Education as a Cross-Cultural Theme: A Look at the Education System in Zimbabwe as Compared to the Education System in America Through the Lens of Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions tells the story of Tambu, a young teenage girl, as she lives a life of hardships, twists, and turns in the colonized state of Rhodesia, which is now present day Zimbabwe.  In the large picture the novel deals with how a negative, colonial influence can place a control over people causing them to develop illnesses, side effects, and mindsets that can last for many years.  However, the themes of the book go above and beyond those conditions in regards to freedom, identity, and the importance of education.

The idea of education was one that struck me as interesting because I believe it is a concept that is easy for many American readers to connect to while reading the novel.  Education is taken for granted in the United States because everyone is given free public education and many students continue at the university level because they have the financial means and opportunity to do so, but education in Zimbabwe is a different story, as the country suffered from years of colonial control that caused their people to have fewer opportunities in the field of learning and becoming educated. 

Nervous Conditions helps set up the idea that the importance of education is a universal theme because when readers from other countries see how much Tambu works in order to go to school they will be able to connect her journey to how hard they work in order to be successful in school.  Education serves as a way to gain a voice, an identity, and a place in the world in both societies, but a difference in opportunities makes it difficult for many people in Zimbabwe to continue to become educated as they don’t have all the resources that the people in America do.  I believe this novel offers a look into the worlds of both education systems in the United States and Zimbabwe showing that education is valued in both societies, but democracies have more opportunities for their people to continue their education as postcolonial countries are still suffering from years of being ruled and the transitions that have come after that colonization.

In the novel, Tambu’s brother, Nhamo, is the only member of the family that is being educated because most families could only afford to send one person to school at a time, and their parents raised funds for Nhamo being that he was the male of the family.  Even though it wasn’t fair that the system was set up that way being that Tambu didn’t get a chance to immediately go to school because she was a woman, education was still a whole family ordeal.  Babamukuru, the children’s uncle, is the head of the family because he is the most educated and successful.  Therefore, it is his job to make sure that he sets up the rest of the family with everything that they need in order to have productive and plentiful lives.  He does his part by offering Nhamo to come to his missionary school as it would be a better education than regular schools in Zimbabwe.  Meanwhile, Tambu is stuck at home wishing that she too could have the education that her brother was getting from her uncle.  Tambu works as hard as she can in order to reach this goal as she plants corn and tries to sell it at the marketplace to raise funds for school.  The selling process doesn’t go over too well, but eventually a white couple gives her enough money to pay for her education because they felt sorry for her.  However, she didn’t get her chance to go to school until Nhamo reached a sudden death because she was able to take his place for her family being that Babamukuru wanted to keep his promise of educated at least one person from each strand in his family.

The fact that Tambu was given the chance to have this education was quite shocking during this time period in this country because women weren’t looked at as equal to men.  When Tambu initially expressed her aspirations to attend school her father said, “Can you cook books and feed them to your husband?  Stay at home with your mother.  Learn to cook and clean.  Grow vegetables” (Dangarembga, 15).  His views go along with the common ideal that education was a man’s institution.  Her father believed that any education that she received would just benefit her husband’s family in the future and not hers, so he saw no use in providing money for her to learn when it could be allocated elsewhere in more useful ways.  Luckily, education was an “inherited tradition and a patriarchal investment in which it allowed the man to play the primary bread winner” (Nair, 133) because that allowed Tambu the privilege of attending the missionary school under the guidance of her uncle, Babamukuru, who is the headmaster of the school.

            This educational opportunity sets Tambu up for lifelong learning since Babamukuru’s devotion to his family overrides society’s view on women being educated.  It was rare for women to be highly educated at this time, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t happen.  Bababmukuru’s wife, Maiguru, holds a master’s degree, and she serves as an inspiration to Tambu throughout the story.  Tambu hopes to one day be as educated as her aunt, but she hopes that when that time comes she will have the ability to use that education.

            Although Maiguru is highly educated, she doesn’t have the privilege of using that education because she still has to play the role of a woman in society.  She is expected to cook, clean, and wait on the men of her household while at the mission and while at the family homestead.  This causes turmoil for her as she is trapped in this society where she can’t let her true identity show.  Literary theorist, Janice Hill, states, “colonial education, and the drive of the entire Sigauke family to educate themselves and each other through the colonial system, drive and complicate much of the action of the novel in ways that are directly connected to silencing…” (Hill, 79).  Maiguru is a character who is connected to that silencing as her role in society causes her to not be able to use her degree.  A person’s education is what defines who they are, and the fact that she doesn’t have that right leaves her as a silent character in this novel.  She conforms to her role of mother and wife and just lets her degree go to no use.  She was fortunate to have the opportunity to earn that degree in England while her husband and children were studying abroad, but back in the state of Rhodesia, she doesn’t have the opportunity to put the knowledge she gained to use. 

Tambu is aware that her aunt’s lifestyle could very well be her outcome in the future as the society she lives in is relatively static, but she hopes that through education and with time opportunities will arise for her.  Therefore she takes every chance she can get to keep learning.  When given the chance to possibly attend an esteemed mission school near the end of the novel Tambu says, “If you were clever, you slipped through any loophole you could find.  I for one was going to take any opportunity that came my way….going to the convent was a chance to lighten those burdens [of the women in my family] by entering a world where burdens were light” (Dangarembga, 182).  Although Tambu uttered this statement near end of the book, this seemed to be her motto throughout the novel.  She was aware that educational opportunities were scare for her people, especially women, so she took any chance that she could get to learn and, therefore, gain her own identity.

This educational adventure starts right after Tambu’s brother dies and she is offered his spot at Babamukuru’s mission school.  This step offers a whole new world for her as she goes from a simple school in her village to this mission school that is towns away.  Originally mission schools weren’t used to educate as much as they were to bring Africans to Christianity (Summers, 117), but they also served as a more effective form of education as their teachers were paid more than government schools (Summers, 132) because they held higher degrees and were educated in faraway lands just like Babamukuru. 

While at this mission school, Tambu is offered a variety of opportunities that wouldn’t necessarily be available to someone of her status, but because she has the connection with Babamukuru she is allowed the privilege to step inside his world.  She lives with Babamukuru’s family right on the mission grounds, and she is treated as if she were a daughter in the household.  The family gives her food, provides her with clothing, and sets her up with a bed.  Coming from a homestead where she was expected to wait on her family members and play the role of a woman in the home, this was a drastic change for her.  She was able to focus on her studies for once in her life while also forming connections with her cousins that had been educated in England.

