For my design, initially I went for a black background, but after experimenting with a few of my posts, I realized that I was not getting the feeling I wanted to convey with the portfolio. I wanted the tone to be warmer design-wise, so I went with a tan color and a lively but formal font. With making structural choices, I had a hard time figuring out what would look best where and how each post coincides with the other on each page. To find a solution, I looked at the examples that we looked at as a class and tried to remember what I initially thought of the ones that I remembered made an impact on me.
With the artifact selection, I knew I wanted to display one of my fiction works because I plan to apply for a graduate creative writing program, and this would be a great way to get my work out in the career field somewhere. I found the artifact section of the ePortfolio hard only during the remix part of it because I had never created a poster from paper before. I am grateful for that experience, though, because it showed me that I am able to transform a piece of art into a whole new artform entirely without ruining or losing the original meaning of the artform.
I feel that this website reflects how I value English literature, whether I am focusing on comparative or my fiction writing. This ePortfolio shows my creative ability to present my work on a different platform that is outside of an academic setting. I do wish I had more time on the general style and color of my website. While I thought the color style was better than the black tone I originally planned, I thought I could have found a better theme color that coincides with my work.
I did not know where to begin with the ‘Flower Petal Exercise’ from Richard N. Bolles’ book “What Color is Your Parachute?” The book is self-help for people who are about to embark on or searching for the next step in their professional lives. This specific exercise centers around getting a better understanding of a person’s wants and needs for their career path through the metaphor of flower petals. I truly thought the whole exercise would be easy, but I was wrong.
Sadly, I believe we as a society are more integrated to point out the negative aspects of ourselves and one another than the positives. So while I think that logic is one of the main reasons that I hit a wall, it is not the only rationale that hindered my ability to do the exercise. I believe the other reason is because I have spent the last eight years truly developing my skills as a student (I don’t really count middle school or any primary education). I have been selling myself as a student for so long that I have to make the transition to prepare to sell myself as a potential employee or graduate student.
When I finally started the exercise, I tried to go in order of every petal. I am a very linear thinker, so I rarely skip around when there is any numerical work that I have to analyze or answer. With this work, though, I had to jump around because there were some questions that I could not think of answers to right away. As soon as I started to skip around with the petals, I decided to order them from the easiest to answer to the hardest.
My List (From Easiest to Hardest)
You and Geography
You and a Workplace
You and the Knowledges You Already Have
You and People
You and Salary/Responsibility
You and Your Purpose in Life
You and Skills
The first two, You and Geography along with You and a Workplace, were the easiest, and that makes sense as both prose of these petals describe the ideal setting in which I can see myself doing the most work for my career. I’ve always wanted to head up north after I graduate, so it was very simple to list the characteristics I have always admired about the New England region. For You and a Workplace, while it was simple, it was also much more fun than I was expecting. I basically go to dream up my ideal workplace, and since I want to be a writer of some sort, I basically describe a piece of my dream home.
You and the Knowledges You Already Have was a bit harder than the previous, but not by much. The petal was hard in the sense that I am not good at categorizing things I know much about, as I do not have to think hard about the subjects at hand. It helped when I listed off my hobbies and could see that there are subjects that I know greatly about. At this point, I could already see the exercise’s main purpose already at work, as it made me focus on myself, get in tune with my mind, and know my worth.
You and People was challenging because I tend to work best on my own, but that does not mean I am closed off to the aspect of working with a group of creative collaborators. I love to listen to interesting writing prompts and see where other writers take them, so while it was hard, I basically had to open myself up to the possibility I would be working closely with others in the workplace. You and responsibility go into the same category for me, as I do not know what my ideal salary is at the moment. All I know is that I want a job. But I had to put myself in the mindset of being responsible for others if I could see myself doing that in the future, which is still debatable.
You and Your Purpose in Life, along with You and Your Skills, were the hardest ones to answer, in my opinion. The petal based around my purpose in life was a little easier because I know what I want my purpose to be: to be a figure of inspiration for writing, even just for one person. I want to create characters that speak to people to be able to bring more representation to the LGBTQ+ community while staying true to whichever genre I choose to write in.
