I would first like to say I very much enjoyed being in class with you all and would like to thank Professor Seaman for a great semester.
As someone not graphic-design inclined (nice rhyme) I was not too selective in regards to the way my website looked. My favorite color is green so I chose the color green. In thinking about the structural aspect I just based it upon what I thought looked good. I hope it did.
For my artifacts I decided to choose the three pieces I thought I did well on throughout my career at Charleston. In looking back, I wish I better thought out how they attribute to my exact skills rather than looking for how well they perform comparatively to my work. In doing so I would probably pick things that are more musically inclined or close to the analyzation of music.
Going on the thought process of improving I think I could work better on the overall layout of my e-portfolio. I have friends that are more artistically inclined, so I wish I cooresponded closely with them in regard to the aesthetic portion of my portfolio.
Additionally, my website must have not saved properly as my blog post section and linkedin were not included during my presentation, but I will read those soon.
I further wish I had more ~professional~ photos of me, but that is more of a personal thing than directly pertaining to my portfolio. I do believe it would help my portfolio look better.
There are a lot of things that delight me. A sunset, a sunrise, petting a dog, playing video games, or an ice cold beer after a long day. These are all temporary and will not make your day, however. In thinking about a true delight, one that affects my day, I found myself hard struck to find one… until earlier today.
Upon sweating through my original shirt due to the sweltering heat, I found myself rushing home to change my shirt and avoid the embarassment of a sweat stained shirt. Sadly, as I entered my personal domicile I was reminded of the horrifying fact that it was laundry day. Searching through my stack of shirts I never wear, I found my dads old ‘The Descendants‘ shirt which has the characteristics of being from the ’90s. Old, grey, and strangely loose.
As I left the house to walk to my local convenience store in search of an Arizona and a bag of chips, I heard an older voice say, “Hey man where’d you get that shirt?”. Stopping my usual stare at the ground style of gander, I looked up to see a man about the age of my dad with a smile. “Really cool shirt man.”, he said with generosity. My natural preoccupation with hating anyone I don’t know was quickly disarmed.
Through a slightly lengthy conversation that I do not see the need to reiterate I talked to this man about my dads love of punk music and my subsequent music taste due to the tutelage my father had bestowed upon me. His departure after this conversation left me with a smile. Not only was I complimented but I was given a chance to talk about my dad, someone who I look up to and see someone else who appreciates him for the way he raised me.
It is in this moment that I realized what a delight truly was. It does not need to be an outward exertion of dopamine into your brain, but just a simple act of kindness. Something that makes your day not because it was trying to but because it meant something special to you. Whether you are reminded of someone you love or something you love there is an importance in love.
As Ross Gay says, “my delight grows — much like love and joy — when I share it.”
When I was a young man, I felt that these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman. I was living a hell in small rooms, I broke things, smashed things, walked through the glass, cursed. I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed. In and out fights, in and out my mind.
Women were something to screw and rail at. I had no male friends. I changed jobs and cities, I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders, garbagemen, English accents, Spain, France, Italy, walnuts, and the color orange. Algebra angered me, opera sickened me, Charlie Chaplin was a fake and flowers were for pansies. Peace and happiness were to me sign of inferiority. Tenants of the weak and addled mind.
But as I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of women, it gradually begun to occur to me that I wasn’t different from the others, I was the same. They were all fullsome with hatred, glossed over with petty grievances . the man I fought in alleys had hearts of stone. Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating from some insignificant advantage. The lie was the weapon and the plot was empty, darkness was the dictator.
Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times, I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed, the better I felt. Maybe the other life had worn me down, I no longer found glamour in topping somebody in conversation or in mounting the body of some poor, drunken female whose life had slipped away into sorrow. I could never accept life as it was. I could never gobble down all its poisons.
