The color of our skin may be different, but the blood that runs through our veins is the same.

I was sitting in my sorority chapter meeting Monday morning and we had a guest speaker. A girl named Paula came to tell us about a campaign called Falling Whistles and that she was trying to get at least 1000 people to come watch the founder of this campaign speak on Wednesday evening. I’ve always ha a soft spot for children and so I got excited to go learn more about this campaign. When the founder, Sean, walked out on stage Wednesday evening and started speaking, I gained something I didn’t expect. Sean is a great public speaker. He left things open for discussion the whole way through and made an enormous effort to get to know the audience. He asked us what was important to us. Then he told us that one thing he loves is story telling. He loves story telling because it is the one great connector between all people. By sharing stories, you’re able to learn of commonalities that you never would have known existed. He then proceeded to tell us his story of how he came to build the falling whistles campaign. His story is one that I will never forget. He showed us pictures that will remain sketched into my mind, and every time I see a child suffering I will think of his story. When he spoke, you could almost literally see his passion radiating. When you looked at his face you could see the tragedies he has learned etched into eyes and his smile. Sean works to eradicate the deadliest war that not only my generation but also so many generations before mine have ever seen. Yet, we aren’t actually seeing anything. We are too busy on our laptops and cell phones to take the time to realize that our own greediness and those devices that we depend upon so desperately are causing the deaths of children too small to carry a gun and the raping of women in the Congo. Sean works for a better world. Sean is the reason I still have hope in the future of humanity.

Something Special

I have read a lot of books in my 19 years. I’d even dare to say more than a lot of my fellow classmates. I took AP Literature my senior year of high school and it was one of my favorite classes without a doubt. But there are some books that I just don’t enjoy reading. Then there are the books that will stick with me forever. There are some books that taught me a lesson or opened my eyes to a part of life that I never valued or even knew existed before. Jeanette Walls’ book The Glass Castle was one of those special books for me. Some books are special because they make me work hard to read and comprehend, like Shakespeare, but this was actually quite an easy read. I read this book for the first time my sophomore year of high school, but when I read it again as the freshman reader, I realized how unable I was to appreciate it the first time around. Being just a couple years older, I was able to comprehend the situations in the book, and I was even able to relate to and understand some of the hard relationships Jeanette grew up with. Although I’ve never had to live out of a car or in a house with a collapsing roof, I felt that Jeanette made her story into one that everyone can relate to in some aspect. She made her story into one of hope springing from heartbreak, the acceptance of everyone no matter what their background or past, and the acceptance of your own past and struggles. I learned a few things from this and I was delighted when she came to speak and I learned that her story has inspired plenty of others as well, if not more. The Joshua Tree in particular is a symbol that has continued to stick with me.

"I'll swallow your soul, without gagging at all."

These past couple of weeks I have been working on Ball State Department of Theatre and Dance’s current musical, Evil Dead: The Musical. I worked wardrobe, which meant I had to be backstage for all of the performances, although it is custom before opening to hold something called “crew view.” This is just when the cast puts on a special performance of the whole show just for the crew because we wouldn’t get to see the show we’re working so hard for otherwise. This crew view was particularly rough because costumes weren’t finished and the set didn’t have all the necessary pieces in place quite yet, which meant that at some parts we had to use our imaginations. But overall, it was still a great show. This musical is a spoof off the original movies, which I have never seen so I had no idea what to expect. Honestly, I didn’t even know it was supposed to be funny until after it started. After the first song was finished though, it was clear that this show was meant to be one in which the audience could just come and enjoy a nice evening filled with laughs. It was not a show meant to make the audience think or to try and change the audience’s opinion on a topic, as the majority of theatre is meant for, ever since the morality plays of Oedipus and Everyman. Personally, I’m not a fan of farce, but Evil Dead was put together quite well and the mixture of sexual puns, stupid puns, and an excess of fake, sticky blood made from corn syrup was just enough to actually elicit quite a few laughs from me. It didn’t hurt that the girl playing the head demon was wearing footy pajamas and is maybe one of the most talented musical theatre actresses the department of theatre has in this graduating class. Maybe I didn’t leave this show a little smarter or a little more open-minded, but I had a damn good night and I truly appreciated hearing the laughter of the audience every night as I sat backstage.

