Back?

It's been nearly three years since I published a blog post, and in those three years nearly every part of my life has changed. When I think about the person that wrote blog posts here in 2016 and before, it really feels like a completely different person.

I'd love to get back into blogging again. It's a great way to encapsulate how I felt and what I was thinking about at a particular point in time, and a good way to update family and friends about what I'm up to.

Right now, I simply don't have the time or energy to get back into blogging though. I'm currently 2 months away from graduating with my BA in English. I currently have four different jobs, and between them work somewhere between 35 and 45 hours any given week. I'm looking for new apartments to move into and need to start looking for a new car soon as well. There's a lot going on.

My hope is that during the summer, once I've finished school and things begin to calm down a little, I will have time to write about some of the things I've done over the last 3 years. I recently spent 3 weeks in West Africa, and I have lots of thoughts and stories to share about that experience, when I have the time.

I'll be back soon (I hope)!

Homeschooling: A Retrospective {Part 2: Homeschooling and Me}

In Part 1, I wrote about how I ended up being homeschooled, and the homeschool philosophy we followed. This post will be more personal, and focus on how I feel like I was impacted by being homeschooled, both positively and negatively.

Ups and Downs 

This is challenging for me to write, because when I think of homeschooling, I think of pretty much everything that happened in my childhood. When school happens at the kitchen table, and the lines between fieldtrips and family activities blur, and when your classmates are your siblings and your teacher is your mom, it's hard to say what exactly is "school."

The reason this is important is that I have a lot of somewhat negative feelings about homeschooling that aren't really about homeschooling. They're really a negative reaction to other things happening in my life at that time, but the two get very blurred. Up through 6th grade, homeschooling was wonderful. I loved it, I thrived in it.

Seventh grade and on are a whole different story. At the end of 6th grade (when I was 11, turning 12), my parents got divorced and we moved from my childhood home. This sparked a series of events that went on for years, and effected me greatly. My anxiety really flared up around this time, and I was very intensely depressed from that point until I was about 16.

This is where I become very conflicted about homeschooling. I believe that educationally, I had a better experience than I would have in public school. However, to be entirely honest, I didn't really do much school at all for several years. I read a lot, and I kept up with some things okay, but I did the bare minimum (honestly, less that that even) to convince my mom that things were going okay, and put no real effort into anything. 8th-10th grades were a total wash, and I did very little actual school work.

I struggled very much during this time. My anxiety was debilitating, and my depression meant that I had little motivation for anything. There isn't one easy thing or person to blame for this. While it is easy to want to place blame on someone else, it was a conglomeration of many circumstances and situations that led to me being in the situation I was.

There are ways in which I know I would have been happier and more successful had I been in public school during those years. And it was considered - I almost went to school for 9th grade, but eventually decided not to. I'm conflicted about that decision now. In a lot of ways I am glad I didn't go to school, because my friends and support I have in the homeschooling community mean so much to me.

Educationally, I didn't suffer. When I started Running Start in 11th grade, I went into my classes without an issue and have done well my whole two years here. I finished my time at Whatcom Community College with a 3.9 GPA, something I am very proud of.

But, and I don't want this to sound like I'm dissing on homeschooling here, I don't think that my homeschool background had much of an impact, positive or negative, on how I did in college classes. The factors that decided that were, I believe, my personal love of learning and my love of reading, both of which are the aspects of my personality that I strongly believe are the deciding factor in my academic success.

I am glad I was homeschooled, because I would be a very different person were I not homeschooled. At the same time, I am not sure if I would want to homeschool children I may have someday. For me, that decision would depend on the social situation we had as a family, the personality of the child, and many other factors. I can't say that I would absolutely homeschool my children, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

Homeschooling: A Retrospective {Part 1}

The summer when I was seven, my parents decided to pull me out of school. I didn't go back to Geneva Elementary for second grade, and instead I stayed home with my dad and my little sister, who was in a local Waldorf preschool at the time. This move to homeschooling completely changed my life. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have absolutely no idea who I would be today if I hadn't been homeschooled.

The Early Years

My mom was skeptical about homeschooling, and for good reason. She worked full time, and she was worried about having the time and energy to make it work. But she started researching got excited, and found a way to make it work. For most of my homeschooling career, we did school every evening after dinner. She would leave "homework" to be done during the day while she was at work (things like spelling, grammar, math), and in the evenings we would work on things like History and Science. 

