars." The lashcars are defined as an "anti-Taliban tribal militia, or lashcar." These words were used by the voice introducing the story.

Then Mr. Quadri, sounding very "classic BBC," tells the sad but millenially common story of an area divided by war. Much of the story comes through through his editing of his interview with Irshad, a lashcar member from Adezai, a village that had become a fort. Irshad says he knows about "80 %" of the local Taliban because he was involved in local elections and sporting events before the fighting started. Now, he says, if a Taliban would pick him up, they'd kill him and if he caught a Taliban, the man would be killed.

This true story saddens and horrifies while making me thankful that I don't live in this situation.

Strangely enough, however, my very first response to the story was my response to the word "laschcar." It brought a mental image of painting of dark menacing man with long mustachios. On boats. With big swords. I think I saw this painting when I was in high school. (Or, Dr's Freud and Jung, did I just dream of that shadow with its long steal/stele?) Later on, looking at 19th Century paintings in museums, I would run across pictures of "lascars." The men in the paintings were dark skinned and usually not presented as heroes of the image. They were often subsidiary characters, decorations, part of "exotic" locals.

So as I listened to Mr. Quadri's story, I felt he was playing on my old, orientalist biases to get me to think of the Afghanis being as different from me as the Victorians imagined these dark skinned men.

It seems to be true that both laschcar and lascar mean a military group of some kind. But the lascars were not evil, though they were treated and pictured as far less "good and decent" than the white folks of the Victorian period. Perhaps to justify their misuse. As historian Diane Robinson-Dunn notes,
they were simply "Asian sailors" or sometimes "Asian or African sailors." They were predominantly Muslim and dark skinned. And they have an honorable history. So the old, "white man's burden" images that popped to mind were probably not what Mr. Quadri was intending me to imagine as I listened to the story. Though he does spend a lot of time emphasizing the bloodiness of the Afghanee quarrel.

Why not FREEDOM?

2011-03-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

My colleague Terry Krueger had an article in the Bend Bulletin today in which he used a metaphor* to describe the growing size of our classroom syllabi. The tenor of the metaphor was the classroom syllabus. The vehicle was a novel. The ground was the concept of "things with many pages." His point was that the current institutional expectation that we clearly state every possible do or don't and our graded or behavioral response thereto has encouraged us to produce syllabi greater than the 2-6 typed pages we received when we were but graduate students.

The novel he offered as an example was one known for its length: War and Peace.

Now, my question. Why use this particular example? Why not Freedom? Why not Middlesex? Why not some other great contemporary tome, popular or literary?

Perhaps because a more creative metaphor would have called attention to the writing of the piece rather than to the point that appears when we extend the metaphor to the inevitable question, who is going to read either?**

Of course it could be we're looking at one of the differences between a readerly and a writerly text, and because Terry's purpose is persuasive, I think, I think he's probably thinking of his audience. (That's at least three thoughts and plenty enough for one post.

_____
*By the way, if you surfed to t-bob's homepage, you could see her interest in Great Pyrenees, an appropriate obsession for a college teacher. I mean, not everyone can have a poodle.
** If you click to these pages, please make sure you read Dan Coleman's comments.

Tiny rant: What are they teaching these days?

2011-02-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

So I took a look this morning at a paper my nephew wrote for his U of Oregon junior-year English lit class. It was about Shelley's famous sonnet, "Lift not the painted veil . . ." He'd asked his mom, my sis, to look it over and give him feedback. The paper, which he was rewriting, was assessed by what the U of O called a GTF (graduate teaching fellow) but which I used to call (when I was one) a TA (teaching associate) or GS (graduate slave). The final will be graded by the course teacher. I scanned the essay as I was drinking my coffee and was pleased to see him make a thoughtful argument in which he used the term "ontological angst."

I was not pleased to note two knowledge deficits (which I, of course, will blame on his previous education, not him since he is my beloved nephew). First, he didn't know that fourteen lines with end rhymes was a sonnet. How can someone get through high school and not know what a sonnet is? Second, he didn't recognize that "the Preacher" mentioned in the final line is about the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes. AND, more to the point, neither did the GTF!

So, my mini-rant would be, why wasn't this English major taught something about the Bible? Especially about the book that, arguably, is one of the best known among the non-religious? Eric S. Christensen, in Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries, says this:

In the spirit of Renaissance interpreters, the nineteenth century sees Ecclesiastes and/or the Preacher himself coming gradually to signify a general spirit of inquiry that is as intoxicating as it is dangerous or frustrating. This is evident in the way in which writers such as Percy Shelley found kinship in Qoheleth's [the preacher's] observations seeing increasingly that the world is a 'spectacle of emptiness. . . this was sometimes coupled with a profoundly frustrating sense of futility, such as in Shelley's 'Sonnet' (1818). . . .

My irritation about this lack of Biblical knowledge among English majors is not unsimilar to my irritation with the same lack of knowledge among the conservative Christians who inhabit my classes. The Christians should read the Bible because they profess to believe it. English majors should know at least those parts of the King James Version which so thoroughly influenced British and American writing.

But, perhaps I should just calm down. As the Preacher said (Chapter 3) (Quotation lifted from the Bible Gateway site).

