Archive for February, 2010
February 18th, 2010
It is one of the scariest things a writer has to face – writer’s block. You stare at the white sheet of paper, tapping your pen, and spacing out as you try to think of what to write. Looking at the blank page only reminds you that your mind is blank with ideas, too. The problem with writer’s block is that once a person feels stumped, they have a hard time forcing themselves to write anything at all. Quite often, some people even say they have writer’s block just to have an excuse not to write. Writing takes work, concentration, and creativity. Whatever your reason is for feeling that you have come down with writer’s block, here are some simple steps to help overcome your own block.
Step #1 Prewrite
Yes, you hear your instructors tell you all the time to prewrite, but do you ever listen to them? Prewriting (which is listed in another blog) is not just a way to organize your thoughts and get down ideas, it is another way to look at your writing project and force yourself to write. Getting past your writer’s block is often just a matter of looking at your task from a different perspective (or looking around your writer’s block, if you will). If you can brainstorm or outline some ideas for your writing, then you have a better chance at feeling confident and putting your pen to the paper to start writing. With all of the different methods of prewriting, there really isn’t any reason not to use at least one of them when you’re stumped.
Step #2 Write Backwards
Even after the prewriting is finished, you may still feel uncertain how you want to word your thoughts exactly. If that’s the case, jot down your ideas out of order – write the end first and the beginning last if you must. Sometimes your ideas may be scattered, which is why you are having trouble focusing on just one idea. Maybe your mind is blank with your introduction, but you know what you want to write for your body paragraphs. If that is the case, then just skip ahead. Write down whatever good ideas you think you have and reorganize them later.
Step #3 Take Your Opposing Side
If you are really uncomfortable with your topic and feel you have absolutely nothing to write about, then you may want to take yourself out of your own head and put it into someone else’s. This has nothing to do with cheating. You are supposed to write the opposite of what you really feel. Or, think of what other people would say about your subject. It may be easier putting down what you think other people feel or believe than what you actually believe. Your confidence in your own ideas may be what stops your writing. Do not use this technique all of the time though. There are some assignments where you need to give your honest opinion, and this method of breaking writer’s block may not always be suitable.
Step #4 Just Write!
It may sound harsh, but sometimes you just have to force your pen to move on the paper or to have your fingers move across the keyboard. Often people refuse to write anything because they don’t think their ideas or words are good enough. Well, when you’re struggling, writing something is better than writing nothing. Put down whatever comes to mind whether or not you think it sounds good. You can always fix it later, which is how we come to Step 5 in breaking the writer’s block.
Step #5 Walk Away… and Come Back
Sometimes students are just not in the right state-of-mind to write. If there are a bunch of things running through your head, you may need to just set up your writing assignment as best as you can and walk away from it for a while. When you come back to whatever writing you have put down, you may feel more inclined to fix your ideas and even add more ideas down on paper. Depending on how much time you have for your writing, walking away from your assignment for an hour or a full day may be just what you need to come back to your writing and look at your project with a clear head. When you come back to your writing, look it over with a critical eye, as if it were someone else’s paper, and see what you do and do not like about it. And then, take your writing from there. Unless you are taking an in-class essay, this method can be a great way to clear your mind. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on a different method of break down that writer’s wall.
February 17th, 2010
All of your life your mother has told you, “Get some rest.” Students were taught at a young age to go to bed early in order to get their full 8 hours of sleep. Although this was enforced throughout most of their lives, the majority of adolescents and young adult do not follow this rule.
Staying up late to watch television or hang out with friends is hard to resist. When you are young and full of energy, it seems pointless to go to bed when you still feel so lively after midnight. However, the effects of sleep-deprivation have proven to be even more harmful to people in the long run than anyone ever realized.
Our bodies are like rechargeable batteries and our beds are the docks where we get reenergized. Most everyone seems to recognize the normal short-term side-effects of lack of sleeping: difficulty concentrating, physical weakness, and even mood swings. Long-term deprivation of sleep will not only increase the seriousness of these common side-effects, but it can also cause more serious consequences, as well.
