Becoming a Communicator

When people hear that I’m a French and English double major, they usually ask me what I’m going to do after college. They also like to try to answer for me: they ask, “Do you want to teach?” For some reason the only thing that comes to mind when they think of English and French is education. And I can’t really blame them. For most Americans, the extent of their exposure to literature or foreign language is restricted to their experience as high school students, and therefore their high school teachers. But it’s exactly this kind of limited perspective that I want to avoid as I grow up.

So, back to their question: what am I going to do? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that question myself. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. As much as I love French, I am loathe to think of myself as a sharp enough listener to be a verbal translator. I have a long road to fluency ahead of me, and I want to be 100% confident in my speaking skill before I try to use my French professionally. That means translation is off the table – for the time being.

Then there’s English. Writing is a part of me, and I believe that I can use it to my advantage in any career I want. The thing about English that I think is too often overlooked is the importance of clear and effective communication. Having someone who can communicate important and nuanced messages between parties is vital to everyone’s success. I want to be the person who manages that communication to make sure everyone understands what’s going on. As much as I day dream about being a wildly successful and widely acclaimed novelist, I also believe I have an important role to play as a communicator.

I’m not a perfect communicator. I keep secrets. I intentionally mask my feelings through sarcasm and body language. I became instantly embarrassed last semester when one of my departments’ secretary commented on my tone regarding a certain professor. I knew I had to speak about him respectfully, but I was so fed up with him that I couldn’t help but indirectly express my annoyance. It’s better than blurting out everything that’s on my mind, but it can be just as inappropriate.

Managing how and what I communicate has been a struggle for me for as long as I remember. The number of times my parents and other relatives have suggested that I take something down from Facebook or my old blog are a testament to just how hot headed I can be. Over time I’ve learned to think more carefully before I speak and post, often saving myself from embarrassment. Sometimes, though, I over censor myself by hiding my thoughts and feelings from people that matter to me and deserve to have at least the occasional honest peak inside my mind. I’m on a quest to find balance in what and how much I communication, and the process of adequately censoring myself is an integral part of my continual growth as a communicator.

If you don’t believe I’m a communicator, ask yourself what kind of person would write five paragraphs about being one. On a Saturday night. For fun. The answer? Not many.

Still – what do I want to do as a communicator? I'm still not sure, but I'll share a few of my ideas next time.

Playlist

Boston, Augustana

Thunder, Boys Like Girls

Go the Distance, Roger Bart in Hercules

I Miss Writing

I developed a huge part of my identity around the idea of being a writer during the first half of my high school career. Writing became the thing I could point to and say, “That’s mine. I made that.” The most important writing I did was for my blog, Moonwaves iWonder. Keeping a blog meant expressing myself when I felt alone and repressed at the technical school I went to as a freshman, and later as a history of fond memories of friends and family and important events in my life.

I was a true hobbyist blogger, talking about my life and pontificating about the deeper meaning of it all. Occasionally, friends and family would chide me for my posts. They pointed out to me how one sided I could be when describing an issue, and how there are some things that just shouldn’t be posted on the internet. To this day I censor myself when posting to Facebook and Tumblr (though I’m still a bit of a loose cannon on Twitter). There’s something to be said for the voluntary following of other people’s posts and one’s freedom of speech, but I definitely appreciate the lesson my small band of readers taught me. There are a lot of things I want(ed) to write about and share with an audience that I’m glad I have not – because I really doubt I could handle the consequences of those words.

I retired iWonder when I felt it no longer fulfilled those desires of expressing myself, and when I felt that my personal stories were becoming boring drivel that no one would care about but me. To some extent I think it was the right choice. The life of a straight, white, middle class, Protestant boy high school student from Massachusetts, whose life consisted of little more than video games, mediocre cycling and swimming, and internal psychological conflicts, is definitely not the most interesting thing in the world. Internet personalities like Charlie McDowell, Bryarly Bishop and the Vlogbrothers later showed me how to be successful talking about yourself on the internet: by not just being and speaking and writing interestingly, but by doing interesting things. These people start giant charity organizations, create original works and travel to exotic locations for more than just the pleasure of travel. They capture their viewers attention by doing interesting things and telling interesting stories. Needless to say, I wasn’t doing many interesting things in high school.