Creating an Effective Presentation

Chapter 9 of Envision, “Delivering Presentations,” was a particularly interesting chapter for me. I really enjoy giving presentations in class more than I enjoy writing a paper. I found quite a few things helpful in this chapter. The first section that interested me was Aristotle’s branches of oratory. A lot of things Aristotle says interests me. The three branches include judicial/forensic: defending or accusing and dealing with the past and what’s right or wrong, deliberative/legislative: politics and what might happen in the future and what may be beneficial or harmful, and epideictic/ceremonial: dealing with the present and praising or blaming. Of the three, I find judicial least interesting and epideictic most interesting. Epideictic seems to be more personal in nature. The next section I found interesting was the section in which the book compared Steve Jobs and Bono, mostly because they are two of my top 5 idols. The section I found most helpful and relatable was “Choosing Methods of Delivery.” It talks all about exactly how to deliver a presentation in the most effective way. I enjoyed this section because it talks about the fun part of a presentation. It reviewed some fundamental elements of delivery such as stance/posture, pacing, gesture, visuals, and style. It also talked about the importance of memory and delivery in helping, not hindering, your presentation. The visual organization called “architectural mnemonic technique” was brought up. I had never heard this phrase before. The book defines it as “a method in which you associate a phrase to a room or a part of a house so that as you look around during your presentation you receive visual clues to trigger your memory.” This is something I do automatically and I had no idea it had a name! I thought it was a quirky thing I just did to help myself.

FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, Comic Strip, and Live Performance! But no Plays?

Chapter seven of Envision explained how to properly document sources in order to avoid plagiarism, whether intentional or not. It began with discussing why it is important to give credit where credit is due. One of the parts I found most interesting was when it talked about how, in ancient times, students would copy a speech word by word before they analyzed it. This was in order to further study the organization, rhythm, and other such factors of the writing. This is what helped them become better writers themselves and help the world of literature evolve. The other section I found particularly helpful was the section about avoiding unintentional plagiarism. This, I feel like, is probably the number one issue that student have. Ho do we know if we are plagiarizing? The two practices they gave to help are to “Always keep in mind that you are contributing to a conversation with other writers” and to “Develop effective ways of note taking while reading through your sources.” The first put into perspective how thinking of writing as either responding to another’s works or quoting them in order to include them in the dialogue. The second gave me the idea of, when copying a quite, taking note of how I might use that quote. The section of the chapter that I found myself a little frustrated with was when it went through almost every single way to document almost every single type of source out there… except for how to document lines from a play. It even had visual sources and facebook and twitter. But, because I am writing a textual analysis of a play for a different class right now, I referred to the book for help on how to cite lines from a play, but there was nothing to help me. Although, it did go into deep detail that will probably help me on different projects. But I was a little disappointed.

Producing a Film Is the Same as Writing an Argumentative Essay... I could buy it.

Chapter six was all about organizing and writing research arguments, and there were a few parts of the chapter that I found particularly interesting. For one, the very beginning of the chapter draws a parallel between the process of writing and the process of film production. Because I am a performer, I of course enjoy visual entertainment more than written entertainment. That is why this parallel caught my interest. It said that these two processes are similar in that they both “have many small steps that support a grounding vision or main idea, have a carefully planned structure, and involve rigorous editing.” These are all very true. It also states that just as it takes plenty of time to edit, cut, and rearrange parts of a film, it also tales time for all of these aspects before coming to a completed, polished paper. The book continues to use this comparison throughout the rest of this chapter.

