By now, you should have a clear idea of the question you’ll be answering through personal experience and outside resources. I would like us to now experiment with style using strategies we’ve learned from Pelias. Please respond to one of the prompts from below.
- The beginning: Pelias begins his essay with a description of a physical space that moves: the classroom with students coming in and out. What physical space would you want to start your essay with? Begin drafting this kind of introduction. Remember, to use specific details and consistent tense.
- The analogy: Pelias compares the life of an academic to the life of a tourist. He keeps to this analogy for the entire essay. By using this analogy, he is able to answer larger questions about what it means to be an academic. What are analogies you can use to answer larger questions connected to your project? Spend time explaining these analogies. You might start with a sentence like: X is similar to Y because…
- Point of View: Pelias does not use first-person in this essay. He uses second-person. That is why we see so many “you” sentences. By using “you” and making the reader a part of the essay, Pelias is able to connect with the reader on an emotional level. Try using second person point of view for your auto ethnography.
- Integrate: On page 371, Pelias integrates a Booth quote into his essay because he remembers a colleague commenting that Pelias’ research does not involve trips to the library. Pelias feels this is a critique, so he thinks about a favorite line he would like to bring into his narrative and then goes on to explain its significance. Try to do the same. Begin with a personal experience that leads into a “favorite” quote or an “important line” and explain the connection the quote/line has to your personal experience.
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“Run! Run!”, your friend yelled at you as the class raced to the classroom to see who could get there first. Your teacher waited by the classroom door and she quietly told the stampede of students to be quiet and stop running. You hurriedly pass your friends and run to your seat. Your face is beet red, your chest is heaving and you can’t even talk because you’re out of breath. You wipe the sweat off your forehead with the sleeve of your sweater and your heart is beating fast and loud, “lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub”. The rest of the class follows behind you and your friends and you start talking and laughing again. As your teacher puts on the 20 minute timer and plays classical music, you know it’s time for independent reading time. As she hits play on this classical song, you roll your eyes and think “Why this boring song? Why doesn’t she play a Taylor Swift or a One Direction song?”. But as you find yourself reading, your breath is back to normal, your heart is beating, but you can’t hear it anymore and your face is cool. You focus on the words engraved in the book and you fall deep into the world of the characters. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. The noise startles you and you notice the 20 minutes flew by. As you put your book away, you realize that the boring music actually helped you relax and concentrate with reading. Now that you’re in college, not only do you listen to music when reading, but when you’re doing homework or studying. Your academic performance has improved as a result to listening to music while studying because it allows you to concentrate more. You don’t even have to play an instrument to appreciate music, listening to it allows you to appreciate its ability to help you whether it’s mentally, physically, emotionally or academically.
What great details you’ve got here Rebeca. I see that you sort of did a mashup of two Pelias-related conventions. First, you use second person, and two you describe a physical space. The description of the classroom and realizing time flew by because of music works well to invite readers into the world you’ll be exploring. I’m not totally sure about second person. If this will be an argumentative piece that will involve a lot of outside research, I feel like second person will become tiring. Often when using second person you want to ask yourself, what is the value of the reader participating in the writing? What are you hoping to prove? illustrate?
Point of View: Pelias does not use first-person in this essay. He uses second-person. That is why we see so many “you” sentences. By using “you” and making the reader a part of the essay, Pelias is able to connect with the reader on an emotional level. Try using second person point of view for your auto ethnography.
You would think in diverse society that being a mixed race American would help me understand the complexity of our society. But, you are definitely sadly mistaken. To be African American in America isn’t the most easiest thing to be. To be black in America who always is ridiculed for either being incompetent or always needing government assistance. Which neither statement is a fact, but being black in America most times out of ten people are prejudging you before even speaking to you. Puerto Ricans or any type of Hispanic in America already categorizes you as a minority. I am both of what the common American would feel is a social misfit. Our society makes it extremely hard to overcome any circumstance because of the color of your skin. Were so colonized were subconsciously being stripped of our history.
Powerful introduction. I would say this isn’t second person, it’s first person with a direct address to the audience. It would be second person if you were making the reader the subject of the piece. “You are both of what the common American would feel is a social misfit.” or “Your society makes it extremely hard…”
During my 3 years of College, I have experienced stress in many ways. For example, having two jobs at the same time and being a full-time student in multiple occasions limited me to focus and giving my 100% of attention to the courses I had. Getting home around 11:00 pm and having to study for a test the next day at 8:00 am can be very difficult and due to the lack of sleep my brain just doesn’t want to cooperate. This is where stress comes in… But I have been able to use a quote that has helped me in multiple situations and scenarios like this one. The quote is “Feeling tired is temporary, but the satisfaction of getting it done will be forever”. This simple line has helped me in multiple occasions when I feel like giving up or I just feel too exhausted. Most of the time I grab a cup of coffee and try my best to stay up most of the night and finish what I started.
