Essay Options
Essay 1 for 150 points: 1,400 words typed and 3 sources: Hard copy and turnitin upload due no later than start of class on March 1:
Option One
Comparing at least 3 stories from Lasdun’s collection, develop an analytical thesis that shows how Joseph Epstein’s online essay “The Perpetual Adolescent” supports the assertion that Lasdun’s characters self-destruct under the weight of their adolescent fixation.
By perpetual adolescence, we meaning the following:
Chasing Eros instead of maturing.
Chasing the ego's needs instead of maturing.
Adulating or worshipping the culture of youth while shunning the wisdom of maturity
Chasing the compulsivity of youth and never learning the self-control of maturity.
Chasing the hedonism of youth instead of finding connection and meaning.
Pursuing Dionysian impulses instead of Apollonian ones. Some say that all literature is about the conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Be sure your essay has a minimum of 3 sources.
Option Two
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state? (cause and effect thesis)
By "demonic" I mean several things:
They go mad as they become disconnected from others and living inside their head, the condition known as solipsism.
They become irrational so that they are incapable of maturity, which means having the faculties of love and reason.
They have no boundaries with others, so that they are “clingers,” as we discussed last class, people capable of symbiotic relationships, which render both people emotional cripples.
They become blind to their own self-destruction so that they have no self-awareness or metacognition.
They chase a pipe dream or a chimera and obliterate themselves in the process.
They become bitter at their wasted life and realize they've squandered their existence on a cheap dream. They're overcome, as a result, with self-hatred and remorse.
Consider, their madness as the result of the Faustian Bargain, settling, the dream of eternal adolescence, and the chimera for a comparison essay that includes at least 3 stories, "The Half Sister," "An Anxious Man," "The Natural Order," and "Peter Khan's Third Wife." Be sure your essay has a minimum of 3 sources.
Option Three
Analyze two stories in terms of the Faustian Bargain described in the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks. Be sure your essay at least 3 sources. You may use the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" as a source and as a story comparison.
Literary Present Verb Tense
Remember to use literary present verb tense. Here's a brief explanation.
Questions to ask when assessing credible sources.
Themes in the "The Natural Order"
Abel has a moral fall. He violates his marital vows, betrays his family, himself, and aspires to the devil's (Stewart's) argument for hedonism (pleasure seeking).
Why?
The existential vacuum and ennui (a sense of stagnation and boredom) push us toward a moral crisis or struggle in many ways as we must confront:
self-delusion: our infinite capacity to fool ourselves into believing in fantasies or in our ability to deny reality. (football comeback)
feeling worthless and irrelevant (like a cog in the machine; man comes home and sits in his car drinking while waiting to go inside the house; when he does, everyone in his family ignores him)
Abel is seduced by devil's (Stewart's) lame definition of freedom, which amounts to complete abandonment of Abel's moral responsibilities. Stewart is a Dionysian force come to wreak havoc in the Apollonian Abel.
Stewart contributes to Abel's self-delusion, that he can be young forever and pursue a young man's lusts.
Abel is self-deluded. People with self-delusions suffer tragic endings.
The Causes of Self-Delusion (taking us away from metacognition)
1. The unconscious: forces we cannot see that spring from unknown needs and desires and fears. Often these desires and fears project into delusions such as a compulsion to collect brief cases (organization from chaos) or search for the perfect bed (search for lost mother).
Sometimes we suffer from unconscious bias such as recently reported about science professors in their bias against female science majors.
2. Vanity is another cause of our self-delusions based on its very definition: excessive and exaggerated esteem and estimation of our powers, skills, talents, "good looks," etc.
3. Chimera, as we said in the first lesson, is a mirage that we chase because we are in love with the chase, but not the acquisition. We are too often in love with an idea about life but not life itself. Chimeras are always unconscious manifestations. The most common chimera is the "velvet trap"; it appears like paradise from the outside but offers hell within.
Another form of the Velvet Trap is the myth of Hakuna Matata, the land of no worries.
Often a chimera is a symbol of our broken dreams. For example, in the short story "The Half Sister" the lonely Charmian is the Priestess of Broken Dreams, a chimera who draws Martin into her lonely world where his guitar playing will be subsidized by Charmian's rich father.
HomeTown Buffet is a place of Broken Dreams, the dream of getting full. It is a feeding hut where metacognition doesn't exist. All the blood is out of the brain and in the belly.
Patrick Malloy's or some other night club is the Dream of Connection and Eros. Let's put it this way: Do good things happen to people who are in bars drinking at 3 A.M.?