Addictions
It’s interesting how one bad habit can lead to another. Overloading and becoming dependent on caffeine is one such bad habit that is developed from excessive sleep deprivation. You stay up late, and pay the price in the morning by feeling exhausted, so the first thing you reach for in the morning is a cup of joe, or two, or three. When that’s not enough, others reach for the caffeine provided in colas. The side effects of caffeine has been mentioned in a previous blog (http://blog.eduify.com/index.php/2009/11/04/coffee-how-much-caffeine-is-too-much/) and most people should understand the unhealthy habit of consuming these drinks in high quantities. Staying up late could be described as the gateway to other bad habits.
Weight Alterations
Although no one wants another reason to think about their weight, a lack of sleep can tie directly to your figure. Because your hormone levels can alter depending on the amount of sleep we get, your weight can be directly affected, too. Your hormones affect the way we gain and lose weight, which should give sufficient motivation for the more self-conscious individuals to finally get an adequate amount of sleep.
Physical Fatigue
The body cannot perform as well if it is not rested. In effect, your body may actually feel much weaker than it usually would. Your backpack could feel 5-10 pounds heavier to you if you have not been giving your body the rest it so craves. It’s bad enough that you can feel tired after a day of studying, so who wants to start out the day already feeling tired?
Weak Immune System
Although the occasional sick day can be a welcome day off, constantly getting sick can be a nuisance. Without proper sleep, your body not only becomes weaker, but your immune system does, too. Why else would your doctor recommend sleep when you are ill? Your body cannot fight of germs as easily as it once could if it is weakened from exhaustion. People who do not get a proper amount of sleep often find themselves catching colds and flues more frequently than other people who are a bit more rested.
Mental Fatigue/Aging Your Brain
Lack of rest makes your mind become weaker the same way your body becomes weaker. Your mind’s strength shows with its ability to concentrate, but concentration will not come so easy if your mind is not rested. In fact, some recent studies compare sleep-deprivation to aging your brain since the parts of your brain that are affected by aging are the same parts affected by being sleep-deprived. Just like your muscles and joints become slower as they get older, your brain can also become slower, which is exactly what results from sleep deprivation. You may not be as quick-thinking and even tend to become a bit more forgetful when your mind is tired. Some mental illness like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are said to be an effect of tired brains, as well.
More research on the effects of sleep deprivation can be viewed: http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/31/brain and http://www.sleep-deprivation.com
February 16th, 2010
by Julia H. Jackson
“Do not forget what’s left, because this is all we have, and you won’t found your roots online. We have no dances or chants if we have no history. Just rants—no roots, just tears. This is all I have of my family history that’s real. And now it’s yours.”
–from Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio’s “Kumulipo,” performed at the White House on May 12, 2009
Last spring, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted an evening of poetry, music, and spoken word for students from Howard, American, Galluadet, and Georgetown Universities. Readers included Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, a Hawaiian poet who later represented her state on HBO’s Brave New Voices, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the Broadway musical “In the Heights.” There was something different about the way these readers shared their original poems; these were not recitations, nor were they readings in any traditional sense. These performers brought passion and theatricality to their words; theirs was a form of slam poetry. Today we examine The Roots of Slam Poetry.
Of all the words in the English language, “slam” and “poetry” don’t seem to naturally connect. And yet, the slam poetry movement has been growing strong ever since its birth in late 1980s Chicago, when construction-worker-turned-poet Marc Smith coined the term while performing at his favorite jazz club. In its essence, poetry is usually defined by its poet, but the slam poetry movement arose out of a desire to raise the stakes with local, regional, and eventually national competition.
In the introduction to his book, The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip Hop, and the Poetry of a New Generation, Smith states that in the 1990s, “poetry reared its motley head” all across America. Cafes and bars such as the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago, and Boston’s Cantab Lounge started hosting regular competitions in which poets were judged on their content, style, performance, and emotion.
Slam poets such as Saul Williams, Taylor Mali , Mayda del Valle helped publicize the burgeoning movement in the 1990s with their performances, both in their own communities, as well as televised competitions. Williams played the main character in the 1998 film Slam, which followed a young inmate who discovers his passion for poetry in a writing class in jail. Slam poetry teams and nonp
rofit organizations sprung up across the country, including the NYC-Urbana Slam Team, the Austin Slam Team, the nationwide program Youth Speaks , and Poetry Slam, Inc., the heart of the movement.
The slam movement picked up its pace in 2002, when television hip hop entrepenuer Russell Simmons began hosting Def Poetry Jam on HBO. The show followed a national competition every year until 2007. In 2008, the Def Poetry producers created Brave New Voices, a new poetry competition that spotlights teenage voices.