¹To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

²A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

³A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

⁴A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

⁵A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

¹⁰I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.

¹¹He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

¹²I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.

¹³And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

So now I think I'll go and eat and drink and enjoy the good of my labour.

Wonderful Example of Love Gone Wrong

2011-02-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

I followed a Facebook link to the blog "Slightly Disheveled" and found some terrific writing, including a wonderful parable about puzzles and mistaken love. It does a fine job illustrating two important concepts. The first is one that is so important in Interpersonal Communication: ambiguous language and misunderstanding. The second is vital to my love education courses: the unfortunate fact that people "in love" project their expectations onto the love object, thus being unable to see the love object with clarity.

Dexter-ous

2011-01-05T10:55:00.000-08:00

I began my sabbatical by watching the entire first season of Dexter, on the recommendation of my friend Stacey, a literature professor I trust to give good advice about things narrative. She told me that it was a "novel" like the Sopranos, with the focus of each season on a particular other serial killer. I'd avoided watching the show in part because we don't have Showtime. But now the first and second season of the show are streaming at Netflix. I'd also avoided it because I thought that a show with a serial killer protagonist would be both violent and decadent. It's neither.

Now, it does have a lot, and I mean like BUCKETS of blood, most of it aesthetically splattered about like the work of a grand guignol abstract expressionist. But very little slam-bang viciousness. In terms of gross visions of corpses, it's far less disturbing than any season of NCIS or CSI, two of my favorites. The violence in Dexter is like that in old fashioned horror films -- mostly hinted at.

As for decadence: though he is a serial killer, Dexter is a vigilante version thereof. He "takes out the trash." He is a "dark hero" along the lines of Dirty Harry, Batman, and a thousand other Hollywood and comic book characters. He is also self aware and mentally struggling with the conflict between the normality he desires and his difference. So the show is, in some ways, ferociously moral.

Dexter's struggle is part of what made the show interesting and enjoyable. He knows that he is a monster and he is doing his best to live by the code taught to him by his adoptive policeman Dad, Harry. Harry taught him the practice of looking normal. "Even if you don't want to smile, you should. It's what normal people do." This is the key, of course, to surviving in the bourgeois world. The rich can be monsters without cost because they have the power to make evil actions invisible. Those who live in absolute poverty have some of the same freedom because they don't have trackable connections. But to live in the middle class, one has to maintain an image of normality.

I believe that every bourgeois person in postmodern, information age society struggles with the challenge of balancing their "authentic self" with the need to "fit in" with their colleagues and friends. This is one reason why Americans report having very few friends. According to Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades (Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Matthew E. Brashears, American Sociological Review), our social networks have decreased dramatically in the past twenty years. Few of us have more than two or three people with whom we can "be ourselves." Many have only one or none. One of the reasons for this is that most Americans find their closest connections in the workplace and must, perforce, hide from their colleagues any aspect of their character that might put their colleagues or themselves at risk.

Dexter hides his monstrousness from his colleagues, his adoptive sister (he was adopted by the cop when he was 4), his girlfriend and her kids. The show suggests that most people have something to hide and I think that the shows viewers are probably people who experience this hiding in their own lives.

SPOILER ALERT

In the first season, the show has a mythic quality because the serial killer Dexter and his cop colleagues are investigating turns out to be his "real" brother, the other boy who sat in a cargo carrier two inches deep in blood. Through the season Dexter thinks of the Ice Truck Killer as a genius, a master class teacher, and a friend. When he discovers it is his brother, he is tempted in a very deep way. His brother is the only one who can possible understand him, who can accept him as he is. His brother wants him to kill his adoptive sister and Dexter has his hand on the knife, but can't do it.

I think this is the most powerful struggle anyone can face -- the struggle between our desire to feel loved for ourselves and our desire to follow a social code of conscience. It is the struggle of addicts. It is the struggle of anyone whose "true self" is experienced as unworkable. Most people in our overly regulated, surveilled, and measured society have something they want to keep private. Or perhaps something that they should keep private. Yet we have been taught, perhaps by our parents, perhaps by some teacher along the line, to just "be ourselves:" "I know I'm somebody, cause God don't make no junk," as the poster tells us. But what if the self is not acceptable to most if not all of the people surrounding one? The desire to release the constant control, to just be open, to flow as an animal flows without self-consciousness, to feel accepted and loved, to feel connection becomes more powerful as it faces constant thwarting.

In the show, we see Dexter go to a therapist (who he is about to murder) and say, "I'm a serial killer. Whoo! Wow! It feels great to say that out loud, finally!" We know how much Dexter wants to feel accepted, wants to have his monstrosity seen, recognized and celebrated. At the end, Dexter fantasizes about a crowd celebrating him. His desire to be accepted, however, is fulfilled only by the evil actions of his brother, a different kind of monster who has gone to great lengths (buying a freezer unit, chopping up hookers, etc) to bring Dexter to consciousness so that he can recognize his brother's love.

I think that, as viewers, this might be a hidden desire we all experience -- to have someone need us so much that they go to great lengths to help us realize ourselves. But at the end, this dark and evil "therapy" must end. Dexter kills his brother as every acolyte is taught to conquer or move past his teacher in order to become a master. "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

Somewhere there must be a Jungian analysis of this show.