To figure that out, I had to push past all my humility and ask myself what I truly wanted to get out of my life. It was a very scary question, but I found myself more at peace after answering it. You and Your Skills was the hardest for me because, like I said in the introduction, I am not very good at pushing past the negatives, but for this I did. I found myself to be an analyzer, an empathetic person, and a great listener. While those skills seem miniscule, I have learned from this class and the Flower Petal Exercise that they are anything but.
Andrew Siegrist is not your ordinary English major. When he first got to the College of Charleston, he had never been a part of any literary scenes before. He found his love for literature in his late teens. Gabriel García Márquez’s works made him realize that he wanted to take a shot at being a writer himself. Siegrist threw himself into the literary world of Charleston, going to readings and libraries, allowing him to get accustomed to reading and writing, truly develing into an entire other universe he had never been a part of before.
“It was my introduction to a whole different world that I hadn’t had any experience with.”
SIEGRIST TALKING ABOUT HIS LITERARY EXPERIENCE AT COFC
The creative scene helped Siegrist through his artistic journey; the literary program at Charleston is where he genuinely fell in love with writing. The workshops of short fiction and poetry were very impactful to his career now, with professors such as Bret Lot and Anthony Varallo working with him to help hone his skills and inspire Siegrist to continue down the writing path.
After attending the attending the College of Charleston, Siegrist started working various construction jobs, trying to figure out how to continue his writing passion while also providing for it. One night, Siegrist was watching television when he came across an advertisement for a graduate program. He described the advertisement as writers coming together and creating stories, looking for ways to make them better. Siegrist, who had spent the entire day spackling a roof in 20-degree weather, wanted to jump at the chance to make his work better. Thus began Siegrist’s time at the Creative Writing Workshop program at New Orleans University.
Talking more about his time at graduate school, Siegrist said attending the program helped his writing career as much as it was possible. He details his time there as setting aside two to three years that are dedicated to creating written works and editing said works with fellow aspiring writers. After completing graduate school, Siegrist started doing what every young graduate writer would do: trying to get published. Siegrist eventually got his collection of short stories published in 2021 through a short fiction collection contest that he had won. The collection of short stories was actually his thesis that he completed in graduate school, which he had submitted the year prior to no avail. We Imagined It Was Rain was published by Hub City Press in 2021, a series of loosely connected short stories that explore the human mind and spirit.
Siegrist’s career journey is definitely not ordinary, but it seems that no English major’s career journey is. When I first asked questions dealing with the topic of the viability of majoring in English, Siegrist’s initial response was that he was a bad English student. While I was certain that was not the case, he elaborated further on how he struggled with analytic essays and close readings but thrived in workshops and writing. After the initial response of how the English major was viable for him, Siegrist gave me a response that let me know he wasn’t a bad English student like he had labeled himself as. Siegrist talked about how being an English major means that you get to explore worlds and people different from your own, taking the time to understand them and their actions, which expands empathy.
Being able to forge connections with characters from the 1800s and characters from a whole other universe is something truly unique to the English major. We joked that “extra empathy” sticks with us after we put down each written work. As I brought up the situation of finding myself making backstories about strangers I pass along the street and then making myself feel bad for said stranger because of the tragic backstory that I made up, Siegrist admitted that he finds himself doing the same thing. Reading works of literature expands one’s morality, which is a topic that has been debated greatly in the literary past but also within our own classroom. As Gregory Currie, in his own article that surrounding the debate on the connection of morality and literature, states, “Literature helps us, in other words, to be, or to come closer to being, moral ‘experts.’” While I wouldn’t call anyone an expert on morality, from my conversation with Siegrist and my own experience as an English major, I can say that literature allows us a greater understanding of the people and the world we live in.
“Especially now with everything going on with the world, having empathy is important as it has ever been.”
