The Final Stretch--December!

We’ve reached the month of December! It really is the final stretch of this semester.

  

On Monday, my Sophomore Essay will be wrapped up—the final draft turned in and, after 8:30 p.m., the end of public Sophomore Essay presentations, my PowerPoint given. I need to work on my essay this weekend, but thankfully, most of the edits I’ll be tackling are minor. My PowerPoint also needs some tweaking.

 In Intermediate Fiction, we are on our last portfolio which we will hand in at a reading at our professor’s house.  I am not so confident about where I’m at with this portfolio as I am with my Sophomore Essay.Among other things, I need to do a major rewrite on one of my stories. I am not feeling too enthusiastic about either of my pieces this semester. Hopefully the magic will come back when I sit down to write!

My grammar paper is in need of some serious work too. The rough draft I turned in was admittedly not the best I’ve ever done. It doesn’t help that I’m finding it difficult to really take a side with my paper. I’m examining grammatical differences in two versions of the Bible and I am supposed to be arguing that one version is more rhetorically effective. Initially, I decided the modern version was more rhetorically effective, but examining the King James Version has made me realize some if its rhetorical strengths, as well. This essay is due later than my portfolio, though, so I still have quite some time.

There are also final projects coming up in Thought & the Natural Sciences and a final paper in Hebrew Bible.

Something else I am just finishing up is applying to study away for a semester. I will be turning in my two final forms today—then I will officially be applied at Susquehanna’s Office of Cross-Cultural Programs (the application to the specific study abroad program comes later)! Though filling out the application was a bit tedious, it also renewed my excitement for going abroad. I ended up with Northern Ireland as my first choice. I keep thinking, “This time next year, I’ll be in Europe!”

While these next weeks leading up to Christmas break are bound to be academically stressful, I am hoping there will also be time for fun. I am looking forward to the Christmas Candlelight Service, as well as our university president, President Lemons, reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to us in our pajamas. I’m also going to a young adult Christmas party at the Selinsgrove Church of the Nazarene on Saturday. As far as Christmas parties go, though, I am most excited for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Christmas party. Last year I received a clown mug as my gift!

All in all, though, I really am looking forward to break. It was nice being home for Thanksgiving, but it feels like such a short period. I am also looking forward to a new semester, new routines, and new classes come January.

Sophomore Essay Draft 2!

Monday I had an advising appointment with Chaplain Radecke to discuss the second draft of my sophomore essay. This draft clocked in at 20 pages, plus a few more for the Works Cited section. I am now transitioning into the tweaking phase which might include adding subheadings for the paper, checking the flow and organization, etc. The most substantial thing I want to do is a bit more work identifying and acknowledging the arguments against my position. My essay argues that the genre of young adult fiction needs to explore religious doubt with more frequency and nuance. It’s been difficult to articulate the arguments against this. I think what I really am opposing is not just poor writing but the commercial concerns that make such poor writing a wise choice, as well as the apathetic stance that it doesn’t matter if such issues are addressed in fiction for teenagers.

I’ve had a really positive experience working on this essay. My passion about the subject hasn’t waned, but has grown. I think it helps that it comes from a very personal place. As a reader of Young Adult fiction, I’ve always been on the lookout for books that talk about spiritual and religious matters in a way that speaks to me, but often I find I can’t relate to the secular Young Adult novels that tackle the issue or those published by Christian publishers.

The intersection of religion and literature has been so interesting to me that I keep thinking about how I want to pursue it in the future. I don’t know if this exploration will mainly focus on my own creative writing and how best to portray spiritual or religious ideas realistically and powerfully or if it may continue in this scholarly direction.

I am excited to complete this essay and be able to more fully share my research with others. One way I’ll be sharing it is through the Sophomore Essay presentations. A few people are giving talks, while the rest of us will be sharing posters and PowerPoints.  Right now, I am trying to figure out how to best share my essay in a PowerPoint.  I think I will focus on making a lot of my points on the overall treatment of religion in the Young Adult genre, what doubt is, the theological and theoretical approaches I reference, etc., on the slides.  Perhaps I will relegate excerpts from Young Adult novels and my analysis of them to print-outs; this seems like it might be easier than trying to cram as much onto my PowerPoint as possible.

Tomorrow, in my Sophomore Essay class, I will be doing a practice presentation, so hopefully I will receive a lot of helpful feedback on how to best translate this topic, which I’m very excited about, to this medium that isn’t exactly captivating me.

Officially A Double Major

After a lot of reflection, I’ve officially decided on and declared a Religion major.  Before I registered for next semester’s classes, I filled out the paper work for a second major. I am now a Creative Writing-Religion double major with an Honors program minor. I went back and forth with this decision many times, but I’m very pleased with it.

My coursework in religion classes so far, Applied Biblical Ethics and Hebrew Bible, has been interesting, and I had a strong desire to take more courses than only a Religion minor requires. I’m also very interested in how this major may play into future career paths. Maybe I could end up working for a religious magazine or theological journal or doing communications work for faith-based non-profits, churches, denominations, etc.  I’m also interested in librarianship, so maybe one day I could end up working for a theological library or archives for a denomination. The interplay of my spiritual life and my creative writing is also something of interest.