Why is slam poetry important? Well, think of it this way: slam poetry is a way to expose talented young writers by challenging them to recreate their inspirations on stage. Poets are judged not only by their command of language, but by the ferocity or subtlety with which they speak. Many slam competitions have paved the way for writers who might not normally be nationally recognized, perhaps because of the communities they represent, perhaps because of the content of their work. Either way, slam competitions act as a platform for writers of all backgrounds and ideologies to voice their opinions, aspirations, fears, and desires.
“However it begins, it’s gotta be loud
and then it’s gotta get a little bit louder.
Because this is how you write a political poem
and how you deliver it with power.
Mix current events with platitudes of empowerment.
Wrap up in rhyme or rhyme it up in rap until it sounds true.
Glare until it sinks in.”
–from Taylor Mali’s “How to Write a Political Poem”
February 12th, 2010
by Julia H. Jackson
Regardless of your age, disposition, and romantic status, you can’t avoid Valentine’s Day. Whether you thrive off the sentimentality of paper hearts, can’t stand the pink tissue paper wallpapering most drugstores, or secretly wish that certain someone would do something, anything, for you on February 14, surely you’ll have to acknowledge it somehow. Maybe you feel as Welsh poet Dylan Thomas once did; that love is “an intolerable emptiness in me, that can be made whole only by your soul and body. I will come back alive and as deep in love with you as a cormorant dives, as an anemone grows, as Neptune breathes, as the sea is deep.” A bit heavy? Perhaps, but don’t dismiss Thomas, whose love letters to Caitlin MacNamara later comprised an impressive literary tome. Who’s to say that your next original Valentine can’t set the stage for a greater romantic work?
Today we examine 5 Books To Use as Valentines that, who knows, might inspire an ocean dive. Unsure just what kind of message to send your attractive classmate or flirtatious friend-of-a-friend? Not to worry; Eduify’s got your back.
5. For the bold, die-hard romantics:
Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda, translated by W.S. Merwin
Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!
That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine
–from “Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew (VII)”
This 1924 collection of poems by Pablo Neruda established him as the master of eroticism. Born and educated in Chile, Neruda later served as ambassador and émigré in Spain and Mexico. His political affiliation aside, it was the sincerity of Neruda’s “desperate love song” that inspired generations of writers, filmmakers and artists worldwide. Neruda’s unabashed sexuality, coupled with the joire de vivre of a twentieth-century Renaissance man, made his poetry famous worldwide, eventually winning him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
If you dig Neruda’s style, but sense that your date isn’t ready for explicit seduction, check out the 1994 film Il Postino, an Italian story inspired by the life and literature of Senor Neruda.
4. For the English majors:
Possession, by A.S. Byatt
In this 1990 literary fiction bestseller, Byatt weaves two centuries of romance into intertwining stories about two competing graduate students in English who are stuck deciphering the long-lost love letters of two Victorian poets. This is the perfect choice for girls and boys who like to read between the lines, who see romance as a subtle game full of hidden meaning. And for you cinephiles, there’s a film version too, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart.
3. For the garage band guy/girl:
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
Perhaps this novel’s greatest strength is its loving testimonial to the art of mix tapes. Rob decides to break down his relationship failures one by one, recounting past girlfriends as if he were ticking off records in his collection. One of Nick Hornby’s early hits, High Fidelity could be the story of young hipster love, or it could be a tribute to how we choose to express our affection, via words or chords. The 2000 film adaptation with John Cusak is worth noting, too. This book, coupled with a personally-curated mix CD, might be the epitome of twenty-first century Valentines.
2. For the magical realist in your life:
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Thomas Pynchon wrote in a 1988 New York Times review that Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera was courageous, not only in its mastery of magical realism, but also because it was not afraid to tackle love. This was a “daring step for any writer to decide to work in love’s vernacular, to take it, with all its folly, imprecision and lapses in taste, at all seriously — that is, as well worth those higher forms of play that we value in fiction. For García Márquez the step may also be revolutionary.” And what could be more revolutionary than a love affair put on hold for 50 years? Not only must Florentino Ariza sit on the sidelines for half his life, waiting for Fermina Darza’s husband to die, but he must endure the two choleras of his time and place: the illness itself, which sweeps the unnamed Colombian town, and the emotional damper la colera, the melancholy that accompanies wars without end.
