My name is Ayla, I鈥檓 an undergraduate English student at 杏吧原创 University, and I’m currently finishing up my three-term Co-op experience. When I first began, I thought I would be working 鈥楨nglish-specific鈥� jobs like technical editing or working as an intern at a publishing house. Now, towards the end, I鈥檝e learned that the skills I鈥檝e built during my degree have allowed me to contribute meaningfully in a variety of professional environments: the , and .听

Kanata North Business Association (KNBA)

It comes as a surprise to some that as an English major, I spent the first of my three Co-op work terms immersed in technology. 

My first placement was with the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA). The KNBA represents the 540+ member companies which are in Kanata North Tech Park鈥攁 designated business improvement area. 

One of the major events that I helped to plan was the Annual Technata Hackathon. The event focused on sustainability and invited students from 杏吧原创, the University of Ottawa and Algonquin College to participate in group mentorship and problem solving. Planning the event was a test to my time management skills, which were luckily already quite strong from balancing assignments in university. From organizing the catering to organizing the participants and mentors, I learned how to juggle not only my own time and expectations, but others鈥� as well.  

One of the highlights from this event was interviewing the participants, mentors and sponsors, whose responses I used to write an article on the event. In my degree, the lectures and materials have always invited discussion. The interpersonal skills acquired through these discussions allowed me to interview confidently and effectively. This article led to my favourite project of the work term, which was organizing and editing the KNBA鈥檚 annual publication TechTalk. This magazine was printed and distributed at the annual partner鈥檚 summit, and it included my article on the Hackathon.

For a few of my written deliverables, I was asked to write on topics which I was not familiar with, featuring 鈥榰p-and-coming鈥� technology. One such instance was when I was asked to write a blog post on semiconductors, which was meant to kick-start Chip Month (October). I didn鈥檛 have a clue what a semiconductor was, and up until this point, would have guessed it was some kind of semi-truck. However, my degree has helped hone my research abilities. After asking a friend in engineering to explain the concept, reading through various articles and publications and asking AI to help simplify the topic, I was able to write a blog post explaining the 鈥榳hat鈥� and 鈥榳hy鈥� of a semiconductor. 

Working in the Kanata North Tech Park, I learned how versatile my degree was, and how many opportunities there were for an English major that no one thinks or talks about. 

Library and Archives Canada

My second work term was spent at the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) branch of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). While it is difficult to picture an English major in a Tech Park, LAC is exactly where you would picture one. 

I worked largely on one project throughout the summer term, which I will first contextualize. Under the Privacy Act, there are exceptions for when LAC can release information which would normally be redacted. One of these exceptions is 8(2)(m)(i), which allows government institutions to release information in the 鈥榩ublic interest.鈥� However, 鈥榩ublic interest鈥� is interpretive, and it is therefore difficult to determine when an invasion of privacy is warranted. LAC is investigating how this section could be applied to Indigenous information. Like the rest of ATIP鈥檚 teams, the Indigenous records team is backlogged. Normally, information is released through an informal processing of requests under 8(2)(k) of the Privacy Act, however, this too is time-consuming. Unlike a non-Indigenous citizen requesting information, these requests often pertain to land claims, historical grievances, etc. which are often urgent in nature. Additionally, under OCAP (ownership, control, access, and privacy) which are the governing principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, First Nation, Inuit and M茅tis governments require access to their own information to properly practice self-governance. Canada has committed to reconciliation, and data sovereignty is a part of that.

While a Library and Archives might be an expected workplace for an English major, policy work is not necessarily included in that association. However, once again, my research skills were advantageous in this role. My work involved researching various Indigenous, First Nation and M茅tis organizations and reading through the reports that they had published concerning the Privacy and Access to Information Acts. Additionally, it involved reading through suggested policy changes and familiarizing myself with the concept on Indigenous Data Sovereignty. 

This research accumulated into a 25-page report wherein I made the case for why LAC needed a policy for releasing Indigenous information under 8(2)(m)(i) (鈥榩ublic interest鈥�), as the current structures were an obstacle to Indigenous Data Sovereignty鈥攁n incredibly important issue. 

This work term was incredibly fulfilling, as it allowed me to work on a real-world issue, and broaden my understanding of information, data and ownership. Bringing this knowledge back to my degree, I have a greater appreciation for information accessible to me in my studies. 

Hydro Ottawa

My third, and current, work term is with Hydro Ottawa. Again, this is a position not expected for an English major, and I often receive confused looks when I tell people that I work for an energy corporation. Despite this, I believe this placement to be the most related to my degree. 

I work on the Corporate Planning team responsible for internal reporting. Internal reporting includes deliverables such as the Annual Reports, Quarterly Reports, the CEO鈥檚 communications, the Board鈥檚 presentations to Hydro Ottawa鈥檚 shareholder (the ), and the 5-year Strategic Direction.听

Thus far in my placement, I have worked on confidential presentations for my supervisor and for the board and am currently assisting in authoring the new 5-year Strategic Direction. I am incredibly excited to be working on this document, as it details the company鈥檚 plans for the next five years. Additionally, both through working on the presentations and now on the Strategic Direction, I am learning to write in a completely new way. Corporate writing is incredibly concise and should be accessible for most people. This means breaking down syntax, and asking myself 鈥淲hat am I trying to say? Can I say it in fewer words?鈥� While building on my written communication skills from my degree, I am also adding new ones. 

Another learning curve has been the operational pace of the team. Because we have so many deadlines, it is an incredibly fast-paced working environment. It has pushed me to be even more efficient in my time-management, and to work under tight deadlines. This has been incredibly rewarding as I am able to directly see where my work is going and the impact it is having. And… I am writing and reading… All day, every day (an English major鈥檚 dream). 

I am learning an incredible amount in this work term鈥攁bout energy, my own writing and the corporate setting in general. It is demanding, but it is rewarding, and it has pushed and challenged me in ways that, I believe, will best prepare me for any work environment that I might enter after graduation.

The post 杏吧原创 English Student Shares Her Co-op Journey appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By 
 Student Blogger for 2022/2023

Dear reader, one of my academic nightmares finally came true. A few weeks ago, one of my classes had an assignment that required us to come up with pitches for an upcoming presentation in groups of four and present them in front of a small group of professors. My group had for some reason been under the impression that we were only submitting a written document and not presenting, but half way through that week鈥檚 class we were informed of our mistake. When we found out that we would be giving our half-baked presentation pitch to the class, my team and I nervously looked at one another, trying and failing to come up with a plan telepathically. We had no powerpoint, and after a brief stint of trying to pick a single representative from our group to go up and give a spiel by themselves, we ended up each staking out our separate spots around the front of the lecture hall and one by one sharing our visions of what our contribution to the project would be, framed by an improvised introduction and a conclusion that was more of a sputtering out than a complete stop.

Our pitch was a complete disaster. Our relatively small class was silent; a pin dropping would have been a welcome addition to the sonic landscape. When the feedback started, the professors present each took turns gently pointing out research challenges that we hadn鈥檛 considered and recommending that we switch topics. I alternated between unbreaking direct eye contact with who was speaking and staring at the yellowing leaves outside the lecture hall鈥檚 window. Once the feedback was done, I sat down in my seat and buried my face in my laptop for the final group鈥檚 pitch presentation. I wasted no time in leaving the class the second it was over. I speed-walked right out of the room and across the campus to the bus stop. My thoughts didn鈥檛 catch up with my body until I was stuck staring out the bus window, forced into stillness by the necessity of getting home. I felt thoroughly academically humiliated.

Academic embarrassment can come in a variety of different forms. Maybe you鈥檝e been given assignment feedback in which the professor states that they haven鈥檛 given you a mark because it would be too low. Maybe you鈥檝e shared an opinion in class that was met with a long silence and someone changing the topic. Maybe a professor has forgotten your name more than half way into a semester. If you鈥檙e the kind of person who (like me) is prone to feeling self-conscious, then embarrassment can be lurking around every corner of the academy. Judgment starts at the application process, as universities 鈥渁ccept,鈥� 鈥渃onditionally accept鈥� and 鈥渞eject鈥� you. The existence of participation marks can make every moment in class feel like an evaluation, that you could be discovered a fraud, that your place at university could be revoked at any moment. Even praise at times can feel like a burden being heaped on your future self: doing something right once can feel like you鈥檙e setting yourself up for unrealistic expectations of greatness that will be followed by a plummet back to earth.

Reading these few paragraphs, it may come as no surprise to you that for my first few years in higher education, I took academic embarrassment really hard. I would always start the semester with so much energy, always contribute to classroom discussions, but then say something really dumb or submit an assignment that I hadn鈥檛 done very well, and feel too embarrassed to attend class the next week. These absences would make the shame grow larger in my head, and a week would turn into a month, until I would either drop the course or submit as much as my professors would allow at the end of the semester and slide through with a low grade. I would talk in therapy about how ashamed I felt all the time until I would miss a therapy appointment and feel too ashamed to go back. I took a break from university when this shame became too much to stomach, and spent two years working at retail and childcare jobs until I could work up the nerve to come back and try again in earnest.