Siegrist talking about the value of empathy
Siegrist now spends his time as a farm manager, where he says that even in that specific form of employment, there are some elements that he finds more naturally than others because of the English major. Showing another great value of majoring in English, which is also shown in the Degrees at Work file, which shows the numerous jobs that various majors can go to and looks at the patterns which different majors follow in their career journey. The information report showed and stated that “language and philosophy jobs go into a broad array of jobs.” The major is so vast that there are so many diverse jobs and sets of skills that come with it. So while Andrew Siegrist may not seem like your typical English major, he is actually a perfect example of one.
In my spring junior semester at the College of Charleston, I worked on a paper that helped a great deal with broadening my skills as an English major for my future. The class that this work was for was focused on how literature relates to nature, more so how man interacts with nature in specific texts, like Robinson Crusoe and The Tempest. Like most of my English finals up to this point, there were various topics that I could write on, but I chose one that centers around a reimagined Robinson Crusoe, where Robinson is actually a woman instead. With this topic, I had to write numerous scenes of the woman Robinson interacting with nature and how it differs from how the male Robinson treats nature. I then had to write a paper on the background of my woman Robinson, and how the story differs from the original, nature- and character-wise. While at first it seemed easy, it was the semester I had decided I wanted to become a writer, so I was desperate to write anything in any form. But as I delved into the character development of my woman, Robinson, I found myself hitting a pretty big wall. I had no experience in this type of world before.
This was the first time I had ever encountered Robinson Crusoe; I had never read it before. So while the material was fresh in my mind, I felt intimidated because I had never written any fiction that took place in a different period before. I decided that I would reread Robinson Crusoe, and in the middle of my rereading, I realized I really did not have to connect to the setting at all for this paper to work; I had to connect to Robinson. Through Robinson, I could see how he interacted with the world around him and how that would change to see a woman in that setting. I wouldn’t call the project easy after that, but I had a solution and now knew what I was looking for. From there, I created a whole new character by the name of Jane, who was shipwrecked on an isolated island in the middle of traveling from England to America after being forced into an arranged marriage.
From this paper, I utilized the skill of encountering worlds and interacting within that setting with this work, as I created an original character within this world. While the shipwreck on an island is the same, the circumstances surrounding it are completely different. I took an already-created world and got introduced to a new one within the aforementioned world in the process of this project. The second skill that I built up and maintained through this paper was how to have a good perception of our world, as that is essential to understanding how other worlds work too. Because this course had a lot to do with nature and how man treats it, that allowed me to be more grounded in the nature of this planet. Helping me better understand how to treat it in a healthy way and open broader horizons. Like if, in the future, I would try to write a story relating closely to this world’s nature that I could portray sensibly.
But how did I acknowledge that I even had these skills in the first place? Because humanities-trained people harness this method of thinking called “sensemaking,” coined by Christian Madsbjerg in his book titled Sensemaking: The Power of Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm, The term revolves around “practical wisdom grounded in the humanities” and focuses on the deeper meaning rather than the wider. I feel like I did not know how to put the true benefit of an English major into the correct words until I read about this term. Each one of the five principles that make up sensemaking I consider to be an essential skill that I will carry with me as I set out on my career journey. The main issue that I have been grappling with, though, is which one will be the most viable for me when I go forth on said journey. As you will soon see, my answer has changed from my previous blog posts, but it is the fifth principle called “The North Star—Not theGPS.” This prioritizes interpreting the facts and signs given to us in life instead of relying on our advanced technology to do the work for us. As Madsbjerg states, “The tools of navigation have always been available to all of us. But we must take responsibility for interpreting them.”
I believe this skill is the most viable for me at the moment because I would not say I have this certain principle in me. I hate to admit it, but I do rely on technology to interpret the signs of my life for me instead of making my own brain do it. I focus on what the internet would think, not what I would. I feel that to excel in my career, whatever it might end up to be, I will have to read opportunities in many different fonts, be able to recognize them for what they might be, and then take them.