What a positive quote to have handy when life gets stressful. I appreciate the clear link the quote has to your coping with stress. I wonder if your project will explore how tiredness and stress can sometimes feel like it is NOT temporary.
What physical space would you want to start your essay with?
I will start my essay talking about my home and classroom because this is were I was taught that getting a degree is necessary in life to succeed. My parents, both of them have a college degree and since I was very little, my house was a very spacious place, where me and my siblings always had a specific space to do homework or study. I had my own study table in my room, filled with books, notebooks, loose paper to do extra work, pens, pencils, etc. Every time I was lazy and I wanted to do my homework on the bed, my dad used to tell me ”homework can’t be done on the bed, get on your desk”. This encouraged me all the time to get work done, and to be organized. One time my dad wanted to learn English as a second language and he payed for expensive adults classes and I have a vivid memory of him sitting in front of his computer, with his big chunky book on his lap, studying everyday, repeating every word and sentence after the translator and I was used to think ”wow he is learning quick because he dedicates time to it everyday”. Another physical space that influenced my decisions as student, was my classroom. Big, very bright space with a lot of old fashion windows, two green boards on front and one small desk for the professor. The room capacity was always around forty kids, who used to sit in six different lines, one behind the other. Being in school for so many hours and taking so many classes, made me understand the purpose of school and learning something new everyday. I hated being at school for so many hours but also loved it because I knew this was the space were I could get most of my work done so the after feeling of knowing that every assignment was done and on time, was simply priceless by the time of going home.
Great work here Estefania. Your details about your home and your father are vivid and draw the reader into your particular world. The details about school are interesting too but I think less specific. One suggestion, how would this passage change if you shrunk the distance between reader and writer? One way to alter the distance is through changing the tense, but another is to stay locked into the space you describe. Take a look at this shift:
I had my own study table in my room, filled with books, notebooks, loose paper to do extra work, pens, pencils, etc. Every time I was lazy and I wanted to do my homework on the bed, my dad used to tell me ”homework can’t be done on the bed, get on your desk”.
My study table was fill with books, notebooks, loose paper…When I was lazy and did my homework on the bed, my dad would say, “Homework…”
OR
My study table is full of books, notebooks, loose paper. I tell my dad I want to study on the bed. He exclaims, “Homework…”
No version is right or wrong, it’s just interesting to note the impact each version has.
Prompt 3: You can feel the cold, dank air on the back of your neck as the tiny hairs there stand at attention. From outside the din, you can hear the dissonant echoes of your classmates shrieking and laughing, the sound of a rubber ball bouncing against the floor. Here, though, here it seems the world has stopped outright. The mineral smell of cement floors wafts up with mildew and something like standing water and the stench of the squirrel in the alley last summer who was left to rot in the sun. You’re standing in basement gym of your small Catholic grade school, one that apparently can’t afford lights or clean facilities in a basement that belches dirty water from cracks in the floor every time it rains. You take a tentative step forward, your insides leaping with fear and the urgent need to urinate. As you peek into one doorless stall, you half expect some specter to be perched on the toilet, snarling at you. Instead you glimpse the most horridly dirty toilet you’ve seen in your six years. You’re small for your age too, and the idea of your feet dangling from such a monstrosity makes you feel at once vulnerable and indignant. That you couldn’t go upstairs to the well-lit bathroom next to the kindergarten room! You scan the walls. No demonic symbols, as far as you can tell. Maybe the promised marks of the devil are in the second or third stall, but you see only the “So and so was here” and other expected graffiti. Ultimately, you decide to hold it for the remainder of class, but just standing in here has given you a sweaty, gritty feeling you want to wash from your palms. You go back to the sinks, where a sliver of light peaks in and blinks back at you in the mirror. You stop dead. This is where the fifth graders played Bloody Mary. This is where they saw her, on that day they ran screaming from this very room. No. you don’t risk it. Angling your eyes away (lest she scratch them out) you dive for the door, and rejoin your class. Your heart thunders and you feel jittery all afternoon. It’s worth it, you decide, rather than see the demons and vengeful spirits that haunt that place. It still feels worth it when you wet your pants just ten minutes later.
