Sarah Allen

Eng 319

11 November 2008

Statistics

“If one of you want to, you can sit with me,” I said to the girls sitting in the seat behind me.  The bus was cramped and the girls behind me were sitting three to a seat.  Everyone on the bus had a partner, except me.  The girls looked at me for a while and mumbled phrases like “Oh, it’s ok” and “We don’t want to bother you.”  They were trying to be nice about it but failed.  I had known these girls for over six years and it killed me to see them act this way, like I was some disease that couldn’t be in a ten-foot radius.  “Ok, just thought I would ask” I managed to squeak out while holding back the tears.  I sat forward in my seat for the whole ride, looking out the window, and listening to my friends behind me giggle and talk about boy issues.  Not once did they talk to me till we reached the ball field and even then they would just ask me questions like “Have you seen my glove?” or “Are you hitting next?”

            I played an ok game that day despite my friends and the fact that my parents didn’t come watch.  It seemed there was no way of escaping what happened.  I would go to school and walk the halls alone, except for the rare occurrences when someone who didn’t know would walk with me.  Then I would go home, and shut my door hoping that no one would open it and see me crying; praying that my mother would not come in and refer to me as a slut or worse act as if I didn’t exist.  For the first time in my life, I felt like I wanted to die. 

            The week after it happened, I didn’t eat, and I couldn’t sleep in certain positions because I would get flashbacks of that night.  No one noticed my appetite; I wasn’t the type of girl to just stop eating therefore no one worried about it, I just wasn’t hungry anymore.  Plus no one knew yet, so they just thought I was tired and in a slump.  Everything changed about three days after the day when a friend told everyone, the softball team, their family, and my mother.  I never understood why everyone pushed me away but they did.  This is my story:

            It was sometime early August between my sophomore and junior year in high school, and a friend of mine, Amanda, was having a huge party.  I had the whole evening planned out, I was going to go to a party with some work friends and then go over to Amanda’s.  When I went to the work party I misunderstood how much alcohol content was in HotDamn and drank a little too much.  Along with that the friend that I had driven to the party had to leave and hour and a half earlier than planned.  She drove me to my car, which we had parked in a Walgreens parking lot, and sped home.  I contemplated for a while what I should do, I didn’t want to drive because I HATE drinking and driving, but I didn’t feel like I could stay in the Walgreens parking lot and wait for a police officer to randomly stroll by and find me.  Therefore being young and very reckless I got into my car and drove to Amanda’s house.  I was very intoxicated and tried to take every back road that I could find.  For the last five minutes of my drive I balled on the phone to a friend named Courtney telling her I would never drink and drive again. 

            Of coarse all those emotions were gone once I got to the party, my impaired judgment took over and I thought it would be fun to drink more.  I went up to the first group of people, who happened to be all girls, and asked if they had anything to drink, they had some Jaeger, which I happily took two large swigs from.  After drinking I looked at the girls who didn’t seem very happy at the fact that I had just randomly ask for a small swig and was on my way to drinking half the bottle.  I quickly left their group and went to the next, which happened to be all guys.  I asked them what they were drinking which ended up being some kind of rum, which they gladly handed to me.  I did the same to their bottle as the previous.  I wandered around for the rest of the night doing the same routine. 

Halfway though the night I blacked out, I felt as if I was sleeping but other people had different stories.  All I know is I woke up puking in the bathroom with a guy named Richard holding my hair.  I stopped puking and had enough breath to ask Richard what had happened and how I got to the bathroom.  He, in turn, told me the story of how he watched me run around and then I announced to the room I was going to puke.  Ends up that I blacked out for about an hour and till this day I have no idea what happened. 

 I finished my puke-o-rama and decided it was a good time to go to bed.  I went upstairs, found a bed and started getting ready to sleep.  While doing so, I decided that I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a room alone in a house I had never been in, so I went downstairs and attempted to have a girlfriend of mine, Christina, sleep in the same room as me.  She shrugged me off and told Dustin, a good guy from school, to go with me.  I felt comfortable with Dustin; I knew he was a good guy and that I could trust him.  So we went upstairs and within the first ten minutes Dustin was out cold.  Before I went to bed I finished the water that a guy named Eric had gotten me and started to fall asleep.  I was at the between state of being asleep and awake, I understood what was going on and was almost sleeping when I heard the door to the bedroom open.  I wanted to get up and see who it was but I couldn’t move, my whole body felt lifeless.  The guy sat next to me on the bed, I was sleeping on my stomach so I wasn’t facing him.  He went through his movements slowly as if not to wake Dustin, who I could hear lightly snoring next to me.  I could feel the covers being lifted off of me and put gently next to Dustin.  The guy seemed to hesitate a bit before grabbing my shorts and underwear off and setting them on the floor next to my night bag. He played for a while before getting to “business”.  Tears rolled down my face the whole time, I wanted Dustin to wake up and see what was happening, I wanted to call out and scream but I couldn’t even lift a finger.  “Eric! Where are you?” I heard someone say from the other room.  He stopped, listened for his name again and threw the covers over me like I was a piece of evidence that needed to be hidden.  Eric left for about an hour. 

Within that hour I managed to crawl off the bed, put some jeans on, and dry heave in the bathroom.  I don’t know why but I crawled back into bed and laid there.  Eric came in at the end of my hour, I laid very still, but this time out of fear.  He pulled the blankets off of me and noticed my jeans; he stood there for a while till he finally just walked out of the room.  I slowly lifted my head half expecting him to appear behind me.  I got up close and locked the door, and laid in bed for the rest of the night listening to Dustin snore next to me.