Being that her cousins, Nyasha and Chido, had been educated in England they were different than most of her peers.  Living in a mansion that was as furnished as Babamukuru’s, and having a life as privileged as they had was very rare in Rhodesia at this time.  In fact, Tambu had mistaken Babamukuru’s garage for his house (Dangarembga, 64) because she had never dreamed that her uncle would be living in such an extravagant place as his white-walled mansion.  There had always been a since of disconnect between Tambu and her cousins because she was very used to her lifestyle on the homestead where things weren’t westernized at all.  However, once Tambu started living at the mission, she too started to become westernized just like her cousins.  She found in the mission a place that she didn’t want to leave.  It offered her a transformation and step into the direction of becoming the person that she wanted to be.  She said, “Babamukuru was God, therefore I had arrived in Heaven.  I was in danger of becoming an angel, or at the very least a saint, and forgetting how ordinary humans existed—from minute to minute and from hand to mouth” (Dangarembga, 70).  Through her time spent at the mission, Tambu was able to learn from scholars in a variety of fields while also living in this dream-like land so different from what the rest of her family was experiencing, and then one day she was offered an opportunity to attend an even higher esteemed mission school ran by nuns.

The day when the nuns came to the mission, Tambu tested high enough on her test that they administered that her next level of schooling could be taken at the covenant school that the nuns ran.  Originally, Tambu didn’t want this to happen because he feared that she would become too educated for her own good, but in the end he allowed her to go.  Tambu continues with her motto by taking any opportunity placed in front of her and jumping on it.  She finds it hard to leave her cousin Nyasha behind, but she knows that she has to do this for her in order to break out of the uneducated stigma that women are placed under in society.

The story ends with Tambu coming back to the mission school to visit Nyasha who is suffering from an eating disorder due to the control that she has been under from her father, her people, and the colonized government.  Nyasha’s issue is a separate theme within itself in the story, but it in fact connects with education because when Tambu comes back she sees what the colonized system has done to Nyasha, and she is able to reflect.  Tambu states, “I told myself I was a much more sensible person than Nyasha, because I knew what could or couldn’t be done.  In this way, I banished the suspicion, buried it in the depths of my subconscious, and happily went back to Sacred Heart” (Dangarembga, 208).  Tambu was able to see what a colonized system can do to a person who isn’t rebelling and taking chances to get out of it.  Tambu chose education as an escape from this system, and her reflections on how Nyasha turned out allowed her to write about all the aspects of this story in hopes that people could see that she had not gained the freedom to be a strong, independent woman who wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.  She was given opportunities unlike so many other people during this time, but she took them and allowed education to be her ticket to escape, freedom, and identity.
 

American readers should be able to connect with this idea that education can offer an escape because that is a very similar concept in The United States.  Students are told to stay in school because they can achieve their dreams with degrees.  High school diplomas used to offer a variety of job opportunities, but now it seems as if people have to have a college degree if they want to make a decent living.  Therefore, people are finding means of going to college to escape from the world of financial hardship in order to become the person they want to be.  This is similar to Tambu’s journey because in the end her education started to give her an identity and a voice. 

American readers should also be able to connect with the way education is set up in Zimbabwe.  Students who have the opportunity will attend a primary school for seven years, and then they will move on to secondary school consisting of six forms which are closely related to high school and college in The United States (Embassy of The United States).  The years are a little different as it only takes three years to earn a bachelor’s degree and five years to become a doctor, but their system is very much set up like the one that America has today. 

Both societies offer a variety of schools for their students to attend.  Whereas Tambu could attend a government school or a mission school, students in The United States have the chance to attend public school, private school, or charter school.  Although it is hard to associate the class system in America with the hardships that the people of Rhodesia suffered from, there can be a connect between the two systems.  Just as opportunities arose for Tambu to get a better education because of her family connections, schooling in America is related to income and success as well.  Although it is free to attend public school in The United States, many parents believe that private and charters schools are the better route to take, and they cost money.  There is much debate in America as to which school system is the most effective way for children to learn, but the connection to opportunity, financial opportunity, is still there.

This idea of opportunity is what divides the two cultures as well though because in America everyone has the chance to attend school through public school, but in Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) a student’s chance of being educated is in the fate of how much money their parents have to spend, who they are related to, and the chances that they take.  Tambu lucked out because she was given the chance to be educated by her uncle after her brother, unfortunately, passed away.  However, many people, especially girls, wouldn’t have gotten that chance because the colonized land offered many hardships for families—Tambu’s situation was a success story.  People had to worry about living from day to day.  Money was used for shelter and for food first off, and if any was left over then maybe one child could be supported to go to school. 

Education in America is taken for granted, but books like Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions help change this status.  This cross-cultural theme about the importance of education helps students from America relate to those in Zimbabwe, but it also helps them open their eyes to the hardships that take place for people living under colonized rule.  America was once a colonized state many years ago, but the way history turned out they became a democracy.  History could have taken another route though, and Americans would have been in the same situation that those in Rhodesia were facing.  Therefore, it is important for readers in America to read books like this in order to reflect on the life that they have and to connect with others as humans in this worldwide society.

Works Cited

• Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Banbury:  Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd., 2004. Print. Embassy of The United States. “Education in Zimbabwe.”
• Hill, Janice E. “Purging a Plate Full of Colonial History: The Nervous Conditions of Silent Girls.” College Literature 22.1 (1995): 78-91. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
• Nair, Supriya. “Melancholic Women:  The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in Nervous Conditions.” Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995): 130-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
• Summers, Carol. “Demanding Schools:  The Umchigwe Project and African Men’s Struggles for Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1928-1934.” African Studies Review 40.2 (1997): 117-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.

The Best of Both Worlds: What Happens When Anita Desai Sets Up Fasting, Feasting in Two Parts?

     Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting looks at the consumption of food between families in both India and the United States.  The first part of the novel is focused on the life of Uma, a daughter who is tied to her parents’ every want and need in India, while the second part of the novel looks at how her brother, Arun, in how he adapts to life in the American suburbs.  It’s interesting how Desai chose to put one family member, the one who has the most freedom to try new things, in American society to compare and contrast the two social systems.  Food is a central issue in this novel, and Desai does a remarkable job in showing how in both societies food takes precedence over everything else.  The way in which she set up her novel shows that the societies are both very different although the importance of food remains important in both.  Her formatting of the novel is up for interpretation though.  Does the dual structure of Fasting, Feasting allow for an easier comparison of consumption in India and the United States since they are separated in such a manner?  I believe that in separating the narratives written about India and America, Desai has made it easier for her readers to see how consumption takes place in both societies.