Of course, Dexter's duality also gives the show plenty of dark humor. The lead actor, Michael C. Hall, manages to play Dexter with complexity and wit. The visuals are stunning and the ensemble cast is excellent, all of which add to my pleasure in the show. I think I'll go start season two.

Long Time No Sea

2011-01-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

Which is what Lewis and Clark said just before they reached the Pacific Ocean.

Last year I resolved to post often -- that resolution died very quickly through a combination of laziness and lack of purpose. Then I hit a couple of walls last spring that left me considering the whole blog thing.

First wall was legal: what can I actually write about my life and not get sued over? I was so excited last spring to take my first cell phone pictures of a student group presentation that seemed to me very creative. Then a few of the students in that creative group basically blew off their final written work. I wanted to post the picture and also write about my disappointment but news stories were surfacing about teachers being sued or fired for blog posts.

Another wall is my conflict avoidance. I had one nasty criticism about a post and it evoked such an unfortunate scumble of unpleasant emotions that I realized I probably don't have what it takes to engage with lively topics in the wild west of the web. While I enjoy live intellectual debate and have found methods to manage personal face-to-face relational conflict, the whole anonymous attack thing took me back to graduate student days of receiving nasty anonymous reviews of material I sent to journals.

So I'm not sure, at this point, what this blog is for. When I find out, I'll tell you.

Dr. Jill Biden

2010-06-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hooray for Dr. Biden and her commitment to the ethos of the community college.

This month's More magazine features an interview with the wife of the V-POTUS. She is currently teaching three sections of English at Delaware Technical and Community College. She calls this her "one sacred area." My first response to her work was to wonder how bad the job of Second Lady must be to find teaching freshman comp a better option! But then, from the article, I couldn't really tell whether she teaches writing or literature.

Dr. Biden talks about her commitment to people like herself, women who go back to college after marriage and children. She says that she believes in her students and lets them know. Her comments remind me so much of folks at COCC like my friend Carolyn Esky and others in the Human Development program.

Interviewer Lynn Sherr asked Jill Biden, "What is it about community colleges that so moves you?"

Dr. Biden answers, "It's people who are struggling to get ahead. They work at minimum wage jobs; they're trying to support families. I want to raise awareness that this is the perfect place for them to get job training or that it's the gateway to a four-year college."

I agree with her views. But please don't think I am a community college teacher out of any kind of altruism. I sometimes think it would be nice to live the life of my oldest friend -- a private university professor who pretty much teaches just what he wants to teach and who has grad students doing his slave work. But, bottom line, I prefer doing what I do. I believe in the community college not just for my students but for myself. I think that what I do is "right livelihood," one branch of the noble Eightfold Path. By increasing other people's opportunity to live a successful and powerful life, I ease my own suffering. And there ain't nothin' self sacrificing about that.

Manhattan Perception Management

2010-05-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Jack Donaghy would be proud! Proud of the management of perception performed at the foot of 30 Rock. I went to the Top of the Rock when I was in Manhattan over spring break and experienced the amazing class erasure performed at the entrance to the experience.

One enters the Top of the Rock experience as though entering a ride at Disneyland. We take a short one story elevator to the ticketing area. Once there, we walked through an overview of the history of the building of Rockefeller Center. This included some videos about the construction, about the wonderfulness of the founders, and about Swarovski Crystals (they constructed some of the decorations within the Center).

One is almost required to have one's photograph taken on the way in. One is posed on a "steel beam" in front of the New York skyline in a shot that emulates or parodies the famous photograph by Charles Ebbets called "Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper."

At the end of the journey one may choose to purchase the full packet of pictures for $25 (two magnets, cardboard framed photo). The package probably costs $2 to create but the labor!

Yes, it's the labor I'm thinking about. The structure of this visit continually links, blends, mystifies, (pick the word you want) the interests of the workers with those of the plutocrats (great 1930s curse word) who financed and continue to finance the building and its works. The ticket stubs, the advertising, the videos, all ignore the huge differences between those who make things and those who own them.

And, sadly, I think that this is what America wants -- to ignore the gigantic differences in lifetime safety, stability, and hope between those who have and those who have not.

New Quarter Halfway Over

2010-05-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

I thought this would be a light quarter. I only have two classes, one the public speaking weekend bootcamp and the other a small group communication class taught at night. Unfortunately, I am also on three hiring committees which have eaten up a lot of time. And I'm setting up to teach online this summer. So I'm behind.

Another Disappointment

2010-04-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

Another disappointment included not receiving help from faculty and staff at our "partner" university, Oregon State. I'd been planning to teach a brand new course, Introduction to the Rhetoric of Film. The only school in Oregon that offers it is OSU so I needed to know their student learning outcomes in order to create a course that they would accept so our curriculum committee would accept it. Last year, in winter 2009, when I emailed the department chair for the first time, he didn't answer me. This year, I emailed the teacher of the course and spoke with him twice. He promised to send the syllabus and the outcomes but never did. I also emailed the departmental administrative assistant who didn't sent me a syllabus either.