            By the time nine o’ clock rolled around there was only three people left at the house, Amanda, Courtney, and Me.  They sat in the living room discussing everything that had happened that night as I listened.  After rehashing everything they looked at me and asked me what was wrong.  I asked them where Eric was last night and Amanda said that both of them hung out in her bedroom.  Amanda had, had a big crush on Eric for a while.  She asked me why I asked and I told both of them what had happened and how I was sure it was Eric.  Amanda yelled at me for accusing her crush and told me I was trying to steal him.  Courtney said that I must have really been out of it last night and that it was probably Dustin, if anybody.  Those words “probably Dustin, if anybody” made everything seem so casual as if it didn’t matter.  These girls made my experience seem like nothing.

            So many things went through my head that day.  No one believed me, and no one could act as a witness.  I drove home and took a shower and thought about how even if I would report something like this, it would never hold up in court.  So I washed all the evidence, leaving nothing behind.  I felt like I could make it disappear if everything was clean.  I didn’t eat and hardly slept.  I was able to tell one person about it but not because I wanted to, because I needed help getting Plan B.  I was not yet eighteen and could not get it myself.  Two days after telling her, she told everyone what had happened and my life was then turned upside down.  My mother stopped talking to me and when I would go to a game or to hang out with people my mother would say things like “No sex” or “Don’t go whoring around because I don’t know if I will be able to get you Plan B again”.

            I look back on this event of my life and see it as a building block to where I am today.  I know it is hard to believe but through everything I have managed to take that night and make it positive.  When people turned away from me I learned to rely on myself and look inward, and my mother referring to me as a slut allowed me to have a strong backbone to life.  Overall, I have been able to become a stronger more independent woman because of Eric.  I’m not going to say it was easy because my life was a dark place for a few years but I have managed to come out of everything all right and do not regret anything.  People ask me if I had the opportunity to go back in time and change what happened what would I do.  I simply tell them I would not change anything.  I know that’s hard to believe but the way I look at it is without that event I wouldn’t be the person I am today and I like the person I am and have become.  In my mind regretting that event is regretting the person I am today, and I don’t.  I have had my hard times, especially when it comes to relationships.  Most guys become uninterested in me because they feel like I have “too much to deal with” or they see me as broken.  I am the furthest from broken and I hate being seen that way.  I want to be seen for the progress that I have made in my life and not seen as a mirror of that night.  I want to be able to freely talk about what happened and not be ashamed, or thought of as a slut.  It seems that when a girl says that she has been raped people look at her as make it seem like she asked for it but who asks for something like that? 

            All of my relationships with people have changed since that night.  My mother and I talk but I have really distanced myself from her, it seems that she never fully recovered from the “news”.  The girls on the bus used to be my friends but after I graduated I ended up distancing away from all but one of the girls.  I look back on things and see that they were my “fake” friends.  My relationship with guys has, and probably always will be, a little rocky; it’s always hard to tell who I can tell and who I can’t.  Till this day my father does not know which I think is better because I think by telling him I would just be opening a can of worms.  Overall, through this experience I have come to understand what it is like to take something bad and turn it around.  I been able to stand up and say, “I’m a statistic and I’m still living.”  

Sarah Allen

English 319

12 October 2008

My Instrument

Voice, according to Webster’s dictionary is “an instrument or medium of expression”.  The voice makes a paper more personable and easier to relate to.  Therefore, in my opinion, making it the key to a paper.  The only problem is, what is voice?  I understand Webster’s definition, but what is voice to me?  I find voice to be a form of imitation that is mostly style based.  I feel that if I can write in a style that is my own then I can become better at persuading readers to see things from my perspective.  The style I write in is not full of big words and dense sections but about reaching a diverse range of people.  I want the academy and my peers to be able to easily access my writing, not have to dig or reread because I felt the need to impress with extravagant words and detailed phrases.

I find voice to be very interconnected with audience.  What I mean by this is if I am writing to the academy I will use a different style opposed to when I write to my peers.  Because of this interconnection, the audience that I prefer to write to are my peers but only because it is acceptable to write in my own style.  In a way, my peers accept my writing for what it is, there are no expectations or rules while the academy is the opposite. The academy is full of rules and expectations for writers and I find style to be the hardest rule to abide by. Academics seem to like a universal style, but that is just not possible simply because of diversity.  When I say it is impossible, I mean that it is impractical for everyone to write exactly how the academy wants him/her to.  There are so many different types of people out there, how can the academy expect everyone to do the exact same thing?  On top of that, if everyone is supposed to go by the “rules” of the academy then does that not smother individuality?  The style, or voice, of a paper gives a paper the power to be different and I find it to be very persuasive when used correctly in writing.

By using voice as a style, writers can persuade readers of just about anything, even if the writer does not agree.  This is where the truth comes into play.  I believe that when writing to the academy people feel the need to lie to their readers to obtain approval.  Writers do not necessarily have to believe in what they are writing; as long as they can explain the theory in their own words they can persuade any audience.  I think there are times where people take advantage of voice and use it to falsely lead readers to believe that the writer believes in what they are writing.  To prove this theory I took the readings from p.42 to p.46 from On Truth and imitated the substance but added my own style.

When people experience a type of happiness from an external source, Spinoza believes that, that person will in turn love that external source because of the happiness it brought him/her.  Overall, he understands love to be the way people react to external sources that bring joy into our lives.  Because of this, Spinoza believes that people cannot help loving whatever brings them joy and happiness.  These people consistently love this object because they believe it helps them find their “true self”.  Which, to me, seems about right.  It seems that a lot of people who love show this type of pattern of loving something/someone for the joy and the idea of finding themselves.  They see it as someone loving them for being themselves and not having to give up their identity or essentially themselves.

