Professor Harrison

English 101-013

20, April 20, 2009

Dear Marlen,

I have to say that my experience with this class has been a strange one. I never thought I would actually value a class, but for some reason, I’m realizing that I’m oddly grateful for my experience in your English 101 class.

            I really have come to realize that the whole process was a love/hate thing. I loved what I learned, not only about writing, but about myself. At first I thought the blogs were so pointless, but I now realize that every little thing that we did tied together so perfectly. Everything that we had done in class, all of our blogs and essays, they all connected to each other somehow. I didn’t even realize it until I was writing my autoethnography, but everything that you had us do helped teach us something about ourselves. I’m insanely grateful for this, because I had whole hell of a lot of learning to do.

            The hate factor wasn’t because of the work load, even if it was a little crazy at times, but it was more of my own fault. I realized that I am one HORRIBLE procrastinator. With just about every blog and essay, I waited until the very last second to write them. Most of my essays weren’t getting finished until 5 or 6 in the morning, so most of my work was quite the tragedy. I think that this would probably be my only complaint about the course, and it was all me. I honestly couldn’t think of one part of this class that I would change and make different.

            Thanks to you and your class, I’ve grown to be more comfortable with my writing, and with sharing it. I’m finally realizing that it’s okay to have less than perfect drafts, and that everything is a process. I’ve also learned so much about myself as an individual, and have a better grasp on a lot of aspects of my life. I just want to say thanks for having such a great class, it really taught me a lot and gave me a lot of really helpful ideas and tools that I am going to need further on down the road.

Thank you!

Kelly

Now that I’m done with the rough draft of it, I realize that it was so much easier than I had been expecting. The pages just kind of flowed together and I never had to take a break and think about what should come next. I wasn’t expecting the incorporating of the blogs into it to work well, but when I went through them all I realized it went perfectly.

The second place was called Dorrance Publishing. I don’t think it was free, unlike LuLu, but it seemed more like something that I would try. You fill out information about yourself, and fill out a description about  your manuscript.

Finally, the last one that I found was called Book Surge. It looked exactly like the second place I found. It required the same things. You had to fill out information about yourself and the writing that you wanted published. It still seemed reliable, just like the other two did. If I was serious about publishing, I’m not sure if I would use any of these, I would have to do a lot more research to find the right place.

Most of the paragraphs need a lot of work, a lot more explanation and details. Some of them probably could be taken out, maybe they didn’t work very well with what I was saying.

I plan on really changing it around, because after the first paragraph, it started to lose the feel that I had orginally wanted for it.  I didn’t use any outside sources, other than my own essays and blogs. I’m going to work on putting in other sources, other than just myself.

How is autoethnography a form of phenomenology?

Phenomenology is a first-person study of consciousness. It’s about an object, or an experience. An autoethnography is related to that because it’s a first-person study of experience, only an autoethnography is more of finding a hidden, or unconscious meaning of one’s self. Phenomenology is more obvious, not such a hidden meaning.

Why did I chose my template?

I’m not really sure..I guess it’s the only one that really appealed to me.

Why the photo on my about me?

I picked that one because I remember I just took it that day, so I just kind of stuck in on there. I don’t even really like the picture, it was just kind of the only one suitable I guess.

Why did I write what I wrote?

I wrote it in bulletin form, and tried to sum up who I am. My audience was anyone who stumbled across it. I tried to just put random things about myself, or things that would help people understand me a little bit better.

How do I feel about my first “What is I” blog?

I still feel pretty much the same about what I wrote, but I did notice that it was pretty vague. I had no idea what I meant, so I kind of avoided the question and instead just explained that I is a pretty mysterious word. I noticed, too, that my writing was a little bit better back in the day. I think I just have been writing so much for this class that I’m not taking what I’m writing as seriously as I did in the beginning.

What resources did I used to write the “What is I” blog?

I used the paper that we printed out by Kawai, but I didn’t really refer back to it too much when I was writing. Now though, I have so much to go off of. I’m going to use all of my blogs, and anything that I’ve ever written, in order to write my autoethnography.