So, by the time COCC's registration started in late February, I was feeling very unprepared to teach the course. None of the current textbooks I've found, like The Terministic Screen or Narrative in Fiction and Film, are suitable for community college freshmen. If I was going to work without a text I really needed outcomes and a bit more help. Didn't get it. After a weekend of registration filled almost all the other speech courses but left my new SP199 course with only two bodies, I decided to abandon the course and teach another section of the ever popular small group communication.

Horrible Ending of the Quarter

2010-04-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

Last quarter ended terribly and I just haven't wanted to blog about it.

First, there was the problem of my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. Reading their final analyses, I realized that at least half of them were leaving the class invested in the same old belief in "true love" they had when they entered. I feel like King C'nut, trying to hold back the waves of noxious ideology and like him, I think I just have to turn back that work to a higher power.

Second, there were the two exploding teams, one in each small group communication class. Two teams did not check up on their paper writers and suffered at the very end of the quarter when in one group, the writer stole two thirds of the paper and in the other, the writer didn't even turn the paper in. This is a terrible betrayal of other students who, basically, allowed themselves to be betrayed. I spent much time online on my Ipod Touch dealing with each issue.

I was on my Touch because we were off to New York on March 21 where, among other stories we consumed was South Pacific, a play that celebrates "true love" in that "at first sight" 1940s fashion and reveals it in all its awe-full glory.

Another Wonderful Presentation

2010-03-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm a few days late in writing this because Lucky Seven actually performed last Thursday night.

This was another wonderful presentation. They gave their presentation on communication in a dental office. They had an attractive PowerPoint with pictures of people from the office. Their presentation was very well organized. I appreciated especially that they had a funny skit AND they made excellent use of their written sources (something some of the teams have neglected to do.) But the aspect of the presentation that I most appreciated was that they went beyond their original question and became critical thinkers and asked about the problem of "groupthink" in a low conflict work environment. Great work!

Great Small Group Presentation

2010-03-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw the first of my small group communication class's Team Oral Reports and I must give props to KJCJs. They presented a report on Conflict in the Restaurant Setting that was excellent! It had everything I want a group presentation to have. They dressed in black uniforms to show their solidarity and also gave each team member a chance to present information. Their presentation had a clear beginning, middle and end. It was creative: they used web videos and skits as well as simply presenting with talking heads and PowerPoint. They referenced their sources, had quotes from the text, showed that they understood the course concepts and overall worked together with energy and commitment. Great work!

Oh yes, they also introduced us to the wonderful video series created by Generation Awesome called "The Bartender Hates You"

Images

2010-02-26T18:50:00.001-08:00

I was thinking tonight (after receiving the envelope from the college) about COCC's change from the masculine postage stamp (rectangular) to the feminine moon as its representative symbol. The college paid a firm of grown up advertising and marketing folks to research and implement this change so (therefore, Q.E.D.) it must be based on valid assumptions about effectiveness in our target market.

But what are those assumptions?

Papers

2010-02-13T06:17:00.000-08:00

Ack! As Bill the Cat might say. I have 43 tests and 43 student papers from the Philosophy of Love and Sex class to assess today and tomorrow. Fortunately, my spouse is willing to help with the grading of the test (it's objective) (mostly) (I should learn to use scantron but never think that far ahead). I will combine grading with poodle grooming (a five to six hour job).

On the plus side, we went to the opening of the A.R.T.C.A.T. show at the Pence gallery last night. That was great. Wonderful work by the best art students and teachers of Central Oregon.

Differences in Classes

2010-02-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

My two Small Group Communication classes took the midterm last week and in one section, four out of five teams got As and in the other section only one team received an A. I'm trying to think of what I've done differently in those classes.

I could use fallacious post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning and say that one of the classes had to change their classroom and that made a difference. But who knows?

3Days Off

2010-02-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

It was great having the college website shut down for two days. And I slept all Friday afternoon. So, basically, I haven't worked for three days except for grading my TR Small group midterms. Tomorrow I'll write the midterm for the love class.

Love Sometimes Stinks

2010-02-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

This ain't about love. It's about my Philosophy of Love and Sex class. This week they proved to me that most of them are not reading the assigned material. Sigh.

I could give them a pop quiz every Wednesday night. But what would be the point? This is class they don't have to take. I don't want to turn them off the material by making them actually read it, for goodness sake. Now, I wasn't all that surprised when I found out that only seven out of 43 admitted that they'd read the online chapters of La Vita Nuova by Dante. But when most of them had not read On Love by Andreas Capellanus (selections of which are in our textbook, The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love) well, that made me kinda sad. I want them to be interested so don't want to punish them. Nevertheless, it's hard to talk about the material or play with it if they haven't read it.

Last week we had a terrific time comparing sections of the New Testament, especially Mark 10 and Matthew 19, about Jesus' comments on divorce. We also looked at a few different translations of 1 Corinthians 7, from the King James to The Message. In that class we also looked at love and gameplaying, checking out bits of Ovid's Art of Love. I also read about Roman Empire marriage customs from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of Love.

Well, next week is the midterm. Gotta write that today.