I have found that in this short amount of time that we have been in this class, I feel my opinions changing from my previous blog posts. I have found that I like that my perception of English as a major will always progress and shift as I dive into my career path. For me, my opinion on the skill of empathy and how my opinion has grown in the way that I feel it is because of being an English major is that I have grown immensely in that specific skill. In the article, ‘Does reading fiction make us better people?’ by Claudia Hammond, she talks about how people who read more fiction have better empathy. Before, when I covered this article in Blog Post 1, I criticized the fact that empathy should not be the only emotion taken into consideration when judging the morals of a person, but I see now that the article’s purpose was not just to point out how empathy is more common among fiction readers.
For this course, this article was to show how empathy can be a great skill I can harness as an English major when I go forth on my career path because empathy is truly diverse in where it is needed in jobs. As seen when Hammond brings up an example focusing on how empathy can be essential to the medical field, she writes that multiple doctors firmly believe “that reading fiction results in better doctors and has led to the establishment of a humanities programme to train medical students.” (Hammond). I feel this quote emphasizes how much of a necessity the skill of empathy is in the general career field instead of just one section of it.
It is because of this course that I have allowed myself to think about all the genuine skills that being an English major can bring to the career field. I am able to connect with other periods and times, to understand the characters in them, and to care about them. I saw from my paper that I genuinely cared about Jane and her character arc, even though I only wrote a few pages of her story. It is definitely a project I want to return to some day, as it taught me so much about myself as a writer and student. Being an English major has taught me how to prepare for my future, from allowing me to connect with people I have never met to allowing me to recognize any sign that is in my way. While I am still learning to utilize these skills, I can see how helpful and essential they will be.
Part I: Why English Will Me Viable For Me Professionally
English is a very broad major, so much so that there are various specifications on which type of English a person wants to study. I chose English mainly because I liked to read and write, and none of the other majors seemed to jump out as much as English did. My previous perception of the English major included a lot of writing and analyzing over the simplest of sentences, which I was fine with. But little did I know how viable the choice of English as a major would be for my career path. English is rooted in sensemaking, an idea introduced by Christian Madsjerg, described as “a method of practical wisdom grounded in the humanities.” (6, Madsjerg). Sensemaking has five principles that make up the idea, and I find myself needing all five for my career path, but there are two that I feel will be the most viable for me as I transition into my career as a writer.
The first one being called “Thick Data—Not Just Thin Data,” with Madsjerg defining thin data as the facts we use to “understand us based on what we do” (15, Madsbjerg). He prioritizes thick data, explained as our knowledge of the world and “the very way we deal with the world.” (14, Madsbjerg). This will be practical for me professionally because fiction authors write about characters and how they interact with the world around them based on the author’s knowledge of how people interact with each other. Authors use thick data every time they create a whole new world or write a scene of dialogue between characters.
Another principle that shows why English will be viable for me in my profession is titled “The Savannah, Not the Zoo.” This principle relates to the previous one in a way as it pertains to human behavior. To show the natural human experience, we have to study it out in the wild and not just be interested “in what is extraordinary, but what is ordinary and common for all” (Madsbjerg, 17). Allowing authors to relate to the readers as they see themselves in the mannerisms of specific characters and how they experience the world around them.
Part II: Three Projects
The first project that I remember giving me a sense of what kind of skills I could have outside of the English major was a paper that I had written my sophomore year. The class was British Lit since 1800 and our final project was a paper with various prompts. I chose the one that focused on relating two works of fiction, one of them being a text that we had discussed in class that dealt with the theme of science vs. nature. I chose to focus on the similarities and differences between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. My paper argued how similar both creators were, as Frankenstien and John Hammond were both inventors of their own demise, both demonstrating unethical uses of the natural world for scientific reasons.
Through this paper, I focused on the skill of analyzing the human experience, immersing myself in both worlds, looking at the interactions between the characters, and delving into a character’s psyche by analyzing the minutiae details of said character. This project really made me think about the human experience by looking at two characters closely in their natural habits and being able to point out the differences and similarities. To see how the human psyche and experience can be portrayed in two different ways but end up having similarities. Showing how the knowledge of the human experience differs based on whatever universe or society is written up, but the creator’s human experience seemingly gets woven in with the character’s, creating these interchangeable traits.