     Desai has her novel divided into two parts with the first part taking up almost three-fourths of the entire book and the last part taking up just one-fourth.  The way in which she formats the two sections helps her set up the distinctions between the societies that are worlds away from each other.  When it comes to the first part that is focused on India, the chapters are very long and drawn out, and overall it moves very slowly.  The second part, however, is quite the contrary.  Its chapters are very short and it seems to flow a lot quicker than the beginning of the book.  This is symbolic in the way that the two societies run.  America is a very fast paced society that never slows down while India seems to be a calming land with a flow of its own.  I believe that in separating the novel into two parts, Desai was able to focus more on each country at hand to develop a more detailed description of how life takes place there.  Literary scholar, Angelia Poon, agrees with my point here.  She says:

Thus, rather than interspersing Uma’s story with Arun’s narrative or splicing both stories, Desai realizes her insistence on an unequal world by literally dividing her novel into two parts. This bifurcated and bifocal narrative structure, part of the novel’s transnational politics, shows us two fairly circumscribed worlds where there is little room for border-crossing, seepage, and hybrid identities (Poon, 37). 

Poon believes that in focusing on the narrative as two separate structures, the readers are able to see Uma’s story and Arun’s narrative for themselves.  Although they are occurring simultaneously, their separation allows for no confusion as to which ideals belong to which society.  The reader is still able to juxtapose Indian society and American society in terms of consumption by reading the stories separately.

     It is a justifiable case that Poon states here as India and America do differ very much in regards to politics and power.  India was recently under control by the British colony while America has been a free country for many years.  It is important for readers to keep this in mind as they look at each part of the novel because it is easier to understand why people act a certain way in society due to how they are ruled.  Indian society, again, seems very old-fashioned with an easy pace because they’re used to following orders and living out their daily lives in a uniform manner.  American society is much quicker and more open because they have been a free country for quite some time.  She also brings up border-crossing and hybridity as ideas that don’t really come to focus too much because the societies are so separate.  Arun physically crosses a border as he moves from India to America and he could be faced with hybridity as he tried to merge the culture of his homeland with America, but being that these two sections are separate readers don’t concentrate on that aspect of the story as much.

     It is easy  to think of Arun as a hybrid character at the start because you can assume that he will merge the two cultures together, but in fact he becomes very caught up in the society in America and starts to lose his Indian ways for American traditions.  He struggles finding food to eat in this new society because everything seems to be very raw.  Arun was used to his vegetarian lifestyle in Indian, but that food choice in America is very different.  His host mother, Mrs. Patton, tried her best to make him meals with vegetables, but they were still very Americanized with raw vegetables.  Yet, he didn’t back down because they weren’t what he was used to.  He suffered through it and ate the food that she had made (Desai, 184-5) Although he is able to point out many American ways of life that are quite foreign to him, like buying food in bulk, he still falls into living that lifestyle when he is with the Patton family.  One may argue that he does let go of his Indian culture as he gives his shawl and tea to Mrs. Patton at the end as well (Desai, 228).  These are the only two pieces that Arun has to remind him of his homeland, and he realizes he doesn’t need them anymore.  Therefore, he makes the best use out of them and gives a little bit of his culture away.  Sybil Steinberg agrees in her book review of the novel because he says, “…his final act in the novel suggests both how far he has come and how much he has lost” (Steinberg, 56).  By living in American society for just a short while Arun was able to think, act, and eat American.  Anita Poon looks at this in a more theoretical way in connecting it with the separation aspect.

     Poon goes on to say, “The attempt to capture simultaneity and coevality, in order to suggest disjunction as well as possible connections between gendered subjects and different cultures, forms part of Desai’s novelistic vision or what we may call her ‘imagined world’” (Poon, 37).  This idea of an imagined world comes from the work of Arjun Appadurai, and it looks at the combined worlds of different cultures that come together to form another world that becomes a vital part of the global economy (Appadurai, 25).  This imagined world becomes real in Arun’s America as he joins in the Indian Diaspora and his home culture crosses the border into his new country.  By creating this imagined world, readers are able to look at the two societies and easily compare them in ways of consumption and beyond.

      As the title suggests, Desai sets up a very distinct food system in both parts of her novel.  In India, they seem to always be thinking about food and what they‘re going to be eating at the next dinner, but they don’t eat besides at dinner.  In America, food is bought in bulk so people can snack on it throughout the day.  Uma is part of a society that eats to live and Arun is living in a society that lives to eat.  This imagined world that Desai sets up with the two cultures could very well change the outlook on globalization, or at least it could help establish the fact that similarities can be found in areas of difference around the world.  Although America is more consumer-minded and food seems to be held on a higher scale than in India, food is just as important in Arun’s homeland as it is in the country he is now living in, and by placing these realizations at opposite ends of the novel it is easier for readers to understand that comparison.

      Along with food, the idea of consumption seems to be a large part of this novel.  Food is made to be consumed in both societies, but a different light is cast on the way it is consumed based on how the society is run.  As mentioned earlier, America is a very consumer-minded society while Indian society is very tradition in that they don’t have supermarkets on every corner.  The ways in which these societies have been run in the global world have a lot to do with this situation.  The freedom of American society has allowed for a capitalist system to be set up with a free market.  This is why America is full of so many restaurants and businesses.  When it comes to India though, just getting away from British rule, they’re working to build back their political power in the world.  Naturally, they wouldn’t have as big of a business industry to disperse on food.

    Interestingly enough, this idea of consumption goes beyond just the quantity of places in which you can get food in each country.  Dinner time is connected with consumption in a very close manner, and because of the way each society is set up dinner occurs very differently in each.  In India, the family sits down together and eats the same meal and overall the meal seems to be healthy mix.  There is a hierarchy at the table as the women have to help the man with different aspects of his meal such as peeling his orange, but I believe experiences like that really help the family bond and connect over dinner.  It is, in fact, much the contrary in American society.  As the Patton family doesn’t even eat with each other in the book.  Everyone seems to do their own thing as they pick what they would like to eat, but there is a large disconnect between the family.  Dinner time should be a time of collective consumption between families, but this isn’t so in America and problems occur because of it.  In the novel, the Patton’s daughter only eats certain foods and she is found to be bulimic because she doesn’t always keep her food down, on purpose, after eating it.  This is one of the largest issues of consumption in the book, and it happens because society in America is so open.  Once again, if these two families were side-by-side in the novel it would be hard to see this connection while hooking each individual case back to something in that society.