Failure with Resolve

2010-01-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I thought I'd make it through January at least with my resolution to blog daily. Nope. Not only did I skip the MLK weekend while I was traveling, I also skipped all last week and weekend. This is kinda the story of my writing "career." I have very little personal discipline and if I can't see a clear reward at the end of a project (I mean something besides the very amorphous concept of "self expression") then I don't do the work. And it is work. And I'm not a graphomaniac.

I suppose I could say a few words about how Socrates thought writing problematic (see Plato's Phaedrus). Or show my self awareness by noting that almost no one (Hi, Stacey!) reads my rambling. But the truth is, to paraphrase Henry Clay, "I'd rather be president than write."

Posting for a Class in CMC

2010-01-13T22:18:00.001-08:00

I'm taking an online course at Chemeketa C.C. called Computer Mediated Communication. Here's my "reflection" for this week. It will just need to do double duty. The teacher asks us to write privately on certain topics.

"How has technology affected your life and improved or detracted from your life? Are you a technophile or a technophobe? What are the benefits and liabilities of using technology in your life? List four or five benefits, i.e., connecting with family and friends and four or five liabilities, i.e., spending too much time on the computer, etc."

The spork is both a spoon and a fork. As a technological innovation it is both a stroke of genius and a joke. It does the work of two utensils but does that work inadequately. In my experience, all technology has some sporkiness about it.

Because this is a class focused on technologies of communication, I won't talk about my love/hate relationship with cars. Well, come to think of it, the automobile did have a huge impact on communication by giving people a private protected area outside the home in which to share intimacies. Cars also made it possible to spend time with distant (i.e., over 10 miles away) family and friends. So the car actually IS a communication technology. But not of the sort we're talking about in this class. The car is not "intended" as a channel of communication but as a mode of travel.

Technologies can often have unexpected consequences. The usage of technology can also have unexpected effects on the further development of same. Technology and society impact each other in complex ways, as our author notes when he quotes Rob Kling on "social realism" (p. 43) Social realism views the "relationship between technology, culture, and social interaction as more of a two-way street."

The same is true of my personal experience with technology. I act on it as it acts on me. I can use technology for unintended purposes (I can hang a spoon from my nose or use an old laptop as a target). Technologies encourage me to use them.

I am a bit of a social constructivist in that I tend to believe more that our social systems and groups impact how we manage technology. But I'm not strict about that.

There are many technologies that I love and value. I love email. It's a quick way of keeping a paper trail at work while communicating basic information or just socializing. If I relied on only oral communication I'd also have to keep a journal or notes so that I'd have a record of agreements. I love writing on a computer. That's the thing I love most: word processing programs. When I first started keyboarding, it was on manual typewriters. I remember in high school turning in papers that one teacher called "topographical" because they were covered with so much liquid paper.

I love researching in databases or on the web. And, wow, Boolean searching is the bomb. It is SOOO much simpler than card catalogs or going through indexes.

And my life has been made immeasurably richer by first microfilm and now digital copying of old newspapers. The New York Times is completely available! I did a radio show on our local low power fm station that was focused on the music and news of the WWII era: "Swingtime With Sylvia." It wouldn't have been possible without technological access to old recordings and the New York Times. The coolest CDs I have were a huge collection of music copies from "V-Discs," Victory Discs, records (wax singles) that were sent to military bases for free. I have these amazing recordings of Fats Waller, Woody Herman, Glen Miller, Artie Shaw...etc. All this amazing history, complete with comments to our boys oversees, made possible by both old and contemporary technology.

I also love being able to watch my niece push towards success as a model as she posts dozens of startlingly glamorous photographs.

Now for the downside. I am addicted to visual narratives. I watch way too much television, especially crime dramas and police procedurals. I assume that if I weren't watching I'd be reading, becoming more educated, being more creative, etc etc. I occasionally go on media "fasts" to try and cure this addiction but it always comes back. I also communicate too often with email when I could just walk down the hall and talk to someone. I sit too much. My body protests. I also don't read as much fiction as I used to and can barely get through a novel. My attention span is the size of a gnat. Was it ever any larger? Do I remember?

And there are times when I feel utterly overwhelmed by the amount of information trying to push its way into my brain. When I was young, I prided myself on being able to talk about the news. Now, even though I listen to NPR ever day, I really hate a lot of what I hear. I find that too much news makes me depressed. I feel like the fat kid in the Gary Larson cartoon: "May I be excused? My brain is full." http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/images/extbrainfull.htm

Also, I'm not a big fan of the death of privacy, but since it's a relatively recent invention, I'm trying not to sweat the loss too much.

Social Comparison

2010-01-12T21:52:00.000-08:00

One of the ways that we create our self concept is "social comparison:" we compare ourselves to others to figure out who we are.A student in my evening class asked, "Of course you know Jim Hawes? And I said yes, and this student commented that we have a similar style in the classroom -- chillaxed. Hmmmm. I'm still processing that comment.

Getting into Groups

2010-01-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

This morning the MW Small Group Communication class found their team members. The start of the team project is always interesting to watch. I encouraged them strongly to be aware of team member behaviors and take notes after class.

Last quarter so many folks had trouble with the Final Analysis that I'm trying to encourage everyone as strongly as possible to keep track of the behaviors of their colleagues. I also created a set of rubrics for the written and oral reports.