1. For the aspiring memoirist:
Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak by Writers Famous and Obscure, edited by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser
Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), SMITH Mag launched a movement in 2006 with the Six-Word Memoir. What better way to kick off Valentine’s Day then to draw on then the concise, heartfelt nuggets like “At twelve, found soulmate, still together” or the bittersweet realities of love’s uglier side (“Inevitably, his obituary didn’t mention me”). This sharp little collection features notable writers as well as contributors to SMITH Mag online. Perhaps you could start the date with a book, and end it with a snappy six-worder of your own!
So there you go—consider all your Valentine bases covered! You might say that these books have a way of turning people on.
Happy V-Day.
February 11th, 2010
Study, study, study… it’s what students do almost every day of their life. And, if they aren’t studying, then they are worried about when they have to start studying again after their short break. Unfortunately, that is just the way of the student. There are good and bad ways to study though. If you are a student who wants to improve your grades, then there are simple tricks and tips to keep in mind that will not only improve your grades, but possibly make your own studying habits a little simpler on yourself.
Overall, it comes down to planning. Think ahead a little bit and try out these 7 things to help improve your study skills and, ultimately, your grades.
#1 Get Rest
Although this has been gone over many times, it is never said enough – Get enough rest before you go to school. Showing up to school tired means that you are not focused on the material that your teacher is lecturing or on what you are reading. If you are having trouble focusing in class while you yawn every ten minutes or more, chances are that you are not getting enough sleep during the night. If you are still skeptical on the importance of getting sleep, there is an entire blog on Eduify that is dedicated to the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation.
#2 Eat Before an Exam, (but don’t drink much)
Food is fuel. When people do not eat properly they become tired, weak, and grumpy. None of those symptoms of hunger are conducive to proper concentration while you try to study or attend class. If you are in class and you stomach is grumbling because you skipped breakfast again, you are going to end up daydreaming about food rather than listen to the lecture. Do yourself a favor and eat something that will tide you over while attending class. However, you may not want to drink anything in excess. The feeling of a full bladder and needing to run to the bathroom in the middle of class can be just as distracting as an empty stomach.
#3 Arrive to Class Early
When students are showing up to class late they are often out of breath or are interrupting the instructor’s lesson. A late entrance not only distracts the students, but it distracts the teacher, which is no way to get on a teacher’s good side. Being late also means that you have missed some material that was first given in the beginning of class, which may leave you a bit frazzled and possibly missing even more information as you ask a fellow student, “What did I miss?” I recommend showing up five or ten minutes early to class, so you have time to take your seat and set up your books without disturbing anyone with your backpack’s zipper or adjustments of your chair. An early student is prepared and in a ready state-of-mind to be taught.
#4 Make Flash Cards
Many students make flash cards when they are preparing for a test. I suggest making flash cards even before your test. Make early preparations for your test. If there is some information that you feel will be difficult to remember, you should put it on a flash card, that way when it is time to take your test, most of your flashcards will already be set for you, which should make you more relaxed than having to prepare cards last minute for your test.
#5 Record Lectures
If you happen to have a teacher who goes over material quickly or does not seem to stay on a topic long enough for you in class, ask the instructor if he or she would mind that you record the lecture. With a copy of the lecture in your pocket, you can later rewind and listen to any important parts that you may have missed jotting down in your notes. Most teachers do allow students to bring a recorder in to class, as long as they are warned ahead of time. It is not ethical to record a person talking who is not aware of it, so be sure to ask your teacher for permission before doing so.
#6 Read the Material after the Lecture
It may seem simple, but there are far too many students who only listen to the teacher lecture over a subject, but never actually read the material in the book. After the lecture, make time to read over the same material your instructor went over. Going over a lesson twice will help solidify the information in your memory better.
#7 Discuss Material with Friends
Although most students do not want to talk about their homework, having a discussion about the material you are studying is a great way to help remember information. If you are reading something confusing or interesting, relay that exact information to a friend or family member. When you force yourself to repeat the material and think about the topics in a conversation, you help yourself remember the information better. Since I had trouble remembering dates in history, I used to spout off facts to my brother with, “Did you know…?” He would usually roll his eyes or ignore me because he didn’t want a history lesson, but I just continued talking at him and it was a lot of help for me to remember the facts easier.