But there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking. I reformulated. I don’t know when, date, time, all that. But the change occured, something in me relaxed, smoothed out, I no longer had to prove that I was a man. I didn’t have to prove anything, I begun to see things. Coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a café or a dog walking along a sidewalk or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there, really stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself, and its eyes were looked at me and they were beautiful.
Then it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in worst situations and there were plenty of those, like say, the boss behind his desk, he is going to have to fire me, I’ve missed too many days, he’s dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses, he says “I’m going to have to let you go”, “it’s alright” I tell him. He must do what he must do, he has a wife, a house, children, expenses, most probably a girlfriend. I’m sorry for him. He’s caught.
I walked out into the blazing sushine, the whole day is mine, temporarily anyhow. The whole world is at the throat of the world, everybody feels angry ,short-changed, cheated. Everybody is despondent, disillusioned. I welcomed shots of piece, tattered shards of happines, I embraced that stuff like the hottest number, like high heels, breasts, singing, the works.
Don’t get me wrong, there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism that overlook all basic problems just for the sake itself. This is a shield, a sickness.
The knife got near my throat again, I almost turned on the gas again, but when the good moments arrived again, I didn’t fight them off like an alley adversary, I let them take me, I luxuriated them, I bade them welcome home, I even looked into the mirror once having thought myself to be ugly, I now liked what I saw. almost handsome, yet a bit ripped and ragged, scars, lumps, odd turns, but all in all, not too bad, almost handsome. Better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheeks of a baby’s butt.
And finally I discovered real feelings for others, unheralded, like lately like this morning, as I was leaving for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there covers pulled high, just the shape of her head there, not forgetting centuries of the living and the dead and the dying, and pyramids, mozart dead but his music still there in the room, weeds growing, the earth turning, the tote board waiting for me. I saw the shape of my wife’s head, she so still, I ached for her life just being there under covers, I kissed her on the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seat belt, backed out the drive, feeling warm to the finger tips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill pass the houses full and empty of people. I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.
That is my favorite poem of all time. For reasons that I do not feel like divulging and reasons that anyone reading does not care about.
I do not love apathy yet I find myself constantly surrounded by it. In most worldly affairs, I do not care. For those I do care about, I care too much. In earlier years I found myself consistently angry at the world for better or for worse. I do not know if I hated as much as Mr. Bukowski, but I did hate. I never gained anything from this hatred nor did I find any inner happiness.
There is a danger in hoping against hope. An inside dialogue of wanting things to go wrong because they must.
As we read through lines such as, “I felt that these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman.“. There is an internalization of not just outward hatred but inward hatred. Flakes of misogyny slip between the lines as a heterosexual man begins to divulge a leering towards woman. This hatred while not tied to woman is thus attributed. To read this, however as an indictment of woman by Bukowski would be reckless. It serves moreso as an indictment of self and the destructive hatred that is perverting Bukowski’s mind.
In my opinion, Bukowski’s most powerful lines are, “I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of women, it gradually begun to occur to me that I wasn’t different from the others, I was the same. They were all fullsome with hatred, glossed over with petty grievances . the man I fought in alleys had hearts of stone. Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating from some insignificant advantage. The lie was the weapon and the plot was empty, darkness was the dictator. “. In this we see the penultimate cause of the problem. Allowing yourself to be enveloped by a hatred. Allowing others to further feel this darkness instead of attempting to garner an empathetic aura into the world. To continue the cycle is to harm the world.
“When the good moments arrived again, I didn’t fight them off like an alley adversary, I let them take me, I luxuriated them, I bade them welcome home, I even looked into the mirror once having thought myself to be ugly, I now liked what I saw” As we allow ourselves to love not only each other but ourselves we will be filled with happiness comparable to no other. To look around and enjoy without a guise of needing to be smarter or better we internalize a sense of love so desperately missing in apathy we forego knowing for understanding.
Ann Horner throughout her life has loved reading. Her passion began with Nancy Drew books which she read voraciously. This love was aided by her bibliophile father who lended her copies of classic literature, such as Gulliver’s Travels and Call of the Wild. Horner felt reading was a logical hobby in the same way breathing was a logical` hobby… “it just made sense”.