Philosophy 

My mom, in her research, discovered the classical method of homeschooling. We became disciples of Susan Wise Bauer, and her book, The Well Trained Mind. If you're not familiar with the classical method, it's a system of education based on cycles and repetition. 

It has three main stages, the Grammar stage (1st-4th grades), the Logic stage (5th-8th) and the Rhetoric stage (9th-12th). The first years are focused on grammar and learning the mechanics of the world. The Logic stage moves more into analysis and discovering the "why." High school is about moving beyond the textbook and communicating your own thoughts.

In the classical method, all of education is spun around the spine of history and literature. Both history and science are studied in a 4 year cycle: Biology and Ancient history in 1st grade, Earth Science and the Middle Ages in 2nd, Chemistry and Early Modern history in 3rd, and Physics and Modern history in 4th. Then the cycle repeats for the Logic stage and again for the Rhetoric stage. 

In the first stage, the grammar stage, the focus is on learning about the world. In history, most of the time is spent reading stories and doing activities to introduce the child to history and the world, in chronological order. There is a strong focus on "living books," in other words - not textbooks. Kids are being exposed to literature and history at an age appropriate level. Science is similar. A lot of time is spent exposing the child to scientific concepts through reading books and doing simple experiments. 

The classical method also has a strong focus on writing and communicating, and this begins early. Formal grammar is studied from 1st grade on. Studying Latin is another common practice, and it also beings early, often in second or third grade. 

In the Logic stage, there is a move toward more typical "textbook" learning and towards learning the details. A study of formal logic often happens in this period to support this transition. The student reads classic historical fiction related to the time period they are studying, and some literature from the time period when appropriate. The study of science loops back again as well, just more in depth this time.

The Rhetoric stage is the culmination of the prior two. The student has a strong understanding of history already, and now the primary focus is reading literature and primary sources from the time period, in historical order. The student will read and write in depth about history. The focus now is on joining the conversation by using their strengthening writing skills to add their own thoughts to the academic discussion.

Reality

While this is the way you hope and want homeschooling to go, the reality rarely matches the expectation. That was certainly true in the case of my family. Homeschooling has been quite a journey for us, and it never quite reached the potential the classical method extolled.

Real life gets in the way, and in my family, real life made homeschooling very difficult at times. Living in a single parent household, with a parent who worked full time AND tried to homeschool us was a challenge for everybody. It was a struggle, and there were a lot of ups and downs to the way things ultimately went.

In the end, I read a LOT, I wrote a good deal, and I got a lot of real life experience that has proved invaluable to me as I move into the "real world."

In part two, I'll talk more about how my experiences homeschooling effected me.

Do I Have the Right to Write this Blogpost?

The final session I attended at the Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 was called An Author's Bill of Rights by Stephanie Kallos.

The session began with a question:

Do you have the right to write about ______? What does a writer have the right to do? Do you have the right to write about a person or event or group you are not part of or did not experience?

She spoke about how writers are so often hesitant to write about things/people/events that they don't have personal identification or experience with. For example, does she, a middle aged white woman from the midwest with no immediate connection to the Jewish community, have a right to write about the Holocaust? Or to write about a child with autism? Or a transgender person?

To me, this is a super interesting question, and one that I do think the writing community needs to be having a conversation about. But I have very mixed and often negative feelings about the way the topic was handled in this session.

First, let's start with the positive. At the core, the message was to not be afraid to write what you have not directly experienced. In other words, scrap "Write what you know." I do think that this is valuable advice. It's easy to limit yourself from fear, but there is a value in overcoming that feeling and learning through writing.

However, this was not where she stopped. To set this up, you need an image of the room we were sitting in. The conference was predominantly while, middle to upper class people in their 50's. While there were younger people, they were in a minority, and there were very few under 35. The lack of people of color was distictly notable. So, we have a primarily homogenous and privladged group of people listening to this talk.

Now, here is the problem.

She essentially was telling this group of people that it is okay to write about cultures they are not part of and people they don't know and experiences they haven't had. If she had not been a woman of color, or in some other way not part of the privlidged majority, this would have felt very different. But the way she was saying this felt very wrong. She was saying "Don't let anyone stop you!  You always have the right to write about anything!"

What she was missing was an element of respect. I agree that it is not only permissable but to some extent important to write about cultures you aren't part of. With the permission of the members of the group you're writing about. Can I, a white middle class 18 year old girl from Bellingham, WA write about what it is like to be a black transgender woman in Chicago? Maybe. But not without a shit ton of research and the blessing of members of those communities. I'm not telling my story, I'm telling their story. And if they don't like it, or if they want me to change it, or if they tell me to stop altogether, it is my responsibility to listen and respect their wishes. No matter what.

