I Feel Cranky

I feel cranky. I feel fat, gross, sick and disgusting. I’ve gained weight during chemo. I’ve lost all the muscle tone and stamina I had developed in the year before my surgery. My abdomen still gets sore when I do chores like unload the dishwasher. I’m getting more hot flashes than ever. I’m having intestinal issues. I’m sick of taking pills. I’m tired of being bald and wearing hats and having hardly any eyebrows and eyelashes. I’m tired of being tired.

This is the point in my chemo cycle when I become particularly restless:  I’m not quite well enough to resume (relatively) normal activities, but I’m well enough to become unsettled. My physical symptoms have subsided enough for my fears to begin breaking through again. At this stage, my tendency toward depression becomes most evident.

When I was a child and would whine about some perceived hardship, my mother would tell me to “offer up” my suffering to God. I was never quite sure why God would want it.

I still don’t believe that God wants our suffering, but I do have more of an appreciation for what my mom was getting at. I do believe that I can learn something from this experience. I believe that there is purpose and value in being open to the lessons available to me today, even if I can’t figure them out right away.

I don’t like how I feel today, but it is how I feel. Maybe one of today’s lessons is to simply accept that fact without struggling against it. I’ve been at this stage four times before, and four times it has passed. Undoubtedly, I’ll pass through it this time as well.

Revisiting the Past

As I’ve mentioned on my website (www.celinski.net, see The Academic Word), I used to live my life in the academic world. While I was attending graduate school, I taught English at Kent State University. Mostly I taught freshman English I and II (usually numbered something like English 101 and 102 at most schools, although KSU used 10001 and 10002). I also taught some sections of business writing (20001), a sophomore-level course required for business majors.

The last semester I taught was Fall 1995. By the time I finished with my teaching stint, I was pretty burned out on the experience:  its low pay, lack of appreciation, and dearth of career prospects. Nevertheless, in the time since then, my mind has wandered back to that slice of my life. There are some things I miss about teaching college level courses:  the relative freedom of the daily schedule, the control I had in the classroom, the rare but fantastic “teaching high,” the feeling that I was “making a difference” – at least sometimes.

I’ve also started to think about how I would do things differently now. When I began teaching, I was essentially fresh out of undergraduate school – all I had was a semester of grad school and an inadequate pedagogy class to prepare me. I had no real world (i.e., non-academic) experience to guide me. After I left grad school, I worked for a temporary agency for a couple years, which exposed me to a number of work environments. One of those jobs turned into my first permanent job, in the sales office of a steel processing facility. And finally, I did freelance editing work, which finally led to my current gig as an editor, researcher and writer for a business research firm. As a result of these experiences, I now have a much better idea of what would be truly helpful to my students in the courses I used to teach.

To start with, I want to think about the introduction to English that most college students get:  the dreaded, required English 101 (a.k.a. English I, Eng 10001, etc.). If I were to teach English 101 again, here is what I would do differently:

1. Punctuation, Grammar & Other Sentence Level Errors

While important, I’d let go of the more esoteric points of punctuation and grammar, because in the working world, these things just don’t matter. I’d also find some way to simplify the discussion of sentence types. I’d encourage my students to write in a simple style (i.e., more Hemmingway than Faulkner). Not only is a simpler style easier to master, but it is also more effective in business environment. Note that I am not advocating for my students to produce simplistic texts. Rather, I want them to produce texts that are clear, clean and easy-to-follow.

1. Rhetorical Strategies – Traditional, from English 101 Textbooks

When I started teaching, the fashion was to teach traditional rhetorical strategies (e.g., description, comparison/contrast, instructions, argumentation) one a time. After learning a strategy, students would write an entire essay using just that one strategy. This, of course, is artificial and hard to do. Very rarely does any piece of successful writing use only one strategy. In addition, this approach subverts effective writing technique – as a writer, you pick your strategies to enhance your message, rather than pick a strategy and try find a message to fit within it.

As my teaching career progressed, there was a reaction against this original approach. This new approach asked students to read long, complex essays, and write amorphous, “thinking’ replies, which were supposed to get them in touch with how to think and how to work their way into writing on a topic. This tactic was overwhelming and failed to teach basic structure of any kind. Students ended up frustrated and perplexed, because they couldn’t really understand what kind of texts they were supposed to be producing (neither could I, for that matter).

Were I to teach again, I would strike a middle ground. I’d teach the traditional rhetorical strategies, but rather than ask students to write entire essays based on each, I’d have them practice each strategy via shorter passages (a paragraph or two). Equally important, I’d emphasize the reasons to use each approach, depending on the intended purpose of the passage. I’d also make sure that students understood how to combine strategies. To learn this, students would examine essays (e.g., from newspapers, magazines, business texts, and other accessible sources) to analyze what strategies are being used for what purpose.