I share all this not to imply that university must feel this high stakes, but instead to communicate that if you feel even a little bit this way, that you are not alone. Over the course of my stint in academia, my thoughts about academic anxiety have evolved from me thinking that it鈥檚 something that only I experience, to thinking that it was something that some other people deal with, to thinking that it鈥檚 a common feeling, to realizing that it鈥檚 nearly universal. Anxiety is not just the dominion of the student, either. In the introduction to Teaching Literature, Elaine Showalter writes about professors鈥� nightmares about teaching: some dream about starting a lecture but not being able to form words, some about having their students turn against them in the middle of a class, others about finding out that they鈥檝e been supposed to teach a course but forgot about it and now need to give the last lecture of the semester, et cetera. She says that some professors are just as nervous for the first day of class as their students. These realizations don鈥檛 make the moments of humiliation feel any less painful, but they do somewhat help me try to embrace the old cliche that 鈥渢his too shall pass鈥� (I tell myself 鈥渏usqu鈥檌ci tout va bien鈥� instead of 鈥渢his too shall pass鈥� because it鈥檚 from La Haine, a French movie where tout is not 鈥榲a鈥檌ng bien at all, and I can only engage with such an earnest idea if I present it to myself ironically).

While I was looking out the window on the bus ride home from the class of my disaster presentation, I told myself that I was going to drop out of the Major Research Project (MRP) portion of my Master鈥檚 program, that I was going to cancel a party I was throwing that weekend and that I was going to quit my job. When I got home, I cooked myself pasta with tomato, onion and hot pepper sauce. I told myself that I would send out the emails announcing my retreat from my life the next morning, only if I still felt like it. Those emails never got sent.

Dear reader, I am still in the MRP program, and I did not quit my job. I still threw the party that weekend, and everyone had a great time. I had an office hours meeting with the professor that I was most worried that I embarrassed myself in front of (on a topic unrelated to the presentation), and she remembered only that our group had changed focus. 

I don鈥檛 even regret the presentation that much anymore. Our team used the feedback to come up with a better proposal. I鈥檓 grateful to myself that I handled it without letting it turn into a backslide and giant problem. I鈥檓 still putting one foot in front of the other, and I hope that you are too.

杏吧原创 Sam:
Sam Bean is a first-year Master’s Student in English Literature with a Climate Change Specialization. He is a free-floating writer who has worked for the Charlatan, a dubious tech startup and the Ottawa Art Gallery Communications team. He also writes poetry in his spare time. He is from Mississauga but insists that everyone back home calls it ‘M-Town.’

The post Sam’s Blog – Dealing with Academic Anxiety, One Step at a Time appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

叠测听
聽Student Blogger for 2022/2023

As I entered the final days of my summer job, I said private goodbyes to my least favourite parts of food service. Goodbye to the flies in the maintenance room. Goodbye to the loft from which the managers could assess our work efficiency at any time. Goodbye to the smelly mops, goodbye to the dishwashing nozzle that would inevitably splash water back at me no matter what angles I would spray the dishes at, goodbye to putting on food safe rubber gloves only to be told that you have to go do something that requires you to take them off and then have to put a new pair on again. These routine annoyances, compounding each other in unique ways every day, made me daydream often of quitting in the middle of my shift, of throwing a temper tantrum and walking out to never be seen again. 

Luckily for the fast-ish food chain that I am contractually obligated not to disdain in a public forum, a few key factors prevented nuclear meltdown in the long four months of what I hope is the last service job that I鈥檒l ever have to work. My coworkers, a scrappy mix of local nineteen-year-olds who don鈥檛 take things too seriously and international students vastly overqualified for the work they were doing, kept the atmosphere light. I ate my weight in free food. While hardly attractive, minimum wage did let me keep a roof over my head. These benefits, however, barely outweighed the tedium of changing the same six garbage cans and wiping the same twelve tables week after week. In short, I could not be happier to be back at 杏吧原创 for my Master鈥檚 degree.

Hello reader, I鈥檓 Sam, and I鈥檓 the next in line to be the 鈥�Life in English鈥� student blogger. Like a lot of people I know, I simultaneously love to talk about myself and struggle to write on the subject. I graduated from 杏吧原创 with a B.A. Hons in English in the spring and am back for more, except this time with a (still finding out exactly what that entails). I came to English through a deeply felt love of people and the stories we tell ourselves. I was born and grew up on Treaty 13A land, which was sold by the Mississaugas of the First Credit to the British government under false pretenses and this deception remained unresolved for 200 years¹. (Parenthetically, the restitution from the Toronto government, which amounted to a one-time payment of around $20,000 per claimant,² is still only a fraction of a percent of the money that owning that land has produced. Is this really a land claim settled? Is this really justice?). My mother is Irish and a teller of long winding stories, something that has rubbed off on me in a serious way. I am a seeker of novelty, much more of an 鈥榠dea person鈥� than an 鈥榚xecution person鈥�. I am very sentimental; when I found out as a child that the plants in our garden died every winter and had to be replaced every spring, I was inconsolable for several days straight. I often bring things home that I find on the side of the road, even if I don鈥檛 know what I鈥檓 going to do with them. I鈥檓 a Pisces moon with heavy Aquarian influence, and I half believe that my astrological profile meaningfully describes me.

Everything I鈥檝e listed in the previous paragraph is a version of how I might introduce myself at a party, in a mixer or on a date. They are expressions as much of the person I want to be as they are the person that I really am. The real me, like the real you or the real anyone else, is built every day in small pieces by action, personal experience and moments of connection. This is, however, little comfort for someone meeting a lot of people and making a lot of first impressions in a short amount of time.

The fact that academia marks the beginning point of many people鈥檚 careers adds another layer of stress on top of meeting new people. The very idea of 鈥榥etworking鈥� has always made my skin crawl, especially as a young person and student with very little to offer in terms of reciprocity for advice and connections. As the short- and long-term prospects for employment seem increasingly unstable, family, work and school have all seemed to push the idea that making these 鈥榩rofessional connections鈥� is necessary to building a durable future for myself. At an introductory presentation to FASS graduate students, one of the presenters said something along the lines of 鈥渕aking connections and securing reference letters is a central part of graduate studies鈥� (I suppose it鈥檚 possible to somewhat agree with a statement while hating the way it鈥檚 made and its implications). There is an undeniable urgency to having limited time access to a group of highly motivated, thoughtful and lovely people in your peers and faculty members, especially when these people could give you your first big break. Just making normal friends can be hard enough.

When I first came to 杏吧原创, I signed up for Frosh, half-heartedly attended the first event and then hid in the Canal Building to read a copy of The Charlatan front to back three times before going home. Flash forward several years and things are very different. Attending faculty events and meeting my cohort are now for me a huge source of joy and excitement. I wish I could go back and comfort my younger self, give him a few words of encouragement. Since I can鈥檛 do that, I鈥檒l write what I would say here.

1. The vast majority of people you meet all want to like and be liked. 
2. People like to be listened to. 
3. People like to hear a fun little story if you鈥檝e got one to tell.
4. Awkwardness often comes from someone wanting to connect but not knowing how, not from judgment.
5. If you ever want to leave a situation, say a little goodbye and that it was nice to meet them. They鈥檒l appreciate it.

These observations are obvious to the point of banality, but their obviousness helps me relax into meeting people. It鈥檚 not that complicated, it鈥檚 not final, it鈥檚 not a reflection of personal worth. It’s a chance to say hello and take the first step into everything that鈥檚 to come.

I can鈥檛 wait for all of that.

Endnotes

¹ I first found this information through a fantastic online application, the , which highlights treaty land and Indigenous nation land, among other functions.

² .

杏吧原创 Sam:
Sam Bean is a first-year Master’s Student in English Literature with a Climate Change Specialization. He is a free-floating writer who has worked for the Charlatan, a dubious tech startup and the Ottawa Art Gallery Communications team. He also writes poetry in his spare time. He is from Mississauga but insists that everyone back home calls it ‘M-Town.’

The post Sam’s Blog – New Year, New Program, New People appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Noah Bendzsa
Student Blogger for 2021/2022

Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, my friends and I were addicted to feeling shocked, scandalized, thrilled, chilled, freaked-out. We loved horror movies with leaping danger and sudden, discordant sounds, and creepypastas鈥攕hort stories published on the internet that are scary as long as you don鈥檛 contemplate their logic (鈥淚f my dog was dead, who was licking my leg, in the dark?鈥� and that kind of thing). Interestingly, though, none of us had read Stephen King. Everyone we knew who had grown up in the seventies and eighties鈥攑arents, teachers鈥攔egularly adduced King鈥檚 books, in conversation, as the scariest things they had ever read. Carrie, Christine, Cujo, The Shining, and It were household names, like Bran Buds. And like Bran Buds, they were nothing we had ever tried.

When I was fourteen, I finally took Carrie out of the library. It bemused me more than it frightened me. Nineteen-seventies culture was odd, and I couldn鈥檛 quite figure out the characters鈥� motivations. What I remember most vividly is identifying quite strongly with Carrie鈥檚 friend, the one who, at the end of the book, is left wandering a field somewhere鈥攖hough I can鈥檛 recall her name. Although I liked Carrie well enough, I moved on to other things, and until recently hadn鈥檛 had any urge to read another Stephen King novel. A few weeks ago, I got the urge.

The novels I read were 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 Lot and It. I started reading them because I have an obsessive interest in regionalism, or local colour鈥攐f which I had heard King is a specialist鈥攁nd I finished reading them because their writing surprised me. King is not, as Harold Bloom blustered, 鈥渁n immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis鈥� (qtd. in Ciabattari, 2014). He is a talented writer who works with mature themes and is sometimes capable of genuinely beautiful prose and imagery.

