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Thesis Fest #2

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Today, I decided to play around with number 4 from my take-aways yesterday. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and might have more reading on my hands.

I figured out what was bothering me about the “Narrative structure is general knowledge” statement, though. I am personally pretty committed to the idea that narrative is somehow bio-linguistically ingrained (whew, that’s a big word). But I don’t think it’s a necessary idea for my thesis. Instead, I think it’s enough to say that narrative is necessary for full integration into society and culture.

I ended up breaking the “Narrative structure is general knowledge” paragraph into two separate ones. I realized it was about two separate things–life story as form of communication and life story as meaning-making device. Both are important. Importantly, this separation made the life story as meaning-making device section much stronger. Also, ironically, “narrative structure is general knowledge” was deleted.

Unfortunately, this creates an awkward transition into adolescence and life story so that needs to be worked out still.

To do: It occurred to me today that it might be helpful to go through and write topic sentences for every paragraph and see where that gets me.

To read (or skim): Dan McAdam’s The Redemptive Self  and David M. Boje’s study on storytelling in an organization “The Storytelling Organization”

Amount written: 1/2 page

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Thesis Fest #1

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Admittedly, I read completely through my first draft of my first chapter of my thesis for the first time today. It wouldn’t be remiss to call it a frankenchapter. There are certainly good ideas, and it’s close to being presentable, but it was mostly written in parts, and that shows. It lacks continuity, and there are abrupt introductions of ideas that don’t go anywhere.

A couple of take-aways from today’s read-through:

1. A new introductory paragraph is needed that outlines the structure of the chapter. As this structure is likely to change over the next couple of days, I’m going to leave the current paragraph as a place-holder. But the paragraph must include, minimally, life stories as narrative, narrative identity, the adolescence importance in life story, agency & communion, imagoes, how these ideas will be applied, why adolescents are important in narrative psychology, and a defense of the use of the three novels.

2. I want to take a serious look at the number of terms I’ve introduced. One of the main paragraphs on life story for instance on page 3 seems largely out of place. I wonder if I need the term at all. It’s unfortunate that McAdams uses this term instead of narrative identity in Stories We Live By. There must be a better way of describing life story though than relying on a hierarchy involving narrative identity. Indeed, even with all of that confusing hierarchical talk, on page 4, when I get to the “Life Story and the Adolescent” I still want to know what life story is.

3. Many of the sections could be made better with better transitions, especially the “Agency and Communion” section.

4. The “Narrative structure is general knowledge” line on page 5 could be made better by discussing McLean and her work on how culture provides many of the narratives we use on a daily basis.

5. There are a couple of really cool places for growth. With the right unpacking, I have some really cool directions.

  • The tension that develops as adolescents shift from collecting stories to creating them.
  • The idea that a narrator of a novel cannot be observed outside of the story, meaning, on some level, that the narrator must become the imago(es) he narrates.

Feeling good about the revising process!

*For those of you who are not Dr. Bianco, I’m going to be doing these pretty regularly now (and by regularly, I mean daily). They won’t always be this long, and I will continue to blog every once in a while about things other than thesis. I just need the public aspect to keep myself motivated. If I get a lot of complaints about this, I will consider moving this portion of my blog to some other webspace.

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I Think I Want to Waste My Senior Year

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In 24 hours, my college town will double in size. Every year close to 30,000 people come out for a Halloween block party. 30,000 twenty-somethings take over the main drag of Athens. The city shuts the street down. People wander in and out of the dozen bars on the street and bands are booked for different alleyways. It’s a great time.

Except last year, there were 50 arrests.

The year before that, there were 78 arrests.

I don’t think anyone comes here expecting to get arrested. Probably, the vast majority of these people are good kids in the wrong place.

But, I have an issue. We have created a world in which the end all of “blowing off steam” is participating in a party that is rife with illegal activity.

***

In 24 hours, religious zealots will descend on my liberal college town to stand in the middle of a block party to hold signs reminding people of hell. They will tell the costumed college students that fornication and drunkenness end in death.

I don’t think these zealots are hateful people. I just don’t think they’ve ever interacted honestly with a costumed college student.

And many costumed college students will come to the conclusion that God has nothing to offer them but death and punishment.

And all of this sucks.

***

Fifty miles away, in the heart of rural southeastern Ohio, is a 10th grader working on his homework. He is in a special education program. He loves to read. In fact, he has read the book his class is currently reading four times already. When asked about the book, he gets excited and can talk about it for near half an hour. Most of that half hour is summary, but it’s the most detailed summary you have ever heard.

On Monday, he will go to a school where teachers will applaud him for that rambling summary, believing that to be the precipice of his academic achievement. Meanwhile, the “normal” 10th graders will be asked to analyze symbolism and figurative language in poetry. None of this higher level thinking will ever be asked of our student in the special education classroom even though he obviously has the capacity to connect to a text in a profound way (since he has read a book four times).

***

A costumed college student at the OU Halloween party will be arrested. She will call her parents in the morning. After the initial shock and anger of their daughter being arrested, conversations will happen about why she engaged in the behavior that led to the arrest. She will site stress or peer pressure.

She might go to therapy for a while. When she is finally able to see herself as a “good kid” again, she will leave therapy. She will go back to hanging out with her old group of friends. She won’t get arrested again. But her grades will suffer. No more Bs; Cs and Ds now. She will graduate, won’t be able to find a job, and will move back in with her parents.

She will spend months, years complaining about information overload or “how busy she is.”

***

I am tired of having to hear about the costumed college student while the book-loving 10th grader is struggling.

My generation is wasting our time. We are wasting our time with “inspirational” blog posts and with quotes with cool pictures on Tumblr and with inventing things to complain about. There is plenty to complain about. When drunk drivers kill innocent people, for instance. Or when bullying and “slut”-shaming leads to suicide.

Or when half the country isn’t getting a quality education.

Or when your country uses drones to kill people from other countries.

Or when 20% of women report being sexually assaulted at some point.

But, instead, my privileged middle class peers and I choose to spend our time talking about how Facebook poking is cramping our dating game. Or how corrupt and evil everything is except our three closest friends. Or “blowing off steam.”

I have been told more times than I can count that I need to enjoy my senior year. Why? Why is that so important? I appreciate the sentiment, but with all due respect, I am only here because I had the privilege of growing up in a family that valued education and because I went to a public school that expected I end up here and because I am hardly paying a dime for my schooling.

And what is this enjoyment anyway? Does it really require that I go to a block party that was invented so that my peers could perform illegal activities without consequences? Does it require that I go to a small bar with my close friends and toss back a cold one?

Or can I, like, fix things? Would that be okay? Like, if I took all of that energy I put into trying to figure out how to make myself happy and spent it on figuring out how to save lives? Or would that be a waste of my senior year?