My ego was stroked today when my colleague Kathy McCabe, an ex-police officer and head of our criminal justice program, told me that her daughter thinks I'm terrific. (Why? She only saw me once and in a state of moderate inebriation. Maybe it's the hair.)

Skipped a day

2010-01-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Friday sucked so bad that I skipped yesterday. But here I am, back on the horse of language saying that I will be so glad when I'm no longer an administrator.

I haven't been writing much media analysis lately but I do want to point out something I thought last year about the Visa Aquarium commercial . This is sooo intended for boomers who took psychoactive drugs when they were young and now have children to bring up. Look at the fire breathing sea horses, the kaleidoscope imagery, the sea rays arranging themselves into an M.C. Escher drawing. And, of course, there is the soundtrack by the Moody Blues. "Tuesday Afternoon," a song about an afternoon in a flowering field has spaced out lyrics which have nothing to do with an Aquarium though the analogy between fish and flowers seems apt. The commercial startled me when I first saw it because, as someone who lived in the sixties, its imagery and music was sooo similar to that in the hippie bookstores and head shops of my youth -- the high color visions of those who took 'shrooms and acid. And now those people are taking kids to the Aquarium on a workday. The message, "Yes, I used to be a stoner, but now I'm a responsible parent. But, you know, there was a magic to those old days and maybe I can recapture it through the mind of my child."

I remember my dad taking me to a movie in the middle of the day when I was eight years old. He was working night shift at the time and I was at home from school for some reason. Maybe we were both playing a kind of hooky. He took me over to San Jose (10 miles) to see "Sail a Crooked Ship." I loved watching a silly, grown-up movie with my dad. I've seen the movie since and it's really, really bad. All I remember is that it starred Ernie Kovacs and had an embarrassing moment when a woman's bra was used as a slingshot. Now I wonder if Dad was drunk at the time. It was such a strange thing for us to do.

So one wonders about the little girl in the ad and what she'll remember of the day out with Dad.

Hard Decisions

2010-01-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

I had to make a hard decision yesterday and today had someone email the president of the college and say that I was heartless and a disgrace.

This is what's really hard about administration. Someone always hates you.

Week ENDs in mess

2010-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Being a chair means putting out fires and managing tragedy.

I tried to avoid going to my office today, instead hoping to be able to just go to the north campus to teach my class. Instead, I had to go to the main campus to pick up my class bag (I have my classes in separate bags by subject) and found an email message from a woman my administrative assistant said had been yelling at her about smoking.

Oi, don't get me started. I don't smoke. I hated that my mother smoked and that it killed her. But how much damage, really, can be done by walking through one puff of smoke in the freezing outside air? Control indoor smoking, yes. But outdoors? Sigh.

So this complainer left a long message on my phone, on the dean's phone, and is writing a protest letter to the state of Oregon about various violations on the COCC campus. She though my admin was an art teacher and condemned her for "setting a bad example." It's enough to make me want to take up smoking.

On the horrible terrible side, one of our faculty members had her cancer take a terrible term and is in the hospital. I've got to find a replacement or cancel the classes. Actually, this isn't as hard for me as you'd think because there is one person, a newly minted PhD and son of the admin mentioned above, who might be able to take the classes.

I will be SOOOO glad when I'm no longer chair. I'll be on my feet more in classes and working more, but it won't be as stressful.

Ice Day

2010-01-06T22:02:00.000-08:00

After an emergency session at the highest levels, my school canceled all classes that started at 4:00 or after. I got email and phone messages on my cell (text) and home phone, not to mention the warning on the website (which seemed to appear rather late).

So -- I spent some time allowing people into my evening class and posting syllabus and schedule on Blackboard.

Sigh. Soooo exciting. Lead story at News 21.

Redmond at Night

2010-01-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

I'm in a strangely shaped classroom in Redmond: thin and long from my left to right. There are only 30 seats so that will keep me from loading the class up. It's located in the building the college rents to the Oregon State workforce division. We have a little side door so they can lock up their lobby at night.

A few folks laughed. I worked the age thing better this time because I used a "nominal group technique" sorta structure rather than just having them meet and talk about the question.

Among the guesses at my age: 50, 47 ("we averaged them all out"), "don't look a day over 25," "none of our business," 55, "Older and wiser than us." One woman (who took the time to chat with me before class) said that it was a trick question.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, because you're a woman. Because it's the first night. It's difficult to put into words."

"Let me see if I can put words in your mouth. 'you're a woman' ... In our culture woman are not supposed to tell their age because success is related to being young and pretty. So guessing age wrong could be insulting. And 'it's the first night' means that we don't know each other yet and you don't know how to respond, especially since I wield the economic power in the classroom. So, in that way, it's an unfair question."

She said that I'd done a good job of mind reading.

First Class

2010-01-05T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well, last quarter I tried something new in my classes: I didn't read my syllabus aloud the first day. Instead, I threatened them with a quiz on it and then just had them sign a note that said that they had read it. Big mistake. I got questions about the syllabus all quarter.

Yesterday, I went over the entire syllabus after kicking out people on the wait list who couldn't fit into the class. I made some jokes. Then I had the students cluster and guess at the answers to three questions:

Why is Huck teaching this class?
What gives her the "right" to teach this class?
How old is she?