And yet the people at HomeTown Buffet and Patrick Malloy's are empty and depressed.
When we pursue the chimera, we commit a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the devil, that demands every fiber of our being but gives little.
4. Lust or concupiscence makes people use other people but the user wants to feel good about himself so he rationalizes his behavior.
5. Stewart from "The Natural Order" represents the chimera of Eternal Youth, Unlimited Possibilities, and Hedonistic Paradise.
Sample Thesis Statements
James Lasdun's stories show us that the tragedy of the Faustian Bargain is that once we are seduced by a false paradise, we submit our will to that sacrifice resulting in _____________, ____________, _______________, and _______________.
Ennui or the existential vacuum makes us vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain in four ways, not the least of which is ____________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
The characters in Lasdun's short story collection are woefully lacking in free will evidenced by ________________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Richard from "The Incalculable Gesture" and Abel from "The Natural Order" are both victims of the demonic, which is the result of overreacting to a crisis, feeling a sense of existential irrelevance, demanding a scapegoat to hide their personal responsibility, and wallowing in self-pity.
“The Natural Order” Lexicon
One. Devil Spreads Seeds of Discontent. See page 24 in which Stewart says a wedding ring announces that a person is someone else's property. Stewert stirs the pang of envy and regret in Abel's heart.
On page 28 we see that Abel feels the need to justify his oppressive existence, that being a married man, a parent, was to choose a "freakish and bizarre approach to life."
He now wondered, on page 29, if his married life was that of a deliberate choice, a good thing, or "passive acquiescence," a bad thing.
Feeling inferior, he begins to dress up and groom, emulating Stewart and we wonder if all the grooming and fashion from the advertising world is to stimulate our Dionysian lusts and impulses.
Abel will wear a crimson disco shirt, which I would call meretricious, cheap and garish in its allure.
Two. Unbridled, Radical Individualism and Masculinity, an untamed beast who is possessed with a "ceaseless and exclusive preoccupation with sex" (25).
Three. Family life vs. satyr (Pan or Billy Goat) life represents the war between Apollonian and Dionysian Forces. See this other link about Apollonian and Dionysian Forces.
Stewart embodies the Dionysian spirit as we read on page 31: "under the man's crassness a fine, bright flame seemed to burn in him. One was almost physically aware of it: a steady incandescence of sexual interest in the world, the lively brightness of which was its own irrefutable argument."
In contrast, Abel feels disabled, like his life is "domestic contentment," not present with joy but absent of pain (31).
See the Satyr's Tool Kit on page 30: jars, tubes, bottles, vials, oils, lotions, etc. (my favorite passage)
At the story's end, when Abel crosses the line and commits adultery, he is full of "unfamiliar savage jubiliation," part of the Dionysian spirit.
In a marriage based on love, not dynasty, as we read in Tim Parks' essay "Adultery," marriage is afflicted with the "collision of sacred and profane, the scenes of domestic bliss undermined by evident allusions to more disturbing emotions: serpents and harpies warning rapturous newly-weds of obscure calamities to come."
In other words, the marriage of dynasty, business, family, is an older, stronger form of marriage. Marriage of love is a newer type that is more vulnerable to the need for passion and ecstasy.
This hunger for ecstasy comes from the god Dionysus who "loosens and unties," creating chaos. "Dionysus is the river," we read in Parks' essay, "we hear flowing by in the distance, an incessant booming from far away; the one day it rises and floods everything, as if the normal above-water state of things, the sober delimitation of our existence, were but a brief parenthesis overwhelmed in an instant." In other words, passion is a tsunami that destroys the nest we've spent years building.
Four. Lies of omission: On page 33, Stewart flirts with a woman and tells her he lives in Connecticut, a truth, but doesn't tell her he's a husband and a father.
Five. Moral Inversion: to justify wrong behavior by turning the tables, as it were. Look on page 36 where Abel says to not have an affair, to not betray his wife would be a sin because he would be wasting a golden opportunity. Life doesn't offer many incredible moments to have great sex with another human being; what a waste to squander such an opportunity, he tells himself. He's BSing himself now.
Six. Like Martin from "The Half Sister," we see that Abel suffers from squandered dreams, lowered expectations, recurring futility, self-pity, and self-loathing (failed playwright) and wants to medicate himself with something: a sexual affair perhaps. See page 37.