     I believe that while looking at consumption in regards to each society in this novel, it helps that Desai wrote two separate parts.  In connecting the idea in a postcolonial light while looking at the power in each country, the author was able to write vivid parts that could stand alone as single stories or move together as one.  It is interesting that consumption of food although very different in each society in quality and quantity, is actually a factor in India as well as American.  Having a little universality in the book helps connect the theme across borders for the two distinct parts, but making the two distinct parts really helps set apart the idea of consumption in both societies for readers to easily compare.

Work Cited

• Aldama, Fredrick Luis. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” World Literature Today 74.1 (2000): 240. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theorizing Diaspora. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 25-27. Print.
• Desai, Anita. Fasting, Feasting. New York: Mariner Books, 1999. Print.
• Moeller, Dianna. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” Library Journal 125.2 (2000): 115.   EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Poon, Angelia. “In a Transnational World: Exploring Gendered Subjectivity, Mobility, and Consumption in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Ariel 37.2/3 (2006):  33-48. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Ravichandran, T. “Entrapments at Home and Abroad in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Indian English  Literature:  A Post Colonial Response. Ed. Gajendra Kumar and Uday Shankar Ojha. Darya Ganj, New Delhi:  Sarup & Sons, 2005. 80-89. Print.
• Steinberg, Sybil. “Forecasts:  Fiction.” Publishers Weekly 246.49 (1999):  55. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.

A Critical Self-Assessment and Application of My Literary Approach: How a Meshed Genetic/Reader Response Criticism Can Be Used on the Works of Truman Capote

            Literary criticism is a very broad topic that can be looked at using various perspectives.  There are many theories that can be used while reading a piece of literature because everyone reads texts differently.  Some people concentrate more on the story while others are concerned with the realism of the characters.  Others focus on the language and words found in the story, and even more focus on how readers would react to the work.  History, the current culture, and literature as a whole can come into play as well for many readers.  All these different perspectives make literary criticism a very diverse subject that allows each reader to read a piece the way they find best fit.  This makes the subject of literary criticism and theory appealing for many who study it because they don’t have to follow theory by the book and agree with everything that has been said and written about the different perspectives.  They can decide what they agree with and what they disagree with, and they can mesh different theories together to make their own literary approach. 

            Donald Keesey, author of Contexts for Criticism, has developed a graph of formal criticism that many place themselves on in order to understand how they read literature.  Keesey states, “Because criticism usually involves the interpretation of a particular work, it is logical that the work in question should hold the central place in the diagram” (Keesey 3).  Therefore the piece of literature remains in the middle and the various perspectives branch off to the sides for readers to apply to the work.  The graph is made up of an x-axis and a y-axis.  The top of the y-axis is concerned with the author and historic criticism, while the bottom is concerned with the audience and reader-response criticism.  The x-axis is made up of reality and mimetic criticism on the left and literature and intertextual criticism on the right.  When I first looked at the chart, I had difficulties trying to decide where I would place myself because one doesn’t always think about how they read until they are told to do so.  First, I thought that I just fit at the top of the y-axis because before I read a piece of literature I have to always read a biographical piece about the author so that I can connect the literary story to their life and the time in which they wrote the piece.  However, after some deeper thinking, I realized that I do more than that.  I also connect the story to myself and how I react to it as well as how other readers would respond to it.  Therefore, when looking at Keesey’s diagram, I fall on the entire y-axis.  Sometimes I spend more time on the top of the axis and other times I spend more time on the bottom, but usually I spend my time right in the middle so that I can move freely between historical criticism and reader-response criticism. 

            I feel at home on the y-axis because through all my work with the different theories, the historical and reader-response perspectives make the most sense to me.  I feel like I have gained the appropriate amount of knowledge of those theories, so I’m able to apply them to every work that I read and they work in helping me understand different pieces of literature.

            The historical context of criticism looks at a piece of text from the background of the past.  Those who concentrate on this theory mainly look at the author’s background, the author’s intention, and the mores and conventions that were in place in society at the time the piece was written or even at the time in which the story is based.  People who study this will look into the story to find different aspects that they can do further research on to derive some deeper meaning about the story. 

By looking at the author’s background they can see if the story is directly or partially based on something from his or her past or if something that occurred in his or her past caused the story to be written in that way.  By looking at the author’s intention they will be able to figure out what the author has planned to do in writing the story.  If they did some research and found out information about the author’s past then they would be able to connect that to the story and hypothesize why each aspect of the story was written a certain way.  In looking at the history of the time the story was written historical critics look at different scenes and actions in the story to decide where it is taking place.  They will also use what they know about what was going on in the life of the author and the society they were living in at the time that he or she wrote the piece.  This information will help them decide if different aspects of the story were put there on purpose because that is how things worked back then or if they were just coincidental.

E. D. Hirsch spent a lot of time with this theory.  He argued that coherence was not a quality that should be looked at fully to determine meaning, but that the context of the interpretation of the work should be evaluated.  In his essay, Objective Interpretation, he states, “It is natural to speak not of what a text says, but of what an author means, and this more natural locution is the more accurate one” (Keesey 27).  Therefore, he believes that doing research to decide what the author’s intention was is a more accurate way to understand a piece than just looking at it for its words in general.

After reading this quote by Hirsch, I knew that I agreed with his perspective of the historical context.  I too believe that readers are able to understand a text better by figuring out what the author is trying to say instead of just looking at the words.  This is why the formalist context doesn’t work for me because I’m more concerned with what the author is trying to get across in his work.  I spend time studying the history of the time when the piece was written and the life of the author, so that I can figure out what the author means by the piece.  A formalist critic is only going to look within the piece to find its true meaning, and this doesn’t always work.  Many times the author has an external motivator that he brings in from the outside to form meaning in his work.  I find this to be a positive aspect of historical criticism because it offers a different perspective in looking at a piece of literature.  I’m all for cognitive learning, and I feel that it is far less cognitive to search within a piece for meaning than it is to search outside a piece.  It takes some extra work and deeper thinking to find the meaning of a text outside of the text, but after all is said and done I feel like the reader is able to better understand the piece overall by using this literary context.