            Spinoza later adds an observation about love that seems on target: “One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the things he loves” (Ethics, part III, proposition II, scholium).  This proves that people find the things they love to be precious and feel that his/her life and his/her attainment and continued joy of finding oneself depends on the things that he/she loves.  Meaning that the things in life that bring us joy we often feel we have to covet them and protect them.

Just to compare and contrast, here is the pages that I imitated on: “Now, if a person who experiences joy recognizes that the joy has a certain external cause --that is, if the person identifies someone or something as the object to which he owes his joy and on which his joy depends – Spinoza believes that the person inevitably loves that object. This is what he understands love to be: the way we respond to what we recognize as causing us joy. On his account, then, people cannot help loving whatever they recognize as being, for them, a source of joy. They invariably love what they believe helps them to continue in existence and to become more fully themselves. It seems to me that Spinoza is at least on the right track here. Many paradigmatic instances of love do exhibit, more or less straightforwardly, the pattern that he defines: people do tend to love what they feel helps them to “find themselves,” to discover “who they really are,” and to face life successfully without betraying or compromising their fundamental natures.

            To his account of the essential nature of love, Spinoza adds an observation about love that also seems accurate: “One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the things he loves” (Ethics, part III, proposition II, scholium). The things that a person loves are manifestly and necessarily precious to him. His life, and both his attainment and his continued enjoyment of personal authenticity, depends on them. Therefore, he naturally takes care to protect them and to ensure that they are readily available to him.” (p.44-p.46).  After being able to read both sections ask yourself, whom did you believe more?  The same substance was given in two different styles.  One was set to please the academy while the other was set to please myself. 

In doing this exercise I was able to see how people relate voice to substance but I still agree with voice as a style.  If voice was substance then people would have to follow rules and I think that a persons voice should not have to follow any rules besides the ones that the writer has set.  I believe this because rules are thought of as restrictions and how can you set restrictions on something that initially represents you?  I believe that this exercise demonstrated how diverse two people could be and that the academy cannot expect every person to conform to the universal style.  By eliminating this expectation the academy might actually enjoy reading papers because they would vary in style and presentation.  Without voice, style, I find papers to be monotone and less intriguing as those that do.  When I read a paper I feel like I can relate better to the writer when the voice is prominent and by being able to relate, the writer can achieve empathy and persuade his/her audience more effectively.

When imitating On Truth I realized that I understood what the author was saying but while typing the section I never thought if I agreed or disagreed, therefore proving that a writer can write about anything and still achieve voice.  Noticing this difference made me become aware of my own experiences with disagreeing in a paper but being able to write a paper in a way that reflected my personality.  There have been numerous occasions where I have lied to my readers to “get the A” but still been satisfied with the paper because I felt like I was able to apply the words to the paper how I wanted.  I think what it initially comes down to is; do you prefer your words or your opinion to be on the paper? 

It would be nice to have both but I find it easier to write when I can use my own words and not have to spend the time looking up big and interesting words that make me sound more intellectual just to please the academy.  In the end, I would rather use my voice as an instrument that is fluid throughout a paper through style, instead of only allowing the reader to get “glances” of my voice through the substance.

Sarah Allen

Eng 319

11 November 2008

Me

“If one of you want to, you can sit with me,” I said to the girls sitting in the seat behind me.  The bus was cramped and the girls behind me were sitting three to a seat.  Everyone on the bus had a partner, except me.  The girls looked at me for a while and mumbled phrases like “Oh, it’s ok” and “We don’t want to bother you.”  They were trying to be nice about it but failed.  I had known these girls for over six years and it killed me to see them act this way, like I was some disease that couldn’t be in a ten-foot radius.  “Ok, just thought I would ask” I managed to squeak out while holding back the tears.  I sat forward in my seat for the whole ride, looking out the window, and listening to my friends behind me giggle and talk about boy issues.  Not once did they talk to me till we reached the ball field and even then they would just ask me questions like “Have you seen my glove?” or “Are you hitting next?”

            I played an ok game that day despite my friends and the fact that my parents didn’t come watch.  It seemed there was no way of escaping what happened.  I would go to school and walk the halls alone, except for the rare occurrences when someone who didn’t know would walk with me.  Then I would go home, and shut my door hoping that no one would open it and see me crying; praying that my mother would not come in and refer to me as a slut or worse act as if I didn’t exist.  For the first time in my life, I felt like I wanted to die. 

            The week after it happened, I didn’t eat, and I couldn’t sleep in certain positions because I would get flashbacks of that night.  No one noticed my appetite; I wasn’t the type of girl to just stop eating therefore no one worried about it, I just wasn’t hungry anymore.  Plus no one knew yet, so they just thought I was tired and in a slump.  Everything changed about three days after the day when a friend told everyone, the softball team, their family, and my mother.  I never understood why everyone pushed me away but they did.  This is my story:

            It was sometime early August between my sophomore and junior year in high school, and a friend of mine, Amanda, was having a huge party.  I had the whole evening planned out, I was going to go to a party with some work friends and then go over to Amanda’s.  When I went to the work party I misunderstood how much alcohol content was in HotDamn and drank a little too much.  Along with that the friend that I had driven to the party had to leave and hour and a half earlier than planned.  She drove me to my car, which we had parked in a Walgreens parking lot, and sped home.  I contemplated for a while what I should do, I didn’t want to drive because I HATE drinking and driving, but I didn’t feel like I could stay in the Walgreens parking lot and wait for a police officer to randomly stroll by and find me.  Therefore being young and very reckless I got into my car and drove to Amanda’s house.  I was very intoxicated and tried to take every back road that I could find.  For the last five minutes of my drive I balled on the phone to a friend named Courtney telling her I would never drink and drive again. 

