Soon I will be in charge.  I will have to rise from my seat as a student and walk around to the other side of the desk.  I will be the one setting due dates, handing out grades, and dealing with pain in the asses like myself…my god, what if I get a student like me?

            I look around campus at all the instructors moving about amongst the flowing masses of students and wonder which one I will most be like.  It’s a fresh start, I can be anyone.  I can create a new me, forged in the likeness of any of these instructors or any of those that I have ever known. Suede jacket or corduroy? Striped tie, bow tie, or no tie?  Jeans with that jacket or intimidating pressed pants?  Will my eyes be friendly, or should I subtly relate a constant annoyance about being troubled by the problems of mere mortals?  Will it be tons of assignments designed to prove they are keeping up, or shall I rely on the students’ inherent motivation?  How hard should I push?  Should I pay attention to their work loads in other classes or just concentrate on what I want them to learn and damn the rest? Do I crush the one that challenges me?

            And then there are their questions.  In the beginning they will be simple, having to do with my expectations and translations of the syllabus.  As we progress I will no doubt have to answer questions relating to course content, grammar, definitions, and more examples. But as we move further down the line and the students gain in understanding…their questions will become more advanced, and one day they will ask a question that I do not have the answer to.  There I’ll be, standing at the front of the class uhhming… a silence will perhaps ensue as a collective understanding of what is happening spreads throughout the class. I will be out numbered, alone, and answerless. I will no longer be the one who knows, I will be the one who doesn’t know. I will be unqualified, out of my league, staring into 50 eyes reflecting high tuition, overloaded work schedules, and mandatory attendance. I will be a target for all the frustrations relating to the University.  I will have no protection against the class or the clock, slowly ticking its way through an hour and fifteen minutes.  It could be the first crack in my foundation, The first vertical degree off of center as I begin to lean and pitch forward.  Will a challenger arise, sensing my weakness and smelling blood?

            But maybe that won’t happen… or perhaps not knowing won’t be so bad. I’ve seen teachers say, “I don’t know” before. I guess it all depends on how I structure my relationship with them.  I wonder if I should push the fact that like them I am also a student. This could back-fire though… like they aren’t going to get their money’s worth out of a student.  I don’t think there is any way around it though, as my name won’t even be on the syllabus.  I’m operating under someone else’s name.  That has to be a little nerve racking for my mentor.

            Maybe the answer is in the student centered classroom… if I subscribe rigidly to Freire I don’t think I even have to go…. I’ll just leave some notes on the board and have them lead their own class.  I think Freire said that they would get far more out of their education without me there anyway. I wonder what that would look like.

            I certainly am glad of the time I have spent in the front of other classrooms at this point.  At least I’m not going in cold. It kind of blows my mind that teaching assistants are given no training in educational techniques. It seems an over site to me…  but then again…what do I know?

It had been an unusual night.  What started off as a typical date with my wife had turned into something entirely different.  In the middle of a nice Thai dinner, she had an idea.  The next thing I knew I was holding hands with a nine year old stranger surrounded by decapitated bodies, brains in Tupperware, lungs sitting on scales, and eye balls floating in a tank of formaldehyde or some sort of preservative.

Taking my hand away from the little girl, I snapped on a latex glove and my wife handed me a heart that had been removed from an 80 year old woman.  It was heavier than I expected and dense.  The condition of the bodies was such that if I could get my mind off the smell, they didn’t seem entirely real.  They were kind of like mummies at a museum… that is until the little girl pointed out the eye lashes.  It was not her first time to the lab, and she knew what details really mattered.  The brains in plastic tubs were gross, but it was the eyelashes that were scary.  They were so human. Next my little friend pointed out the painted toe nails.  Objectified mummies don’t have painted toe nails.  Especially bright red, glossy nails…nails that were no doubt painted by a younger steadier hand.  A daughter perhaps, near the end.  The eye lashes and painted nails anchored this body in our world.  My eyelashes will look like that someday.

We left the gross anatomy lab and went downstairs into the student union…to the stage.  The hypnotist was choosing volunteers from the crowd.  I didn’t volunteer as I still had the smell of formaldehyde and eyelashes permeating my senses.

