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johngoldfine@acadia.takethisouttomailme.net

Sunday, June 06, 2004

* Meaning and purpose of journals--stealing from my other blog

Dec. 12. Journals. I had a conversation with a colleague Wednesday about keeping an online journal (what my 162 students call a 'log-in life.') He thinks it's silly, show-offy, a bit pathetic (sign of low self-esteem), attention-demanding, self-indulgent, embarrassing (no one wants to know about your personal issues, he said), and just generally a bad way to do what is called in edu-speak 'initiate dialogue.'

He likes to talk about stuff but says he doesn't have time to read www.emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine !!! (Excuse me, but the person who is tired of www.emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine is tired of life!) The colleague speedreads everything--and claims to have no time or desire to write responses.

Time for Colleague Smackdown: how can we teach writing as a vital and ongoing part of an educated life without ourselves practicing it? Is writing just a tool for classes, something like algebra, a tool no one would pick up and use unless they had to? I reject that totally.

(When I get through with my classes in a couple of hours, I'll be back writing, not talking, about what the missus said about hating writing and the emotions it brings up, about dogs and thinking, about the prof 40 years ago who told us we couldn't think without language; I'll defend journal writing as valuable and not synonymous with self-indulgent therapeutic baloney. I'll talk about the self-educating quality of a journal like this and how it's affected my professional life.

But right now, I have an eight and then a nine o'clock class I can't disappoint.)

Later. (I've only got a minute, but will be continuing my defense of journaling eventually.) Here's the next bit:

A sociology professor leading into a discussion of wild children living without human care told us that thinking without language is impossible. I guess I saw that, but then I became a dog owner. Dogs know a few words and signs, but don't have language. But do they think? They sure do! Chloe and Scoot have all kinds of ideas. But the prof was onto something: it's hard for people to be sure what it is we really think unless we can articulate it in words--get it outside our minds, either orally or in writing.

(And the rest will follow, but here comes my eleven o'clock class.)

Later. I don't know what I think until I try writing it. I'm not a great speaker, and I certainly don't think well on my feet (See Dec. 10 post on Speech, Speech!). I say all sorts of stuff I wish I could take back because it's stupid, shallow, not what I mean, or not said in a way that conveys what I want to convey.

My faith as a writer and teacher of writing is that there are dark corners in the mind (John, didn't you promise weeks ago to stop using dumb mind metaphors--what is this: the mind as attic with corners, cobwebs, and a lot of useless junk? Bogus! Sorry....) And you don't know what is in there until you slip out the flashlight (Will you cut it out! Is this flashlight supposed to be writing? Lame!) Until you slip out the flashlight and light the corners up--that means writing.

Writing surprises the writer. If the writing is alive, if it hasn't been outlined to death, then it can-- (Gotta go to class again. I don't know how this sentence is going to end! Maybe I don't need to end it--something about creating reality instead of just describing it, but that's so fatuous I won't let myself write it.)

Later. I was losing it in the last few grafs above. I was in the New Roost and a half-dozen guys were in there talking guy talk. I'm a potty mouth myself, though I keep that under wraps in this venue, but these guys were so crude that it was hard to concentrate. Is it me getting old and fuddy-duddy, or is it 'Clockwork Orange' time?

Anyway, yeserday I was talking to the missus about what my colleague said about journals, and forty years after we first met, she still has the power to surprise me. Jean can write well and has sold her writing. She has writing projects. But now she tells me she hates to write; she dreads sitting down and facing the blank screen! Hey, Jean, you have to pay me to listen to that kind of talk!

So, even the missus sees a journal as an exercise in masochism!

There was a time I hated to write, dreaded deadlines, and despaired at blank paper. No more. The computer freed me from most of my difficulties. As long as I don't have to rip out a sheet of bond paper and retype a whole page because I screwed up a subject-verb agreement, I'm good to go.

This journal is the opposite of masochism--and I don't mean sadism. My pleasure, not pain, is the principle here. I've been creating a character a lot like me, who has some things to say, but who hasn't got my personal life (journals are not necessarily therapeutic and self-indulgent, not that everything therapeutic is self-indulgent anyway....) Writing gives me immense pleasure and to write about my professional life, a matter important to me, is the kicker.

I've used the journal to figure out what is happening in my professional life. I've been plucking bits and pieces of events and dressing them up as posts. I've dug out prompts for exams, ideas for 162, and tentative proposals for a couple of new online courses. I'm planning to argue that these online journals are a serious part of my professional development and should be counted as such by the people who do the counting. And, as I say above, I've found out all sorts of stuff I didn't know I knew until I wrote it.

Not the least of which is that my colleague (whom I've spoken to between the beginning of this post and now) absolutely refuses to read any further posts including this one!

If only I could make any headway at all with FrontPage!

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