The second project that I worked on that possessed a sense of viability was a short story assignment that I had to do for my Fiction Writing course last semester. Our main project for that semester was that each student would write two short stories that we would then have to workshop. It was nerve-wracking for me, but I loved it. Everyone’s feedback was super essential, and it made me want to continue to write more short stories, as I found them to be fun to write in general. It was definitely a lot less daunting than writing a whole novel. The professor gave us total creative freedom as well, allowing us to write whatever our minds could conjure up. This truly allowed me to dive into my creative writing abilities, allowing me to connect with my characters as I was writing them.
I was surprised at how the nerves went away when I was writing, almost as if I was nervous that I could be writing a two-dimensional character. What I learned through this project was how to not do that. So when I work on this piece and there are heavy dialogue scenes or scenes with multiple characters, I try to do so in a public space. If I felt myself hitting a wall, I would look up and take in the people around me and how they interact with the space that they’re in. Soon, I would find myself making up backstories for these coffee shop people, and suddenly, I was back with my head glued in front of my laptop screen. I found that knowing how people interact in the real world, with other people and in specific spaces in general, helps me find realistic inspiration for my work.
The third key humanities project that I have worked on was a final paper that I had to write last semester for my Studies in American Film: Hollywood Genres course. For the final, our professor wanted us to write a paper on genres dealing with American films; we could narrow that broad topic down to our own one. I decided to focus on the horror director, Mike Flanagan, and how his filmmaking differs depending on the subgenre he works with. I spent my time closely examining Flanagan’s choices and exactly why he made them. I analyzed how his characters interacted with the world he created and why Flanagan decided to portray characters differently in a stylistic light. I was able to recognize patterns and find similarities in the works that differ in subgenres of horror.
From these stylistic patterns, I can see what they symbolize for the film as a whole. This project has allowed me to dive into other worlds and be able to understand them from only the stylistic elements, making me see the human experience through the eyes of another. While similar to my first project, to me it is different. For this project, I knew I wanted to work in the film industry after I completed it. Because it did not feel like a project, it just felt like I was doing something that I genuinely enjoyed.
Part I: The Horror/Purity of Accidentally Calling Your Teacher ‘Mom’
[ PhotoofJames Island County Dog Park on their official website]
I went to James Island County Park on Saturday. My destination was the dog park, which is located inside the whole facility. It really was gorgeous that day, with the sky being a clear blue and the weather being cool but hot enough for me to roll the windows down without catching a chill. It was a day made for being outside. The only downside of the park is that it costs two dollars per person. While not the end of the world, two dollars to a broke college student is equivalent to one hundred dollars. Nevertheless, I was there for my dog, so I reluctantly handed over my two crumpled dollars to the older employee working the booth. I was then rewarded with a bright smile and a dog treat for my pup in the back.
The exchange was so happy and pure that my mind went blank for a moment. The person turned to me with the same smile and said, “Enjoy your time!” I replied with the same amount of enthusiasm, “You too!” It was not until a few seconds after I drove away that I caught my slip-up and felt my cheeks flush. That was not the first time I said something like that to an employee when I was the customer; most likely it would not be the last as well. But instead of letting the little incident go, I let it fester some more and thought about why that is a common occurrence in society. It’s almost on the same level as accidentally calling your teacher ‘mom’, not on an embarrassing scale (in my opinion, the latter takes the cake by a mile), but in how often it occurs in society.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that when I have that slip-up, it is usually when I am interacting with a person that I genuinely feel comfortable around. This conclusion came from me realizing that when I would call a teacher ‘mom’, it would be because I felt safe around them. The interaction with the park worker was so pure that I felt genuine about wanting them to have a great time, whatever that might look like.
Part II: Little Exercise by Elizabeth Bishop
My name is Mallery McKay, and I was completely clueless as to which piece of prose or poetry truly spoke to me to analyze. I decided to choose a piece of work that dealt with the struggles of mental health, mainly anxiety, as I struggle with a great deal of it. I thought it was so interesting develing into a writer’s mindset of anxiety and how the struggles from it play out in the work itself, format-wise and symbolic.
