completely irrelevant...

yesterday we discussed “the death of the author”...

Barthes suggests that we should not take we know about the author and then try and find connections within the text... this is considered a flawed approach and by doing so it creates limitations.. most often texts are a lot more than just what the author is about... and sometimes it actually has nothing to do with the author at all... Barthes says to consider the author dead, and what’s left is language itself...

i found this to be an interesting argument considering i am currently learning the many ways to connect the author within his/hers texts in another one of my English courses. over the past 3 weeks i have been given all the important details of the authors life and from here have been told to connect them to the text. however, this task seemed difficult at times as i found myself struggling to find any connection at all. Bathes texts offers me an answer as to why i this may be happening..

this then makes me question... is the information that is being connected to the authors life always accurate? ... have people taken false information about the author to make this connection more clear?... how do we know what is true and what is not?... do we just assume because we are told it does?... to avoid such question the answer seems simple to me.... consider the author dead..


as for my other English class... i’ll continue to make such connections as asked... even though i feel it is completely irrelevant...

red lumberjack jackets

Dr. Pound used the example of a red lumberjack jacket in order to describe structuralism. Since this discussion which happened a little over a week and a half ago I have seen 28 people wearing red lumberjack jackets...Coincidence or not? I found this to be very weird and even mentioned it to a friend in the class, who too had seen an abnormal amount of red lumberjack jackets since that discussion.
every time i see one the first thing that comes to my mind is how it signifies on the basis of a difference, and then i find myself trying to find its meaning in a larger set of conventions. With this constantly running through my head (considering i see least one or two a day) it is helping me better understand and remember the idea of structuralism...a very helpful study tool at the moment...

scribbling

"how do you read a difficult text?"

throughout my education many teachers have thrown out their own ideas, tips, and fun ways to "crack the codes" found within literature. however, with all these different possibilities i found myself trying to combine them all into one... as you could imagine... this did not exactly work. i now seemed to have the whole text highlighted in the all the possible colours, pictures where drawn all over the page, dictionary definitions filled the back...etc. with this i found myself more frustrated then ever... while discussing peoples different methods yesterday in class i once again felt over whelmed with all the ideas and possibilities.

i often get frustrated when i don't understand a text, even if it is only the first time i read it . therefore in order to avoid this, i avoid the words, phrases, sentences that i simply don't understand. i actually scribble them out on the paper (with a pencil of course) until they are not visible. i felt this idea of my own to be very helpful because...

a) for some reason it helps gets rid of any frustration i may already have
b) the words are no longer visible, therefore there is no distraction (potential to look back at the words, phrases, sentences that would have caused me frustration)
c) i have had good laughs and entertainment erasing the pencil marks the discovering what i did not understand
- sometimes by the end of reading i have already discovered the meaning
- sometimes the word was so bluntly obvious and i just had read it wrong

once i have finished reading the text, there is normally a sense of success, or complete confusion. if it is a sense of success, then i typically move on and continue the assignment. however, if it is complete confusion, this is where i take the time and slowly but surely erase the pencil marks to discover the words that i once tried to avoid. from here, i typically use the many dictionary sites found in my "favorites list", and discover a meaning.

does anyone else use this method by chance?

an exciting interruption in 2903!

"we are going to have a interruption in class today".....

after Dr. Pound informed us of this i couldn't help but try and figure out what this interruption was going to be. the first thing that honestly came to mind was that there was going to be a fire drill or something.. ? (bringing be back to the good old high school days where they kept us outside freezing, i always seemed to complain) ... but little did i know in a short amount of time 4 people dressed in orange jump suits would come through the door with a mega phone, tool box, pylons, books, pieces of paper, and a stop sign with RANDOM ACTS OF POETRY on one side. i have to admit i was kind of startled at first and was completely clueless as to what was going on! however, as the only female of the bunch (i wish i could recall her name) explained their purpose, i became very intrigued. i thought this idea of performing random acts of poetry was such a creative, fantastic, fun, exciting, interesting, unique and educational idea that i had never heard before nor would i have ever thought of. they most definitly caught my attention, and i thoroughly enjoyed the poems that were read. I couldn't help but continue my day talking about this exciting interruption in 2903...

ROMDOM ACTS OF POETRY= pure brilliance

thanks Dr. Pound

The Margins Of My Notes Are Filled With...

over the past week i have been conducting a little experiment of my own. during class i have been writing down at COMPLETE RANDOM any ideas, thoughts, opinions, quotes, reactions and single words that have come to mind during our discussions. while i looked over my notes this morning in my 8:30am class (with a coffee in hand for survival) i realized that i had a lot of little random things written down. the margins of my notes looked a little something like this....

what is my method/strategy do i use when interpreting? (figure this out vanessa, this could be interesting) interpretation is comes naturally to me... i assume this is the same for everyone? maybe not? creating.. always valued?
interpretation :) what "training" do i have? :):):):) over analyzing = danger (sometimes)
do i interpret to much? exciting!!!

however another one looked like this....

my brain hurts.. winning an argument.. (i can't always do this..) i am confused.
homo seriosus or homo rehetoricus? (look over this again) acting + stage = :)(L) this is taking me long to figure out... :S

(there were a couple of pictures i had come up with as well..)

as you can see..things are kinda all over the place. however, after looking over the randomness/ emotions i had written down, this allowed to become aware of the SPECIFIC interpretations, questions, thoughts and ideas that i either did or did not understand from class. with these specifics i can now focus on what i need to go over and or refer to the :) for reassurance. it was fun to look back over my notes and see what i had come up with in class. i actually "laughed out loud" at a few things a had written on another page.. it had brought back a few hysterical memories, and then some other things that just made absolutely no sense but i had to have written it down for some reason....right?

this is something that i am going to continue and ill be sure to keep you posted... try it out...maybe this is something that will work for you?.. be sure to let me know:)

Anecdote of the Jar...here i come..