Admittedly, 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 Lot is not superbly strong, but it is only King鈥檚 second novel. And it certainly delivered on its regional promises (and in high gothic fashion): the best writing in the novel comprises descriptions of the fictional town Jerusalem鈥檚 Lot, Maine. Nonetheless, a lot of the other writing, including the horror, is boilerplate. The protagonist鈥檚 love interest, like many of King鈥檚 women, apparently, is repeatedly described as 鈥減retty鈥� (as in, she has pretty much the depth of the woman from the ). Characters鈥� emotions can often be read off their faces, like those of the characters in a sitcom. And King鈥檚 musings about evil and the haunted house on the hill are clumsy. The word 鈥渉aphazard鈥� is used in a description of the house, and then, as if readers don鈥檛 get the point, 鈥渉aphazardly鈥� is used a few lines later (King, 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 24). The echoes of Shirley Jackson鈥檚 Haunting of Hill House and Wallace Stevens鈥檚 鈥淭he Emperor of Ice Cream鈥� are too frequent, and the internally rhyming sentence 鈥淗ail Mary, full of grace, help me win this stock-car race鈥� is embarrassingly like something a teenager might write (241). (I should know, because that鈥檚 the kind of stuff I wrote as a teenager). But as a whole, 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 Lot is an entertaining work, and the last 150 pages read very, very quickly鈥攖o King鈥檚 credit as a haberdasher of plot.

It is an entirely different work and an impressive novel, without qualification. It was published ten years after 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 Lot and showcases King鈥檚 development as an artist. It is a masterclass in structure. Over 1100 pages long, the text jumps back and forth between 1986 and 1958, and across more than a dozen different focalizations. Certainly, King doesn鈥檛 worry over his sentences like Henry James or Jean Stafford or Shirley Hazzard, and many are duds. Though none are any worse than many of those authored by the most-praised contemporary 鈥渓iterary鈥� writers (see ), and the book contains some truly beautiful passages. Consider the focalized description of a boy getting his first bicycle, named after the Lone Rider鈥檚 horse, Silver, up to speed:

King鈥檚 diction doesn鈥檛 always strike the right note, as this passage demonstrates (is an airplane really a 鈥渨addling gadget鈥�?), but the whole is an amazing trick. Anyone who has ever ridden a bicycle and has pushed it to thirty-five or forty kilometres per hour feels what鈥檚 being described, here. The experience is like that.

Later on, one of the male protagonists, Ben, returns to his hometown, the fictional Derry, Maine. 鈥淗e walked across the library lawn, barely noticing his dress boots were getting wet, to have a look at that glassed-in passageway between the grownups鈥� library and the Children鈥檚 Library,鈥� King writes;

Although It is inarguably a horror novel, it is also delightfully ruminative, and explores serious themes of childhood remembrance, belonging and ostracism, and friendship and the bonds between people. If any of that sounds familiar, it鈥檚 because those are some of the same things that Proust writes about in 脌 la recherche du temps perdu鈥攆or instance. I鈥檓 not trying to imply that King is 鈥渙ur Proust鈥� or as even meticulous a writer as Proust; all I鈥檓 trying to say is that saintly feet have walked this ground before.

I should remark, though, that It鈥檚 status as horror is not as straightforward as you might assume鈥攁s I assumed鈥攁t least, not for a non-coulrophobic adult reader. Before I began the book, I understood its horror elements to consist of a shapeshifting clown called Pennywise (or an eternal spider-thing that sometimes takes the shape of a clown called Pennywise) and his various forms. But the portions of the book about the clown, the clown-cum-teen-werewolf, -cum-mummy, -cum-Honda-Civic-sized-chickadee aren鈥檛 scary. These are childhood fears, and may be the things that tweens and teens find frightening when they pick up the book. They certainly would have been the scares my friends and I were after at thirteen. What鈥檚 really horrifying for an adult reader, though, are the human acts of violence, for which the clown is only a catalyst. I鈥檓 not sure if Henry Bowers resembles any real fifth-grade bully, but his homicidal tendencies make you angry, make you feel powerless, make you really fear for the kids in his sights and wish you were there to give him a few whacks with a sand-filled hose. This is how we are made to feel about a twelve-year-old. And then there鈥檚 the protagonist Beverly鈥檚 abusive husband, Tom; the scene in which he beats Bev鈥檚 whereabouts from one of her friends, and then threatens to come back and kill the friend if she calls the police, is hard to read. It鈥檚 awful and all too real.

But Tom鈥檚 violence is not the only violence based on a鈥攂ased on many a鈥攖rue story. After the famous clown-in-a-storm-drain opening, which even those who haven鈥檛 read the book know about from the 1990 miniseries, comes the first murder of the clown-creature鈥檚 new cycle. Except this murder is not perpetrated by the clown. Pennywise, although he snacks on the corpse, as he is wont to do, is essentially a bystander. The victim is a gay man, Adrian Mellon, and the murderers are a pack of rabid homophobes. It is these banal and intolerant human characters who 鈥渟tab [Mellon] seven times,鈥� before throwing him over the side of a canal (38). The episode is based on the real-life killing of Charlie Howard in Bangor, Maine, in 1984. But hate-crimes against LGTBQ folks鈥攍ike spousal abuse, like violence against women鈥攁re frighteningly commonplace. This murder 颈蝉苍鈥檛 the reified fear of a desiccated corpse. One of my friends has had to lie about his sexual orientation before because feared for his life. We鈥檝e all been in a situation where we鈥檝e had to keep quiet because it鈥檚 safer, and we鈥檝e all read or heard stories about people who have been badly hurt, or died, if we haven鈥檛 known a survivor personally. That鈥檚 terrifying.

There is received wisdom, other than that about the scares, that turns out to be wrong, too. First, there is the assumption, upon which the two-鈥渃hapter鈥� adaptation of It from 2017 and 2019 is based, that the novel is actually a pair of novels grafted together: a protagonists-as-children novel, set in 1958, and a protagonists-as-grownups novel, set in 1985. A diligent structural reading reveals that these two 鈥渘ovels鈥� are not separable. The as-adult sections might be surgically removed from the as-children sections, but unlike the as-children sections, they would not be able to survive on their own; they rely too heavily on flashback and recollection, and the scenes that result from these techniques constitute parts of the as-children section. The above-quoted scene from the as-adults section, when Ben returns to Derry, for example, is anchored in the winter scenes of the as-children section.

Then, there is the notion that 鈥渨hat amounts to an orgy鈥� takes place amongst the seven protagonists, in one of the sections set in 1958 (Smythe, 2013). What happens is the six male protagonists have vaginal sex with the female protagonist, Bev, at her instigation. Doubtless, for some the scene will be discomfiting and feel voyeuristic, although I suspect this is age dependent. The protagonists are eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and the reader鈥攁t least, this reader鈥攁nd the writer are much older. Overstating the case somewhat, we might ask, 鈥淒oes this scene amount to the promotion of some kind of meta-literary pedophilia?鈥� Without appealing to King鈥檚 intentions, I think we can answer 鈥淣o鈥� to this question and its variants for two reasons. First, there are a fair number of sexually active eleven- and twelve-year-olds; the scene, if improbable, is realistic in the sense that children become sexual subjects (in the self-forming sense of 鈥渟ubject鈥�) around this time in their lives. Second, the sex 颈蝉苍鈥檛 exploitative of the characters, or especially explicit within the text. Bev uses sex strategically, and its purpose is to renew the bonds of friendship amongst the participants. She 颈蝉苍鈥檛 objectified during the scene; in fact, in a pleasant inversion of many adult-heterosexual-sex scenes, it is her pleasure that is central, and most of the male characters are unable to ejaculate. (Oddly, this appears to be for developmental rather than psychological reasons).

For folks in English studies, the most controversial thing about It, or any of Stephen King鈥檚 novels for that matter, ought to be their literary status. Are they Literature or are they mass entertainment, pulp, penny-dreadfuls, or whatever else you want to call the negation of Literature? This question, popping back up like a clown-shaped punching-dummy whenever someone thinks that they have successfully put it down, is one of the eternal questions of our discipline that many pragmatic people wish would just go away. It is interesting to study why people hold the beliefs they do about Literature, and what it means that literature has been defined this way (with a capital L), rather than that way, but Is It Literature? is largely irrelevant as a question in and of itself. The great Literature Debate is a debate in the same way that 鈥淲ho would win鈥擠arth Vader vs. Kylo Ren, Jaws vs. Moby Dick鈥� are debates. Yet people insist on debating.

Harold Bloom has already weighed in; a few years after he made the above-quoted comment, he said this: 鈥淪tephen King is beneath the notice of any serious reader who has experienced Proust, Joyce, Henry James, Faulkner and all the other masters of the novel鈥� (qtd. in Ciabattari, 2014). I don鈥檛 know how Bloom could have taught undergraduate English students for all those years and made this statement, but there you are. Here is another self-avowed snob, the novelist Dwight Allen: 鈥淎fter you鈥檝e read Roberto Bola帽o and Denis Johnson and David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon鈥� why would you return to Stephen King?鈥� This is not the best set of examples, not the least reason being that all the writers are men, and three of them are white American men. It is also predicated upon excluding these (admittedly very impressive) writers鈥� worst work. Having not read enough Bola帽o and Johnson, I can鈥檛 speak of their books, but after a few chapters of the expansive and frivolous Against the Day or an encounter with the aptly named Wallace narrator Ovid the Obtuse, I think most people, even serious readers, would gladly return to King, and even say that some of his writing is markedly superior.