            Of coarse all those emotions were gone once I got to the party, my impaired judgment took over and I thought it would be fun to drink more.  I went up to the first group of people, who happened to be all girls, and asked if they had anything to drink, they had some Jaeger, which I happily took two large swigs from.  After drinking I looked at the girls who didn’t seem very happy at the fact that I had just randomly ask for a small swig and was on my way to drinking half the bottle.  I quickly left their group and went to the next, which happened to be all guys.  I asked them what they were drinking which ended up being some kind of rum, which they gladly handed to me.  I did the same to their bottle as the previous.  I wandered around for the rest of the night doing the same routine.  Halfway though the night I blacked out, I felt as if I was sleeping but other people had different stories.  All I know is I woke up puking in the bathroom with a guy named Richard holding my hair.  I stopped puking and had enough breath to ask Richard what had happened and how I got to the bathroom.  He, in turn, told me the story of how he watched me run around and then I announced to the room I was going to puke.  Ends up that I blacked out for about an hour and till this day I have no idea what happened.  I finished my puke-o-rama and decided it was a good time to go to bed.  I went upstairs, found a bed and started getting ready to sleep.  While doing so, I decided that I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a room alone in a house I had never been in, so I went downstairs and attempted to have a girlfriend of mine, Christina, sleep in the same room as me.  She shrugged me off and told Dustin, a good guy from school, to go with me.  I felt comfortable with Dustin; I knew he was a good guy and that I could trust him.  So we went upstairs and within the first ten minutes Dustin was out cold.  Before I went to bed I finished the water that a guy named Eric had gotten me and started to fall asleep.  I was at the between state of being asleep and awake, I understood what was going on and was almost sleeping when I heard the door to the bedroom open.  I wanted to get up and see who it was but I couldn’t move, my whole body felt lifeless.  The guy sat next to me on the bed, I was sleeping on my stomach so I wasn’t facing him.  He went through his movements slowly as if not to wake Dustin, who I could hear lightly snoring next to me.  I could feel the covers being lifted off of me and put gently next to Dustin.  The guy seemed to hesitate a bit before grabbing my shorts and underwear off and setting them on the floor next to my night bag. He played for a while before getting to “business”.  Tears rolled down my face the whole time, I wanted Dustin to wake up and see what was happening, I wanted to call out and scream but I couldn’t even lift a finger.  “Eric! Where are you?” I heard someone say from the other room.  He stopped, listened for his name again and threw the covers over me like I was a piece of evidence that needed to be hidden.  Eric left for about an hour.  Within that hour I managed to crawl off the bed, put some jeans on, and dry heave in the bathroom.  I don’t know why but I crawled back into bed and laid there.  Eric came in at the end of my hour, I laid very still, but this time out of fear.  He pulled the blankets off of me and noticed my jeans; he stood there for a while till he finally just walked out of the room.  I slowly lifted my head half expecting him to appear behind me.  I got up close and locked the door, and laid in bed for the rest of the night listening to Dustin snore next to me.

            By the time nine o’ clock rolled around there was only three people left at the house, Amanda, Courtney, and Me.  They sat in the living room discussing everything that had happened that night as I listened.  After rehashing everything they looked at me and asked me what was wrong.  I asked them where Eric was last night and Amanda said that both of them hung out in her bedroom.  Amanda had, had a big crush on Eric for a while.  She asked me why I asked and I told both of them what had happened and how I was sure it was Eric.  Amanda yelled at me for accusing her crush and told me I was trying to steal him.  Courtney said that I must have really been out of it last night and that it was probably Dustin, if anybody.  Those words “probably Dustin, if anybody” made everything seem so casual as if it didn’t matter.  These girls made my experience seem like nothing.

            So many things went through my head that day.  No one believed me, and no one could act as a witness.  I drove home and took a shower and thought about how even if I would report something like this, it would never hold up in court.  So I washed all the evidence, leaving nothing behind.  I felt like I could make it disappear if everything was clean.  I didn’t eat and hardly slept.  I was able to tell one person about it but not because I wanted to, because I needed help getting Plan B.  I was not yet eighteen and could not get it myself.  Two days after telling her, she told everyone what had happened and my life was then turned upside down.  My mother stopped talking to me and when I would go to a game or to hang out with people my mother would say things like “No sex” or “Don’t go whoring around because I don’t know if I will be able to get you Plan B again”.

            I look back on this event of my life and see it as a building block to where I am today.  I know it is hard to believe but through everything I have managed to take that night and make it positive.  When people turned away from me I learned to rely on myself and look inward, and my mother referring to me as a slut allowed me to have a strong backbone to life.  Overall, I have been able to become a stronger more independent woman because of Eric.  I’m not going to say it was easy because my life was a dark place for a few years but I have managed to come out of everything all right and do not regret anything.  People ask me if I had the opportunity to go back in time and change what happened what would I do.  I simply tell them I would not change anything.  I know that’s hard to believe but the way I look at it is without that event I wouldn’t be the person I am today and I like the person I am and have become.  In my mind regretting that event is regretting the person I am today, and I don’t.  I have had my hard times, especially when it comes to relationships.  Most guys become uninterested in me because they feel like I have “too much to deal with” or they see me as broken.  I am the furthest from broken and I hate being seen that way.  I want to be seen for the progress that I have made in my life and not seen as a mirror of that night.  I want to be able to freely talk about what happened and not be ashamed, or thought of as a slut.  It seems that when a girl says that she has been raped people look at her as make it seem like she asked for it but who asks for something like that? 

