Culture Essay

Culture Essay

I’m a fringe-er. I’ve always been a sort of outsider. In my family, in school, in my approach to the world, I always choose the position that is slightly off-base, out of vogue, not popular. As a child, I liked to read in family of non-readers. In school, I preferred Converse to Nike, a Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt to Polo. As a student, I was drawn to ideas on the fringe. When I was studying composition pedagogy, in a school that was strongly current-traditionalist, I was drawn to expressionism, and then when that became more popular, social-epistemic. As a teacher, I tend to go against the mainstream. I choose books no one else is using. I’m not proud of this fact; if I was, maybe I’d be more of a rebel, but as it stands, I cannot accept the status quo because it just ain’t me.

I was raised Lutheran. I was confirmed Methodist because this was the church that most of my friends attended for Wednesday morning church school. Can you believe it, when I was a kid, every Wednesday morning; we were let out of class, allowed to walk to our churches, and spent 50 minutes learning religion? My friend’s and I even had time to walk uptown on our way to the Methodist church and grab a few donuts at Dahl’s bakery, piping hot, fresh from the deep fryer. To this day, I still dream of this, the excitement of being free to walk uptown, and the pleasure of donuts eaten on the run, with friends, with freedom. Wow.

Then, for a long period, I did not believe in God, and, in fact, felt quite a bit of disdain for organized religion. It started out as a fringe thing. Agnosticism, or outright atheism, were not popular beliefs to hold in my high school, which is why I was drawn to them. I haven’t recovered.

There was a short time when I tried on religion again. I had a friend from work, Angie -- very nice, very cute, and very religious -- and she talked me into going to church with her. I did, a few times, and I really respected her belief and the comfort it gave her, but try as I might, I could not find faith. I wanted to belong to this church thing, but I just couldn’t make it happen; I couldn’t make it authentic.

I think I’ve always been drawn to the fringe. When I was in high school, I was arrested at the Grand Forks Air Force base protesting the nuclear missiles housed there. I can say, with certainty, that I really didn’t feel threatened by nuclear war, but I wanted to be a part of that new hippie movement, or the remnants of the old hippie movement. The group I protested with was called Bemidji Partners for Peace, and it was headed by a charismatic guy with a badly-scarred face, Greg. He seemed to have the answer for everything. He was an outsider. He was cool.

We sat ourselves outside the front gates one morning, blocking the entrance to the base. The MP’s arrived in minutes and carried us away. We were sent to the Grand Forks police station and booked there. We were released shortly after being booked. I was a minor, nothing happened to me. I received one day of In-School Suspension for skipping school, but even this was a sort of honorable badge, sitting with the really bad kids in a austere room, eight hours, no talking.

The fringe has always captured my imagination. As a scholar, I’m drawn to unpopular ideas, the underdogs. I wrote my M.A. thesis on John Updike’s Rabbit, Run. Clearly, Updike is recognized by critics as an excellent wordsmith, but he is often condemned for writing about nothing. Most people who read Rabbit, Run hate the title character, Harry Angstrom. He’s lazy, misogynistic, immature, and completely self-absorbed. I defended him. I argued that Updike’s book is about one man’s quest to find meaning in his life, and even though each avenue he tries proves nihilistic, he never gives up. I argued that Updike’s book is about the indomitable quality of the human spirit, embodied by one Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.

But, as a researcher, I feel like I work from a blank slate. As a person, I’m naïve, open, and unassuming. As a teacher, I have a very difficult time adopting the role of “professor.” I have a hard time believing, deep down, that I know anything with enough certainty to profess it to the masses. I like the process of coming to know something; the product of that process is often unimportant to me, and I soon forget it. Let me give you an example.

When I teach literature, each time I address a short story, it is new to me. Sure, I assign many of the same stories over and over each semester, but each time I read Dubus’s “Killings,” I find a new focus in it. I reread it each semester, and I follow my brain along as it comes to terms with the story. One semester, I might focus my discussion on the morality in the story, the difference in the killings, and whether one is more justified than the other. The next semester, I might see in my rereading a story about fathers and sons and that unbreakable, yet pitiable bond between the two, and so on.

In either case, I feel like I am always open to alternatives; I like multitudinous possibility. I feel like I’m always curious about people, issues, the world, and I think this is what serves me best as a scholar. My office mate told me last week that he imagines me this way as a teacher, even though he’s never seen me teach: “I imagine you walk into the room, greet each student, lecture for a few minutes, and then work with each student one-on-one. You seem, no offense, better with individuals than with groups.” He’s right. I’m a good listener because I’m open to learning new things, any things, to fill this blank slate of my soul.

Sometimes I’m annoyed that I don’t know more conclusively after all these years of education. Sometimes I wonder what I have, sort of metaphysically, to show for it. I can’t recite Shakespeare. I can only speak generally of Plato’s theory of the forms. I have to look up the definition of abscond. But, when I think about this in terms of being a researcher, I think it’s a grand advantage. I’m innocent, naïve, unknowing, but I’m also open, willing and wanting to learn.

Now, normally, I would stop the essay right there, but I am also an obedient student, and in looking back at the prompt, I realize I have not addressed all the questions. So, let me continue beyond what feels like the ending to my essay to make it an essay for EdRem 6714: Action Research.

I do not imagine having difficulty engaging any informants. I think I have an easy style and manner that puts people at ease. I like to talk to people about people, and most people willing comply. When I conference with students about their writing, I always begin the conference by asking about each individual, not because it creates rapport, but because I’m interested in who they are. I have legitimate curiosity.

However, if I meet an informant who disrespects education, doesn’t care about his own learning, or the classroom context within which it is completed, then I find it difficult to find the energy or will to bother with them, even though I might learn something valuable from them. In many cases, in studying writing, the hatred or spite people feel towards writing is a result of negative prior experiences, something that very well could tell me something about that writer.

I don’t really believe this. I should have stopped before. I have “bothered” with plenty of failing students. Last semester, I had a student in my research writing course that did NOTHING in class. He came everyday, but never completed a single assignment, he sat in the back of the room for fifty minutes and drew comics in a notebook. When we did group work, he went to his group, and checked right out. His name was Jared. He liked video games; Half-Life 2 in particular, had built his own gaming computer, read graphic novels religiously, and had a collection of anime. So, you see, I bothered, not because he was a good student, but because I have a genuine curiosity for people, and this quality has always served me well as a person, professional, student and scholar.