What common theme’s are among my blogs? What was my approach?

I kind of wrote about family a lot. Once about my dad, another time about my grandma. If it wasn’t that, I was just going back to my past experiences and explaing the way things made me feel. My approach to these blogs and essays was so horrible. I wouldn’t sit down to write them until midnight, so the quality them was awful. I was always so tired that I would just write down complete crap. It was a bad idea.

Julie’s first song, Free Fallin by John Mayer makes me think that she likes to relax with her music, but likes songs with emotion and meaning behind them. I’d assume that she isn’t a big fan of really hardcore, loud music. The second song, Stars by The Weepies was another really relaxing song, it was a little bit different than usual music, so she’s probably unique and does her own thing.

Nate’s music was completely different. He goes for a more old school type of song, and when I say old school I mean 1950′s. It was very happy and uplifting sounding. His second song was much more recent, but still had the same kind of old school vibe to it.

uhm..

okay, so when someone listens..you are actually getting to know what that person is saying to you. you’re taking it all in, trying to get an understanding of whatever it is that the person is saying. but with hearing..that’s just picking up noise. not really listening, or paying any attention to it. listening to someone is so much more important than just hearing them. you never hear praises being giving for being a good hearer, but being a good listener is always a good thing to be complimented on.

i don’t have any idea what else to write about for thisssss, all i know is that it’s insanely hot in here, and my hair is pasted to my forehead with sweat.

I dreamed of a fever
One that would cure me of this cold, winter set heart
With heat to melt these frozen tears
And burned with reasons as to carry on
Into these twisted months I plunge without a light to follow
But I swear that I would follow anything
If it would just get me out of here
And so you get six months to adapt
And then you get two more to leave town
In the event that you do adapt
We still might not want you around
And I fell for the promise of a life with a purpose
But I know that that is impossible now
And so I drink to stay warm
And to kill selected memories
Because I just can’t think anymore about that or about her tonight
I give myself three days to feel better
Or I swear I’ll drive right off a fucking cliff
Because if I can’t learn to make myself feel better
Then how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?
And I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere
Just get me past this dead and eternal snow
Because I swear that I am dying, slowly, but it’s happening
So if there is a perfect spring that’s waiting somewhere
Just take me there and lie to me and say it’s going to be all right
It’s going to be all right, yeah, you worry too much, kid
It’s going to be all right

            I headed to Google and tried to figure out this whole autoethnography thing. The first link I clicked on was by a woman named Susan Bennett, and she spelled everything out perfectly for me. According to Bennett, an autoethnography is an analytical/objective personal account, and is about the writer as a part of a culture. With writing one, Bennett points out that it is a chance to see yourself as others do, and to also to explain differences from the inside. At this, I realized that I might actually really enjoy writing something like this. It’s completely different than what I had originally thought, but there’s always more to learn, so I kept searching for different explanations and definitions.

            The next website I stumbled across was a blog written by Jeffrey Keefer. His description was short, but still helpful. His idea of an autoethnography was that it’s a form of research where the writer uses their own experience to fuel the investigation. The next place I visited had the same gist, stating that the writer, or researcher, becomes the subject of the research.

            Thankfully after researching what exactly an autoethnography is, I’m not so afraid of it anymore. I’m actually kind of excited for it, because if what I  read is true, it sounds like a really good way to find out more about yourself, and let others in on who you are as well.

Autoethnography in First Year Writing. University of Wisconsin, Madison. 15 March 2009.

     <https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/rlhunter/web/autoethnographyinfyw/what%20is.htm>

Bennett, Susan. Susan Bennett’s Workshop Autoethnography: Writing about the Self Analytically. Humboldt. 15 March 2009

     < www.humboldt.edu/~cpf/autoethnography.html>

Keefer, Jeffrey. “Silence and Voice: Research and Practice in Postmodern Learning.” Silence and Voice. 15 March 2009

   <http://silenceandvoice.com/archives/2009/03/05/what-is-autoethnography/>