The reader-response context is made up of an umbrella of approaches to literature that focus on the responses that readers have about the text.  Someone who looks at a piece of text using a reader-response context combines the text with how they feel about it from a reader’s perspective to create a shared reaction.  By taking what they find in the text and combining it with what they know they are able to react to the text and understand it more deeply.

As I have already stated, this context is really made up of a series of different approaches that are interrelated, so to describe this context more clearly I will describe two perspectives that I agree with.  When it comes to reader-response criticism, I tend to follow what Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish have each developed.  I combine both of their theories together to make up my reader-response theory that I can use to apply to different pieces of literary work.

Wolfgang Iser came up with the concept of the implied reader.  This was broken down into two roles that the reader would have:  the role of a textual structure and the role of a structured act.  In the role of a textual structure the reader will be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to just based on what he was already aware of.  In the role of a structured act the reader will find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.

Stanley Fish believed that meaning was derived mostly from the experience of the reader.  The same aspect of a piece of text could be viewed many different ways depending on the prior knowledge that each reader has of the material.  In his article, Is There a Text in this Class, a girl asks her teacher if there is a text in the class that she is going to be in for the new semester.  The teacher replies that there is a textbook because based on his prior knowledge from when students usually asked that question he assumed she was talking about the textbook when she said text.  However, she wanted to know if the class was going to be one where the students believe in poems and other texts or if was just them and their own perspective.    Therefore, based on this example different readers are going to view aspects of a piece of writing in different ways based on their own personal lives.

I know that this context relies more on looking at the text to develop a reaction and then a meaning, and I just got done saying that I’m not too fond of formalism because it looks solely at the text.  However, I feel like the use of the text here is different.  The reader-response criticism doesn’t just look at the text, but it makes a connection with what the reader knows and doesn’t know to help guide them in the meaning.  I don’t like how formalists only use the text to find meaning, but here prior knowledge and experience, two outside sources, are used to help the reader develop meaning.

In regards to this perspective, it is hard for me to choose between the theories of Iser and Fish because I see the use in both of them.  Some critics who follow this context of criticism will only agree with Iser or only agree with Fish, but I can’t really argue that one theory is stronger than the other.  The implied reader idea is appealing to me because I like how a text can open doors and allow the reader to see ideas and perspectives that they haven’t been aware before through the textual structure.  I also find it to work positively through the use of the structured act because the reader is able to find meaning from the text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him, and this can relate to historical criticism in a way.  The perspective that guides the reader can be that of the author’s, and their perspective can be related to their own history.  Therefore, my two different approaches on the y-axis are able to find a connection here.

Fish’s theory also works well in my approach because it can connect the reader-response context with the historical one as well as work by itself.  Fish believed that readers are able to understand different pieces of text based on the experiences that they have had.  Therefore, if a reader has had much experience with the works of the writer they are reading then they will be able to understand the meaning of the piece better due to what they already know.  This works well outside the author realm as well though.  I find that when reading a piece of literature I begin to understand parts that I can relate to more.  I believe this is true for all readers.  No matter what piece of literature one is reading, they will always find a part of it that they can relate to.  This part will stick out most in their mind and allow them to derive meaning from the story based on that relatable aspect that they connected with.

The reader-response context works well overall because it allows for the reader to not only relate the text to what they know in order to respond to it, but it allows them to think about how other readers are going to relate to it as well.  I chose this theory as part of my approach based on this because I like the wide range of opportunity open for readers to use their cognitive minds.  I also find that the umbrella of perspectives allows for this context to be used in a variety of ways, and although I chose to only include two of those perspectives in my approach, just having those two allows for quite an expansive range for readers to use and apply to different pieces of literature.

I chose to mesh historical criticism with the reader-response context because I feel at home using both theories.  I find the connection to the outside world in both contexts to work towards that advantage of finding the true meaning of different pieces of literature.  I think that it can be difficult at times to use other theories that solely look at the text to find meaning because doing that uses more interpretation than my approach allows for, and in interpreting a piece of text it can be hard to know if what you are thinking is what you are supposed to be thinking.  At least with my approach, interpretation has outside sources to fall back on.  I value the fact that records can be looked at to see how the writer lived their life, and the fact that readers can take from their own experiences to react to a piece of literature and find its deeper meaning.

I will now take this time to show how my approach applies to a piece of literature using Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”.  I think this is a piece that I can really showcase my theory on because this piece was influential in helping me design my literary approach.  I read this piece after I began to figure out how I read pieces of literature.  Therefore, I feel like my approach shines brightly in this story.  Capote used different aspects of his childhood in the South to write the story, and I was reminded of my relationship with my maternal grandmother throughout the story.  Therefore, the historical and reader-response contexts show up strongly and can easily applied. 

            “A Christmas Memory” is a story about a little boy nicknamed Buddy and his elderly lady cousin who he refers to as his friend.  They live in a house with many other family members, but the rest of the family is very strict so Buddy and his friend keep to themselves along with their dog Queenie.  They are rather poor, but they save their money up over the year so they can use it around Christmastime.  Starting in late November, they get their money out and go out and buy supplies to make fruitcakes.  They make about thirty fruitcakes a year for people that they have met once or twice or even for those they haven’t met at all.  They make one for a couple whose car broke down in front of their place a few years back, missionaries who lectured in their town the previous year, the bus driver, the reverend, and even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Making the fruitcakes for those people allows Buddy and his friend to feel special because they’re doing something for people who are much more well-to-do than themselves.

            They spend a good portion of the story gathering supplies for and then making the fruitcakes.  They pick pecans from an orchard that isn’t theirs, gather different fruits from town, and purchase whiskey, the key ingredient, from an Indian bootlegger named Haha.  After the cakes have been made and mailed out, Buddy and his cousin finish off the whiskey with their dog.  The other family members in the house ridicule the elderly woman for allowing a child to get drunk.  This brings her to tears, but Buddy cheers her up by reminding her that they will soon get a Christmas tree to decorate and have presents to make.

            The next day Buddy and his friend go out and chop down a very large tree and bring it home.  Then they spend many hours creating ornaments for the tree and making gifts for each other and the rest of the family.  Buddy suspects that his cousin is making him a kite just like she did the previous year, so he does them same.  On Christmas day, the two go out and fly the kites that they made each other and have a joyous time.