Heck, I am willing to do both, right now.

#

French Dispatch Sentences. I am still looking for opening sentences with three dangling participles, two split infinitives, and nine spelling errors, in response to a challenge posed in “Fifteen-Minute Intermission” (send to: noahbendzsa@cmail.carleton.ca).

Below are a two marvellous submitted sentences鈥攐ne by Vivian Astroff, a fourth-year student studying the History and Theory of Architecture, and one by Professor Jody Mason, of the English Department鈥攁nd one sentence I鈥檝e written.

Works Cited

• Ciabattari, Jane. 鈥溾�� BBC, 31 Oct. 2014.
• Dry, Judy. 鈥溾�� IndieWire, 10 Sep. 2019.
• Dwight, Allen. 鈥�.鈥� Los Angeles Review of Books, 3 Jul. 2012.
• King, Stephen. It. 1986. Scribner, 2017.
• King, Stephen. 鈥橲补濒别尘鈥檚 Lot. 1975. Anchor Books, 2011.
• Smythe, James. 鈥溾�� The Guardian, 28 May 2013.

The post Noah’s Blog – Shocks in a Clown-Shaped Box appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Noah Bendzsa
Student Blogger for 2021/2022

Like ballets and operas, many long old movies have intermissions, partway through, when viewers can get another popcorn or soda, or go to the washroom, or leave gracefully. There is an intermission in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Ben-Hur (1959), Giant (1956), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and My Fair Lady (1964). Gone with the Wind (1939), which is almost four hours long (and almost four hours too long), has a twenty-minute intermission.

In this intermission, I would like to pose two challenges for my readers. Both of them come from a very literary new film, The French Dispatch (2021), which is about the composition of three articles in the life of an editor-in-chief (Bill Murray) and his literary journal鈥�The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun鈥攈eadquartered in the fictional Ennui-sur-Blas茅, France, from 1925 to 1975.

The first challenge concerns a comment, made by a proofreader, about an article written by J. K. L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) about the artist Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro). The proofreader deadpans: 鈥淭hree dangling participles, two split infinitives, and nine spelling errors in the first sentence alone鈥� (Anderson 7). My challenge for you is to write that sentence and send it to me (noahbendzsa@cmail.carleton.ca). The best three sentences I receive will be appended to my next blog post. They need not be about the fictional Rosenthaler, but they should be in the form of the first sentence of an article about some artist or creator鈥攚riter, moviemaker, singer, songwriter, actor, painter, sculptor, showrunner鈥攆ictional or not, living or dead. For the spelling mistakes, take inspiration from the days of pre-standardized spelling (from, for instance, Spenser and Chaucer). In order to make it all hold together, you will probably need a semicolon or two.

The second challenge is to identify, or at least speculate about, what the chart drawn up by the copy editor played by Elisabeth Moss is meant to reveal about the sentence, 鈥淭hey will fail to notice, under the corner of a threadbare rug, the torn ticket stub for an unclaimed hat which sits alone on the upper shelf of a cloakroom in a bus depot on the outskirts of the work-a-day town where Nickerson and his accomplices were apprehended鈥� (3鈥�4). And what鈥檚 with that sentence? Wouldn鈥檛 鈥淭hey will fail to notice, under the corner of a threadbare rug, the torn ticket stub for the unclaimed hat that sits alone on the upper shelf of a cloakroom in a bus depot鈥︹�� be better, or at least more conventional?

Regardless, try not to join in your compositions and speculations. Sometimes, says Nickerson, a work-a-day sentence will do.

Exeunt moviegoers.

#

Below are a two marvellous submitted sentences鈥攐ne by Vivian Astroff, a fourth-year student studying the History and Theory of Architecture, and one by Professor Jody Mason, of the English Department鈥攁nd one sentence I鈥檝e written.

Works Cited

• Anderson, Wes. The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. Deadline, 2022, . Accessed 24 Jan. 2022.

The post Noah鈥檚 Blog 鈥� Fifteen-Minute Intermission appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Noah Bendzsa
Student Blogger for 2021/2022

Here is the beginning of one of my favourite novels, Wildcat:

Wildcat was panned when it was first published, in 1998, and is now out of print. Its author, Eli Cash, reasoned that its lack of success was due to it being 鈥渨ritten in a kind of obsolete vernacular.鈥� Critics may have hated it, but it fascinates me. I would write a paper on it, although that could be problematic. Eli Cash 颈蝉苍鈥檛 a real person: he鈥檚 a character in Wes Anderson鈥檚 2001 movie, The Royal Tenenbaums. Unlike Cash鈥檚 other novel, Old Custer, Wildcat does not even get a prop dust jacket. It is briefly mentioned, in one scene, in which a Charlie Rose stand-in brings it up and triggers Cash鈥檚 meltdown on live TV. The 鈥渆xcerpt鈥� above, as you may have already guessed, was something I cooked up by doing either my worst or my best imitation of Cormac McCarthy鈥� (Gilman, 2012).

It鈥檚 funny, I don鈥檛 like McCarthy much. (Just now I tried reading No Country for Old Men, for inspiration writing the beginning of Wildcat, and the opening scene with Chigur and the deputy almost made me vomit.) I do, however, love movie writers. That is, not screenwriters but movie characters who are writers, especially those who have failed to live up to their potential in some way, or otherwise basked in oblivion despite their talent and the praise they so clearly deserve. There is Cash from The Royal Tenenbaums, George Gulden from One True Thing (1998), Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys (2000), Bernard Beckman from The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Joan Castleman from The Wife (2017).

Most of the films these characters appear in were adapted from novels. Two of them, One True Thing and Wonder Boys, were written by Pulitzer Prize鈥搘inners. (Anna Quindlen had already won, for commentary, when she wrote One True Thing, her first novel. Michael Chabon won for The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, in 2001.) The Wife was first a novel by Meg Wolitzer.

I made the mistake of reading Wonder Boys and The Wife after I had seen the films. The novel The Wife, purely from the perspective of reader response, was okay. It was a little clich茅d, a little heavy-handed, and the prose was sometimes awkward. But there were some good similes. (As an airplane stewardess leans over her husband, Joan Castleman remarks, 鈥淚 could see the ancient mechanism of arousal start to whir like a knife sharpener inside him鈥� [Wolitzer 2].) Chabon鈥檚 Wonder Boys, on the other hand, was a disaster鈥攁 well-written disaster, but a disaster nonetheless. The novel鈥檚 Grady Tripp is insufferable鈥攖he first insufferable literary pothead I have ever encountered鈥攁nd not in the least engaging, empathetic, or otherwise worth reading about. I would quote from the novel, but once I was finished with it, I got rid of it as fast as I could. The only thing I got out of its three-hundred-odd pages was that Michael Douglas, who played Tripp in the movie, is a magician, transforming an annoying lecher into an earnest, likeable muddler.

I have a general theory about why it鈥檚 more fun to watch these characters than to read about them. It鈥檚 because you鈥檇 rather be reading what the characters themselves have written. Successful metafictionalists, like Philip Roth, know the perils of making their novelist characters鈥� novels more interesting than their own. When Roth writes about or Nathan Zuckerman, he has them tell the story he wants them to tell, the interesting story, rather than merely alluding to how these characters once won the PEN Award or the National Book Award or the 鈥淗elsinki Prize.鈥� Nobody, least of all me, wants to read about how a character is in a slump because they鈥檙e typing away on an endless project, or because they鈥檙e always stoned, or because they didn鈥檛 get tenure at Harvard one time. And in print, there鈥檚 only so much you can do with a blocked writer. Although Roth and Zuckerman often agonize over whether they have gotten the story straight, at least they give it a shot.

But this is a negative theorization. It doesn鈥檛 answer why watching these writers on film 颈蝉苍鈥檛 tedious. For me, the answer is simple. I like watching movies and TV shows on their own terms. Watching them rarely inspires me to read about their characters鈥� interests. (Besides, films are rarely really about what their characters are interested in. The Sweet Smell of Success [1957] 颈蝉苍鈥檛 about newspaper culture but power; The Draughtsman鈥檚 Contract [1985] not about drafting but semiotics; Goodwill Hunting [1997] not about 鈥渕ath鈥� but something else, I assume. I don鈥檛 know.)

The more interesting question is why I like the writer movie-character in the first place. Why do I think that Eli Cash and Grady Tripp would be great professors, when there鈥檚 sound evidence they wouldn鈥檛 be? (When would they even have time to mark midterms?) Why is Bernard Beckman fascinating even though he鈥檚 a jerk? Why do I want so desperately to read The Walnut, even if Joe Castleman鈥檚 name were on the cover instead of Joan鈥檚? Why is George Gulden my hero? I don鈥檛 intend to answer all of these questions. Some of them come down to taste and thus aren鈥檛 very interesting for anyone other than myself. Cash is charming and silly and easily hurt. His vulnerability is cute. Tripp, (un)blocked as he is, has a debut novel whose name, The Arsonist鈥檚 Daughter, is right out of . Beckman (Jeff Daniels) is a petty narcissist, but I can stomach watching him blunder through his personal life, because I鈥檝e known men like him, and he鈥檚 hardly an exaggeration. Now, my loves of George Gulden (William Hurt) and of Joan Castleman (Glenn Close and Annie Starke) are a little more complicated and deserve more detailed explanations, because I think these loves are revealing.

