Project Unnamed

            The first rule of honors options is you don’t talk about honors options.  At least, that’s what it felt like to my freshman self when I joined the honors program.  I couldn’t quite figure out what they were, and my upperclassman friends just gave me vague and sinister warnings about avoiding them and sticking to regular honors classes. 

            So that’s what I did for two and a half years, but now I am going to debunk some of the honors option myths because I am currently working on one--and actually enjoying it.  In order to graduate in the honors program, you have to get 24 hours of honors credit.  This is easy to work on freshman and sophomore year, because most core classes are also offered as honors classes.  However, once you get to be an upperclassmen and are taking classes mostly in your major field, honors classes are a bit harder to come by.  Enter honors options.  The idea is to make some of your regular classes honors by working with the professor to do an extra project related to the class.  You propose a project, get it approved by the honors program director, and then work on it throughout the course of the semester.  Sound less mysterious? 

            Maybe, but a lot of people still think it sounds like a lot of work.  But what my upperclassman friends didn’t tell me was that this extra work could actually be fun—remember you get to pick what the project is.  Which brings me back to the introduction to this post, which is a reference to the book (and, yes, movie) Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.  What does Fight Club have to do with honors options?  In my case, everything.

            I am taking an American Novels class, and I decided that it had the most potential for an honors option, so I went to Dr. Arthur and made my proposal: I wanted to study Fight Club, a contemporary American novel, to figure out why it became such a big cultural phenomenon if most of the literary world seems to think it is just a gross piece of shock art.  After I assured Dr. Arthur that no, I am not interested in anarchy, self-mutilation, or beating the tar out of anybody, he agreed to help me with this project, and it has been an interesting ride.  Dr. Arthur has never read Fight Club, so I’ve enjoyed hearing his reaction to it (mixed so far…he doesn’t seem super impressed, but I am secretly convinced he finds it a page-turner). 

            The project has actually evolved over the course of the semester into something a little different: Project Unnamed (this is what I have decided to call it, since I’m in Fight Club codenames mode).  I will be defining a brand new literary genre consisting of literature that deals with underground societies/conspiracies, such as Project Mayhem in Fight Club, W.A.S.T.E in The Crying of Lot 49, and the Mutafikah in Mumbo Jumbo.  My project will culminate in a mock encyclopedia entry explaining this genre, which I myself will get to name.  Suggestions are welcome, because right now I am trying to resist the temptation to name it something totally random or just name it after myself, but somehow I don't think that would be the most scholarly approach.   

                 

           Though the true name of Project Unnamed is still a mystery, hopefully after reading this post honors options aren’t, and you’ll be tempted to take one if you ever get the chance.  Because in what other class could you get your professor promising to be a character witness if the government comes after you for researching anarchist movements? 

You also might check out Dr. Arthur's Rockhurst blog for his take on our little project: http://jasonarthursblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/everything-but-fight-club-is.html

The Writing Life

                        “Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” – Annie Dillard

            As I sit here in the Rockhurst Library slogging through one of two annotated bibliographies I have due in the next few days, I am asking myself (and my friend and fellow English major Andy Boland, who has the privilege of being in over half my classes and therefore my partner in late night writing and complaining) why did I think it was a good idea to major in English?

            Andy and I determined that it is because we want to be writers who wear bathrobes and have boxes of Chinese takeout and stacks of scattered over our one room apartments, which contain nothing more valuable than our typewriters.  (As I finished typing that sentence, I got another text from Andy saying “don’t forget the indie music playing while we wear our converses”—duly noted.)  I don’t think either of us really plan on going down that path, we are thinking more along the lines of editing (me) and teaching (him), but nights like these do make us look at our lives and ask why in the world we are doing what we do. 

            And even though it is 11:44 and I have about 7 more sources to skim and cite before I can hit the sack, I find that I do have some answers:

It was a good idea to major in English because…

I now own a complete anthology of the works of Shakespeare. 

I have earned the right to say “that’s soooo postmodern.”

I got this sweet Rockhurst blogging job.

I’ve gotten strangely good at IDing what movies are based on books. 