Seven. The One-Armed Man. He represents hyper-masculinity (war prisoner and sniper who had his trigger finger smashed and we see him chopping goat; there must be a rich metaphor in there somewhere) on one hand and crippled limitations on the other. Is he an image of Stewart the Satyr?
Eight. Slippery Slope and the Moral Abyss. On page 47 we read "it was impossible to get a sense of the scale of what he was confronting," which is a life of denial, lies, of living an outright, perpetual lie. This is the gorge or the abyss. This is nihilism, the death of meaning.
- Stewart, who is hostile to marriage, represents what chimera to Abel. The chimera of unlimited opportunities and possibilities (more tech, more misery); all windows are open (ironically when you try to get through all the windows you fail at passing all of them). In fact, Stewart is a man-child beholden to concupiscence, desires that get worse when we try to feed them.
- Most guys are familiar with a Stewart type. We both hate and admire the Stewarts of the world. Women despise them and justifiably so, for should we not hate that which can make us helpless and destroy us? Explain men’s ambivalence toward the Stewart. We want to be like him; at the same time, we know he’s evil and selfish, what we might call a sexual conquistador. We'd never want the Stewarts of the world to date our daughters, our sisters, and our mothers. See page 26. Abel is in shock and anger at Stewart's blunt arrogance and need to show off about his conquests, but he envies Stewart at the same time.
- On page 29, we see Abel go down the slippery slope of self-delusion. Explain. We begin by watching Abel emulate Stewart’s dress code, that of a lascivious satyr. Abel claims to reject Stewart’s philandering while wanting to salvage Stewart’s good qualities, but in reality Abel is becoming the very image of the man he despises. And that is the beginning of descending into the abyss. Evil knows no compromise. Once we start down that road . . . In fact, by page 31, we see that Abel admires the flame of robust vitality that roils beneath Stewart’s exterior. He is a man of vitality who embraces life; indeed, Stewart has an appetite for life and lives life fully. He has now been idealized, put on a pedestal. Putting undeserving creatures on a pedestal is very dangerous and self-destructive.
- On page 31, what doubt haunts Abel about his marriage? That domestic life was a way of hiding from life, from being a member of the walking dead, a fake life. Abel is a charlatan and an impostor, a sort of eunuch. Stewart in contrast is an adventurous Billy Goat. In Abel’s newfound perverted “wisdom,” having affairs is a sign of moral superiority evidencing a man overflowing with life. Living in a marriage is being a slave inside a prison, a castrated man pretending to be happy. He begins to believe in his own B.S. Very dangerous.
- Does Abel cheat on his wife in a state of frenzied intoxication or calm acceptance? Explain. See page 35 top. Worse, than cheating on his wife, he realizes he no longer loves her. Now this happens BEFORE he cheats on her. Abel lives in two parallel universes: The universe he really lives in and the universe he WANTS to live in. That is his chimera.
- On page 46, how does the scene evidence that Abel’s cheating temptations are more about vanity than lust?
- Explain the metaphor of wilderness and dizzying heights in the story? They are about the loss of a moral foundation and the vertigo and self-loss that results.
Some Major Comparison Points
Fashion choices rebel against conformity and age: men choose to dress like teenagers as a sign that they're in denial of their age.
Peter Pan Syndrome: fighting life's natural narrative, what Aristotle called a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Jung's Four Stages of Life Vs. Teenage Stagnation
Athlete
Warrior
Statesperson
Spirit
Teenage stagnation glorified by novels (Catcher in the Rye), music, movies (Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow), sports, cult of self-esteem.
We've become a culture of narcissism under the veil of "staying young."
Concupiscence, infantile desire: Stewart never grows out of the stage (a toddler's stage); Abel regresses to it.
There are toddler foods in America: Hot Pockets, pizza, HomeTown Buffet
Sample Thesis Statements
James Lasdun's stories show us that the tragedy of the Faustian Bargain is that once we are seduced by a false paradise, we submit our will to that sacrifice resulting in _____________, ____________, _______________, and _______________.
Ennui or the existential vacuum makes us vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain in four ways, not the least of which is ____________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
The characters in Lasdun's short story collection are woefully lacking in free will evidenced by ________________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Richard from "The Incalculable Life Gesture" and Abel from "The Natural Order" are both victims of the demonic, which is the result of overreacting to a crisis, feeling a sense of existential irrelevance, demanding a scapegoat to hide their personal responsibility, and wallowing in self-pity.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth grade essay but not college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions
One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:
It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.
You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.
Men who are jealous are cheaters.
We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” as thus:
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.
Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:
Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.
Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes are life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
When my daughter was one years old and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.
One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”
That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.
This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity.”
As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:
“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”
Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:
My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.
But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.
Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.
The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.
Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.
America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that modeling a health system from other developed countries is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.
Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.
Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.
Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.
From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:
The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.
Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:
Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?
Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?
Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?
Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your well-being that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?
12 Things You Can Do To Increase Your Success in Freshman Composition
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.
My English 1A Class Over the Last 30 Years
About 45-50% of my students have dropped.
Some had health problems.
Some had transportation problems.
Some had family problems.
Some had relationship problems.
Some had job problems.
Some had housing problems.
Some had money problems.
But most students dropped for three major reasons.
One, they had terrible time management skills in which they were deluded into thinking their procrastination was adequate to make it through college.
Two, they were so underprepared in English writing and grammar that they become discouraged, despondent, and depressed. Their killed spirit made them back out of the fight.
Three, they were addicted to coming up with dubious excuses for not doing the work on time. They'd email me long-winded explanations of their troubles and seemed blind to the fact that the word count of their email excuses was far greater than the actual assignment. They seemed blind to the fact that BSing takes more work than just doing the work.
Here's the takeaway: When you BS others, you're not playing them; you're playing yourself.
Grammar Deficits = High Risk
There are several reasons for so many students being at risk for failing. Here's one:
At a recent meeting our Dean told us that 85% of the student body come to our college with severe grammar deficits.
Imagine the intimidation a new college student feels with severe grammar deficits and knowing that 70% of students will not transfer or get a degree.
It's like showing up to a jiu-jitsu tournament against blue belts and you know you only have a white belt.
From what I’ve observed in the classroom, here are 12 things you can do to improve your chances of succeeding in freshman composition that are analogous to martial arts training.
One. Shut off your cell phone.
At my girls' martial arts studio in Torrance, the students and parents cannot have their cell phones.
Nothing signals disrespect to the instructor and other students who show an unhealthy dependence on their phones.
I promise you college instructors notice students who are on their cell phones and appreciate students who are not.
The cell phone prevents you from being in the habit of focusing on one thing. Scattered attention and multitasking kill composition success.
Two. You need to not be ashamed for showing up to class without grammar skills. We all have to begin somewhere.
Your white belt isn’t just your skill level. It’s your maturity level. I went to college at 17. I was in remedial math and English. I dropped some classes. I received a letter warning me that if I didn’t improve my scholastic performance, I would be put on academic probation.
The letter did two things: Scared the hell out of me. The fear was an invaluable motivator.
The letter did a second thing to me: It injured my pride. My failings as a student had resulted in a day of reckoning. I was accountable for improving my performance or I’d suffer the humiliation of being suspended from college.
White belts like myself are going to suffer fear and humiliation. It’s part of the growing up process.
Three. You Need to Reinforce Classroom Instruction
When I studied jiu-jitsu with Jener Gracie 13 years ago, I noticed something. The once a week lesson was worthless unless I showed up several days a week to spar with other students. You have to reinforce the lesson with repetition.
Having a lesson from your instructor is not an end; it’s a beginning.
You can reinforce your instructors’ writing lessons by looking up the same exercises in other books, the Internet, and YouTube videos.
I’ve had students tell me I didn’t understand the math instructor’s calculus lesson, so I studied it on YouTube and now I get it.
Four. You Need to Feed Off Your Strength
When you go to the gym and lose fat and gain muscle, you feel more motivated to return to the gym. It becomes self-feeding.
When you study martial arts and climb the ladder and experience more confidence, you are more motivated to continue.
You have to experience the same sense of self-improvement in college to stay motivated.
Because my students struggle with grammar at an excessive level, they get very discouraged. Often, their grammar gets worse, not better, further into the semester.
I have to remind them that they are improving in certain areas: Writing signal phrases, finding credible research, organizing their essays, following a sound argument structure.
Grammar remains the Achilles heel, but I have to show their strengths with their weaknesses.
Five. You Learn Not to Let Your Weaknesses Overwhelm You
There are grammar books with 5,000 rules. If you try to play catch-up, you’ll be overwhelmed and quit. Find out 3-5 grammar and punctuation mistakes you’re consistently making and attack those 5 mistakes.
Your goal for the semester should be to eradicate those mistakes.
90 percent of my composition students make 3 mistakes over and over: sentence fragments, comma splices, and noun-pronoun agreement errors.