In addition to being white, straight, and male, Gulden shares a lot of traits with Cash, Tripp, and Beckman. All four of them teach at insignificant, fictional liberal arts colleges. Like Tripp, Gulden has run up against the old 8×11 white wall in his writing life; like Beckman, he鈥檚 an unrepentant narcissist (at least, up until the end); and like Cash and Tripp, he鈥檚 an addict. Cash, Tripp, and Beckman, though, are all meant to take up space in their respective pictures. Tripp and Beckman are the main characters of Wonder Boys and The Squid and the Whale, respectively, and Cash plays the pivotal role in The Royal Tenenbaum鈥檚 zany climax. Gulden is not supposed to be the focus of One True Thing. He is meant to shadow the beginning of the film as an august presence, only to be defoliated as the film progresses and his daughter, Ellen Gulden (Ren茅e Zellweger), realizes how shallow and self-centred her father really is, shifting her allegiances from him to her dying mother (Meryl Streep).

I have watched One True Thing perhaps three times now, twice all the way through. George never loses his centrality. His literary anecdotes are all the same, customary tchotchkes of Mr. American Literature. Something-something Gertrude Stein, punchline Hemingway. So-and-so kept rotting fruit in their desk to boost their concentration, so now I keep rotting fruit in my desk. He tells his daughter her prose needs to be 鈥渕ore muscular,鈥� and then goes on to say, 鈥淲hen I was twenty and working at The New Yorker, I would spend a whole day working on a single sentence鈥� (Hurt, 1998).

Now, you might think you鈥檝e got me. Didn鈥檛 I just spend my last blog going on and on about The New Yorker? Isn鈥檛 that what English students do, talk about The New Yorker until they鈥檙e either working there (unlikely) or dead? This is true, but I assure you, it 颈蝉苍鈥檛 why I鈥檓 interested in George. When I first saw Knives Out (2019) and Daniel Craig鈥檚 character says that , I leaped out of my theatre seat. 鈥淚 did! I did!鈥� I may have screamed, in that blank moment in which I lost all self-control鈥攂ut Knives Out is not a movie that I have returned to or that I have any yen to return to any time soon. Moreover, George鈥檚 鈥渕ore muscular鈥� comment is vague and airy, and his New Yorker name-drop is pathetic and, perhaps unintentionally, hilarious. So Ellen鈥檚 prose is supposed to be more muscular鈥� like Cormac McCarthy鈥檚? Roger Ebert points out that if George really did spend all day on a single sentence, 鈥渢hen to meet his deadlines he must have had to dash off his other sentences in heedless haste鈥� (par. 3). In this case, as welcome as literary references usually are in the movies, George is not exactly paying good writing a compliment, or arguing for his presence continuing to overshadow the clich茅d, albeit well-acted, mother-has-cancer storyline.

My love of George is an extra-textual imaginative process. It 颈蝉苍鈥檛 something that the movie means to happen; it just happened to me. I see what kind of academic and writer the character could have been, and in this role, he is oddly inspiring. My own failures as a writer and tyro scholar can crouch behind his image. The character George is at once a literary hero, incapable of letting me down by virtue of his fictionality, and a disguise. He is a set of Groucho glasses that I can pull on when I am writing something difficult. (Like you, I have other disguises, too, but they are completely of my own design.)

Joan Castleman, on the other hand, does not represent a disguise; she is the locus of all the technique of which I am arrogant, the technique that darts a yard or two ahead of my laziness. Not once in the film The Wife (as is the case with George) are readers privy to any of Joan鈥檚 prose. Instead, we are merely tantalized by how she writes. In one scene, she explains to her husband, Joe鈥攆or whom, like Colette, she is ghostwriting鈥攚hy a scene of a woman folding laundry goes on for so long (he feels it should be cut). It鈥檚 not about the laundry, she says, it emphasizes the woman鈥檚 loneliness, her sense of waiting. What would this look like on the page? Would the reader be able to grasp this, or is it too subtle? It doesn鈥檛 matter: the challenge has been set, the paces walked. I get the feeling someone has done it, even if, on second consideration, they really haven鈥檛.

The other thing that I long for and envy about Joan鈥檚 writing life is its sense of stability. Her husband has his names on her books, but her life is taken care of. She gets none of the credit, but she is allowed to write, to communicate her ideas through stories that are ostensibly Joe鈥檚. For her, the work is a form of therapy from the badness of her marriage. She feels misused: Joe has his affairs, is hailed as a literary genius; she is the invisible woman. Her presence, dependence, and servitude are expected. As a person, however, she is no more than 鈥渢he wife.鈥� I am not a woman and did not live through the 1960s as a housewife and homemaker, so I cannot say for certain that I would feel any less resentment than Joan does, placed in her situation. But I do think I would be amenable to it. My temperament is more in line with Alma鈥檚 (Vicky Krieps) in The Phantom Thread (2017): I am ultimately a codependent person. I need a sense of home and being a spouse or partner (in both the romantic and productive sense; children are optional).

This is somewhat the same feeling I have for Alice Munro鈥檚 life. Despite everything she has had to endure鈥攄epression, sadness, loss, anger鈥攖here is something enviable about her life seen from the outside. I suspect Meg Wolitzer feels somewhat the same way about Munro. She has Joan refer to the ability of 鈥渢he gelatin of art [to] contain and suspend鈥� life (165), and for those who have read the short story 鈥淢aterial,鈥� it鈥檚 hard to see 鈥渢he gelatin of art鈥� as anything but a reference to that famous 鈥渕arvellous clear jelly鈥� (Munro 43). So it 颈蝉苍鈥檛 surprising that Joan鈥檚 life is an intensification of the feeling I derive from Munro鈥檚. And the film, in clarifying the relationship between the fictional writer and the real one (it changes the 鈥淗elsinki Prize鈥� to the Nobel Prize, which Munro won in 2013), only makes Joan鈥檚 life even more tangible.

What I like about both Joan and George is that they allow me to transport myself out of the life I am currently living. (I feel as though I have read this somewhere before.鈥�) This is one of the functions of good fiction. When it comes down to it, Joan and George are the kernels of stories I tell myself about writing and stories that allow me to write. They are enviable, inspiring, other lives. They are a few movements and sounds into which I am helpless but to see myself, just as I am often wont to do with prose:

Works Cited

• Cash, Eli. Wildcat. New York: Brooks UP, 1998.
• Castleman, Joe. The Walnut. New York: Pantheon, 1961.
• Ebert, Roger. 鈥淥ne True Thing.鈥� Chicago Sun-Times, 18 Sept. 1998. RogerEbert.com, . Accessed 26 Nov. 2021.
• Gilman, Jared, performer. Moonrise Kingdom. Directed by Wes Anderson, Indian Paintbrush and American Imperial Pictures, 2012.
• Hurt, William, performer. One True Thing. Directed by Carl Franklin, Universal Pictures, 1998.
• Munro, Alice. 鈥淢aterial.鈥� Something I鈥檝e Been Meaning to Tell You, 1974, Penguin, 1990, pp. 24-44.
• 鈥淭hree Plays.鈥� The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by Wes Anderson, Touchstone Pictures and American Empirical Pictures, 2001.
• Wolitzer, Meg. The Wife. 2003. Pocket Books, 2018.

The post Noah’s Blog – The Novelist鈥檚 Novelist, the Filmmaker鈥檚 Novelist appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Noah Bendzsa
Student Blogger for 2021/2022

that I actually exclaimed 鈥淎h-ha!鈥� when I thought that I鈥檇 spotted an error in The New Yorker? I was out in public, and I鈥檓 sure my reaction would have drawn looks, if I hadn鈥檛 been in a parked car in an LCBO parking lot. (I was waiting for a friend.) The apparently offending sentence appeared in , and was published in the August 16, 2021, issue. It ran: 鈥淚n 1966, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which empowered the federal government to set safety standards for automobiles, a matter heretofore left largely to the states鈥� (Menand, 鈥淟egitimation鈥� 71).

Do you see it? Don鈥檛 squint too hard; you won鈥檛 find fault with the punctuation, and there is no egregious but invisible homophonic misspelling like (see Lizza 45). The problem, I felt, was the word 鈥渉eretofore.鈥� The article was not published, in 1966, just after the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. My understanding, backed up by the Oxford English Dictionary, was that 鈥渉eretofore鈥� meant 鈥渂efore now鈥� or 鈥渦p until this point.鈥� As I understood it, it did not mean 鈥渦p until that point鈥濃�攚hich is what Menand means.

If you have ever stopped reading right in the middle of a novel鈥檚 action sequence to ponder a word鈥檚 proper or improper usage; if you have ever paused mid-essay because of a superfluous or, more often, missing comma; if you have ever.鈥ell, I had to crawl through the first pages of Patricia Highsmith鈥檚 The Price of Salt, because I kept getting stopped where my 2015 edition renders 鈥渃o-workers鈥漚s 鈥�coworkers.鈥� This is what grammar and usage are like for some of us (and maybe for you, too). They have a great capacity to get us riled up.