Thanks to my attendance at every Rockhurst Poetry Jam, I could probably recite “Kublai Kahn” from memory because Dr. Kovich reads it every time.

I am one of the few and the proud who is trying to preserve the Oxford Comma. 

I get to do an independent study on Chuck Palahniuk that essentially involves hanging out in Dr. Arthur’s office discussing countercultural fiction. 

I get endless joke mileage out of telling people that one of my jobs is to blog about toilets and small office rental (don’t worry, not this one).

I can confirm from attendance at the English Club Tea Party that Dr. Miller does in fact have a mummified bird in her living room. 

I know entirely too much about the best literary research databases (Literature Resource Center, people, it’ll make your life so much easier). 

I get to read all the time.

Reading The Wasteland rocked my world (“the awful daring of a moment’s surrender/which an age of prudence can never retract/by this, and this only, we have existed”).

I know that no matter what I do, or how much money I make, I will probably really enjoy it.  Or at the very least I got to dedicate four years to becoming well read.

This post is titled “The Writing Life” because that is the title of one of Annie Dillard’s books—my favorite author and the person I am currently researching for a critical analysis paper.  It might not be the most glamorous life, and right now I’d be content to just shut all my books and go to bed, but I picked it, and I know why I picked it.  And I think Andy would agree with me in saying I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

This is on the cover of The Writing Life...I had a moment of Art History pride in Barnes &Noble when I was able to say it is Albert Pinkham Ryder's Midnight Marine (he was famous for putting random junk on his canvas before Jackson Pollock)

 

Farm Life

                Bethlehem Farms was unlike any place I have ever been to.  This lovely little farm in West Virginia, home to a group of people living in community and serving the surrounding population, was where I got to spend my spring break for a Rockhurst service trip.  When we first stepped out of the car on Sunday night, a crowd of about eight people who either live there or come to help out seasonally greeted us with hugs and a “welcome home!”  After a day of multiple flights and uncomfortable naps in a van, our first thought was, “this is so strange…are we staying with a cult?”  Nope, just the most welcoming group of people you’ll ever meet.  We warmed up to the hugs eventually, and by the end of the week, we were all tearing up as we hugged everyone goodbye and had to watch out of the van window as they waved us off then got in a circle to say a morning prayer.  At that point, we were ready to tear up our plane tickets, hop out of the van, and join them for another week of farm life.  What does farm life look like?  Here are a few of the highlights:

·         Farm Chores – Bright and early, before breakfast, but absolutely worth it to be outside as the sun is coming up.  Some of my jobs included making garden pathways and sorting through the scraps of a shed that had been torn down.

·         Organic Food – I am a picky eater.  An absurdly picky eater who doesn’t particularly like vegetables or noodles or really anything new.  But I vowed to try everything that week, and now I can’t get over cravings for butternut squash and curry soup, chili with all sorts of veggies, and the best homemade bread I have ever tasted.

·         Service sites – We went to a different service site each day, though one group always stayed at the farm one day to cook and clean.  I helped patch a roof, rip up an old floor and put in a new one (I got to use three different types of saws, and I am ridiculously proud of that fact), and worked at a food pantry in the back of a thrift store, which involved chatting with some of the local people and hearing some great stories from a man named Montee about his adventures in the Congo. 

·         Cultural Immersion – We got a few chances to get to know the locals, once at a community dinner at the farm and once at a service at the River of Life Church…we even got to play kickball (or be like me and cheer for kickball) afterwards! 

·         Bucket Showers – Exactly what it sounds like.  Showering in a wooden stall outside by dumping cups of water into a hanging bucket with holes cut in the bottom.  We were allowed one indoor shower and one outdoor shower, but I opted for a double outdoor shower…how often do you get the chance to shower under the stars?

                I love Kansas City and I’m glad to be back with friends, but sitting here at my kitchen table listening to cars drive by outside, I really wish that the only sound I could hear was the crackle of the woodstove and an Appalachian breeze. 

Rockhurst, Loyola Chicago, Boston College, and the B. Farms Caretakers

Wearin' Flannel.

Rockin' Bandanas.

Bein' Hawks.