My Sophomore Essay has further affirmed this decision. Just on Monday, I turned in the second draft of my essay to my advisor. The draft is about 20 pages, and I’ve enjoyed working on it immensely. My topic, representation of doubt in young adult novels, has allowed me to branch into ideas of youth ministry, theological concepts like “theology of the cross,” and brief examples of doubt in the Bible. These religious components have interested me just as much as the literary component—which I also really enjoy! The essay itself is very much a meld of my dominant interests.

Next semester, if I get into the courses I registered for, my schedule will be evenly split between these two disciplines. For Creative Writing, I hope to take Intro to Poetry and Aesthetics and Interpretation. Intro to Poetry will be my last introductory class for Creative Writing. I’m excited for the change of pace I’ll get from escaping prose for a semester. I am also curious as to how I’ll enjoy the class because lately my interest in poetry has been rising. My two religion classes will probably be Intro to Asian Religions and Luther: Life and Thought. I’m looking forward to how different those topics will be, especially since I don’t feel particularly well-informed on either.

I’ll have to be diligent to fulfill all the requirements for both majors, but I think in the end it will be worth it, if it means studying two things that really interest me.

In the Sophomore Essay Trenches

A week from today the first draft of my sophomore essay, a 15 to 20 page paper required by the Honors Program, is due to my adviser. I'll admit that I am not as far into my work as I want to be. The fact that I'm going off-campus this weekend for the religious life retreat (which I am really excited about) means I may be even more behind than I'd hoped. 

Still, I've actually been enjoying working on this essay--much more than most of my homework, anyway! Recently I've been gathering all of my research. I've found some fascinating articles. For my topic, representation of religious doubt in contemporary Young Adult fiction, I've not only been researching religion's role in YA literature but, more generally, conceptions of doubt by religious communities, methods of dealing with doubt, and the role of religion in the lives of teenagers. These articles, coming from the religious rather than literary angle, have been especially interesting to me. A few of them have been about how youth ministry should deal with teenagers questioning their faith. It may be a slight challenge to make the application of these articles clear when talking about YA, but with some effort, I think they can work well.

At the start of the sophomore essay program, students are always encouraged to pick a topic, outside their major or not, that is of interest to them. That's the difference between having a fun, or at least satisfying, experience and the whole thing being a drudgery. I'm really glad that I followed that advice and think that it's true.

Working on this project has made me consider bumping up my religion minor to a major; I would be a double major in Creative Writing and Religion. I don't think I'm going to decide that any time soon, but I'm definitely not ruling out the possibility. College is busy enough as it is, and I'm not so sure I could handle trying to complete the requirements for two programs. However, it is very, very enticing.

Class Overview

Since I’m now about three weeks through this first semester, I figure I’ve had enough time in my classes to give an overview of them and my thoughts on them so far. 

Sophomore Essay does not meet every week, though we’ll start getting together frequently later in the semester to do practice presentations. Right now, everyone is working on their sophomore essays independently and meeting with their advisers as needed. As a part of the Sophomore Essay class, each student has a meeting with university librarian Kathleen Dalton. Mine was this Monday. She definitely helped me find databases and some articles to use in my essay. I desperately need to carve out a chunk of time this weekend to dive into my research and map out my first draft which is due in the beginning of October.

English Writing & Grammar is a course I have on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So far it seems to be a lot that I know already. We have a paper coming up soon, and we have some freedom to choose our focus. In mine, I want to analyze a Skype chatroom I have with some of my friends at Susquehanna.

My other Monday/Wednesday/Friday course is Thought & the Natural Sciences, which includes a lab. I’ll admit that this course makes me the most nervous. I am not the best at hands-on learning or even understanding scientific concepts. Thankfully, this course fulfills the scientific requirement in the Central Curriculum once and for all. A lab we just completed was designing and shooting off a rocket. My lab team, the Chinchillas, had two successful launches. Unfortunately, this success was accompanied with sunburn. 

Tuesday and Thursday mornings I have Intermediate Fiction. I’ve already had my first short story workshopped, and yesterday in class we got into small groups to discuss each other’s short-short (4 pages or less) fiction. This is one of my favorite courses, and it’s got me back to that mindset where I just want to write all the time—rather than do other, more unpleasant homework.

In the afternoons I have The Hebrew Bible, which is very interesting and will go towards my Religion and  Honors Program minors. So far we’ve learned about the geography, storyline, translation issues, and reading methods of the Hebrew Bible, and we’ve started a unit on identity, looking at the ambiguity of Moses and the makeup of the biblical family. As someone who is involved in religious life, it is interesting and enriching to look at religion and a part of the Bible from an academic perspective. I had Dr. Bohmbach, the professor of this course, for another class last year, Applied Biblical Ethics, which I really enjoyed. 

Mostly these courses just mean a lot of reading. Some of it is very interesting. Some of it...not so much. But I suppose that's college!