I don’t believe in being idealistic. I think it’s silly. I live for the chaos, the mess, the stress, the disaster—at least when it comes to writing, teaching, etc..

As far as my ENG 101 class is concerned, I want them to start learning about themselves. I want them to start learning about writing and English in a way different than what they felt before. And I want them to get crazy, be messy, embrace the chaos (because I was better for it when I learned to do that).

Coming to grad school, the biggest thing I’ve learned is that even when I wasn’t actively learning in the classes I was “interested” in, I was absorbing information. Even when I wasn’t engaged, something was going on. So as many times as I sat staring into nothingness my final semester of undergrad, thinking about how much I no longer wanted to be there, little pieces seeped in. That’s all I can ask for, that something seeps in.

Idealistically, in regards to ENG 101, I would be able to create copies of myself to be in each workshopping group in class. This would mean that I could hopefully start to give my students a chance to know how to give and ask for feedback… probably mostly how they could ask for feedback.

Even in an idealistic world, I don’t think ENG 101 could ever completely change someone’s world. My students have been telling me there here because they need to be. They’re here to pad the GPA for the classes they’ll take in the future that will make it harder for them to have a higher GPA for graduate programs in Math. That there’s here because it is a prerequisite and that they don’t really care. I don’t see that ever not being a reality. Powerful to me, means impactful, meaningful, life changing, etc. I just don’t know if that’s the job of FYC. We don’t have enough time to have conversations that are that powerful, I don’t think. There’s only so much we can do.

In the big picture, ENG 101 or any FYC class is never going to become this superhuman thing that blasts worlds apart. There’s not enough time for that, and I think that’s what’s frustrating with idealizing anything. I don’t like the way a lot of what we’ve read has been idealistic, and I don’t think it’s at all helpful to imagine an idealistic false-reality for what FYC could do. The question this leaves me with is: Are most of the people who research FYC stuff the people who teach it, or the people who design the curriculums? Would there be a difference? Where’s the messy? Why do we want to think about the ideal so much?