I could have been telling more interesting stories, though. I can’t count the number of story ideas I had in high school that I abandoned for mindlessly pursuing video games or friends who would never fully reciprocate my desire for companionship. The few stories I wrote weren’t even that good, because I never really put my heart into them (see: my senior project, New Babylon, which was truly awful). Between my lack of writing and my writing failures I gradually lost the desire to write, to speak my mind and to think imaginatively. I would even argue that my writing has become less eloquent, and that it’s lost the unique voice that I once thought I could cultivate into a career. This is all rather sad, the death of an artist and what not, but it’s kind of a serious issue since I’m paying a university to eventually give me a piece of paper that says I’m a good writer.

Maybe I still am a good writer. I wrote all this, after all. And lately I’ve felt the desire to write again – a stirring of my mind that feels like an old friend, my muse, returning from a long journey to embrace me and tell me stories of its absence. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. I left my muse, and now I’m returning to tell it tales that I might write for it.

I am still a writer. Just not the writer I used to be.

Words I Love

Does blogging about my homework make me a nerd? Possibly. But I got really excited about this English assignment today and thought it was worth sharing. We were supposed to write about how these words make arguments more effective... but I misread and started writing about why I love them. 

So, here's the window into my mind for the day:

1.      Petrichor

I love petrichor because the Doctor said it, and because it gives a name to the smell of something I love: rain.

2.      Amorous

Amorous is a cool word because it sound like “amour” with a tail at the end. It makes me think of a love fish swimming around the word it’s modifying.

3.      Façade

Something false, or the front of a building, sounds so much cooler when you say “façade.” It’s like you’re giving humanity to an object or a situation by giving it a ‘face’.

4.      Felicity

If I am lucky enough to have a daughter someday, I would want to call her Felicity. She would forever be someone whose company would be desired, for her very name would mean happiness – and I couldn’t exactly name her happiness, could I?

5.      Abhorrent

Guttural Germanic words don’t usually appeal to me, but abhorrent just sounds cool. It’s like harbor, but with a completely different meaning (unless you hate the sea).

6.      Verdant

Verdant is more than just green. It’s something living, moving, eye catching. It’s something that seems crystalized in time, subject to the past, the present, and the future.

7.      Glistening

Glistening sounds like it looks: light sparkling across of surface of something.

8.      Equivocate

Switching the meaning of words? Trying to be sneaking in an argument? You’re probably equivocating. Isn’t that better than saying you’re deceptive? I think so!

9.      Soliloquy

Sol-il-o-quee. What a wonderfully soft and squishy word! It feels good in my mouth… Whoops, am I talking to myself again?

10.  Vacillate

Vacillate sounds like equivocate, and it also means to go between two things. The difference is that vacillate sounds like you’re making vassals do things for you, which is cool - unless you know a vassal.

An Attempt at French Poetry

The foreign languages department is having an arts night next week that I'm really excited about. Since the semester started I've been looking for an opportunity - an excuse - to write something creative that I could share on stage. Poetry feels like a dirty, self indulgent pleasure sometimes. It feels like clumsily paintbrush in my writing hand; and yet, somehow, it comes out to be something not entirely terrible.

I wasn't planning to perform anything at this arts night. Anything I do would have to be in French, and I don't want to embarrass myself with my poor grammar and pronunciation. I'm growing as a speaker, both in French and English, but I tremble enough without the added pressure of rolling rrr's and silent letters. But after talking with some of the other French Club executives I decided I might give it a go.

So here's my attempt, titled: Je ne pense pas.
Note: Written first in French, then translated to English.

<<Je pense donc je suis, >> Dit le philosophe.  Mais si je ne pense pas ?  Suis-je rien ?  Je me sens la froideur de la nuit.  L’obscurité couvrit  Mon corps, mon esprit.  Je suis seul, et je ne pense pas.  Je regards la lune brille,  Guider les étoiles à travers le ciel,  Et me Guider à travers le monde.  Je suis mouton – je ne pense pas.  Je m’assieds au sommet des montagnes,  Regarder l’aube. Je m’entends des voix,  Douces et chaudes. Des amis ?  Oui, je pense qu’ils sont des amis véritables.

"I think, therefore I am," Says the philosopher. But what if I do not think? Am I nothing? I feel the night's chill. The darkness covers My body, my mind. I am alone, and I do not think. I look upon the shining moon, guiding the stars across the sky and guiding me across the world. I am a sheep - I do not think. I sit at the mountains' summit, Watching the sunrise. I hear voices, soft and warm. Friends? Yes, I think they are true friends.

Autumn Leaves

By this time of year, I would usually find myself sinking into a sort of seasonal depression. Beautiful as the golden leaves are – covering every yard and hiding in every man-made corner – they're still signs of the coming winter. The fading light at dusk would make my heart sink gradually into the current of cool time that flows relentlessly forward. It's a sort of paralysis of the soul that comes on slowly, weighed down by every fallen leaf.