            Sadly, Buddy says at the end of the story that this was the last Christmas that he got to spend with his cousin because he got sent to military school.  They still wrote each other letters, but she started to get dementia so she wasn’t the same friend that he held all those fond Christmas memories with.  He ends the story by telling the readers how he knew of her death before he was even told, and he looked to the sky expecting to see a lost pair of kites, like hearts, sailing to Heaven.

            In regards to my literary approach, I always start with the historical aspect first.  Therefore, readers of this piece would have to read a short biographical piece of Truman Capote first or even look into records of his childhood before actually reading the story.  In doing this, they would be able to see that much of the story is taken from his childhood.  He in fact had an elderly cousin that he was very fond of, and they spent a lot of time together because the rest of the family was very strict just like the family in the story is.  However, after getting past this simple fact, the readers would have to explore the reason why Capote wrote this piece.  Did he want his readers to get a glimpse of his childhood life even though it might be a little fabricated?  Did he want to showcase the love between family members, showing that he had at least one person who cared for him?  Did he write accurately about the South in the 1930’s?  Did he actually make fruitcakes with his cousin, or is the fruitcake symbolic of another aspect of his childhood?  Did he actually exchange kites with his cousin?  These are all questions that could be asked dealing with this part of my approach.  The readers are going to want to look at every aspect of Capote’s life including his childhood which he uses for this piece and his mindset around 1956 when the piece as written because it could be just as much about his past as it is about the current state he was in when he wrote the piece.  Readers could look back at records to see where Capote was living while he wrote the piece, who he was living with, and how he was spending his days.  They might also want to look farther back to see what life was like in the 1930’s for a boy in the South or if the other people in the story actually existed.  They could find out if there was a Indian bootlegger at that time who resembled Haha, if a couple’s car had actually broken down in front of Capote’s house, or if missionaries had lectured in his town.  Evaluating every piece of the story for its connection to the writer’s past is essential with the first part of my literary approach because using the outside material connected with the author can help the readers better understand the meaning of the piece overall.

After the historical context has been dealt with then my approach requires readers to travel down the y-axis of Keesey’s chart to reader-response criticism.  Being that this is my approach, first off I would concentrate on the concept of the implied reader, looking at the textual structure and the structured act.  The textual structure would allow the reader to be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to see before just based on what he was already aware of.  For instance the reader might not have been aware of the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other patrons who received the fruitcakes were higher up on the social ladder than Buddy and his cousin, so this part of the story would allow the reader to see that Buddy and his cousin feel like they are important because they get to make the desserts for those people.  Likewise, this story introduces a diverse family connection that many readers might not be aware of.  I remember after reading this that I thought for the longest time that his friend was his grandmother, not his cousin.  Therefore, this story introduces readers to the fact that different family members can have strong emotional connections with one another, and they can take this knowledge and run with it in order to find a deeper meaning in the relationship between Buddy and his elderly friend.  The structured act would have the reader find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.  This means that the reader is going to take what they know in life and bring that to the story.  Based on what they bring, the text is going to mean different things to different people because their perspectives are going to be different.  A young boy might connect with Buddy in the story and see the friend as his grandmother while an elderly woman is more apt to connect to the cousin in the story and view Buddy has her grandson or possibly her neighbor boy.  Also, one has to take in to account that various people are going to be educated differently and be at different maturity levels.  The young boy who reads the story is going to find more meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are playing together and spending time with one another.  While the elderly lady who reads the piece is going to be more apt to see the deeper meaning and connection that Buddy has with his cousin.  They are both lost souls who are found when they are with each other, so when the cousin dies at the end Buddy feels like he has died as well.  That is why he looks up to the sky as if he is going to see two kites sailing to Heaven.  It all depends on what type of perspective a person brings to the story as to what type of perspective they get out of the story.  I think that it is also important to know what each type of reader will bring to the story as I have demonstrated here.  Readers not only have to show how they will react to a piece, but they should also know how other people will as well. 

Stanley Fish’s context falls in closely with this as well.  It all depends on what the reader brings to the text as to how much they understand it and what they get out of it.  If someone has a close relationship with an elderly family member like Buddy does, then they might be able to see the connection that the two characters have.  Likewise, anyone who has experienced the hustle, bustle, and excitement of Christmas time would be able to connect with that aspect of the story and find some meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are participating in the festivities together.  There has to be a least one aspect of the story that each reader has some experience in, and that way they are able to connect themselves to that part of the story and find some meaning from the piece overall.

Using historical criticism and reader-response criticism together on a piece literature has a very positive effect in my eyes.  I believe that bringing in outside sources connected to the life and times of the writer as well as having readers bring in their own experiences to connect to the piece allows for a better understanding overall, and when readers understand a piece of literature they are able to get to its deeper meaning.  Using my literary approach, I have found that I can connect parts of the writer’s life with parts of my life in order to find true meaning in pieces of literature.  Therefore, I believe that my approach works because it brings forth two literary theories that involve cognitive thinking and bringing in aspects of the outside world.  The y-axis on Keesey’s chart is the right place to be because readers are able to make connections and reactions that will help them in discovering the true meaning of every literary piece that they read.

Works Cited

• Capote, Truman.  A Christmas Memory.  New York:  Random House, 1956.
• Fish, Stanley. “Is There a Text in This Class?”.  Is There a Text in This Class?:  The Authority of Interpretive Communties.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1980. 678-693.
• Hirsch, Jr., E. D.  “Objective Interpretation”.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 17-33.
• Iser, Wolfgang.  “Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader”. Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 140-147.
• Keesey, Donald.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003.

OMG, ur English is Gr8: The Effect of Text Lingo on the English Language in Classrooms

     Texting has become a popular activity for teenagers throughout their daily lives. It has become the norm to receive a cell phone once you are a teenager, and the age when kids are given cell phones gets younger and younger as times goes by. Adolescents use their cell phones for a lot more than just making phone calls though; they now communicate via text message. Texting has become one of ways to join the in-crowd, and most of the youths who text often let their cell phones control their lives just as society controls them in pressuring them to text their friends.

     Texting has become a new form of communication for adolescents. It is simpler for many to type out abbreviated words and shorthand in order to tell someone a message than to call them up because they don’t have to go through the routine of starting and ending the conversation. However, this evolution of communication is starting to affect more than just the mode in which messages are transferred. Texting has become so popular that it is beginning to show up in schoolwork all over. Some people believe that this is harming the English language, but others find it to be just a change of the times as the English language is constantly evolving. No matter the stance taken on this issue though, it can be agreed upon that text lingo is beginning to affect the English language in classrooms all over.