That gave me a chance to introduce myself and also talk about decision-making and power relationships. We laughed about the age conundrum. (Guesses ranged from 41 to 59.) Nevertheless, I think I'll change the assignment a bit for tonight's class and give them a chance to work individually first.

Tomorrow

2010-01-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

Winter quarter begins tomorrow. Ah, the beautiful chaos of first week! When we all like each other and our future together isn't predictable. It's also a time of nervous energy for me because I have some communication apprehension issues. Fortunately, our first meetings are heavily routinized so that we are free to let our minds wander across our feelings -- do we like each other or not? will these meetings together have purpose and will that purpose make sense? Will we each be committed to doing the work of making a class?

Day Two

2010-01-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

What counts as "blogging"? For the purposes of surviving my resolution this year, I will be counting entries in either this blog or Another Bag of Poodle Papers. I will not accept Tweets as blog entries.

One of my Facebook friends turned me on to another New Year's idea: picking a single word for the year. I believe the idea comes from Christine Kane. My word for the year is "Metamorphosis." My New Year's Day ritual is to construct a collage vision for the year and then post that in our kitchen. The collage construction is never completely conscious. I just select images that seem to be necessary and that go together. I'll post a picture of my latest college later in the day.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

I fell down on the job last quarter. I didn't talk about the successes and failures of my classes. Sure, I thought about it, but, hey, I'm a slacker. What can I say.

Some of the data on blogger bloviating shows (?) that folks spend very little time reading any one blog entry. 2005 informal analysis by ProBlogger suggests people spend 96 seconds per blog. { http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/03/17/how-long-do-your-readers-stay-at-your-blog-length-of-stay-statistics/ } I've tried for the past half hour to find more up to date stats but without much luck.

This could be because people don't really notice the passage of time while on a blog, according to the qualitative study conducted by Baumer, Sueyoshi, and Tomlinson of Irvine. www.ics.uci.edu/~ebaumer/chi1132-baumer.pdf

Of course, such a study may be difficult because it takes a lot of work to go to blogger websites, contact them, and ask for their data collection.

"You're Fired!"

2009-10-07T10:41:00.001-07:00

First firing of the quarter took place this week. A team member who hasn't communicated effectively with his/her (hey, this person DOES have a gender but privacy concerns prevent me from divulging it at this time) the team was officially fired by it. Now it's up to the fired person to apply to another team. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

So often students do not require accountability from their team members. I've seen teams in the past carry people who don't live up to team contracts, usually to their detriment but not always. Sometimes teams have two or three very strong workers who also place high value on social maintenance. They find it more costly, personally, to upset someone than to work extra hard to cover for someone.

I'll report later on what happens with this team.

Do Students Read?

2009-10-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Ah, I had one of those classes yesterday that would have made me cry when I was a new teacher. In my morning small group communication class, I was asking questions about the reading assigned for the week and students responding blankly. Three of 30 people admitted to reading the assignment for the week. Sigh.

Oh, well.

Blogging VS Blackboard

2009-09-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

The students in my MW morning small group communication class would rather that I use Blackboard than the blog I've set up for them. Sigh. I guess I'll have to make the change.

New Start

2009-09-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

My three classes this quarter are lively and many of the students seem engaged.

This, at least, is my beginning observation. It may just be that there are a few loud people in each class who chit chat, engage with me, and generally make noise. The week has been a bit chaotic with people needing to get into classes and the school encouraging us to do everything we can to let as many people as possible in.

I'm teaching two sections of small group communication and one section of interpersonal. I also have two weekend workshops: Listening and Team Skills. I put the team skills class into the schedule just before registration as a way of getting people an "anchor" class -- a way of getting into the system so that they can register early in November. My service to the college, as it were. And also, because I'm going to be hiring a new part timer to teach the spring one credit workshop, Conflict Management, I needed to pick up and extra load unit.

It's all over now

2009-08-18T21:41:00.001-07:00

Wow. The summer class is done. Sunday we had persuasive speeches, I graded them, and posted the grades this morning. Now it's three weeks till I'm back on contract.

Many folks improved for their persuasive speeches. They took the comments made by their evaluation partners to heart. Others obviously just wanted to get the class over and done with the quickest way possible.

My favorite speech of the day was one on why COCC should pay more attention to food allergies and food intolerance, especially in the food offered on campus. I liked this speech for many reasons. First, it was on a very local issue. Second, it was quite well researched. Third, the speaker had a personal stake in the issue.

I'm always a big fan of local and personal. I pretty much get bored with issues I've heard like a bazillion times -- global warming, nutrition, and exercise among them. I'm not bored with the people who give the speeches. Just with the topics.

Informative Speeches

2009-08-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Had a great collection of informative speeches yesterday. We talked about rescue dogs, the Milgram studies, music therapy, the symbolic meaning of the eagle and many other things. My favorite speech, however, was the one on Anthrax, or Bacillus Anthracis. It was well organized, had plenty of data, and was something I didn't know anything about. The student who gave the speech was able to clarify a very complicated topic.

There were a couple of speeches on very complicated topics that were probably a bit too big for the 6 minute time limit. The speech on American monetary policy wound up being interesting but confusing. A presentation on Global Warming seemed to give a few different descriptions of what caused the problem but didn't completely hang together.