I am even questioning my own right to write this blog post. I am not part of nearly any minority groups. I am coming from a place of privlage. I have a friend and co-worker who I attended this conference with who I feel is in some ways more qualified and able to write about this topic than I am. And I certainly hope that he adds his voice to this discussion. But I also feel that it is also my right to give my thoughts and to share my concerns. I'm not writing this as the end all, be all of this discussion. I'm writing this with the hope of entering a conversation that I feel like I should perhaps be on the fringes of. This is my way of showing my support but also handing this topic over to those more qualified or more involved.

Yes. We as writers should not limit ourselves based on our direct life experience. I completely agree with this. We should use writing as a tool to learn more about the world and to educate others about what we have learned. But if we take on this undertaking, we take with it a huge amount of responsibility. It is our responsibility to do as much research as we possibly can. It is our responsibility to be as accurate as we know how to be. It is our responibility to understand that if we don't feel like we can portray things accurately, it is time to set that project aside. It is our responsibility to seek out and respect the perspectives of the people we are writing about. It is our responsibility, first and foremost, to respect their wishes and thoughts. If I am writing about the queer community and a member of that community tells me my writing makes them uncomfortable and asks me to stop, it is my responsibility to stop. If they ask me to make changes, it is my responsibility to make changes. I have the right to ask, but I do not have the right to insist. If I am asked to stop, it is my responsibility as a writer and as a human being to stop. 

Don't be afraid to write. But use common sense and compassion, and know how you fit into the conversation you are joining.

That is your responsibility, not your right.

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 2)

Here is my summary of Day 2 of the conference, a few days late. This post is only going to cover the first half of the day, as the final session I attended deserves a post all of its own.

The first session I went to for the day was called The Tao of Daily Writing by Susan Colleen Brown. The first part of the session involved making realistic goals. How long can you realistically write each day? How many days a week can you realistically do that? And also setting some intention for your writing. For me, I came up with the realistic goal of writing 30-45 minutes a day, 6 days a week. This is a goal I would like to exceed, but I know that this is a manageable starting place.

The rest of the session (the other 40 minutes of it) were taken up by introductions. Every person there introduced themselves, their work, and how they fit writing into their day. I was a bit disappointed by this. The first part of the session seemed like it was going in a useful direction, but I wished the introductions part hadn't taken up the entire remainder of the time.

The second session of the day was a panel entitled Hitting the Right Note: A Conversation on Creating Your Character's Voice. The authors on the panel were: David Laskin, Sam Ligon, and Stephanie Kallos.

This panel ended up being a bit all over the place, so I thought I'd just list some of the quotes and pieces of advice I jotted down, organized by who said them.

David Laskin:

"Every piece has it's own voice and rhythm, they don't have to be the same."

Journaling and freewriting in the 2nd person can help you seperate yourself from your usual writing ruts, and keep creativity high.

Writing in the 1st person and the rewriting everything into 3rd (or the other way around) can be helpful as well.

"Imprint a character you're having trouble with onto a real person you know. What would that person do or say in a given situation?"

"Any day writing in a productive day, no matter what you write."

Sam Ligon:

"Prose is musical - the voice is the song"

Your first run is instict, get into the song and voice - the craft comes later. If you can't hear it, you can't write it.

"Short and long sentences mixed creates tension."

"Write for a smart reader. Assume they are as intelligent or more intelligent than you."

Stephanie Kallos:

"Give us long thoughts with a strong, present conclusion."

To spark creativity, make lists.

After this, I went to one more session. I had to leave the conference early, and so missed the last two break out periods. But the last session I went to deserves a much longer form thought that I can add to this post. To continue reading about that, click here.

Chuckanut Writer's Conference 2016 {Day 1}

This year, I have had the amazing opportunity to attend the Chuckanut Writer's Conference, which is happening today and tomorrow here in Bellingham. 

Here is a quick recap of the events of today, and the sessions I went to:

First off was the keynote: The Necessary Ingredients: Intimacy and Risk by author Claire Dederer.

She talked about some of the risks we take when we write: we risk being bad, we risk being good, we risk offending people, we risk a lot of things. The main take away for me was this. To be a writer is to take risks. You can't not take risks. The important thing is how to handle those fears and concerns and how you shape them to your advantage. You are going to offend people, but likely not those you were worried about. You're going to be bad, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from it and make your next thing better. 