Horner’s love of reading led her to what she describes as a ‘no doubter’ decision to major in English. Similarly to the current cultural feelings around higher education, Horner’s contemporaries were all focused on a business major.
Much as Benjamin Schmidt describes in his 2018 article “The Humanities are in Crisis”, “While coverage of individual academic disciplines like musicology, history, or comparative literature often deals with the substance of scholarship, talk of the humanities in general always seems to focus on their imminent extinction.”
Paving her own path, Horner began a foray in English, despite a self-proclaimed weakness in dissecting literature.
Ann Horner began her college career in the teaching tract hoping to inspire the next generation. It was throughout this journey that she soon realized that her passion did not reside in teaching as she once thought. Due to this sudden change in her career path, she was left with very little plan for her upcoming future. Despite working throughout her college career as a Resident Assistant, Secretary, and an assistant at an Art Gallery; Ann Horner was left with very little options upon graduation.
Handwork and a rigorous application process found her working in the admissions program at Coker College. In this role she found herself working more in what she considered ‘marketing’… that is persuading students to come to the college through informal written mediums. This skill would become the crux of her professional career, but more on that later.
After Horner’s time at Coker, she was married which brought her to the beautiful state of Pennsylvania. Ann Horner then became a paralegal writing briefs and wills while working closely with family law. In this occupation she gained a keen sense of interpersonal relationships and how to connect with individuals.
After her divorce, Horner went to Penn State to pursue a masters in higher education. It was after receiving this degree that she began to work at her new Alma Mater in fundraising. In this portion of her career she once again used her excellent people skills to converse with donors on how they would like to allocate their money. Horner further used her English tutelage to write agreements to donors to assure that their agreements were concrete and conducive to a continuing relationship. Horner continued this career path among many different institutions becoming the Director of Development at the University of North Carolina, the Duke University Medical Center, and the Executive Director of Development at NC State’s College of Education.
Upon being asked why she enjoyed this career path Horner said, “I loved not having to use sparkly writing”
Advice from Ann
Ann Horner has had a unique perspective on the viability of an English Degree. Any self-respecting English major would beg for her vast array of advice, but Ann enjoys to keep it simple and straight forward… “Find out what you’re good at and talk to people”. To Ann the true viability of English is not in its writing but in the core approach it provides in analyzing the world and seeing possibilities. As her career started she dreamed of being a teacher only to realize the profession was not for her. This did not dissuade her as she found through trial and error a profession that is both fulfilling and viable for her skill set. Horner persuades English Majors to find their “perfect match” and to not stay stuck in a profession simply because of its comfortability.
“You’ll figure it out if you explore a bit”- Ann Horner
To talk about myself especially concerning my future seemed a bit daunting. Self-reflection as it is does not come easy. In Richard N. Bolles’ book, “What Color is your Parachute?” he introduces the Flower Petal Exercise in which he lays out an activity that aims to help the participant explore their wants and needs in their career/life.
I think a lot of the reasons we find ourselves unable to accurately portray our opinions on life is not having a real grasp on variety throughout the world. To broadly generalize, most college students have lived in two places. Their hometown and the place where they went to college. While the breadth of opportunity and people vary greatly, the worldview still appear very limited in most cases.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Upon doing this exercise, I found myself struggling. Questions of location, people, knowledge and salary were not things I had even considered as I assume most things work out at some point in time. While that is not the best way to think about life, I am glad that this ‘project’ gave me a structured outlook on my wants.