As it turns out, I hadn鈥檛 spotted a mistake in Menand鈥檚 work. When I got home, I realized that The New Yorker uses Merriam-Webster鈥檚 dictionaries (Norris 18), because of course they do. Oxford has been known, in the past, to merely refer readers to Webster鈥檚 (see Hyman 11031) and, as Webster鈥檚 itself notes, is in part responsible for the widespread, , where x is equal to 1,700 or greater. Webster鈥檚, on the other hand, tends to do the lexical heavy lifting. They are the champions of usage, telling us that, yes, 鈥渇unner,鈥� 鈥渃onversate,鈥� and 鈥渋rregardless鈥� are indeed words, and you can go right ahead and use them鈥攁t least, in casual settings. In their on-line dictionary, as a synonym of 鈥渉itherto,鈥� which even Oxford defines as 鈥渦ntil now or until the point in time under discussion鈥� (my emphasis). Menand means 鈥渉eretofore鈥� in the sense of 鈥渉itherto.鈥�

It would have been highly ironic if I had spotted an error in Menand鈥檚 article. It was he, more than anyone else, who first turned me on to grammar and usage. In ninth grade, when I was thirteen, I still had little notion of what a verb, noun, or adjective was鈥攍et alone what constituted a sentence or how to properly use a comma. In an attempt to better myself and my writing, I started reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss. After getting a few pages in, not realizing that it was not a grammar and usage guide but a comedy book, I was puzzled. Even as a punctuator-by-ear, I could tell that there were many more solecisms than there ought to have been merely by chance or human error. This was a book whose title referenced a joke about the ambiguity generated by misplaced commas, and yet, in the text, there were missing and misplaced commas everywhere. Where were the copy editors? In my own na茂ve way, I was apoplectic: I had wanted to learn something and instead was, as I read, merely tallying vague grievances of my own.

As teenagers do, I turned to the Internet for someone who shared my opinion, for an expert who could precisely diagnose what was wrong, and validate what I felt. That expert was Menand. His , titled 鈥淏ad Comma,鈥� begins, 鈥淭he first punctuation mistake in 鈥楨ats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation鈥欌�� appears in the dedication, where a non-restrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there鈥� (Menand 102). I鈥檝e read 鈥淏ad Comma鈥� in its entirety maybe six or seven times, parts of it upward of a dozen; I have never made it past chapter two of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

None of this is to say that I am now, or ever was, a stickler鈥攖hat is, someone like Truss鈥檚 popular image. Truss鈥檚 narratorial voice is a part of a pervasive stereotype (maybe less pervasive in English studies) that says those who care deeply about language and grammar鈥攋ust as much as they do about the meaning that words and punctuation together are trying to unambiguously convey鈥攁re uptight and have the irrepressible urge to correct any and all violations of language conventions. I think this originates, for most people, in primary school and older, prescriptivist systems of education, where teachers were intransigent when it came to anything but a very narrow range of usage. These people, Lynne Truss sticklers, hiss and recoil when someone uses so-called adman slang, like 鈥渁ccessorize鈥� or 鈥減rioritize鈥�; or uses 鈥渋mpact鈥� or 鈥渓oan鈥� as a verb; or ends a sentence with a preposition. Assuredly, these people will have stopped reading this by now, because I have already split at least two infinitives in this post, one in this paragraph.

My anger at the mistakes in Truss鈥檚 books was the same kind of anger that she says she feels at the sight of a grocer鈥檚 apostrophe (mistakenly pluralizing a word by adding an 鈥檚). But鈥攁nd this is important鈥攊t was born out of disappointment and not out of fear or resentment; a book I believed capable of helping me, let me down. I don鈥檛 maliciously correct people鈥檚 usage in conversation, and I don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 any real need to correct minor errors in print. (Yes, it annoys me when a certain scholar writing on We Need New Names spells 鈥淏ulawayo鈥� three different ways, but my thinking is, 鈥淎s long as the scholarship is good鈥︹��) People make mistakes, and doubtless at least one grammar or usage error has slipped past me and my editor (more likely me) in the course of writing this very article.

I very often, in fact, try to pay less attention to rigid punctuation and grammar conventions, not that I have ever done this with any particular degree of success. I often wish I could write a little more like Styron, whose sense of restrictiveness is refreshingly broad. Sophie鈥檚 Choice begins with an omitted comma after an introductory clause (鈥淚n those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan鈥� [3]), and it just gets better from there. I鈥檝e also come to really like the convention up until the middle of the twentieth century of putting semicolons between complete clauses and co枚rdinating conjunctions preceding complete clauses. It can give a sentence a wired, pugilistic spirit, even if Henry James is the one doing it (鈥淚 slept little that night鈥擨 was too much excited; and this astonished me, too鈥� [18]). And what about the British convention鈥攂ad form in the United States and much of Canada鈥攐f putting punctuation, like full stops and commas, outside quotation marks? Toril Moi does this so assertively that I was once helpless to not to do the same, after reading her.

Of course, there are also those writers whom none of us want to emulate. But their writing, hapless as it is, can be a lot of fun, too. That is, it can be funny, funny-ironic. This is especially true since the work is largely unimportant, the writer usually remains anonymous, and no one feels like they鈥檙e the direct butt of the joke. In other words, no one gets hurt. Grocer鈥檚 apostrophes, which are ubiquitous, are quaint but not funny; you almost feel that conventions will change to accommodate them, and someday soon. I鈥檓 referring to bigger things, ontological things. These sorts of things concern real grocery stores.

When I was working at Loblaws, the summer of 2019, there was a sign in the lunchroom that read: 鈥淲ARNING: We regret that this is not an allergy free room.鈥� As I didn鈥檛 care much for the building, I might have been using peanut butter after all. Many older Loblaws locations also have an ersatz Eastern European deli, complete with a red false awning. Under each awning is a sign that reads: 鈥淟a Marchetta.鈥� You might innocently think that this is Italian for 鈥渢he market鈥濃�攚hoever commissioned those signs certainly did. Actually, it means 鈥渉ustler鈥� or 鈥減rostitute.鈥� (The deli pictured doubles down, and a sign, on the left hand side of the frame, declares that it is located at 鈥�104 Marchetta Avenue.鈥�) Who knew our grocery stores were living such full lives.

Compared to these鈥攚hat are they, faux pas? snafus?鈥攁 lot of the grammar and language ambiguities on the Internet are relatively tame. However, I would be remiss if I didn鈥檛 take this opportunity to point out a similar transfiguration that I鈥檝e noticed on-line, with the proliferation of writers referring to themselves as 鈥渄og mom鈥漵 or 鈥渄og dad鈥漵. I guess it鈥檚 only to be expected; after all, at one point there were an awful lot of 鈥渄og lovers鈥� in cyberspace. I wonder what Menand would say about that.

Works Cited

• Hyman, R. 鈥淧arapsychology.鈥� International Encyclopaedia of Social & Behavioural Sciences, 2001, pp. 11031鈥�35.
• James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. 1898. Arcturus, 2019.
• Lizza, Ryan. 鈥淭he Duel.鈥� The New Yorker, 1 Feb. 2016, pp. 38鈥�45.
• Menand, Louis. 鈥淏ad Comma.鈥� The New Yorker, 28 June 2004, pp. 102鈥�04.
• —. 鈥淟egitimation Crisis.鈥� The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 2021, pp. 70鈥�73.
• Norris, Mary. Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. 2015. Norton, 2016.
• Styron, William. Sophie鈥檚 Choice. 1979. Vintage International, 1992.

The post Noah’s Blog – Reading Copy appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Noah Bendzsa (Fourth Year Student, English)

The and The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ Student Blogger for 2021/2022

I am supposed to introduce myself. I am not Jaclyn Legge and, therefore, am someone else, something different. At first, I toyed very briefly with the idea of emulating Anne Carson: 鈥淣oah Bendzsa was born in Canada and does not know ancient Greek.鈥� It鈥檚 playful but hardly sufficient. Even Carson has had more written about her than that.

In drafts two through five, I entertained a different idea. I might avoid introducing myself altogether, assume my being, and begin in medias res. I began to write鈥攗nsystematically, compulsively鈥攁bout two subjects that had been on my mind for some time: Evan Rachel Wood鈥檚 presence in  鈥淲ake Me Up When September Ends鈥� and  from the 鈥淭he Love of a Good Woman.鈥� I did not get far writing about either of those things. My last attempt at this kind of writing was to try to interpret a cryptic Don DeLillo quotation from Underworld, which I believed would illuminate my need to write about such disparate subjects. As it turns out, I misremembered the passage; I believed it to be about the duty and impulse to record, but it is actually about satisfying memories of 鈥渙ld times,鈥� especially those shared with erstwhile lovers (DeLillo 64). Far too personal鈥攖hat was certainly not what I wanted to write about.

I have never been able to comfortably speak or write about myself. Do not think that it is out of any misguided sense of duty to politeness. It is partly because I am a private person, partly because I see writing about the self as a largely futile task. (I will this from an expression of pessimism into one of realism.) In addition to a confused experiment in biochemistry, we are constructions of our stories and the stories others tell about us. The issue is that the only lens we have to view ourselves is warped, and so these stories and our identities are unstable.

