“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

How true.

I’ve reached the “complete” status in my Liberia paper for the class.  I did my research, read the relevant material, turned in a first draft, responded appropriately to her comments/edits, and did everything I need for a good grade in the class.  But now, for graduate school, “well” equals a plateau.

You either choose to leave it there, or choose to brush off the dust (literal, my accumulated stack of library books, and figurative, the mental dust) and rework, reframe, reposition, and… think.

As Dr. Persuasion put it, it’s easy to talk about what other people say.  It’s a whole other thing to say, in understandable words and in ways that “make it sing” what I am trying to say and what I think about the subject.  It’s a process of development, teasing out the important parts and theorizing in ways that make sense to rhetoricians.  But I also want it to make sense to real people, to people outside academia.  That’s the challenge.

My goal is to submit this essay for publication in the next few months.  It’s a high goal, but one that I want to try to meet, if only for the experience of editing my own work and really thinking through my questions and successive answers not just with knowledge, but with imagination.

She’s the perfect advisor, really.  Believes in me and encourages me, but pushes me to do my best — “you can do better than that.”

That’s the kind of professor I want to be someday.

I don’t appreciate your presence or the vice-grip you seem to have on my brain.  How is it possible to know what you want to say, but then stare at the computer screen with unknowing terror?

Maybe the subject matter has gotten a little too intense.  Reading about Liberian mass murder bordering on genocide (what is the line, anyway?) for two days straight is bound to have some consequences.

Or the impending deadline?  Due dates are good, they are.  But the prospect of handing in a paper to Dr. Persuasion using one of her most famous scholarly arguments to ground my thesis?  Yeah, maybe that was a bit ambitious.  I really think it’s right, though.

It’s only a draft, it’s only a draft, it’s only a draft.  I wish that helped.

It also probably doesn’t help that I feel as if I have been living inside an igloo for the past five months.  Five months.  The pile of snow outside the kitchen window is taller than me.  I’m trying to soak up as much vitamin D as possible through the blinds, but honestly.  I want to be warm.  I miss being warm.  JPJD and I have begun our yearly moaning of “Why, o why do we live here?”  If you know of a grant fund that sends grad students to warm tropical locations for intellectual stimulation, please do let me know.  I’m sure I could pump out that application regardless of my current visitor.

I suppose a “high” point of this exercise reveals that I am still capable of thought and typing ability regardless of my utter lack of words for said paper topic.  So maybe I’ll read a cookbook or Martha Stewart for a few minutes, gaze upon a feature on how people living in warmth can host a spring picnic in their backyard, pull myself together, and charge ahead.

I am taking a class on the rhetoric of the first and second waves of feminism from my advisor this semester.  When attempting to choose a project for the class, a colleague suggested looking at Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the president of Liberia and first elected female head of state in Africa.  It combines both my interest in presidential rhetoric and the study of women’s rights.  Great, I thought.

Man, was I ignorant.  Her rise to the presidency is not a simple “I wanted to run for president and got elected” like we see in the United States.  Civil war, crime, corruption, and a movement for peace organized entirely by village women are all parts of her story.

If you care about people and about justice, you need to learn about Liberia, these market women, and President Johnson-Sirleaf.

A few resources and suggestions:

• Pray the Devil Back To Hell: This movie chronicles the story of Leymah Gbowee and other ordinary women who decided they had had enough of civil war in their country and the corrupt shenanigans of then-President Charles Taylor (go here to read a story about him from today).  Not for children or the faint of heart, but an important and inspiring work.  You can read a transcript of an interview with Leymah here.  This movie is available on Netflix, university libraries, and your local library.  Check it out.  Literally.
• Iron Ladies of Liberia: Set after the women’s movement which elected Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, this documentary chronicles the problems and difficulties facing the new president and her cabinet.  A great follow-up to Pray the Devil Back to Hell.  Also found at Netflixs and libraries.  No excuse.
• This Child Will Be Great: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s autobiography published in 2009.  She gives a history of Liberia before detailing her own life.  A woman of grace, character, and determination.

Take the time (60 minutes for each documentary and/or about 3 hours for the book) to read about these remarkable women.  It puts my cocoon-wrapped life in perspective.

There is a quiet yet unmistakable joy on the Friday night bus.  Inaudible sighs of relief envelop you, almost contagious in the air we all breathe.  Today, I’m no exception.

I’m not sure why I’m so tired.  I mean, come on, I go to school, read, respond to student emails, teach, write papers, read, and then… read some more.  Going to class is in there too, as with the terrifying prospect of contributing quality and not just quantity.  It’s a running joke amongst my cohort now, almost as if we’re cheering each other on to say something in class.  This reminds me of undergraduate days and makes me miss my best friends.