AHH! Terrified. This is vivid and horrifying and it has everything to do with your use of second person and pacing. I especially like the way the reader participates in this sort of denial that is grounded in fear, but then the reader actually becomes scared, so it works! I would recommend starting with “You’re standing….” It’s a stronger start.
You sit in silence, the words you read on the page still echoing in your mind. You close the book and set it aside on your desk. You wonder how can a fictional character teach you so much about your life then anyone ever has. You let out a sigh as the question ponders at the end of your book. You were told before that stories after publishing are up to your interpretation. No one can tell you what to interpret as long as you can find evidence for it. So you do what you have always been good at. You think and read more. You look for different stories, you find some but they don’t show you anything you don’t already know. You stop and pull out your phone to read some stories until you find the one, the one that made you think way more then usual. The book that literally changed you in may ways. You aspire to be like its main character, never giving up, pushing forward, and eventually through multiple hardships saves the day but came back home changed, more mature, and improved in many ways. This is the effect that good storytelling can have on you its reader and even though you are still young and haven’t truly known hardship, good story telling gave you a window into that hardship and in a way it made you grow. But what is good story telling?
It’s clear storytelling has had an important impact on your life, and it’s interesting to force the reader to say the same by using second person. I just want to remind you that your project really needs to be as specific and concrete as possible. I see you end with what is good storytelling and I’m afraid that’s just too general. I much like your statement here: This is the effect that good storytelling can have on you its reader and even though you are still young and haven’t truly known hardship, good story telling gave you a window into that hardship and in a way it made you grow.
I was curious to hear about the specific hardships you had access to through books and the way it helped you through personal experiences.
DW
Your nerves are running high as you sit in a classroom that you have never seen, with people that you have never met. The walls are bare of any life except the patches of missing paint where tape used to hold the previous freshman year’s classwork. No one looks at you but you feel like all eyes are on you anyways. Some students talk to friends that they knew for years while others sit in silence dreading the new beginning that today marks. The teacher walks in and introduces herself and instructs the rest of the class to do the same and add where their family is from. Your palms sweat when the person to your left finishes their turn. You speak just loud enough for the teacher to hear, “My name is Jalysa and my family is from Panama.” You feel the relief and a little pride run through you as you finish. That is until a boy who sits rows behind you yells, “Stop lying you’re black.” The class full of strangers laugh and you try to laugh too as to not give him the power of seeing you hurt. You stay quiet the rest of the class trying to not be noticed.
I love the visuals here and the closeness to the experience of being in the classroom. I appreciate you trying the second person, but I wonder if it works? I think first-person would be more effective as the goal is not to make the reader the subject, is it? You’re the subject of much of the paper.
Being a student athlete on top of a double major in mathematics and computer science can require a lot of hard work. Our planners become our best friend, since we need to manage our time well. On a normal weekday, a student athlete in this academic field is surrounded by an environment that is rich in learning resources, and colleagues who most likely have similar goals and interests. While, our breaks from academic work become physical work. When we are at their athletic practices, we must set another goal, and follow our coach’s demands, so we can meet their expectations for our sport. Being a student athlete and a double major can be a lot of fun, since it keeps us occupied. However, it requires discipline, because many times we may need to say “no” to hangouts and parties, spend our free time and meal times studying for our classes, and also having to deal with cultural changes throughout the day. It is possible to be a student athlete and a double major in mathematics and computer science, but there are expectations that those types of people need to meet to succeed in those areas during college.
Detailed intro here. I wonder what you’ll focus on in your paper. Will you investigate the learning resources available to double majors? the benefits of being a student athlete? The discipline it requires? expectations? Also, I don’t understand what you mean by cultural changes. What cultural changes are students making?
She glared at me and I was startled because I have never seen her in my life. I leaned against the wall, pulled out my phone and began to text my friend asking why she was taking so long. “I have been waiting for 5 minutes, and I know your class ended way before that”, I said. It was a second after when the girl walked up to me and asked, “Are you Indian? You look Indian.” At that moment, I felt the blood rushing through my body and brain almost exploded. I mean she didn’t say anything absurd but I questioned how people assume your identity and it kept me going. I politely replied “No (smiling it off). I’m actually from Sri Lanka”. Then she quickly replied, “Oh, but that’s like India” and began catching up with a friend of hers. I was shocked for several reasons, for starters, the conversation was sudden and ended unusually and seemed to have no purpose. Another reason is that now I know If I were to run into her again, she’ll remember me as “Indian” because that is how she identified me as. People can be so quick to assume if you’re a native-born or an immigrant just by a glance of you. However, it’s safe to safe that they are usually wrong. So my question to you is, how do you identify yourself?
