Dear College, Love Kelly

No quote this time. Just a disclaimer: This is simply my opinion and should be taken as such. There are many different ways to approach education, and I think some approaches are much more effective than others.

Today I got a letter in the mail from UW-Oshkosh. At first I thought it was you typical "give us more money" letter sent to the alumni, but when I picked up the envelope I realized it felt weird--very bunchy in the middle. I was curious so I opened it, and inside I found a folded up self-addressed envelope and a 2-page survey. Naturally, I did what anyone would do: survey, meet recycle bin.

Had I followed through with that action, I wouldn't be writing this now.

The survey was from the English Department. Apparently they're doing an assessment of their courses, and they wanted the opinions of the alumni from 2005 through 2012 to tell them what we thought about the courses we took for the English major--which was frustrating considering how little room we were given to write out our thoughts (which, in hindsight, was probably deliberate). I decided, since I sometimes feel like I did get shafted, that I should give my two cents.

The survey was mostly comprised of questions asking which courses were the most and the least beneficial to me. Initially I found it difficult to force myself to answer some of the questions because I felt like, based on my interests versus the university's selected curriculum, the courses weren't really meant for someone like me.

Which gave me all the reason in the world to complete the damn survey.

One of the questions instructed me to circle all of the teaching styles that I felt were least beneficial to me. I circled everything within--and sometimes just outside of--the parameters of "analysis" and "theory." In the 4.5 years I spent at Oshkosh, I felt like most of the courses required for the major were geared specifically toward those of us who A.) Want to be teachers, or B.) Want to be world-class snobs who write ridiculous articles that future English majors will be forced to read and evaluate, but mock outside of the page's margins.

Another choice I circled was "discussion-based courses." I can't think of a single discussion-based course that I sat through which taught me anything. You know why? Because it's all subjective, and I don't need to be taught to have an opinion. If I needed to be taught that most basic aspect of human nature, I would have had no business being an English major. The only thing those courses accomplished on a consistent basis was to trigger an emotion, be it disbelief via slack jaw or an outburst of laughter, because I couldn't fathom the audacity of what people were suggesting, or their naive views of the world around them. I will admit that when I encountered a topic that I understood, sometimes it made me think more deeply into it. But I still didn't learn anything; I just expanded an opinion that already existed.

I have a suggestion for the English department that I wish I had thought to include before I folded up the survey and sealed it in the envelope: I wish I had suggested the simple act of writing. So many professors only made us write one or two monstrously long papers per semester, and the rest of the course was wasted on trying to figure out what the hell was going through the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, the opium-riddled psycho that he was, when he wrote "The Cask of Amontillado." Consensus says he was likely balls deep inside of his own horrifying mind trying to scratch his way out through his eye sockets, or under the influence of some sort of crazy 19th century drug. If that's the kind of thing you'd like for me to analyze, I'd be happy to find an alcoholic, buy them a few shots, and attempt to decipher their deeply complex and philosophical thoughts between frequent post-seal bathroom breaks.

Poe's writing is interesting. It's certainly entertaining. All around, it's just a fun read. But please believe me when I say I don't give a shit what he was trying to express when he wrote, "Ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh!" (Yes, that's an actual quote from the story.)

Back to my point: The one course I found to be most beneficial was a course in which I was forced to write one or two short papers per week. We met every Tuesday and Thursday, and in the fourth week of the semester, we began writing these 2-4 page papers based on the assigned readings. I experienced a very strong mixture of love and hate for this practice. I hated it because the writings were based on what we were reading, which meant I had to read and understand every word of what Plato was trying to teach his relentlessly curious student. But I began to love it because, after writing these papers for three weeks, I began to realize that I wasn't spending as much time on them. This isn't to say that I was becoming lazy. Quite the contrary, my writing was getting better through confidence honed by repetition.

As a sidebar, I also learned during this course that, when I was given a rubric which stated, "This paper is to be 7-9 pages long," my professor didn't actually care. A well-written short paper was worth way more to my professors, and my education, than a "fluff" paper with punctuation that I increased to size 14 font which bumped me up from 6 miserable pages to 7.5 miserable pages of a poorly developed argument based on some pompous scholar's questionable opinion that I had to extract from between run-on sentences and complex verbiage that nobody uses in daily conversation, and I'm the asshole trying to pass that misinterpretation off as fact.

That rant is dear to my heart because I once read a published article that referred to Scuttle, a character in Disney's The Little Mermaid, as a duck.

"Do I look like a *!$%#@& duck to you?!"

I understand the concept of writing on a consistent basis sounds like a dreadful pain to the general populous, and even to some English majors. But I believe in the power of practice, and being forced to write at least two papers per week was the most brilliant homework ever assigned.

If you want to be a writer--hell, if you want to be an anything, you have to do that something. You don't have to even do it well, at least not at first, because that will come with time. Just do it, and do it often.