Yes, there were the triumphs… submitting two papers to a conference next April, seeing the deep gratitude on my students’ faces when I let them out thirty minutes early from class because we finished the speeches early, and then the incredible moment when one of them stopped me and remarked, “I just want to say I always think you look so stylish and professional.”  And I waltzed out of the room like I was wearing a little black dress, heels, and pearls.

And there were the… not failures, I guess, just “learning experiences.”  Getting up early one morning and being greeted by a ripped-apart (by which I mean the dreaded red “track changes” Word function) and grade-declared version of my first essay for rhetorical theory.  Apparently I’m really good at summarizing and not very good at critically analyzing.  I guess I thought “critical analysis” meant “hard work”… and therefore, I thought I had accomplished the task because, man, my brain hurt when I was done.  Or the meeting later that day I had with a professor who commented, “You seem very nervous about this paper…”  Excuse me?  “NO!”  I wanted to yelp.  “No, you are just dealing with a first-born, type-A student who wants to do WELL and is also probably a little over-eager and over-zealous and is kind of still in awe of actually BEING here.”  And then, to end the week in style, the moment this afternoon when I, so thrilled and confident in said paper topic, was met with, “Well, actually you don’t really UNDERSTAND Burke, so you can’t use him in this sense.”  What?  You mean to tell me that the YouTube video I shared with my blogging audience doesn’t equate understanding Burke? Sorry, audience.

But in the midst of it all, the thing I’m most thankful for this week is the fact I have friends at school that listen, sympathize, cheer me on… just like we all do for each other.  We listen to horror-speech stories, help pick out birthday presents online, talk about our weekends, and pick hydrangeas from the campus walkway for home décor.  We’re all going through the same thing at the same time and have the highs and lows of what we call graduate school.  “It will be the highest of highs and lowest of lows,” my mentor said the first time we met.  It’s true, although I’m realizing that the highs happen more often than I expect if I allow myself to enjoy the non-academic successes, such as the little blessings of a lunch picnic on the quad in the sunshine, shoe shopping in the middle of the day, and laughing about how cleaning our houses is the most horrid form of a mental break.

Regardless of the highs and lows, I’m reminded of God’s faithfulness.  He’s not surprised.  He knows what He’s doing.  I’m falling more in love with rhetoric every day and and quite confident this is where I’m supposed to be.

Yes, my brain feels like it’s about to explode.  But it’s worth it.

Live from the bus… It’s Friday night.

I adore Winston Churchill.  He inspires me for many reasons, including his perseverance, brilliant way with words, incredible humor and wit, and resilience.  Here’s the intro to my paper that gets handed in today.

Before his appointment as British Prime Minister in 1940, Winston Churchill stood as the single most resolute voice against Adolf Hitler and the spread of Nazism on the world stage during the years preceding the beginning of the Second World War.   He called upon his government to increase production of aircraft and weapons and warned of the growing German threat.  Although many in Parliament called him over-reactionary and anxious for war, Churchill ignored their charges and continued his call to action.  As a prophet, he predicted Germany’s aggression against Poland and the rest of Europe when the current Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, attempted to befriend Hitler.  Upon his appointment to the role of Prime Minister, Churchill became a national priest, leading his country in a battle between good and evil.  He rallied his countrymen through his stirring rhetoric, asking them to sacrifice in the name of freedom.  Winston Churchill also assumed the role of a patriot, calling on the United States to join Britain’s moral quest against Nazism by appealing to their sense of duty.  If President Roosevelt ignored Hitler’s clear goal of world domination, Churchill argued he would be not only abandoning the fraternal relationship between the United States and Great Britain but also leaving his own nation open to eventual attack.  It is in these three roles of prophet, priest, and patriot that we see the genius of Winston Churchill’s rhetoric and his unique ability to call his audience to action by appealing to their sense of moral duty and patriotism.  In his speech to Westminster College just ten months after the end of World War II, the former British prime minister assumed these same roles to warn against a new threat: a lowering of an “Iron Curtain” across Europe and the beginning of the Cold War.

Ever since my first year of teaching middle school, I become a zombie when the clock strikes 9 pm.  I even fall asleep during James Bond movies.  But get me writing about rhetorical style and suddenly the world becomes clear.  Tired?  Yes.  Thrilled?  Totally.

I think I’ve discovered what I’m supposed to do when I grow up.

I’m no longer juggling twenty different balls.  I become a critic, investigator, lover of rhetoric.  My nine classmates (or colleagues) and I engage in discussion and sometimes debate with Dr. Persuasion and each other.  Yesterday another student raised the question of if women put on make-up and enjoy dressing up because it’s inherent in their nature, or if society has decided that is what women do.  What is the “discourse” surrounding femininity and how does it impact our culture?  I’m never bored and always challenged.  I love it.