I often default to throwing up my own identity on the foundations of the most dramatic stories in my repertoire. I couldn鈥檛 stand being an unreflective bore, and I find these stories are the most engaging for listeners. Here are a few. When I was eight, while spelunking, I punctured the skin of the back of my head. It bled profusely, and I thought I was going to die. (I was a romantic and theatrical child.) When I was twelve, I broke my arm in rural northern Ontario. It took ninety minutes to get to the hospital, over poorly paved roads. The relatives I was staying with were as distressed as I have ever seen them, which I am sorry for, as the accident was my fault. My normally tough-love grandfather read aloud to me from Rum Punch, while I was laid up in the E.R., waiting for my radius and ulna to be manipulated back into place. When I was seventeen, I gave the first half of my valedictory speech in character as Groucho Marx. 鈥淟et me unzip my sweatsuit,鈥� I said of my gown. My speech advisor, who didn鈥檛 know what I was going to do, got up and threw his back out. (He alleges this was unrelated.) My peers, not up on their vaudeville and nineteen-aughts to -forties humour, were baffled.

These stories, the sketches of them I have pencilled, jump through the years of my life because it has been largely unextraordinary鈥攐r no more extraordinary than anyone else鈥檚. But, far from complaining, I enjoy the ordinariness of my life. Dramatic stories of high jinks and disaster may be entertaining for casual listeners, but they are ultimately guests who overstay their welcome and leave rings on the coffee table. I most enjoy plain stories concerning small, everyday occurrences and observations. Going to buy groceries; a bus ride to physiotherapy; something heard on the radio or learned on the Web; common, irrational fears of failure and exposure. These personal stories are the most intriguing and multifarious, and best reveal a person鈥檚 ostensible character and鈥攄are I write it?鈥斺�渢he nature of the human condition.鈥�

Much of literary and visual art is populated by the small observation or seemingly meaningless incident. The recently reappraised John Williams novel Stoner (one of my favourites) is predominantly a collection of small incidents, the play of light and shadow, in the life of its protagonist, an early-twentieth-century Missourian college professor. A large part of why Alice Munro, whose work is the subject of my undergraduate thesis, is such a tremendous writer is because she is able to so perfectly capture little details, like the feeling of lightness when wearing 鈥渞ubbers鈥� after a winter of boots (Dance 120). But, despite an early Munro surrogate鈥檚 desire to record 鈥渆very last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion鈥� (Lives 201), I think Mary Pratt, the Nova Scotian photorealist, can at times be an even better observer of the everyday. Of her , she says, 鈥淭hese apples are almost jewels, set in silver, gold, amber, and yet are obviously mundane, arranged in rows for 鈥榩roper heat distribution,鈥� on tin foil for 鈥榚asy clean up,鈥� redolent with cinnamon and cloves. They refuse to be boring鈥攆launting their romance despite every effort on my part to tear them from their history and their legends. They cry to be celebrated鈥� (qtd. in Gwyn and Moray 42).

The memories that currently 鈥渃ry to be celebrated鈥� in my own life are those of my cousin Cary and my brother, Zooey. (I have changed their names.) I have been thinking about Cary for fairly obvious reasons. He and I spent some time alone together this summer, when he drove down for the weekend to where we were staying, in Coldwell, Ontario. I don鈥檛 drive, so he took me into the nearest town, one day, and we went shopping. Another day, we biked side-by-side to a caf茅, on a wide dirt path that connects the settlements adjoining Coldwell. With most of my worries and anxiety deferred, surrounded by the pacifying bucolic landscape of southern Ontario, I wondered what in life could be better and felt immediately nostalgic for the moment I was in, and wanted to live there. Cary was part of that.

Why I think of Zooey now is a little different from why I think of Cary. Since he was born, this is the first year of my life that I will be without my brother. (He is now a freshman, living in residence, at an east-coast liberal arts college.) Even Cary鈥檚 image, built over precious few visits since the mid twenty-teens, has only a few discontinuities鈥攕ince聽when聽has he been old enough to drink?鈥攁nd gives the illusion of stasis. Zooey is harder to see, since he has been here every day for these past eighteen years. The changes in his character, despite their importance, appear minute and may only be glimpsed peripherally. His abiding image hung over the centre of my eye like a cataract, and now it is gone. His absence has forced my vision to the sharp edges of this newly clear space.

As a child, Zooey was strong, compact, and unflaggingly optimistic. His nickname was Serg, an abbreviation of 鈥渟ergeant.鈥� He was always the biggest kid in his grade, had a barrelling walk, and wanted to impress his own kind of seriousness on everyone, even adults. None of this has really stopped being true; it has only been let down, like rolled cuffs, as he has grown older.

When he was eleven or so, Zooey began playing a competitive sport鈥擨鈥檒l say tchoukball鈥攖o great success. (He is now playing for his college鈥檚 varsity team.) He went to tournaments in Hamilton, London, Toronto, and I began to see less of him. The past few years, much of his free time has been spent in the gym or on the track. I鈥檝e been so proud of him for so long that it feels like a hopeless task to try to adequately express my pride. When my friend Beatrice would ask how I was, in high school, I would invariably tell her about how tall my brother had gotten and how he was playing on three different tchoukball teams and how he was scoring n number of points a game. With him, though, I almost felt that I needed to downplay the importance of his accomplishments to me. I would make statements like 鈥渢he world doesn鈥檛 revolve around tchoukball鈥� and reproach him for his monologues鈥攚hile mine were always far longer and more self-indulgent鈥攁bout the style of play of his tchoukball heroes. I regret my inarticulateness and my buried sentiments, but it doesn鈥檛 and didn鈥檛 seem like there was a lot else that was open to me, as an older sibling: this was how we talked.

One of the best things to come out of being stuck at home for so many months was that, with gymnasiums closures, Zooey and I got to spend more time together. Summer afternoons, we would watch our favourite soap operas. We lay on oversized, under-stuffed pillows in my rented room in Coldwell, watching on my computer screen. As we rooted for the American patriarch to show up the officious Europeans, the vagarious blonde to get a grip and make up her mind鈥攖he Swede or the Louisianan鈥擹ooey would hoot, grin, and talk at the characters. When he spoke, it was an eruption of the half-abashed sweet talk of television viewership. Where had he learned?

Another time, when my magazine subscription accidentally removed me from their mailing list and stopped sending me new issues, we walked the five-mile round trip to our local bookstore, to try and get the one that they had failed to send. (From that perspective, it was a fruitless endeavour鈥攖he bookstore only gets the magazines in a week after they are sent out to subscribers.) I don鈥檛 think we talked about anything very important, just how fast we were walking and the distance to the store, something about how he was feeling about going away. It was such a beautiful, warm day. Zooey holds his chin too high, as though he needs be any taller, and still has the vestiges of that barrelling walk he developed as toddler. Despite his sportiness, he never fulfilled the negative stereotype of an athlete, and has always been an incredibly kind, gentle, and self-sacrificing person. He makes me feel safe.

In the end, I have neither introduced myself (I was born in Ottawa, in 2000. I grew up in Riverside Park and wished it were elsewhere) nor begun with a dis-authored torrent of words. Instead I鈥檝e written about two people who are close to my heart, whom I have felt compelled to write about. And for this reason I鈥檓 not sure this post has gone anywhere for anyone aside from myself. It鈥檚 my hope, though, that anyone who has read this can see some small measure of themselves, their own ordinary stories, in my life鈥攏o matter how different our lives might be鈥攁nd find comfort in that, or else take the time to examine and enjoy their own memories of people whom they love.

Although Munro is often accused of burying pieces of herself and people she knows in her work, it is again Pratt who grabs the ring, for she assuredly does. I can鈥檛 think of a more radical, innocuous, accusatory painting than  (1978). It is Mary looking at Donna Meaney looking at Christopher Pratt looking at us, all in a single gaze. And aren鈥檛 we meant to see in that simple look the whole of those relationships?

Works Cited

• DeLillo, Don. Underworld. Scribner, 1997.
• Gwyn, Sandra and Gerta Moray. Mary Pratt. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1989.
• Munro, Alice. Dance of the Happy Shades. 1968. Vintage, 1998.
• —. The Lives of Girls and Women. 1971. Signet, 1974.

The post Noah’s Blog – An Introduction appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By Emily Coppella

When I walked onto campus for the last time a few weeks ago I felt like I was both at home and trespassing. I blame COVID-19 for these contradictory feelings. It鈥檚 upsetting to see my familiar haunts transform into literal ghost towns. I saw only a handful of people while wandering along the Rideau River, slowly making my way towards the quad. Instead of taking my usual daily walk around my student home in Old Ottawa South, I decided I could say a weird goodbye to my time at 杏吧原创 by physically walking it one last time.

The wind hadn鈥檛 decided if it was winter or spring. The quad was bare, only speckled with a few scratchy leaves and my trusty boots that have helped me brave every Ottawa winter. I felt dismal, not only because of the weather, but because of how anticlimactic my undergrad suddenly felt. I was never too caught up in the idea of celebrating by walking across a stage, but I was looking forward to throwing a goodbye party with my Ottawa friends and chatting with my favourite professors in the lounge one last time. Fortunately, on a personal level, COVID-19 has only really impacted things 鈥淚 was looking forward to,鈥� and that in itself is something to be grateful for.听

April of a final semester is made up almost entirely of me silently repeating to myself: 鈥淥ne day at a time.鈥� This is a coping mechanism I fall into when life gets really busy. If looking too far ahead makes me feel overwhelmed, I just think about today. It鈥檚 like covering my ears and saying, 鈥淟a la la, I can鈥檛 hear you鈥� to far-future responsibilities and embracing the near-future ones with a grimace. It seems to work every year because I complete all my assignments. 