I decided to start with people as that was the first petal. I’ve worked more part-time minimum wage jobs than I would care to admit. In my first employment at Olde Town Restaurant in Trumbull, Connecticut, I hated it. I worked mainly with people much older than me who had already been broken down by the negativity of life. Niceties were lackluster and the overall pessimism and uncaring made the environment horrible. Skipping forward about 3 years, I began to work in a taco truck. This environment was much better than the previous. Despite working 12 hour days 6-7 days a week over the summer, I never hated going to work. While the tacos were great, It was the people that I worked with who made it worth it. They were funny, nice, and did not find time in our long day to complain incessantly about their lives. It was through this comparison that I understood that I like to surround myself with positive and funny people in the workplace environment rather than those who keep their heads down and perpetuate monotony.
For a workplace environment, I found this easy as I would much prefer to work at home. Getting dressed up in a dress shirt, pants, and tie sucks. Anyone who says its fun is lying to themselves. Additionally, anyone who says they like working in a cubicle is also lying. It reminds me of the Panopticon. Very Scary. My house just speaks to me as a calming place. Especially right now as my room gets natural light pouring in and it fully immerses me in any work I am doing. Maybe I just really like sunlight. I have found however, that I really do not care as long as I am relatively left alone when I want to be and also able to be community based when the time comes. As long as I do not have to wear a tie.
My favorite skills are most typically those that relate to writing. I am not sure if I would consider myself good but it is probably the only thing I have. I like to write in my free time and honestly have very little passion for anything else. If I were to be put into a work environment where I did not write, I do not believe I would be able to enjoy my work. Writing certainly serves as a good skill for me, and it encompasses many of the sub ‘genres’ of the skill such as research and editing which further separate me from the pack.
I do not know if I have a purpose yet. I would just like my work to mean something to somebody despite whatever field it may be in. As long as somebody is impacted, positively, I will be satisfied with what I do in my life. I wish I could be more specific and have a more amplified goal, but I feel far too young to dedicate my life to a purpose. In the last month I have changed my opinions about a million things. One thing stays true that I hope to put positivity out in the world.
Monetarily, I just hope to make enough to support myself. I have never really cared about money or having everything in life. As long as I am able to be satisfied with the life I have, I cannot complain. As I have never made over 15,000 in a year, I believe it would be ignorant to assume what type of money would make me happy. Hopefully, for benefits they take care of everything and 100% match my 401k.
Location wise I would like to stay South where it is warm but most likely will not due to more journalism career opportunities being concentrated towards the North. It does however deserve to be said that despite this I do plan on moving South once I have my career more fortified. As long as it is sunny and urban I can not see myself complaining about the location and as someone who wants to operate more freely in their career I see weather playing an important part in where I would like to stay. Additionally, a more urban environment that is fast paced is definitely more geared to my style which will hopefully further allow me to operate in a manner that is conducive to emotional upkeep.
The number of English majors has fallen by nearly half since the late 1990s- Benjamin Schmidt
I’ve found it strange that we as English Majors must consistently defend the major against most others. Finance majors generalized probably do not have to defend their major, yet multiple questions arise from the morality of increasing the fortunes of the quickly accelerating upper class. I will not spend this time discussing class inequality, but it seems to make a point more in our current time.
I do not like grammar, which is about 50% of English. The other 50% of English is vocabulary, I do not have a favorite word. I do however like reading, watching, and listening to English media. Most likely due to it being the only language I can understand. To say my decision to be an English major comes from an empathetic lens would make most of my friends laugh. I think at the end of the day I’m just a consumer that wants to have an excuse for my gluttonous consumption of media. Movies and Music surround my roommates and consistently a silent moment is not often non-existent. It is in this over consumption and my love for media that I have found my interests deeply intertwining with the ‘values’ of the English Major. I wish I had an interesting heartfelt story on my decision, but I do not and like George Washington, “I can not tell a lie”. Humorously, I have actually cut down a cherry tree.
Richard Bolles states, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”. Judging by my submission time on this blog post that I live by these words. Procrastination has always been a problem for me. I have been described as apathetic by friends much to my chagrin as they did not use apathetic and used ‘uncaring’ when apathetic would be a much better word to give me a descriptor. I do however feel as if despite this post, I have gotten much better at procrastination… or worse… better at dealing with my procrastination.