     The majority of those people who believe that texting is ruining the English language are educators who have grown tired of getting out their red pens to mark every word in an essay that isn’t actually in the English language. Teachers in Charleston, West Virginia are concerned that textual language, and other electronic languages, will soon take over regular English writing, especially when it comes to cursive. Cheryl Jeffers, an education professor at Marshall University says of the situation, “Text messaging, e-mail, and word processing have replaced handwriting outside the classroom”, and she worries that handwriting will continue to be misplaced as the years go by (Breen). Others see that this could just be some of the same old hysteria that has been heard before. Kathleen Wright works for an education materials company named Zaner-Bloser where she is the national product manager for handwriting. She believes that the text message craze is similar to the time in which typewriters first came out because people said the same things about them. They believed the typewriters would change how people communicated permanently, but in the end the English language didn’t change that much (Breen).

     Still, there are those people that bring up the debate that texting is making it hard for teachers to understand the students’ language in their work, and this in turn is affecting the grammar and spelling of the students’ language. A study by the United Kingdom’s Telegraph showed that 4 out of 10 teachers couldn’t understand their students’ work because of the lingo, and 55 percent of a group of 500 surveyed teachers said that they could see that their students’ grammar was getting worse due to all the text lingo that was used (Paton). This follows some of the same steps that author and educator, Paul Jury has come up with when it comes to this topic.

     Jury came up with five steps to decide whether texting is ruining or changing our language. He says that new words are being created, an extra space has been deleted after sentences, hyphens are vanishing from between words, students are learning to be more concise, and there are errors in spelling, reading, and writing (Jury). Some of these steps happen to fall into the side that texting is ruining our language, but others show how the language is changing for the better. When it comes to ruining the language, Jury sees the elimination of a space after sentences and the disappearance of hyphens as a knock at the language that once was. He says it’s not that big of a deal, but he always learned that there were to be two spaces after a sentence. Now that texting has caused people to write quickly with a limited number of characters this rule has gone by the wayside (Jury). When it comes to the hyphen issue he says, “Nearly 16,000 thousand words have been stripped of their hyphens in recent dictionary versions: leap-frog has become leapfrog, make-over has become makeover, and post-modern has become postmodern, all because people are too lazy to reach for that one extra key” (Jury). He worries that this is going to change the historical significance of the English language into a language similar to Swedish as longer words are put together (Jury).

     He also has issues with spelling and grammar, but they can be borderline on the language ruined/language changing debate. He states, “I will still say I think texting does have a slightly negative effect, on spelling at least (if for no other reason than the nonincentive it provides to practice spelling words correctly, especially advanced words). And some words get spelled wrong so often (tonite/tonight) in texting that students really are starting to lose track of which way is correct” (Jury). Jury believes that just because an adolescent spells a word in a shortened version with textual language, it doesn’t mean that he couldn’t spell the word if he had too. However, he also believes that since the shortening of words is happening so much it is quite possible that over time the students forget how to spell the words correctly because they have been so used to shortening them. A study by the British Academy would disagree with this point as they found that “more sophisticated literacy skills are needed for textism use” (Turnbull). Therefore, the students have to know how to spell and read the word in order to know how to shorten it for texting. When it comes to grammar, Jury believes that students are either going to be do well with grammar or poorly depending on what they have learned; he doesn’t think cell phone texting affects that at all (Jury).

     Jury believes that the language is forever changing though when it comes to new words and brevity. He compares the text lingo of LOL and OMG to that of all the new words that Shakespeare and Webster brought into the English language. He says, “New technology spawns new words, just like all new culture does. But to argue that this is a bad thing is to deny the very flexibility that makes language useful” (Jury). Therefore, he is arguing in the simplest matter that any type of new word added to a language can be useful because it adds to the diversity of the language and the options speakers have to choose various words. One of Britain’s leading linguists, David Crystal, would agree with Jury on this point. He says, “Shakespeare freely used elisions, novel syntax and several thousand made-up words (his own name was signed in six different ways). Even some common conventions are relatively newfangled: rules for using the oft-abused apostrophe were set only in the middle of the 19th century. The point is that tailored text predates the text message, so we might as well accept that ours is a language of vandals” (Huang). Crystal is saying that language has always been changed by the people using it, so we should just accept it as a commonplace occurrence. He believes that all change in language is gradual, but in the end there will be a monumental development to how we speak and communicate(Huang).

     When it comes to brevity Jury describes how many of the text messaging programs only allow a certain number of characters in their boxes as a limit, so students are learning to become more concise when it comes to writing essays because they are used to having to cut words out to fill a small space (Jury). Many scholars in the field would agree with him on this, as more and more people are beginning to take the side of the evolving language in this debate.

     Many people now see that texting is actually helping students better understand the English language. This may be surprising to some, but different research has shown that language learners are better at spelling, grammar, and learning the language when they are also chronic texters. The British Academy in the United Kingdom found that in doing research with kids age eight to twelve, texting helps them a lot with, “phonological awareness…a child’s ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of sound in speech” (Tumbull). Basically, this argues for the fact, against Jury’s belief, that texting helps learners get down to the root of the language. Since the language is short and concise and the students are around it all the time, they have the extra time to work with it, and this in turn helps them out with their language skills in general. This is also illustrated in Newsweek writer Lily Huang’ article titled The Death of English (LOL). In this article she talks about a new book by David Crystal titled Txtng: the Gr8 Db8. The book looks at how texting is making people better communicators because they are able to go to the root of the language. Huang says, “Far from being a means to getting around literacy, texting seems to give literacy a boost. The effect is similar to what happens when parents yak away to infants or read to toddlers: the more exposure children get to language, by whatever means, the more verbally skilled they become” (Huang). Therefore, she sides with Crystal in believing that texting actually helps students better understand the language because some exposure to it through texting is better than no exposure at all. Crystal also believes that the effects that others have seen in their classrooms due to the high amount of students who text is only just a minor change in the English language. Crystal uses examples from the past to show that language it forever changing. He states that more of the language was changed due to British influence during the Revolutionary War and other times in history than what is occurring now with texting (Huang).