This year feels... different. I'm not rolling down a steep slope, bracing myself against the snow that waits at the bottom. Instead I'm blazing a trail through new mountains. Some days, I loose my breath on mountaintops at the sight of the land below. Others, I tremble in the valleys. It's up and down and back and forth across this new world. Who I am seems to vacillate with each leaf I crunch beneath my feet. Hopefully, as autumn leaves, I will settle down somewhere along these mountains. I may even be in good company.

Vic, Jake, Gabii, and Mike playing Magic

Is this too deep for a blog post? Perhaps. But somehow I think it's just vague enough to publish. 

Playlist:

Ó Fridur, Sigur Rós

New World, tobyMac

Headphones, Jars of Clay

Jeune et con (acoustique), Damien Saez

The Lament of Captain Placeholder, Cranius

Learning is Painful

The other day I was walking out of my art history class with a friend, one of us describing a painful experience. The random professor walking in front of us interjected to say that "school shouldn't be painful" before moving on with his own business. It was such an irrelevant comment, but it got me thinking: isn't it though?

Over the last month, I've identified a theme surrounding everything from classes to relationships: learning is painful. We're told all our lives to pursue knowledge and wisdom and to learn about ourselves and the world. But so often, it just hurts. It's like the violent and continuous birth of the self in the searing light of a new world, or the burning electric fire of serially connecting synapses. Connection and disconnection, building and breaking, stacking and toppling; whether we want to admit it or not, every time we learn something we are changing the way we look at the world, and it isn't always pretty.

Not all learning is painful - you can't say you're sad at the news of a healthy child being born, or when you discover your significant other's cute and quirky secret habit. Likewise, what we learn in the classroom usually doesn't stir in us strong feelings. But when you're trying to figure out how to connect with people, or how to study or write multiple papers simultaneously, you learn a lot of what works and what doesn't from your failures.

I've only had one exam so far, but it taught me pretty quickly (and painfully) that studying is far more important than it was in high school. To be honest, I never really did study in high school. For the most part, for most of my classes, I just knew what I was doing. Now I have to work. Regardless of how easy or hard that work is, the critical moment was learning that I have to work at all. I have two papers, an exam, and a quiz this week: this weekend will most likely be another lesson in what's effective and what's not. Hopefully I don't come out of it with too many bruises.

Learning can even be physically painful. Yesterday I bought a deck of Magic the Gathering cards - in French. When I brought it to the library with my friends to play I quickly learned how taxing it can be to go back and forth between French and English for long periods of time. I learned a lot about French grammar just by repeating phrases over and over again, but I came out of the library with a massive migraine. It was worth, but it still hurt.

As for relationships... I don't think it's possible to have one without hurting someone. It's just part of the learning curve. Making new friends, keeping up with old ones, watching other's deal with their relationship issues and looking at mine - it's all part of learning to be a socially competent person. It sucks, but it's probably... most likely... for the better.

There's still a lot of learning to be done, and I'm sure it will hurt, but I have to believe it will be worth it. If I don't, then I would probably be tempted to pick up my bike and start riding to the west coast: because why not?

What do you think? Is learning painful?

Playlist:
I'm the One That's Cool, The Guild
Octobre, Francis Cabrel
Funny the Way It Is, Dave Matthew's Band
Come Sail Away, Styx
Petty Lie, Bryarly Bishop
The word water, Cloudkicker

What Stays the Same

When everything changes, comfort is found in what remains the same. When you lose sense of what you control, you go focus everything on controlling what you can. When you stare listlessly into the future, you conjure up good memories.

And Lord, have things changed.

It's hard. A lot harder than I thought it would be. And it's been nearly a month! Just when I think the roller coaster is slowing down, I find myself facing a new hurdle. I long for the simple slopes of Norton: the well anticipated challenges of la rentrée (return to school), the domestic conflicts, the lifeguard gossip, the same people with the same stories that I've known since preschool. 

And none of that is really gone, per se. My old teachers are introducing a new batch of seniors to the easiest year of their high school careers, the laundry is still being left in the dryer overnight (accidentally, of course), the lifeguards still roll their eyes from time to time, and my friends are still alive, their pasts unchanged. 

But these things won't stay the same forever. They won't even stay the same long enough for me to go back to them - and even if they did, they would be fundamentally different. They are - they feel - a world away.

So I'm here, searching for what's the same.

Playlist:

Human, The Killers

Cough Syrup, Young the Giant

Elle me dit, Mika

Somebody That I Used to Know, Gotye
Welcome to the Jungle, Guns N' Roses