One thing I've noticed is that the biggest reason people do poorly in my classes is that they don't read the directions. I think I've done a pretty good job explaining exactly what people need to do to succeed in the course but sometimes I think people don't actually pay attention to their own opportunities for success.

Today I'll be hearing the persuasive speeches. I'm missing a few students. I hope that the folks who attended yesterday attend today. I've also got a couple of people who showed up and did the work for the first weekend but who haven't shown up this weekend. I fear that unless they contact me they'll wind up getting Fs. I hate giving failing grades.

SUMMERTIME FUN

2009-07-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching this summer for the first time since 1998. I'm leading an air-conditioned version of the Public Speaking Bootcamp. We just completed the first weekend. It's a fascinating group, very mixed in terms of ages and worldviews. About a fourth are over thirty and a fourth under twenty. There are white and blue collar workers, kids just out of high school, and one gentleman who spent 15 years in prison.

And I was impressed by the work they did this last weekend. Some of them chose very interesting rhetorical figures for their evocative speeches, like diacope and catachresis.

Now comes the hard part -- disciplining themselves to get their work done over the next three weeks.

FINALS

2009-06-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'm hanging out at the front of Deschutes 1, watching five of my 21 interpersonal communication students continue to work on their final exam. I'm tapping away at the front of the room. The test was short-answer, recognition, and essay. After the test, I ask them to write a letter to themselves about what they've accomplished in their work on their personal goals. Three of the five are doing that. Nope. All of them. I'll soon be home sipping prosecco. I'll send them the letter in three months. I got this letter idea from a Small Group Communication workshop I attended way back in my second or third year at COCC. I'm afraid I'd have to look at my H.R. file to remember the title of the workshop.

I myself didn't get everything done this quarter. I wanted to do more interactive online work with the students. Well, more isn't really the right word. Try some. Oh well. There's always next fall! (I get to say that for four or five more years.)

Aha! One left! It's certainly been an interesting group this quarter! If only I'd told more stories about them.

I LUV my Love Class!

2009-06-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

This morning the students in Communicating Love (a course that exists in Oregon only at COCC) presented oral reports on their personal beliefs about love. I felt so happy with their sharing, especially the kind remarks from students who recognized the value of others stories about their struggles. A few times one student would thank another for providing insight either from their own lives or in their discovery of a helpful book.

Some examples:

One student talked about how she had learned over the course of the quarter that she wasn't a very good listener but, more importantly, she wasn't a good "talker" -- she didn't like to self disclose. She shared that she blocks connection but that she is planning to do better on this, starting slowly with a bit of self disclosure in safe circumstances. When she was finished another student thanked her for being so open about how she wanted to change.

Another student talked about two books that he had discovered, one by Harville Hendrix and another by Dr. Phil. What he most appreciated about these books was the idea that it's okay to be single and that it's important to get to know and like yourself before you throw yourself into a relationship with another.

Tears were part of a third student's story as she used her daughter-in-law to be as one of her outside sources and talked about how the young woman was teaching her about how rough she'd been on the men she'd been involved with before and had taught her about how women could treat men with kindness. The woman she spoke of, her son's fiance, is also in the class. She talked about her experiences with her very dysfunctional parents and how she had resolved early on not to be like them.

Each student who spoke today had something useful to share. It made me glad, once again, that I teach what I do.

The "Statement of Personal Belief" assignment.

Communicating Love:
Statement of Personal Belief Written and Oral Assignment
10% Oral Report, 90% Written

Aspects of the task:

1. Review what Huck has to say about academic writing at http://khuck.cocc.edu/Essays/default.aspx. Explanations of how Huck grades are on this page.

2. Find two helpful sources about the relationship between romantic love and long-term relationships. These sources may be artistic (short stories, books, movies) or scientific (studies of human experience as reported in magazines). You will incorporate these sources as well as our textbook into your personal statement. You should have a bibliography at the end of your personal statement with all 3 sources.

3. Create a personal statement as either a series of essays or as one long essay. This personal statement should answer the following questions:

How might the relational patterns in your family history set directions for you? (Incorporate descriptions of what you know about parents, grandparents, and siblings relationships and how these might influence you).
How might the interactional patterns of your own childhood influence your current or future love choices? (Incorporate descriptions of two or three actual past experiences.)
Describe any media texts that currently influence your thinking about love and long-term commitment and explain how they influence you. (These may be books, movies, music, television programs, etc.)
What aspects of yourself and your skills do you bring into relationships and will you bring into them in the future?
Describe, with as much clarity and detail as possible, what you hope to experience in your future loving relationships. (Include some description of how you will manage the decline of chemical romance and differences of opinion within the relationship.)

ORAL REPORT (2-4 minutes long) Due anytime during class: June 2-4

Your oral report may cover any of the following aspects of your essay:
Describe the two outside sources you are drawing from and what you have learned from them.
Pick one or two aspects of what you learned about yourself and share them with the class.
Focus on what you are looking for in a loving relationship.

WRITTEN REPORT Due June 11, 1 p.m.

Must make use of textbook and two more sources.
Must have plenty of specific detail.
Must be at least 750 words long.