If you’re a white belt in jiu-jitsu, you can’t expect to learn all the moves in 16 weeks. You learn the basics: Passing the guard, escaping a headlock, making an arm lock, performing a rear choke hold.
Likewise, in grammar learn the 5 things you’re consistently having trouble with.
Six. You Need to Re-Condition Your Response to Failures and Setbacks
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl teaches us that setbacks, conflict, loss, and suffering are inevitable.
Our overreactions or inappropriate actions to conflict become our enemy. In other words, we are own worst enemy.
As you struggle in a martial arts class, the sensei is not your enemy. You are at war with yourself.
In college, you become your number one impediment to progress.
When my daughters have tantrums, if I overreact with rage, their tantrums last longer. I simply compound the craziness. If I stay calm and composed, I can minimize their tantrums.
I’ve learned over the years to control my response to their tantrums, not because I’m mature, but because I’m selfish. It’s in my self-interest for them to get over their tantrum as soon as possible.
Seven. Get Rid of Energy Vampires from Your Life
The sensei wants his students to focus, which means excluding distractions or what I like to call Energy Vampires.
The one thing that impresses me when my girls are in the dojo is the silence. A lot of their exercises are done with mindful silence. That’s why there are no cell phones allowed, even in the lobby.
Go home and make a list of Energy Vampires:
Reading consumer reviews all day on the Internet. You could spend a whole day reading Amazon and other reviews of digital cameras. You could burn a day on the Internet easily.
Answering texts.
Answering social media messages.
You could burn a whole day texting and gossiping with friends.
Hanging out with associates from high school who are content with being 16 years
old for the rest of their lives.
Speaking of friends, some people you associate with from high school may not be on your college track. They may not be as mature as you. They may be in the Life Is a Big Party phase of their lives.
Most likely they’re Energy Vampires. You need to cut your ties from them. It may be cruel, but it’s the only way for you to survive.
The more Energy Vampires you identity and get rid from your life, the more you’ll be able to focus on the getting more knowledge, getting more independent, and getting more advanced in your climb up the educational ladder.
Eight. Learn That You Can’t Improve Your Skills Without Changing the Whole Person
In martial arts, the skills improve along with the person’s maturity. One doesn’t happen without the other. This is one reason martial arts are so popular with parents.
Often, your maturity will result in your losing some of your friends who didn’t mature. You may feel guilty for abandoning them, but you shouldn’t. They’ve made their choice.
One of my students wrote about this: A friend dropped out of college to work 3 jobs so he could make his BMW payments. He drove the BMW to the front of El Camino on Crenshaw and was screaming at his friends to look at his new car. My student said he and his friends had to rush to their English class and the BMW owner was all alone in the parking lot with no one to admire his new set of wheels.
Nine. You’re Not Alone in the Dark Woods. We start at the bottom.
We’re in this together. We work as a community. We’re interdependent on one another. We ask question. We’re fighting for the same end. We want you to have a higher belt so you can go to the next level. Your teacher is not your enemy or antagonist. Your teacher is your sensei who wants you to have the required skills to get a higher belt.
Ten. You Have to Show Up On Time Every Time: This speaks to accountability, respect, and dedication.
If you don’t show up or if you show up late, the sensei doesn’t want you there. There’s a long line of students who want to show up on time every time. The sensei doesn’t have time to waste.
I can tell you after 30 years of teaching there’s a huge difference in student performance between those who show up on time every day and those who don’t. Just the show of respect alone is huge. But this respect translates into higher performance, listening skills, and turning in assignments on time as well.
It would be nice if the community college were this Giant Martial Arts Studio. That’s not going to happen, but you can approach it like one and you’ll be all the stronger for it.
Eleven. If You’re Afraid of Taking a Writing Class, Embrace the Fear.
Fear can be a motivator. When I was 24 and working as a part-time English instructor, my high school buddies praised me, but I told them to quiet down. I was scared. I didn’t show great discipline. Fear compelled me to do what I had to do. I didn’t see any options other than finishing college.
I have a lot of fearful, anxious students who come up to me and say, “McMahon, I’m terrified. I don’t think I can do this.”
Usually these students do rather well.
It’s the calm students who sleep walk through class who fail.
Who would you rather be, the fearful student who does well, or the calm, zenned-out student who fails?
Twelve. Finish Your Essays Early and Read Them Aloud in Front of a Mirror.
I’ve taken surveys of my students. I will ask them who proofread their essay, and about 10 percent will raise their hand. The other 90 percent procrastinate, wait till the last minute, to rush an essay, and they wonder why they’re not improving. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
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