We’ve also been exploring the role of a critic.  What does it mean to “critique” a piece of rhetoric or public discourse?  What does it mean to be a critic?  We boiled it down to a few points, although the list could be unending:

• A good critic shows you something about the piece of rhetoric/discourse you wouldn’t notice at first glance.
• All critics have some sort of bias, a looking-glass through which they view the work.  You can’t escape from your individual perspective and because criticism encourages a diversity of ideas, your perspective becomes one voice in the “Chorus of Criticism.”
• A piece of criticism is an academic editorial.  As the critic, you conduct research and then write about what you discover.  Yes, you gather facts, but you share these facts from a personal opinion. 
• A good critic helps his/her audience understand his/her position and point of view before the critique.  This provides an appropriate framework from which to consider the critique as its own piece of discourse/rhetoric.

This weekend I’ll be putting on my “critic” hat as I delve deeper into the events surrounding Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech. 

Starbucks and a grande, nonfat, no-water chai, here we come!

I don’t feel moved or inspired when my eyes skim over the page.  Is that just because I wrote it, or because it’s really that unmoving and uninspiring?  How do writers know when something they write is “good” or “enjoyable” or worthy of “praise”?

It’s the essential rhetorical problem: how do you engage your audience so that they understand the importance of what you are saying?

Back in college, in my Prose Style class, my professor would have us each read aloud passages of literary inspiration and sublime quality to whet our palates, so to speak.  They could be from anywhere — newspaper article, novel, encyclopedia, poem, anything.  He always told us it was about reading great writers and training your ear.  And then, of course, practice.

What have you read that’s been helpful in your writing?  Any particular authors or methods of construction?  If I get into grad school, I’m going to be reading and writing for, well, forever, so I’d like to get some advice on the subject.

Yesterday we all arrived at class with droopy eyes, tired sighs, and little to say in class.  However, Dr. Persuasion was kind: “I fully realize that you’ve been working hard on your papers and so I’ll do most of the talking today.”  Thank you.  And in the middle of her lecture, when she noticed Marvin on the point of slumber, she announced to us all that she was “very sympathetic” to our plight.  I’m not sure why this specific paper exhausted me so much, but I felt a profound sense of accomplishment when I handed in my draft.

The paper process for this semester is rather brilliant in my opinion.

• Paper 1 – Descriptive Analysis.  The process starts with a close textual reading followed by examining the seven elements of descriptive analysis: purpose, audience, persona/role, tone, structure, evidence, and strategy.  According to Dr. Persuasion, this paper “starts the conversation” with our artifact in question.
• Paper 2 – Historical Contextual Analysis.  This paper resembles your typical history term paper, except you must use your historical research to inform your understanding of the speech and the context in which it was given.  What was going on to make the speaker say this/that?  How did the audience react to the rhetoric based upon the events of the day?  This is also called examining the “rhetorical situation” or discussing the “rhetorical problem.”
• Paper 3 – Critical Theoretical Analysis.  This is where the process gets a bit “heady.”  Which type of rhetorical criticism will you employ?  Will it be intrinsic, neo-Aristotelian, ideological, or something else?  I’m in the process of trying to figure out the differences between types of criticism and, thankfully, have a few more months.
• Paper 4 – The Final Product.  The fourth or final paper is a compilation of the first three, a product that is supposed to be good enough for publication or presentation.  We’ll see.

I’m tired and feel wordless right now, but I’m excited too.  This paper sequence allows me to learn individual bits of rhetorical criticism and practice them for a while before moving on to the next form.

Thank you, Dr. Persuasion.  You’re a great teacher.

Outlines always looks so nice and crisp and organized.  And then you have to actually write it.

I’ve been feeling rather uninspired lately.  Maybe it’s because of this paper looming over my head.  Or the conversation I had with someone this past weekend who said that she didn’t want to start blogging because most blogs were totally self-centered and screamed ”Me, Me, ME!”  Or the fact that today Dr. Persuasion mentioned the stack “this high” (about a foot and a half) of “graduate applications to read.”  Of course I didn’t expect no one else to apply to the program.  But I got scared and felt my heart jump.  What if I don’t make it?

So right now I feel like half of me is a talking head, one of those who says ”keep going, you’re almost there, you can do it” but wonders if that candidate or staffer or president really will get there or can do it.  They make money either way, you know.

The other half is a wordsmith, or at least half of one who is attempting her best and squeezing out every ounce of creativity and rhetorical jargon she can muster.

That’s Talking Head Tuesday & Wordsmith Wednesday, at least for now.  Back to the grind.