1. Rhetorical Strategies – Essay-Wide

Almost all pieces of writing, except for specialized pieces such as instructions, are basically argumentation. In other words, the writer intends to prove the validity of his or her main point. The abilities to recognize the tactics that writers use and to use such tactics themselves are key for students’ success in undergraduate school and beyond. Thus, in a way similar to the exercise in point #2 above, students would examine different media to analyze how writers use various strategies to prove their points. The emphasis here would be on the global approach to the argument in a piece – what is the main point, and how is it supported throughout the piece? I also think it is important for students to be able to practice this skill on a variety of media, including newspaper and magazine articles, advertising (print, TV, Internet) and other sources such as company websites and Internet blogs, among others. Ultimately, students would begin to be able to make use of these strategies in their own writing.

1. Writing in the Working World

Although usually the subject of Business or Technical Writing Courses, I would start to address this topic in English 101. At the very least, I would teach students how to write a resume and cover letter. Other topics might include memos and business letters of various types, as well as reports and executive summaries. In addition, I would cover how writing styles vary in the different academic disciplines, based on what sorts of majors appeared in my classes.

As far as teaching the resume and cover letter, I might create a character for the students to write about, especially since freshman do not often have much work experience. I would provide details about the character’s background (both relevant and not), and the students would use these to write a resume and cover letter(s).

1. Subject Matter of Student Essays

I would encourage students to write about subjects that interest them. At the same time, I want to avoid “confessional” essays, in which students tell me way too much about their personal lives. I think the second teaching trend in point #2 above had the right idea – that is, encouraging students to engage with other texts and ideas. However, students need accessible material, at least to start with. Thus, I would have students engage with the types of texts and media I’ve been talking about so far. I might also try to pique students’ interest by having them write reviews of CDs, books, TV shows and concerts.

1. Performance and Evaluation of Research, especially on the Internet

While this is usually the main subject for English 102, I think students need an introduction to the performance and evaluation of research in 101. It is crucial to teach students to evaluate what they find – especially on the Internet – so that they can assess is validity and usefulness. Furthermore, an introduction to research would dovetail nicely with an extended discussion of plagiarism.

Wal-Mart and Me

I have a number of friends who won’t shop at Wal-Mart. They boycott the retail behemoth because they don’t like its business practices. Particular issues include the way Wal-Mart treats its suppliers, competitors, and employees; the negative effect Wal-Mart has on local communities and retailers; the company’s stance on selling emergency birth control pills and on insurance coverage of birth control pills for its employees; and the company’s effect on world trade and globalization.

While I find these issues troubling, I have to admit that I shop at Wal-Mart anyway. I feel guilty doing it, but I still go to Wal-Mart to buy my personal care items, as well as socks, underwear, and t-shirts. I’ve even purchased small electronics there, such as a CD player and an MP3 player. Some items I won’t buy at Wal-Mart. I won’t buy small appliances there because I think the company stocks inferior products. I won’t buy CDs at Wal-Mart because the company does not carry albums with the RIAA's Parental Advisory Label.

The reason I shop at Wal-Mart is that it offers lower prices on many items. Does this mean I’m putting saving a few bucks ahead of my ideals? I guess so, but it really isn’t that simple. I made a lot of poor financial decisions when I was younger, and I am literally paying for them now. My debts have a huge influence on my life, and I’m trying to pay them off so I can eliminate that pressure. I try to save money where I can to help me get out from under that mountain.

Aside from my own personal financial pressures, I am also not convinced that Wal-Mart’s competitors are significantly better in terms of corporate behavior. I know one person who will not shop at Wal-Mart, but instead shops at Target. Target, however, engages in many of the same practices that Wal-Mart does. The CNN/Money article “Just Call It ‘Teflon’ Target” points out several of these practices:

• Both chains are non-union establishments.


• Both use a big box store format that some criticize as being eyesores.


• Both are expanding into more urban neighborhoods.


• Both have similar pay and health benefit policies.

In addition, Target allows employees to refuse to dispense medication based on religious beliefs. For example:

A 26-year-old Missouri woman was refused emergency contraception when she handed her prescription to a pharmacist at a Target store in Fenton, MO, on September 30, 2005. The woman was told by the pharmacist, “I won’t fill it. It’s my right not to fill it.” She was told that she could go to a local Walgreen’s instead. (see “Target Corporation” article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Then there are my observations based on my mom’s retail experience. My mom worked for several years for Kohl’s, in the jewelry department, and I can tell you, her pay and working conditions were far from ideal. In fact, when she queried a Wal-Mart employee with a similar position, she found that Wal-Mart actually paid more (although it still wasn’t a great wage). In fact, I don’t know anyone who has ever worked retail who was pleased with their wages or working conditions.

So why not shop at local retailers? I used to shop at a local chain – Marc’s – for the types of items I now buy at Wal-Mart. I stopped because I couldn’t stand the atmosphere: Marc’s stores are dirty and do not consistently stock the items I want to buy. Furthermore, the chain still uses older cash registers, on which the cashier must manually enter the price. Not only does this make check out take a long time, but it also allows mistakes to happen frequently. Plus, Marc’s takes only cash or checks, which is inconvenient for me.

Nevertheless, I’m still left wondering what to do about the issues that concern me. Am I just making up excuses for myself? How am I supposed to manage my own financial situation and live up to my ideals? Does it really matter if I boycott this retailer or that one? Can I make a difference? I don’t know.