Another section of chapter six that I found interesting was the section that talked about the role you, as the writer, and your voice plays in your paper. It provided examples from various movies in which the director inserted his own arguments into the plot. One example was Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet. The book makes the argument that this version was more of Zeffirelli’s interpretation of the story, instead of Shakespeare’s because he cast the actors playing Hamlet and his mother so close in age. This, according to the text, was to put emphasis on the plot of incest between Hamlet and his mother. Although, I feel it could be argued that Mel Gibson probably got the role because he is famous, and it had nothing at all to do with his age. Glenn Close, who was cast as Hamlet’s mother, was cast because Zeffirelli had an image of Gertrude as a woman with the mind and manner of a teenager, a very selfish, sort of naïve woman. That may be why he chose a younger actress for the role.

So, this is clearly an argument of the author of Envision. It was a very well put argument, but an argument nonetheless. It may be a bit contradictory that they posed their own hidden argument in the chapter about arguments. Though overall, the parallel drawn in this chapter between film and writing was very useful for me.

Brainstorming Topics Visually

In chapter 4: Planning and Proposing research Arguments, the one section that I found most useful was “Bringing Your Topics Into Focus: Brainstorming Topics Visually” on page 111. I liked how the whole chapter used visual aids and posters because I like to look at them, and because I’m a very visual learner. This particular section was all about the visual process of writing. It also emphasized finding the relationships between your ideas. I feel that finding these relationships is very useful because it helps when writing transitions, which is one thing I sometimes struggle with when writing research papers. Another issue I sometimes get caught up in when writing a research paper is how to organize my thoughts and ideas when I have so many of them. Further, how to keep from generalizing my topics and focusing or narrowing into the most important points. This section also directly addresses that issue by proving how making webs/clusters/maps helps to put ideas in the appropriate sections or groups, and how new information, and even a solid thesis, can form from answering each question. This section also helps solve one of the most difficult issues when assigned a research assignment: Where do I start and what do I talk about (especially if the topic at hand is very broad or there is a lot of information out there on it). I learned from this section that webbing your ideas help you to find answers to these questions. When finding answers to smaller questions, you may end up stumbling across information that you never knew existed and that radically interests you.

Just a Woman With a Really Weird Childhood...

As I read The Glass Castle this summer, I would often think of the woman Jeanette Walls has become today and the child she was growing up. They seemed to me, polar opposites. How could a woman with such an odd childhood and such eccentric parents grow up to be so NORMAL with a life many people dream of? This is the question I hoped to get answered when I went to watch her speak yesterday at Emens.

The audience was full of BSU freshmen, many of which didn’t even read the book, but also many who did and were probably just as anxious as me to see Jeanette. The speakers who introduced her said lots of nice and inspiring and boring things about how anyone has the ability to become an award winning author and blah blah… they didn’t have much impact on me other than me critiquing their public speaking skills, which weren’t bad. But it was when Jeanette walked out on stage that the audience really started paying attention. Of course, I was skeptical of her at first (it’s in my nature). I was looking for signs of acting and it even crossed my mind that maybe her story wasn’t even true. I kept thinking of the book A Million Little Pieces, and how the author turned out to be half fraud. But I couldn’t find anything within Jeanette’s intentions that wasn’t nervous and sincere, and very endearing.

Jeanette’s speech was particularly enjoyable to listen to because she related to the audience on many different levels. She made jokes about herself and her family, referenced stories from her book and stories of people whose lives her book has touched, and she never stopped smiling. She didn’t seem to be reciting a speech she had written and memorized, but rather her speech seemed free flowing and personal. That’s what made my skepticism go away. You could tell every time she told a story that it was personal and true.

Seeing Jeanette Walls speak as an experience I am glad to have been a part of because she emphasized an idea that I always try to keep a part of my own life, that everyone is good and has redeeming qualities. She is proof that someone can actually become successful without losing their sense of modesty and humility in a way that doesn’t have to bring them down. If they let it, it can actually strengthen them and make for a very interesting and fulfilling life.

One of the first things Jeanette said when she came out on stage was one that really seemed to stick with me for whatever reason. She said something along the lines of, “I’m not celebrity or a hero, I’m just a woman with a really weird childhood…”