I love how metaphorical this poem truly gets; it really makes you work for the true meaning of these lines through symbols mainly relating to the natural world. Bishop uses our knowledge and usage of the natural world as a vessel to reflect on one’s personal mental struggles living in our society today.
Bishop starts the first stanza off with immediate tension through the imagery of an approaching storm; this could be symbolizing worries that a person can deal with, looming in the person’s mind, making it all they think about. Then describing the storm as a dog seems to derive the storm from its power, almost domesticating it for the reader.
Bishop uses elements of the sea as the main symbols of her metaphors, like when she mentions the strengths of a mangrove. That refers to a type of tropical tree that is adapted to live on the shoreline and thrive on saltwater when the tide comes and floods its roots. I believe Bishop uses the roots to symbolize how a person can find strength in another, and the beauty of that statement is that it does not have to be just a human. I think the second stanza can be read as finding solace in the natural world or finding something that makes you stronger, whether it be a human or anything else.
I think the most interesting part of this poem for me is how Bishop shows this mental health battle through the storm and how the natural world around it reacts. How the different elements’ reactions showcase different people with their different struggles, like the mangroves and their tough support system or the heron, who flies away but the water still shines behind it, implies that it looks for the best in the worst circumstances. To me, Bishop’s work showcases how people of the same environment can deal with struggles differently because of their own mindset and their own advantages.
Reading has been a part of my life ever since I could remember. As the daughter of a teacher and a writer, consuming literature was ingrained in my daily routine. As I progressed in school and grew up in general, literature became more of an escape, away from weird teenage emotions and mean kids in the lunchroom. It became a place where I could trade my own emotions for another’s for a minute or two. That’s why I found Claudia Hammond’s article titled “Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People?” so interesting because it introduces an argument that backs up people’s emotional attachment to books in general. Hammond seems to link empathy as the main trait of being a better person, and while empathy is a good trait to possess, one could say it takes a whole lot more than empathy to be labeled as a good person in society.
Nevertheless, Hammond explains various experiments that research people and how empathetic they are based on either being an avid fictional reader or having just read a short piece of fiction. By the end of the article, Hammond seems to believe in her argument that reading fictional literature unlocks an empathetic trait in people. I do believe that consuming fictional literature has made me more in tune with my emotions and able to see them in other people. But I do not think that empathy is the only emotion that we should take into consideration when asking the question if literature makes a person better or not.
My thought is that all literature is intentional, always carefully planned, and edited until the last second. Society does not work that way; it is chaotic, messy, and unexpected. I do find that the experiments themselves are engaging, and the prose is compelling, asking a good question that links literature to how we as people function in a society. I just found that the research focuses mostly on the empathy in others rather than allowing other emotions to be categorized as well when people consume fictional literature.
At my high school, the English classrooms were clumped together in one old, dingy hallway, while the science classrooms spanned two gigantic hallways that had been recently renovated when I got there. From then on, those two subjects—science and the humanities—were always pitted against each other, and where I grew up, it seemed that science was the more favorable one.I believe that’s when I realized that reading books was more than a hobby for me, when there was time for a choice. The choice had never been easier.
That’s why I found Patrick Rosal’s argument titled “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” which presents the dispute that poetry and science go hand in hand rather than being opposites of one another. From this article, I am able to understand why people pick science, why there is even a choice in the first place, and why there doesn’t have to be anymore. Rosal states, “poetry and science are kin.” These two subjects share much in common, even when neither party wants to acknowledge it. I believe the most prominent similarity that they share is “observation” (Rosal). Observation is how poetry gets written; the subject that is observed gets described by the poet on paper. Observation in science is the foundation for any solid hypothesis.
The simplicity of Rosal’s list of similarities struck me because there were only five reasons, but each brought multiple examples to mind. From there, I could actually believe the argument that science and poetry, or the humanities, are similar in various ways. The two do not have to go hand in hand, but we, as a society, should “give them enough space and support to work in solitude but talk together too.” (Rosal). As shown, these two subjects can work together, but neither has to be favorable to the other.