I love the personal anecdote here. It’s so compelling! I think the anecdote connects to questions like: How do people’s assumptions about who we are impact us? What does it mean to identify as something different than what other people see you as? I think these are important questions to ask and work through using your own experiences and research. I would caution you against ending with that final question because I don’t think the project is interested in how others identify themselves. It’s interested in the way you have grappled with identity questions.
YOU FIRST!
”Keep up the hard work”, you are telling yourself that you have to be focused on your studies because no one can do the work for you. You have to show others that you are confident at your own work. Night and day you work study a lot and you try to do well in school. But there are sometime you struggle and you are saying in your mind “I gave up, I do not think I will be able to pass my classes”. But you pause for a moment and think again “This is not it, I still have a chance to do well on my studies, I just need to have the confidence and I have to try to understand the procedures on the things that I am learning in classes”. When you can not understand an assignment, you ask you professor to help you. But you are feeling shy and scared because you might feel like your professor will not listen to you. You know that you can not stay behind like this. You have to move forward because if you do not share your problems with your professor then he or she will not understand you. You have to make others believe that you can do something and you can still pass your classes if you keeping work hard.
This is a powerful use of second person. Is your project going to focus on the experiences of being in school and dealing with courses that are unfamiliar or challenging?
You are deep in your sleep only to be awoken by the sound of a loud POOF and the sensation of an immense vibration. As you open your eyes you notice a wall in front of you and in confusion you start looking around only to notice that your mother and sister are sound asleep. Then you turn to your right and notice a window that you then begin to peek out of and immediately feel your stomach drop as soon as you realize that you are among the clouds.
Interesting– I wonder how this scenario will be related to immigration (I believe that is your topic?)
When you are a teacher you wanted look for different ways that you can help your students to understand or to be part of the class. You has an teacher make impact in children life because they are looking up to you and everything that they learn is because you . You wanted to be able to connect with your students to be able to understand where they come from and to be able to know if they are learning in class. for example, if you speak two language let said English and Spanish you are able to communicate with both students the one does not speak English and the one who speak English not only that but, you can also communicate better with both parent tell them what their kid need to work on at home and who they can help the kid to learn faster. When I was in second grade did not speak English and I was taking test and did not know what to do and I was looking everywhere not knowing what to do but, my teacher did not speak Spanish and he did not now how to help and you has teacher speaking two language are able to help your students.
I am especially interested in your emphasis on being bilingual. There are A LOT of sources out there that talk about the value of bilingual teachers in the classroom. If your question is “How will I impact my students?” You might consider the value you bring because you speak both Spanish and English. Look up articles related to multilingualism and education in the Lehman College library database.
Since my early age, i felt deeply perplex, my whole mind was surrounding with amalgam of thoughts, i questioned and re-questioned my internal “I” how would I escape the way we females are treated in a country that named itself “country of integrated people”. I still can’t find an answer, leading me deeper and deeper traumatized by how females are imposed to behave in that society. As Bessel A. said, “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” (p.97)” Feeling unsafe is the whole body concern internal before physical.
What a compelling intro that shares the thought process behind your question. I do see that it isn’t just a society/culture you’re interested in interrogating, you’re interested in the word TRAUMA. Does this mean your project will look at the way a specific society traumatizes women? Will you look at how society DEALS with trauma in women’s lives? Or will you look at trauma as a consequence of a specific society?
Laying out the physical setting of a story is always highly recommended way to begin a paper of any sort. Pelias describes the physical setting of a college classroom from a professors point of view to introduce the readers to his environment and to set up his main topic of the role of an instructors and how fulfilling it may not be. In comparison, the physical setting of my own auto-ethnography may be a great way to begin my own paper. The image of first picking up my uncle and the astonished face expression he had as he walked out that humid airport in the summer of 2015. Like any immigrant that migrates, everything is going to feel new and adjustments have to be made in order to adapt. At that time i could only imagine his thoughts and the possible doubts; what if I miss home too much? What if a new life is too much? Not too long after we arrived at the airport my uncle walked out that runway, looking like a everyday immigrant, breaking his neck every minute to examine his new surroundings. I bet he was somewhat overwhelmed by the mass amount of people in New York City. He still smelled Dominican though, its a too distinct smell to try to emulate. To this day i do not know if that day my uncle thought he was home or he felt like he just left home.
I agree with you. Starting with this story of your uncle is a powerful way to begin. I’m curious about what it means to smell Dominican. Can you give more details so readers can get the sense of what it was like for you in that car when your uncle arrived?