            All of my relationships with people have changed since that night.  My mother and I talk but I have really distanced myself from her, it seems that she never fully recovered from the “news”.  The girls on the bus used to be my friends but after I graduated I ended up distancing away from all but one of the girls.  I look back on things and see that they were my “fake” friends.  My relationship with guys has, and probably always will be, a little rocky; it’s always hard to tell who I can tell and who I can’t.  Till this day my father does not know which I think is better because I think by telling him I would just be opening a can of worms.  Overall, through this experience I have come to understand what it is like to take something bad and turn it around.  I been able to stand up and say, “I’m a statistic and I’m still living.”  

Sarah Allen

Eng 319

11 November 2008

Me

“If one of you want to, you can sit with me,” I said to the girls sitting in the seat behind me.  The bus was cramped and the girls behind me were sitting three to a seat.  Everyone on the bus had a partner, except me.  The girls looked at me for a while and mumbled phrases like “Oh, it’s ok” and “We don’t want to bother you.”  They were trying to be nice about it but failed.  I had known these girls for over six years and it killed me to see them act this way, like I was some disease that couldn’t be in a ten-foot radius.  “Ok, just thought I would ask” I managed to squeak out while holding back the tears.  I sat forward in my seat for the whole ride, looking out the window, and listening to my friends behind me giggle and talk about boy issues.  Not once did they talk to me till we reached the ball field and even then they would just ask me questions like “Have you seen my glove?” or “Are you hitting next?”

            I played an ok game that day despite my friends and the fact that my parents didn’t come watch.  It seemed there was no way of escaping what happened.  I would go to school and walk the halls alone, except for the rare occurrences when someone who didn’t know would walk with me.  Then I would go home, and shut my door hoping that no one would open it and see me crying; praying that my mother would not come in and refer to me as a slut or worse act as if I didn’t exist.  For the first time in my life, I felt like I wanted to die. 

            The week after it happened, I didn’t eat, and I couldn’t sleep in certain positions because I would get flashbacks of that night.  No one noticed my appetite; I wasn’t the type of girl to just stop eating therefore no one worried about it, I just wasn’t hungry anymore.  Plus no one knew yet, so they just thought I was tired and in a slump.  Everything changed about three days after the day when a friend told everyone, the softball team, their family, and my mother.  I never understood why everyone pushed me away but they did.  This is my story:

            It was sometime early August between my sophomore and junior year in high school, and a friend of mine, Amanda, was having a huge party.  I had the whole evening planned out, I was going to go to a party with some work friends and then go over to Amanda’s.  When I went to the work party I misunderstood how much alcohol content was in HotDamn and drank a little too much.  Along with that the friend that I had driven to the party had to leave and hour and a half earlier than planned.  She drove me to my car, which we had parked in a Walgreens parking lot, and sped home.  I contemplated for a while what I should do, I didn’t want to drive because I HATE drinking and driving, but I didn’t feel like I could stay in the Walgreens parking lot and wait for a police officer to randomly stroll by and find me.  Therefore being young and very reckless I got into my car and drove to Amanda’s house.  I was very intoxicated and tried to take every back road that I could find.  For the last five minutes of my drive I balled on the phone to a friend named Courtney telling her I would never drink and drive again. 

            Of coarse all those emotions were gone once I got to the party, my impaired judgment took over and I thought it would be fun to drink more.  I went up to the first group of people, who happened to be all girls, and asked if they had anything to drink, they had some Jaeger, which I happily took two large swigs from.  After drinking I looked at the girls who didn’t seem very happy at the fact that I had just randomly ask for a small swig and was on my way to drinking half the bottle.  I quickly left their group and went to the next, which happened to be all guys.  I asked them what they were drinking which ended up being some kind of rum, which they gladly handed to me.  I did the same to their bottle as the previous.  I wandered around for the rest of the night doing the same routine.  Halfway though the night I blacked out, I felt as if I was sleeping but other people had different stories.  All I know is I woke up puking in the bathroom with a guy named Richard holding my hair.  I stopped puking and had enough breath to ask Richard what had happened and how I got to the bathroom.  He, in turn, told me the story of how he watched me run around and then I announced to the room I was going to puke.  Ends up that I blacked out for about an hour and till this day I have no idea what happened.  I finished my puke-o-rama and decided it was a good time to go to bed.  I went upstairs, found a bed and started getting ready to sleep.  While doing so, I decided that I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a room alone in a house I had never been in, so I went downstairs and attempted to have a girlfriend of mine, Christina, sleep in the same room as me.  She shrugged me off and told Dustin, a good guy from school, to go with me.  I felt comfortable with Dustin; I knew he was a good guy and that I could trust him.  So we went upstairs and within the first ten minutes Dustin was out cold.  Before I went to bed I finished the water that a guy named Eric had gotten me and started to fall asleep.  I was at the between state of being asleep and awake, I understood what was going on and was almost sleeping when I heard the door to the bedroom open.  I wanted to get up and see who it was but I couldn’t move, my whole body felt lifeless.  The guy sat next to me on the bed, I was sleeping on my stomach so I wasn’t facing him.  He went through his movements slowly as if not to wake Dustin, who I could hear lightly snoring next to me.  First the covers then my shorts......I wanted Dustin to wake up and see what was happening, I wanted to call out and scream but I couldn’t even lift a finger.  “Eric! Where are you?” I heard someone say from the other room.  He stopped, listened for his name again and threw the covers over me like I was a piece of evidence that needed to be hidden.  Eric left for about an hour.  Within that hour I managed to crawl off the bed, put some jeans on, and dry heave in the bathroom.  I don’t know why but I crawled back into bed and laid there.  Eric came in at the end of my hour, I laid very still, but this time out of fear.  He pulled the blankets off of me and noticed my jeans; he stood there for a while till he finally just walked out of the room.  I slowly lifted my head half expecting him to appear behind me.  I got up close and locked the door, and laid in bed for the rest of the night listening to Dustin snore next to me.