I have an important assignment that highlights my procrastination much in the line of the hero’s journey, If the hero was a 19 year old college student doing a project on photography. I hate to say it but I do not care about photographs, much to my own demise as an appreciator of art. For example, I have been told a photograph is good about 300 times in my life and never understood why. Despite this, someone who was teaching a class which I signed up for thought it would be a good idea to make me participate in photography in a photography class. I was tasked with taking multiple photos that make someone ‘feel’. I did not and still do not fully understand what that means. I spent the next week wondering what to do. That is a lie to be fair however as I spent the next week completely forgetting about that responsibility. It was only a day before that I remembered my photos. Luckily, when I most needed a quiet space, we had planned a party that night. As the party went on I decided to take photos of what was going on. To clear the air, I was taking photos of people I know, I was not taking photos of strangers. It was in my hasty arranging of my collage of photographs that I started to slightly understand what feeling from a photograph meant. As I surrounded myself with photos of my close friends, while slightly blurry, I was able to feel a sense of connection with my surroundings and the larger world around me. While not specifically an English Class, it was with my tutelage from various English classes that I was able to understand how a piece of media is supposed to make you feel, and furthermore connect it to the outside world.
This idea is what I truly think makes the English Major important, as I have been given the ability to contextualize anything within our world. It is with this humanist perspective that I have been able to extrapolate the importance for anything, and there is an importance for everything. I would not sacrifice these lessons for anything as I have been a more caring person because of it. I have learned not only how to fix my ability to procrastinate but also configure that with not getting lost in the moment. Learning the best time and place to do work, rather than doing something too early when my head is not in it. It’s important for me to put forth my best work, while this does not always work within the confines of school, I understand that this skill and understanding of my work ethic will better help me contextualize my skills within the job market.
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.”. This is about novels, but I think it says more about the English Major as a whole. It is not what we are able to learn, but what we are able to do with the information we gather from our studies.
There’s a multitude of different ways that I could analyze how English has helped me in my personal life. Whether it be feigning literary and film prowess over my friends or writing in general, I can definitely say there are benefits to this stuff. I believe there are a million and one possibilities in life maybe a million and two that I could have possibly embarked upon. In another life I hope to be an underwater welder. Despite this, choosing English was arguably one of the best choices I have made in my life. It has allowed me to gain a breadth of knowledge and ideas that are normally not found in a vast amount of college majors. As someone who has also experienced the coursework in the Communications department, I’m able to realize a broad difference within the two majors. Communications for one was exceptionally stringent in its processes. A lot of the course material was factual or at least based upon a theory that has been accumulated and corroborated through scientific analyzation. English however is not as straight forward which I personally find to be more enjoyable and rewarding. In my personal life this has definitely led to a better quality of life, but also an interesting position in the job force.
I believe professionally the English Major while being a declining one of that provides an intrinsic value to the work force that others do not. In ‘The Humanities Are In Crisis’, it is said, “The plunge seems not to reflect a sudden decline of interest in the humanities, or any sharp drop in the actual career prospects of humanities majors. Instead, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, students seem to have shifted their view of what they should be studying—in a largely misguided effort to enhance their chances on the job market. And something essential is being lost in the process.” While this is true that means there are significantly less people in my generation with the same skills and thought processes as I. Critical thinking and the ability to write are two undermined faculties in the English Major. Through these skills I should intend to not only harbor a significant advantage in these categories, but a new fresh perspective on problem. Within this the English major provides a direct improvement from others who have valued a more streamlined sense of education.
One project that comes to mind is from my class which was a Survey of Literature. In this class we discussed a multitude of African American works. Culminating in a project I wrote discussing Frederick Douglass’s life. Through this paper I was able to utilize my skills for research in aiding my work. Throughout the project I found myself doing deep research in regards to topics that are not so easily found. Additionally, I began to understand the distinct differences and similarities of contemporary Americans to their predecessor. For one, the cultural anxieties were much of the same. In this I understood a lesson about understanding before disagreeing and the power with which true listening proves beneficial to equipping ourself with the necessary tools to work with one another.