For the first breakout session, I went to Try Essays by David Laskin.

This was my favorite session of the day. He began by trying to define the essay. It quickly became clear that that is a very hard thing to do. Essays can be memoir, report, science based, travel stories, opinion, or really basically anything. What I was left with was this: An essay begins with a question and takes you on a journey to new places, facts, or ideas that you didn't know or hadn't thought about before. Most importantly, the thing that separates an essay from a new report is voice. An essay should always let you show through and let your voice be know. Most of the rest of his talk focused on the mechanics of selling essays.

 Tips: Write for an audience that you assume will be easily distracted and bored. You don't have much space, every word counts. You can have a topic and a thesis and they don't have to be the same thing. Pitch the topic, but write the thesis.

He also gave some suggestions of essays to read including:

"Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me" by Kate Bowler from The New York Times

"O-Rings" by Sarah Stewart Johnson from The Best American Science and Nature Journal 

"The Siege of Miami" by Elizabeth Kohlbert from The New Yorker

Next was the all conference session, My Secret Weapon: Or How to Cheat the Devil by Erik Larson. 

He mostly talked about his own path to becoming a successful writer, and gave some tips. Some useful things I got from this talk were:

-Physically cut up your writing and put it back together. I actually already do this, and I think it is incredibly valuable for finding a good flow in your writing.

-Quit when you're ahead: Don't binge write. Stop in the middle of a paragraph so that you have momentum the next day.

-Set guidelines with the people you let read your work. Make sure you let them know what kind of feedback you want and how you want it. This will keep feeling from being hurt.

Finally, the second breakout session, How to Interview Anyone by Bharti Kirchner 

There was so much good advice in this session. a few highlights:

-Before an interview, do pre-research so you can make sure to ask valuable and intelligent questions, and make a list of questions before you go in, to save time and to make sure you stay on track. 

-During an interview, be sure to ask open ended questions, and be careful to only ask one question at a time. Avoid "why" questions that might sound accusing. Avoid leading language, and try to speak and present yourself neutrally to ensure you don't bias your interviewee. 

-After the interview, immediately jot down thought and feelings about it: What went well? What do you wish you had asked that you didn't? What immediately struck you as useful/important? Is this someone you might want to contact again?

Those were the sessions I went to today. I'm looking forward to going back again tomorrow! 

April 16th

Today is April 16th. It's the day of the semi-colon project, a day to be aware of our struggles, and commit ourselves to fighting on.

For me, it also represents a day of much personal importance. On April 16, 2010, my family moved out of my childhood home. That day was very painful for me, and later on, I labeled it as the day that "everything changed." From that point on, my parent's divorce led to more life changes, and my relationships with my parents changed drastically. My relationship with my father became a great source of pain and worry for me. I entered a time in my life where I was extremely depressed. For a period of two or three years, my grades in school dropped, my interest in social activities and other things I used to enjoy drastically diminished, and I spent a lot of time very anxious and very depressed, with no interest in involving myself with treatment of any kind.

Over time, this has gotten better, and right now my mental health is the best it's been since 2010. There are a lot of reasons for this, but among them: my relationship with my dad has improved greatly over the years, I have a large group of close friends I see regularly, I feel good about my plans for the future, I am in a stable and healthy romantic relationship, and I have been taking an antidepressant.

Throughout all this time, I have always held April 16th as kind of a day of mourning. It marked the anniversary not of the day that things started going downhill (that was several months prior), but it marked the point of no return. It's kind of a symbolic date more than anything. I decided, back in 2010, that it wasn't worthwhile focusing on the past. What's done is done. So I decided that the only day that I would allow myself to truly mope and be sad and feel sorry for myself, and cry about the past, was April 16th.

And as the years have gone by, it has still been a day, in a way, of mourning for the past, and recognition of the intense personal struggles I went through in the years following.

Today is April 16th. And I didn't even realize it until this evening. I spent the day with people I love, and I came home thinking that this was the happiest I could remember being in a very long time. I spent the day relaxing, free from worry, laughing, eating, being close to people I care about, and having a wonderful time. It wasn't until I got home that I even remembered what day it is.

To me, this really symbolizes the transformation my life has gone through over the past year or so. A day that would have been a day of sadness and melancholy a year or two ago was one of the best days I can remember having in years. I certainly don't want to forget my past or the struggles I've had, but life is moving forward. And it's wonderful.