     Crystal believes that the language is always going to change and over time new additions will keep being added to it. Although many other people have debated that the text lingo that shows up in papers is harming the way their students’ write and use the language, all and all Crystal sees that any use of the language can be beneficial for the students in the long run.

     When looking at this topic, it seems to be that people are all over the board when it comes to opinions. Many believe that the textual language that shows up in papers is a hindrance on the language because they see how their students can’t even write a basic essay without using abbreviations of words. However, others take the middle ground and are able to see that certain aspects of the texting lifestyle can impede the use of proper English, but they can also appreciate the fact that this new form of communication is adding so many interesting pieces to the English language. Moreover, others believe the latter part of this in full because they see the diversity brought to the English language from text lingo and are able to appreciate that this form of communicating is helping language learners at spelling and grammar because they’re able to get down to the root of the word. All in all, this debate on whether text lingo in classrooms is ruining the English language or helping it evolve is never going to stop. It really is a matter of opinion, but when one stops to think about all the students concentrating on texting their friends and then putting those similar shortened words into essays for a grade, it is easy to see that texting definitely has affected the way the English language is used in the school system, whether that be for bad or for good. 

Works Cited

• Breen, Tom. “Cursive May be a Fading Skill, but so What?” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 19 September 2009. Web. 9 November 2010
• Huang, Lily. “The Death of English (LOL).” Newsweek. 8 August 2008. Web. 9 November 2010. 
• Jury, Paul. “5 Ways Texting Is Ruining Changing English.” The Huffington Post. 23 July 2010. Web. 9 November 2010.
• Paton, Grame. “Text Message Slang Found in School Work.” The Telegraph. 12 December 2008. Web. 9 November 2010.
• Turnbull, Kaite. “LITER8 LRNRS: Is Texting Valuable or Vandalism?” British Academy. 2009. Web. 9 November 2010.

A Letter from Mrs. Guilliam

I just recently found this letter from one of my favorite grade school teachers, Mrs. Barbara Guilliam. She was my 5th grade teacher, and sadly she passed away from cancer when I was in the 6th grade. This letter just warmed my heart tonight, and it was just what I needed to read. I can now see how much this exact message has motivated me throughout life! :) I hope I have the chance to write many letters like this to my students in the future. It really is the simple things that matter the most in this world.




May 17, 2000


Dear Austin,


I want to congratualate you on having your DARE essay selected as one to be read at the DARE graduation next week. I am very proud of you! You have done well in the DARE program, and I am glad that you will be recognized and honored in this way.


You have been a hard worker all year and I really appreciate that. Your attitude, behavior, organization, and work habits have been tops. Keep striving to do your best in everything you do and you will succeed!


It have been a pleasure having you in class. I have really enjoyed your great sense of humor! With your ability to get along well with others, you will make a great peer mediator. Good luck with that next year. The world needs more people like you.


Keep up the great dancing, too!


Sincerely,
Mrs. Guilliam

Was Blind, But Now I See: I've Been Called to Make a Difference

I just got back from Revive, a Thursday night worship service at The University of Findlay, and I had such an intense experience that I just have to write about it. I didn't really want to use this blog for personal reasons, but tonight's experience relates to my future as an educator, so I believe it belongs here.


As the people close to me know, I have had struggles with my faith in the past. I grew up in a United Methodist church, but I strayed away from it during high school and lost God and all religion during a five year span of my life. I experienced with a variety of different religions, but I felt like something was missing. Two years ago, I went on my first mission work trip with Habitat for Humanity to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and during that week I was so overcome with His glory due to our crew leader Bryan's devotional that I accepted Him back into my life. It's been a long run since then, but I've been trying my best to grow closer to him. I joined a wonderful church in Findlay, I started diving deeper into the Bible, and I decided to live my life for Him in every aspect. Many who knew me in high school and the early years of college found this to be a drastic change, but I had finally become part of the fellowship of the unashamed, and I wasn't afraid to admit that I was finally, once again, a Christian. Things have gone better in my life since that mission trip, but I know I have so much more to do in my journey with Christ. Tonight was another chapter in that story.


Even though I have grown a lot stronger in my faith, I'm not ashamed to admit that I should be doing a lot more. I've joined a great church within such a loving community, but there are times--naturally in my busy life--that my mind drifts off during sermons and other aspects of my longing to know more about Christ. I know this isn't right, but I'm only human--it happens to the best of us. Things changed tonight though. In the middle of the music worship Pastor Matt stopped the music team and allowed us time to distance ourselves from our friends in order to sit and chat with God. He opened up our eyes to the fact that we were singing the words of the songs, but did we really mean what we were singing? Were we literally or spiritually falling on our knees for Jesus? Were we ready to wholeheartedly grow deeper with Him tonight?


I've been struggling a lot with a variety of situations in life in which I won't go into, but one of those areas is my future. Even though I have a degree in education, I've still been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful in which I could make an impact in the lives of others, but even this summer I was looking at ideas all over the career spectrum, at times branching away from education altogether. I just recently started graduate school to earn a master of education degree in reading because it felt right, but I went in blind not knowing if it was truly where I was supposed to be, where I was called to be.


Tonight I was reassured that I am truly following my calling, that of teaching others to read. I swear that God was there with me and He touched me with His presence tonight. I know that may sound crazy, and I've never experienced this before so it sounds crazy to me as well. However, I opened my heart to Him and laid everything on the line. I asked for guidance on where I was going and if it was right, and He showed me that I have been called to work in the area of reading, that my graduate degree was the perfect choice. I didn't get specifics on if I should be working in a school setting, with a non-profit, or even in another country, but I'm sure that will come in due time. I just know that I was made to help children develop the wonderful and amazing power of reading, and I will now do this through Him.


After experiencing this moment, I was overcome with emotion. I'm a very sentimental guy; I have cried during about every chic flick I've ever watched, but tonight was a different kind of crying. I sat there in the auditorium just weeping after receiving my call. I couldn't believe God was actually putting me in these shoes in which I would be able to help thousands of children develop this ability that will help open doors to adventure, doors to knowledge, doors to Him. I kept asking God, "Are you sure about this? You really want me to do this?" And He reassured me after every question that I was truly being called to make a difference. I feel blessed and honored that I'm heading in a direction that not only I want to travel in, but that he wants me to go towards as well. I can't wait to start fulfilling this dream, but until then I will continue to grow deeper with Him, to give myself over to Him, and to allow Him to use me and place me where He wants. It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally in his palm, and I'm so ready for the ride.