Project 2 was a story I wrote for fiction writing. The purpose or story of the piece does not matter much, however writing a multiple page story when I had not done it before proved immensely challenging. This however is important as it not only taught me the lesson of trying something new but committing to something completely. We as English majors will most likely change our professions multiple times throughout our careers. With this we must be able to adapt and the lessons I have learned through this project and others have prepared me for the obstacles I will face through my career.
My last project was actually from my first English class at the College. We were tasked to write about a photographer that inspired us. While I could search my google drive to figure out what I wrote about. I do not find that important. Instead I would like to focus on the fact that at the time I was truly passionate about that photographer enough to even write about them. This taught me that whatever I do in the outside world, I must be passionate about it. Passion for your work is something that not only drives but makes you good or great. This lesson fully made my ideas and dreams tangible.
I believe there are a multitude of lessons from the English major that someone can use to enhance their professional life. Though much line English itself it is up to you to decide what you will personally gain from this Major. In this way the door is wide open, it is simply for you to seize that entrance with the lessons and skills you have learned to further contextualize yourself within the professional world. In many ways these skills apply to all facets of life and to box them up in the professional world places a great disservice into what the world of literature can do for you.
I think there are several reasons why someone becomes infatuated with literature enough to choose an English Major. Through my last four years at the college, I have met a plethora of people whose reasonings for the major differed. While I could claim I chose this major due to a great love for literature throughout my life, that would be a lie. I can name at most ten books I have ever truly enjoyed reading. I think it is important, however, to note that I do read it is just the ‘enjoying’ part that does not synchronize with my brain. I have always enjoyed music more as an art form. Many of my favorite memories from childhood are placed within the confines of my dad’s ‘music room’; which in reality was nothing more than a section in our basement between old collections of whatever lay in those unopened boxes. It was here that my dad kept his collections of CDs which reverberated against the concrete walls into a cacophony of echo and whatever album happened to be playing at the time. The sound quality and its blaring sound led my dad to have permanent tinnitus and me to have the hearing of a 35-year-old man at only 21, however, it was there in my basement where my ‘love’ for music grew.
When coming to the College of Charleston, I originally planned on becoming a Communications Major. Due to the lack of a Journalism Major at the college, and my hopes to write about music, I thought communications best filled the void. It was after my first ‘public speaking’ class that I knew that path was not for me. During the summer of my freshman year, my mom and I discussed what major I should switch to and English was quickly understood to be my best route. I was mostly tentative about the English major as a focus as my fear of grammar and lack thereof in writing I felt would hinder my performance. It was not until my first few classes that I became genuinely interested in the way we would discuss and dissect various texts.
I found Kathleen Ossip’s article, “Why All Poems Are Political” to actually agree with many of the reasons I find literature to be a valuable tool in life. Describing poetry and largely the written word she questions WHY we should care, “Could it be that not-understanding or wondering is more honest and even less violent than knowing?”. It seems that in our current cultural zeitgeist there is an incessant need to be right and know all. Spanning from politicians to stand-up comics there is a consistent theme found in their speaking. Certainty. Everyone must back their positions with one hundred percent certainty. I am at fault in this too. Constantly thinking I am right. The ages of 16-19 were ripe with a lack of conversing; any alternative point was a contention for argument and not understanding. I feel that my knowledge gained from the variety of English courses I have taken over the years has allowed me to slowly kill this part of me. I have been able to internalize that understanding is not always a net negative within assuring your own character. It is an interesting part of our culture that most points seem to ascertain the character of their speaker rather than create an argument for the sake of truly caring about a topic. In this way I think literature further embarks upon the topic of empathy. Rather than making an argument to back your own morality, the arguments more closely come from a place of true care.