Teaching is similar to learning. learning and teaching are both similar because they all employed some styles to be accomplished. learning styles is widely used to describe how learners gather, sift through, interpret, organize, come to conclusions about and “store” information for further use. teaching also has a style. In teaching, the teacher organizes the subject to be taught using a lesson plans and instructional materials in order to deliver the subject matter. whilst teaching, the teacher learn from the learners and the learners learn from the teacher as well. Teaching to me is art, so also is learning and this can be proved based on my personal experience. Once there was this man from my hometown who grew to his nine-ties and never attended school. He was able to write and publish so many books. He translated many prophecies in the bible and interpreted them which many scholars couldn’t do. Teaching and learning “is an art” because it doesn’t only require a formalized school system before one could become a teacher or a learner. Jesus Christ was a great teacher of all time but He never received a trainer to become a teacher or a learner
I’m fascinated by your argument that learning and teaching are art forms because they don’t require formalized schooling. I wonder how that will intersect with your argument that teaching is a noble profession. You might identify what you mean by noble– is it noble because it is an art?
I am dealing with this right now. i have always been the skinny girl in school. hate being this way getting bullied just because i’m skinny. I’ve been skinny my whole life and its not because I exercise or eat right. ” do you ever eat?””you’re so skinny.” Some people then come say ” girl i wish i was your size ” .As a child, I was picked on for being skinny. People called me chicken legs, twig and anything else you can imagine. They would tell me I was going to blow away with the slightest bit of wind.
I’m looking forward to reading more of your auto ethnography!
My father would always tell me, ” The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I always thought that phrase was pretty hardcore and, in a way, put me at ease when I would think about I live my life and how I would like to live it. That phrase convinced me that stationary living only provides tranquility, but I have only ever felt most myself when I am in transition. That is why when I learned how to drive, it became an enjoyable experience. It is my place to vent at other incompetent drivers and decide the path that gets me to my destination . I don’t always need to be right, that’s not the point. What matters is that there is no one to tell me I am wrong. It is my safe space from judgement and when it is interrupted or changed by others that safe space I developed loses it’s allure. I have lost what control I have to someone in the backseat that won’t show me the GPS, but insists on repeating the directions that I can hear plainly from her phone. At that moment dropping her off on a highway does not seem too severe. She’ll find her way to work eventually. However, this severity of action is something I only think about. She arrived to her job early despite rush hour traffic and hopefully she’ll ease up a bit next time. Unfortunately, some people don’t handle stress well. So, the experience was less than ideal, but I know it will not be the only time I drive. I’ll be able to enjoy the journey to my next destination again sometime in the future. That’s where I start thinking about what my father said. A reminder that not every favor you give leads to a promising situation. Sometimes finding your own merit in it keeps you from being in your own personal hell.
I’m interested in this quote and its connection to driving, I’m just not sure I quite get the connections you’re making here. If stationary living is tranquil, how is that related to a road to hell? I’m also curious to understand how favors for rides relates to your larger argument in your auto ethnography.
The beginning: For many years i have wondered whether it was me alone struggling with English writing while becoming a Science major. Now i realize that there are many more people out there struggling equally with this similar problem. The problem of drawing a line between English writing in Science and English writing in arts classes is a common problem in Academia. When i started schooling, my parents shared with there wisdom and advised me to put equal efforts on all my subjects. That was there gold standard for success in academics. However, later in academic journey, i have learned that what my parents wanted of me was not working as my science teachers introduced new rules they described important in becoming science major. I have shared my experience with many friends, and colleagues and learnt that i am not the only one in this struggle. The dogma in English writing for Science students and English writing for Art is a larger question that has been debated for several years.
Thanks Erick. Here are some articles to look into:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/elaina-provencio/the-major-divide-humaniti_b_6582436.html
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/25/science-v-humanities-a-misguided-debate
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/old-new/the-science-vs-humanities-divide-is-false-and-ideologically-driven/343
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/04/the-fate-of-the-humanities/humanities-and-science-must-work-together
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/10/18/why-we-still-need-to-study-the-humanities-in-a-stem-world/?utm_term=.7907aa7f24a9
“the feeling of not being enough to succeed” years have passed and I still question myself. Am I enough to do this? what are my probability on succeeding?. This been hunting me forever because of the level of competition I create myself. feeling like this could be the worst because you personally are never satisfied with your work and always have a sort of idea that what you’ve done is not worth it. me having high standards and wanting to be the very best at all of I do has created this emotion in my head which sometimes has me trapped in my own thoughts.
Provoking questions to start a paper with. I wonder what its relationship to athletes will be?