            By the time nine o’ clock rolled around there was only three people left at the house, Amanda, Courtney, and Me.  They sat in the living room discussing everything that had happened that night as I listened.  After rehashing everything they looked at me and asked me what was wrong.  I asked them where Eric was last night and Amanda said that both of them hung out in her bedroom.  Amanda had, had a big crush on Eric for a while.  She asked me why I asked and I told both of them what had happened and how I was sure it was Eric.  Amanda yelled at me for accusing her crush and told me I was trying to steal him.  Courtney said that I must have really been out of it last night and that it was probably Dustin, if anybody.  Those words “probably Dustin, if anybody” made everything seem so casual as if it didn’t matter.  These girls made my experience seem like nothing.

            So many things went through my head that day.  No one believed me, and no one could act as a witness.  I drove home and took a shower and thought about how even if I would report something like this, it would never hold up in court.  So I washed all the evidence, leaving nothing behind.  I felt like I could make it disappear if everything was clean.  I didn’t eat and hardly slept.  I was able to tell one person about it but not because I wanted to, because I needed help getting Plan B.  I was not yet eighteen and could not get it myself.  Two days after telling her, she told everyone what had happened and my life was then turned upside down.  My mother stopped talking to me and when I would go to a game or to hang out with people my mother would say things like “No sex” or “Don’t go whoring around because I don’t know if I will be able to get you Plan B again”.

            I look back on this event of my life and see it as a building block to where I am today.  I know it is hard to believe but through everything I have managed to take that night and make it positive.  When people turned away from me I learned to rely on myself and look inward, and my mother referring to me as a slut allowed me to have a strong backbone to life.  Overall, I have been able to become a stronger more independent woman because of Eric.  I’m not going to say it was easy because my life was a dark place for a few years but I have managed to come out of everything all right and do not regret anything.  People ask me if I had the opportunity to go back in time and change what happened what would I do.  I simply tell them I would not change anything.  I know that’s hard to believe but the way I look at it is without that event I wouldn’t be the person I am today and I like the person I am and have become.  In my mind regretting that event is regretting the person I am today, and I don’t.  I have had my hard times, especially when it comes to relationships.  Most guys become uninterested in me because they feel like I have “too much to deal with” or they see me as broken.  I am the furthest from broken and I hate being seen that way.  I want to be seen for the progress that I have made in my life and not seen as a mirror of that night.  I want to be able to freely talk about what happened and not be ashamed, or thought of as a slut.  (Need help with a conclusion).

This idea of talking back is shown in Gates’ article through the fact that some African Americans find their own race “embarrassing.  In Hooks’ article the women do not want one of “their own” to grab attention, or in a way be “loud”.  In Gates’ article he describes the different categories of being loud “speaking too loudly, dressing too loudly, and just being too loudly.  The black community did not like when others of their race would act this way because they felt it was grabbing attention.  The blacks that were embarrassed wanted to blend in, almost as if they were afraid of their roots.  The women in Hooks’ story also wanted to blend in.  It seemed that the women thought it would be too much trouble to stray from the norm of not having a voice.

Sarah Allen

English 319

12 October 2008

My Instrument

Voice, according to Webster’s dictionary is “an instrument or medium of expression”.  The voice makes a paper more personable and easier to relate to.  Therefore, in my opinion, making it the key to a paper.  The only problem is, what is voice?  I understand Webster’s definition, but what is voice to me?  I find voice to be a form of imitation that is mostly style based.  I feel that if I can write in a style that is my own then I can become better at persuading readers to see things from my perspective.  The style I write in is not full of big words and dense sections but about reaching a diverse range of people.  I want the academy and my peers to be able to easily access my writing, not have to dig or reread because I felt the need to impress with extravagant words and detailed phrases.

I find voice to be very interconnected with audience.  What I mean by this is if I am writing to the academy I will use a different style opposed to when I write to my peers.  Because of this interconnection, the audience that I prefer to write to are my peers but only because it is acceptable to write in my own style.  In a way, my peers accept my writing for what it is, there are no expectations or rules while the academy is the opposite. The academy is full of rules and expectations for writers and I find style to be the hardest rule to abide by. Academics seem to like a universal style, but that is just not possible simply because of diversity.  When I say it is impossible, I mean that it is impractical for everyone to write exactly how the academy wants him/her to.  There are so many different types of people out there, how can the academy expect everyone to do the exact same thing?  On top of that, if everyone is supposed to go by the “rules” of the academy then does that not smother individuality?  The style, or voice, of a paper gives a paper the power to be different and I find it to be very persuasive when used correctly in writing.

By using voice as a style, writers can persuade readers of just about anything, even if the writer does not agree.  This is where the truth comes into play.  I believe that when writing to the academy people feel the need to lie to their readers to obtain approval.  Writers do not necessarily have to believe in what they are writing; as long as they can explain the theory in their own words they can persuade any audience.  I think there are times where people take advantage of voice and use it to falsely lead readers to believe that the writer believes in what they are writing.  To prove this theory I took the readings from p.42 to p.46 from On Truth and imitated the substance but added my own style.

When people experience a type of happiness from an external source, Spinoza believes that, that person will in turn love that external source because of the happiness it brought him/her.  Overall, he understands love to be the way people react to external sources that bring joy into our lives.  Because of this, Spinoza believes that people cannot help loving whatever brings them joy and happiness.  These people consistently love this object because they believe it helps them find their “true self”.  Which, to me, seems about right.  It seems that a lot of people who love show this type of pattern of loving something/someone for the joy and the idea of finding themselves.  They see it as someone loving them for being themselves and not having to give up their identity or essentially themselves.