The show began and it was funny.  It was perhaps the funniest thing I had ever seen.  My laughter seemed to start in the ends of my toes and roll through my body, racking me with hysteria. I often had to blink away the tears, salty lines creeping down my face as I shook with laughter.  My wife thought the show was funny, but not that funny. She had spent too much time around the bodies to feel the dichotomy of the evening.

I hung on every antic from the volunteers on stage.  They would get confused, speak in foreign tongues, drop their inhibitions and dance erotically across the stage.

The hypnotist moved between the crowd and the volunteers linking us… the nexus between whatever world they were now in and those of us in the audience.  The show ended and we went home.

The painted toe nails are now gone as are the delicate eyelashes.  They have been incinerated and the remnants placed on a mantel, or scattered at a favorite spot.  But she still exists, that whole night still exists. There are monuments that fix that night in history.  Monuments that testify to a nine year old girl, eyelashes, formaldehyde, and laughter.

I saw one just yesterday.  My favorite is the man with flaming red hair.  The color stands out against the snow when he walks across campus.  He has no idea of what he carries with him.  He will no doubt remember being on stage, but he has had no choice in inheriting the rest of the evening.  And now he has to carry it as long as I recognize him.  I said hello once, but he didn’t even look at me when he grunted a greeting back.  He is oblivious to our connection.

            As the protest essays have had time to ramble around in my head a bit… I’ve discovered that they have shaken something loose.  A story, or an event really that I have hardly thought about since it happened.  It is story that now sticks out to me because I feel like a played a part…even though I wasn’t even involved. I merely witnessed it, but I am glad of of my part.

            My final year of high school was spent at a near-by community college and because of this I was distanced a bit from my friends and the daily happenings of high school.  In order to participate in sports, I had to spend two hours of independent study on high school grounds and tried to use this time to catch up on what was going down.

            One day, sometime in the late spring, when seniors are beginning to feel either empowered by their impending graduation or utterly terrified by it, I found the school virtually vibrating with a gossipy sense of something. 

            There had been an act of defiance; It had been well organized; It had been effective; And no one --students and faculty alike-- knew what to do about it.

            The event had centered around a member of the old guard; a teacher who had taught many of the current students' parents in years past.  He was famous for his grading techniques when it came to papers.  If he liked you and thought you were of good stock—you did well.  If he didn’t like you or another member of your family that he had taught in the past—you did poorly… reading the papers really had nothing to do with the equation, nor did he in fact read the papers. 

            There had been acts of defiance before…nonsense written into papers, pages glued together, large plagiarized paragraphs prominently strewn about the pages.  Other teachers and members of the administration knew what was going on… but he was near retirement.  The various protests fizzled and became funny stories of what had been gotten away with.  Each act of defiance had pointed to the ridiculousness of the situation by acting ridiculous. They were an act of bravery no doubt but they drew attention to themselves only after the fact, as a demonstration of things already posited and accepted…. Until one day, a classmate of mine tried something altogether different.

            After receiving a poor grade on a paper…the same poor grade that he had received on all of his papers, Benji Ferenbaucher had an epiphany. Rather than do what had been done time-out-of-mind and re-demonstrate that this fellow graded upon name alone, Benji took the names away from him. 

            Very quietly he organized his classmates.  They signed their names on a master list and in turn received a number.  Benji kept the master list and they enjoyed a sense of purpose as they wrote their papers. 

            The due date arrived, and Benji committed... they all committed.  Each paper was turned in with a number where the name should have been.  The teacher demanded an explanation.  In a faltering, fear-filled voice, Benji explained the situation...He was put in detention for not immediately giving up the list.  The teacher pushed for expulsion on the grounds of disrespect… but of course the administration knew they had a far more complicated situation on their hands. Benji was invited into the principal’s office for a friendly chat… the principal congratulated Benji on a well organized coup, and then asked him to give up the list.  Meanwhile the teacher failed everyone in the class that would not resubmit their papers with their names in the appropriate place…he had to fail the entire class. 

            Parents got involved…and were angry.  The school board got involved…and was angry.  Their anger however was not focused on Benji. 