This year though, my 鈥渓a la la鈥檚鈥� were particularly obnoxious, in part because completing schoolwork takes double the energy when everything is online, but also because I would be closing the chapter of my undergrad and leaving the city of Ottawa. Even while packing up my bedroom 鈥� which included significant heaving of brick-like Norton anthologies 鈥� I had loud music on to distract myself from what I was actually doing. I was a robot. I turned my emotions off.

But while gazing up at buildings I used to scurry around between lectures, that emotional safety valve spluttered. By the time I was walking around Dunton Tower, I was already teary-eyed 鈥� from the wind, I would say to anyone passing by 鈥� and confused. When you鈥檝e been in your undergrad for five years (thank you, Co-Op program) you inevitably realize around the start of the fourth year that you鈥檙e ready to move onto聽the next thing,聽no matter how elusive that thing may seem. So I鈥檝e been ready to say farewell to my time at 杏吧原创 鈥� at least for now 鈥� for longer than I thought, and yet at the same time, I felt unable to let it go. Perhaps this is how guardians feel when they drop their kids off at university. This push and pull of letting go and holding on is so bittersweet.

 How did the time fly by so fast?

I tried to analyze this feeling of wanting to stay and wanting to move on while looking up at Southam Hall where I spent most of my English classes. This is a beautiful curse that falls on English majors. You have a tendency to analyze everything. 

I concluded that I just wanted a little more time at 杏吧原创. Perhaps if I had known in March 2020 that I wouldn鈥檛 be able to return to on-campus learning, I would have milked my final months for all they were worth and felt satisfied at the end of this term. But, I truly believe that if COVID-19 had not happened, I would have felt just as conflicted about leaving. 杏吧原创 was so good to me that no matter how my undergrad ended, I would have always wanted 鈥渁 little more time.鈥� COVID-19 was an interruption, a challenge, but it didn鈥檛 fundamentally change the conclusion of this chapter. I graduated. The class of 2021 graduated. And we did that during a time like this!

I no longer feel like graduating was anticlimactic. Whether we were in a pandemic or not, I think my time at 杏吧原创 would have always ended quietly and softly. This is because walking on a stage or getting a diploma are all great forms of recognition, but the true goodbyes are in the quiet moments. They鈥檙e often done alone.

So strolling around 杏吧原创 by myself with my constantly analyzing and constantly emotional English-major mind seemed like a perfect goodbye to me. 

The post Goodbye, Undergrad appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Dear fellow students,

My time is almost up in this little nucleus of syllabus weeks that turn into essay seasons, of small talk that turns into class banter. I have one final battle to endure鈥攐ne final essay season鈥攁nd then I will be graduating from 杏吧原创 with a BA in English. But before I do all that, I have to say goodbye to this blog. 

For the past two years, this blog has been a lifeline connecting me to my program鈥攆irst, when I was too busy to spend time on campus, and then, when we didn鈥檛 have the choice to meet there anymore.

I am one of those fortunate introverts who thrives in my nest, but there are a few things I have slowly come to miss: pulling out my laptop to work in a cafe, the 613 Flea Market, nerd conventions, and being on campus. It鈥檚 not that I miss the UC, or the tunnels, or Dunton Tower, or even the library, or anywhere specific at all. I just miss being in a community: of students, of lifelong learners, of sleep-deprived coffee addicts.

Beyond these labels, we don鈥檛 have much in common. This is not to say I didn鈥檛 find my people; I made lifelong friends in this program. But a wonderful thing about university is that you come into contact with people who live vastly different lives: people who never take the elevators, who have watched all of Grey鈥檚 Anatomy three times, who own several reptiles, who put maple syrup in their coffee, who handle stress in a way that stresses you out. Inside the classroom and out, you can feel the horizons of your brain expand.

This blog and this final post especially are dedicated to all of those students I have met who are so profoundly different from me. I never wanted this blog to be about one student, or one type of student, so I tried to tap into the universal student experience as much as I could while acknowledging there is no true universal experience. Being a student is rewarding, engaging, fun, and fulfilling, and it is challenging, alienating, boring, and frustrating. Sometimes it鈥檚 all of these things in one day, or in one class. “We contain multitudes”. (Achievement unlocked: cheesy Whitman/Dylan quote. I鈥檝e held off for this long, I couldn鈥檛 resist, forgive me.)

This desire to speak to and for all of us oddballs culminated in twin blog posts where I interviewed students and professors in the English department about the trials and triumphs of online learning. This is my proudest accomplishment as this department鈥檚 student blogger. With the generosity of many busy people, we made a quilt of our unique struggles during this panopticon (this pandemi moore, this panini) that will exist on this blog long after I鈥檓 gone, when you鈥檙e back in classrooms and office hours again.

And after I鈥檓 gone, well, who knows where I will be? I sure don鈥檛.

I don鈥檛 live in the present by nature, but I have been trying to. My tendency is to focus so much on the future that I don鈥檛 actually enjoy things that are happening right now. Delayed gratification is my natural inclination. I try to make a crate of mangoes last until they start going bad and I save the best bites until they鈥檙e lukewarm. I keep working and working so I can take a big break later and when later rolls around, there鈥檚 more work to do. Or my body stops doing work at an inconvenient time because it has taken a break for me.

I want to leave you with a story about how I learned to work with my body by living in the present.

When you鈥檙e behind on sleep, your body takes longer rests whenever it can to make up for it. I always get enough sleep, but without waking rest, my body steps in and rests for me. I didn鈥檛 realize it until recently, but my body has always been trying to rest for me. I can鈥檛 start working for hours after I wake up and I need a few more hours to unwind before I can fall asleep.

This was my schedule, up until recently: wake up at 11 am, grumbling and swearing I鈥檒l wake up earlier tomorrow. Mess around until 2 pm. Start working. Stop working at 9 or 10 pm. Fall asleep at 1 or 2 am. Wake up at 8 am. Tell myself I need to get to work. Snooze my alarm. Wake up at 11 am, grumbling.

I broke out of this cycle by doing the opposite of what comes naturally to me. I stopped working before dinner, no matter how much work I felt like I could do, because my brain needed time to unwind so I could sleep earlier. And when I woke up in the morning and wanted to fall back asleep, I started playing Animal Crossing. I had to do the things I wanted to do so I could do the things my body didn鈥檛 want to do. I had to work with my body instead of against it.

Now I wake up around 9 am, unless it鈥檚 raining, in which case my body goes rogue and sleeps eleven uninterrupted hours. I won鈥檛 be surprised if and when I lose this finely tuned circadian rhythm. In fact, I already lost it once with daylight savings and had to start all over again, but I did it. And I鈥檒l do it again. I like being awake in the morning, I love having evenings to myself, and I don鈥檛 know how I ever lived another way.

            Here are my takeaways from this story:

• My ability to be useful, to myself and others, hinges on me treating self-care as a discipline, not a reward.
• The work ethic I took into university made me a successful student but it wasn鈥檛 sustainable. It got me this far, but I can鈥檛 take it with me.
• A vital component of my postsecondary education has been learning about myself and committing to my personal growth.

All the digs about English degrees or Arts degrees being useless don鈥檛 mean a thing to me because I know what I got out of mine.

Work ethic aside, the world needs good readers, writers, researchers, analysts, and鈥擨 add tenderly鈥攈earts. I believe an English degree鈥攁t least, the one I have gotten here, with the help of all the professors who have guided me鈥攃an help you become all those things. (Grammatically, you can鈥檛 become a good heart, but sometimes the sentiment is more important than the grammar. Yeah, I said it.)

As I write this, I know that not everybody has the same warm feelings about their university experience as I do. Some people leave university feeling lost, uncertain about their choice in program, regretful about the experience as a whole, and some people realize it鈥檚 not for them and drop out before they finish. These stories are familiar to me, close to my heart, and valid. I know that my rainbow is someone else鈥檚 storm, and I hope everybody finds their rainbow.

Now that I鈥檝e acknowledged that university 颈蝉苍鈥檛 for everybody, I just want to say with my chest: oh my goodness, is it for me. I wrote a whole blog post about the struggles of essay season but at the end of the day, I love writing essays. I can鈥檛 wait to write a research paper or thesis for my MA one day.

But first: I need a break. Badly.

There鈥檚 this narrative that circulates among well-intentioned parents like mine that if you take a year off after your undergrad, you鈥檒l never look back. I don鈥檛 think this is such a bad thing. There are other ways to build a life, and you shouldn鈥檛 force yourself into a cookie cutter because you chose what cookie you wanted to be when you were seventeen. But I鈥檝e known what kind of cookie I wanted to be since I knew what an oven was. And I like this oven. 杏吧原创, I mean. I鈥檒l end this metaphor now before it gets overdone. (Sorry, I lied.)

See you, 杏吧原创. You haven鈥檛 seen the last of me. (By which I mean, I am going to come back to campus one day when it鈥檚 safe and sob through Dunton Tower saying hello and thank you to all my profs. And this would be a good place to do an MA.)

Sincerely, your student blogger and her furry mascot,
Jaclyn and Goji

[Puppy鈥檚 note: sniff sniff, boof boof boof, huff puff, snore]

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