            Spinoza later adds an observation about love that seems on target: “One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the things he loves” (Ethics, part III, proposition II, scholium).  This proves that people find the things they love to be precious and feel that his/her life and his/her attainment and continued joy of finding oneself depends on the things that he/she loves.  Meaning that the things in life that bring us joy we often feel we have to covet them and protect them.

Just to compare and contrast, here is the pages that I imitated on: “Now, if a person who experiences joy recognizes that the joy has a certain external cause --that is, if the person identifies someone or something as the object to which he owes his joy and on which his joy depends – Spinoza believes that the person inevitably loves that object. This is what he understands love to be: the way we respond to what we recognize as causing us joy. On his account, then, people cannot help loving whatever they recognize as being, for them, a source of joy. They invariably love what they believe helps them to continue in existence and to become more fully themselves. It seems to me that Spinoza is at least on the right track here. Many paradigmatic instances of love do exhibit, more or less straightforwardly, the pattern that he defines: people do tend to love what they feel helps them to “find themselves,” to discover “who they really are,” and to face life successfully without betraying or compromising their fundamental natures.

            To his account of the essential nature of love, Spinoza adds an observation about love that also seems accurate: “One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the things he loves” (Ethics, part III, proposition II, scholium). The things that a person loves are manifestly and necessarily precious to him. His life, and both his attainment and his continued enjoyment of personal authenticity, depends on them. Therefore, he naturally takes care to protect them and to ensure that they are readily available to him.” (p.44-p.46).  After being able to read both sections ask yourself, whom did you believe more?  The same substance was given in two different styles.  One was set to please the academy while the other was set to please myself. 

In doing this exercise I was able to see how people relate voice to substance but I still agree with voice as a style.  If voice was substance then people would have to follow rules and I think that a persons voice should not have to follow any rules besides the ones that the writer has set.  I believe this because rules are thought of as restrictions and how can you set restrictions on something that initially represents you?  I believe that this exercise demonstrated how diverse two people could be and that the academy cannot expect every person to conform to the universal style.  By eliminating this expectation the academy might actually enjoy reading papers because they would vary in style and presentation.  Without voice, style, I find papers to be monotone and less intriguing as those that do.  When I read a paper I feel like I can relate better to the writer when the voice is prominent and by being able to relate, the writer can achieve empathy and persuade his/her audience more effectively.

When imitating On Truth I realized that I understood what the author was saying but while typing the section I never thought if I agreed or disagreed, therefore proving that a writer can write about anything and still achieve voice.  Noticing this difference made me become aware of my own experiences with disagreeing in a paper but being able to write a paper in a way that reflected my personality.  There have been numerous occasions where I have lied to my readers to “get the A” but still been satisfied with the paper because I felt like I was able to apply the words to the paper how I wanted.  I think what it initially comes down to is; do you prefer your words or your opinion to be on the paper? 

It would be nice to have both but I find it easier to write when I can use my own words and not have to spend the time looking up big and interesting words that make me sound more intellectual just to please the academy.  In the end, I would rather use my voice as an instrument that is fluid throughout a paper through style, instead of only allowing the reader to get “glances” of my voice through the substance.

 Sarah Allen

 English 319

September 21, 2008

Happy Medium

I have had many English classes in my life but not one of them went over the art of writing.  Most of my teachers would give me a book and tell me to write a paper on one of the main topics.  It was already known how they would want the paper; MLA format, no “you” or “I”, quotes to support, and so on.  When coming into this class I never expected the rules to be much different from my previous classes, but I have come to find that this class has really made me think about how I was taught versus how I would like to write.

When I think about writing I think of it as free expression with pen and paper (or keys to key board, etc.).  Everyone should be able to write and have it be accepted.  I have found that the main difference between being a writer and being an academic is the intended audience.  It doesn’t always matter if everyone understands it, as long as the audience that the writing was meant for understands it.  My reasoning for this is because everyone has different styles of writing.  For example, my diary is meant for me therefore I don’t care if the mechanics are correct or that I have paragraphs, as long as I know what I am saying.  The audience of a piece of writing is what makes the writing formal or personal, which makes audience a very powerful element in writing. 

Both Elbow and Bartholomae repeatedly talk about the audiences of writing.  Bartholomae believes that the main audience of writing is a teacher and the academy, while Elbow believes the audience should be anyone, while the writing should be for yourself.   Elbow wants his students “to have readers actually interested in what was on their mind, what they intended to say, reading for intention.” (p. 75 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  At the same time he wants his students to be able to say, “I’m not just writing for teachers or readers, I’m writing as much for me.  Sometimes even more for me” (p. 77 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  Although, I believe it is important to be able to put your voice on a paper, I still believe in structure.  Without structure a piece of writing is just a bunch of words on paper.  If audience is who you are cooking cookies for, then structure is how the cookies turn out, with out good cookies your

audience wont want to eat.

Introducing structure into a paper contradicts Elbow and brings Bartholomae into the picture. Bartholomae talks about teachers and how crucial they are to academic writing.  He states “there is no writing done in the academy that is not academic writing.  To hide the teacher is to hide the traces of power, tradition and authority present at the scene of writing.” (p.63 Writing With Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow).  The teacher represents structure and helps students to write in a manner where the audience is the academy.  I think it is crucial for a teacher to be in a classroom not to assert power, but to manage the classroom, offer guidance, and provide different ways of writing.  Through this, students are introduced to a type of writing that would make things smooth and flow easier.  My only problem with the academic discourse is there is no definite voice.  When I write I try to put “me” all over the paper, but I sometimes find it difficult with the standards that the academy has set.  I don’t like that they expect to “hear” your voice in the paper when you cannot even refer to yourself, because is that not where your voice comes from? 

This is the point where I believe the academic and the writer should come together.  If a writer is only taught how to be a writer and never introduced to academic discourse then that person will never have the opportunity to reach audiences of higher thought.  The reason for this is because the writer will not be able to add structure to his/her writing, and the writing would be a hundred percent personally based.  The problem with a paper being completely personal is that we live in a society that likes to hear the facts.  So, by adding the structure, a few techniques from the academy, and bringing voice into a piece of writing, I believe that a person can create the great piece of writing that can be varied to fit any audience.  As a result of bringing in the voice, the audience can help to establish that the writer is more human and easier to relate to.  If a student strictly uses academic discourse in a paper, it makes the writing hard to “want” to read.  As a result fewer people will read a persons writing if it is found to be “too much”.  What I mean by this is that no one likes to feel dumb, consequently if someone writes in the academic discourse “too much” then only a few will continue reading because it would be too dense for the majority.

 I have always been taught academic discourse and told never to stray from it, but I don’t like the idea of conforming my writing to a form that will inevitability become something so dense that you cannot even sense a voice.  Bartholomae feels that we are keeping tradition alive by teaching academic discourse.  But at what cost?  I feel as if we are losing ourselves to Bartholomae’s so called tradition when we should be looking for other ways of writing.  That doesn’t mean that we have to forget about academic writing, on the contrary I think we should help mold academic writing to make it suite the writer and the audience.  Bartholomae states, “You cannot write or teach or think or even read without imitation, and what you imitate is what another person has done” (p.25 Against the Grain).  Through this statement Bartholomae makes it seem that no matter what, you cannot create anything that is of the individual.  I disagree, I believe that a voice in a paper is what makes it more individual and no one can copy that unless plagiarized.  As writers we can take ideas from others but our opinions are our own.  Through a mixture of academic discourse and being a writer we can achieve individualism in academic papers if given the chance to.

English 319

Happy Medium

I have had many English classes in my life, but not one of them went over the art of writing.  Most of my teachers would give me a book and tell me to write a paper o one of the main topics.  It was already known how they would want the paper; MLA format, no “you” or “I”, quotes to support, and so on.  When coming into this class I never expected it to be much different, but I was wrong in thinking that.  This class has  really made me think about how I was taught vs. how I would like to write.

        When I think about writing I think of it as free expression with pen and paper (or keys to key board, etc.).  Everyone should be able to write and have it be accepted.  I have found that the main difference between being a writer and being an academic is the intended audience.  It doesn’t always matter if everyone understands it, as long as the anticipated audience understands it.  Both Elbow and Bartholomae repeatedly talk about the audiences of writing.  Bartholomae believes that the main audience of writing is a teacher and the academy, while Elbow believes the audience should be anyone.   Elbow wants his students “to have readers actually interested in what was on their mind, what they intended to say, reading for intention.” (p75 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  At the same time he wants his students to be able to say, “I’m not just writing for teachers or readers, I’m writing as much for me.  Sometimes even more for me” (p. 77 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  Although, I believe it is important to be able to put your voice on a paper, I still believe in structure. 

           This contradicts Elbow and brings Bartholomae into the picture.   Bartholomae talks about teachers and how crucial they are to academic writing.  He states “there is no writing done in the academy that is not academic writing.  To hide the teacher is to hide the traces of power, tradition and authority present at the scene of writing.” (p.63 Writing With Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow).  The teacher (in way) represents structure and helps students to write in a manner where the audience is the academy.  I

think it is crucial for a teacher to be in a classroom not to assert power, but to manage the classroom, offer guidance, and provide different ways of writing.  Through this, students are introduced to a type of writing that would make things smooth and flow easier.  My only problem with the academic discourse is there is no definite voice.  When I write I try to put “me” all over the paper, but I sometimes find it difficult with the standards that the academy has set.  I don’t like that they expect to “hear” your voice in the paper when you cannot even refer to yourself.  Because is that not where your voice comes from? 

            This is the point where I believe the academic and the writer should come together.  If a writer is only taught how to be a writer and never introduced to academic discourse then that person will never have the opportunity to reach audiences of higher thought.  The reason for this is because the writer will not be able to add structure to his/her writing, and the writing would be 100% personally based.  The problem with this is that we live in a society that likes to hear the facts.  So, by adding the structure, a few techniques from the academy, and by bringing voice into a piece of writing, I believe that a person can create the great piece of writing.  Just by bringing in the voice a person can help to establish that the writer is more human and easier to relate to.  If a student strictly uses academic discourse in a paper, it makes the writing hard to “want” to read.  As a result less people will read a persons writing if it is found to be “too much”.  What I mean by this is that no one likes to feel dumb, meaning if someone writes in the academic discourse “too much” then only a few will continue reading because it would be too dense for the majority.

          (Need help with a transition sentence) I have always been taught academicdiscourse and told never to stray from it, but I don’t like the idea of conforming my writing to a form that will inevitability become something so dense that you cannot even sense a voice.  Bartholomae feels that we are keeping tradition alive by teaching academic discourse, but at what cost?  Bartholomae states, “You cannot write or teach or think or even read without imitation, and what you imitate is what another person has done” (p.25 Against the Grain).  Through this statement Bartholomae makes it seem that no matter what you do you cannot create anything that is of the individual.  I disagree, I believe that a voice in a paper is what makes it more individual and no one can copy that unless plagiarized.  As writers we can take ideas from others but our opinions are our own.  Through a mixture of academic discourse and being a writer we can achieve individualism if given the chance to.

A few things that have changed between this post and my original is it has more of my voice in it. Also, by being able to look back at the text I was able to incorporate a quote, which helps to support what/why Elbow believes this is a difference between the academic and the writer.