            There was a meeting, behind closed doors. Benji was again asked to turn in his list, and this time he relented…  Not because they were beaten, but rather because they had won.  He gave up the list as an act of mercy.

            The papers were never graded. The class limped on for another month and Benji, along with the rest of our class graduated.  He received a surprising “A” for the quarter,higher than his previous marks would have allowed. The teacher retired.  The papers were never seen again. 

            It was the last big election year, 2004… the one where George was running for re-election against John. It was a cold morning (below zero I think), and the line to vote was out the door.  No one was talking much…. maybe because there wasn’t much to be said.  We all knew who we were voting for, and more importantly we had taken the time to show up and vote.  There was a shared sense of pride. Which ever way we cast our ballots we were at least participating in the process.  We had reached the point where as Americans we have to say, “To each his own” and simply hope for the best.  I was daydreaming a bit when the man in line behind me asked, “So, have you made up your mind yet?”

            “Have I made up my mind yet?” I repeated slowly as a smile spread across the man’s face.  It took me a minute to register that he has joking. 

            “This is a big one,” he said making small talk.

            “It sure is,” I said as I took a good look.  I realized that there, standing in line behind me was Uncle Ted. He was home from D.C. to visit his family, spend a little time in his (now infamous) cabin, and cast his vote in his home district.

            As we talked about the cold weather, and various decidedly non-political things, I couldn’t help but think this whole exchange was rather cool.  Not because I was any big fan of Uncle Ted, but rather because we each had one vote. Somehow it seems like the powerful elite of D.C. have more votes than the average citizen, or perhaps it feels like they have a bigger vote.  But here in the cold, we both stood… each representing one vote, a simple check mark in box.

            As we stepped into the red, white, and blue striped booths I smiled to myself.  No doubt Uncle Ted and I were about to cancel each other out on every single issue.  I could have easily construed this as a wasted trip, my vote negated as soon as it was cast… but I didn’t see it that way.  I saw it more along the lines of David and Goliath.  Here was one of the most senior and powerful men in D.C. being rendered powerless by a guy who scraped the wax off skis for a living.  I felt mighty.  We both voted…and went our separate ways.

            Later that night, I was picking a friend up at the airport and was watching the election results come in on a television mounted on the wall.  The contest was close, with George up a bit as the results poured in from across the country.  And then, surprisingly all eyes turned to Alaska.  Our electoral votes (once the popular votes were tallied) would cinch the win for George. It was a forgone conclusion, and we all knew it.  George won…John lost…and I lost…but it wasn’t a total loss.  I had left my mark.  I had dueled with one of the most powerful men in the country and had taken him out of the battle. Granted he took me out at the same time, but until we stepped into the booths he had been the greater opponent.  In that, even a stalemate was a personal victory.

            So now, four years later when we are headed back to the booths, I here people arguing and debating. I have even heard a few people say they will not vote because they don’t believe it makes a difference. To that, all I can say is… it does for me. 

“You have to read the chapters Zora left out of her autobiography.                               

                        --- Student, Special Collections Room, Beinecke Library, Yale University

I enjoyed the way that Alice Walker incorporated this quote from a random student into her essay “Looking for Zora.”  I thought it was clever, first because one rarely sees a quotation that is not from an expert of some kind.  In leaving the “student” nameless it sort of implies that “students” are out there digging up the truth.  Secondly, I enjoyed the roundabout way that the quotation implies that aspects of her history were edited or left out.  We know from Hemenway that she was edited by a patron wishing to maintain an emphasis on “primitive” aspects of black culture, but I think that this specific instance points to a larger picture of historical editing.  People, stories, experiences, etc. have been edited out or manipulated into the officially sanctioned history of the U.S. (or the World for that matter) in order to maintain various power structures.  This is no new thought as we are all familiar with the old saying that “history is written by the victors,” but I think this points to a more insidious form of oppression…whereby an author consents to a prepackaged cultural portrait.  This concept harkens back to Oates’s introduction where she states, “Here is a History of America told in many voices.”  Oates’s intention is to fill in these gaps in editing or at least enrich the historical discussion via essays of her choosing as an editor herself… which begs the question, “what is Oates’s agenda?”

I can’t help but wonder what Zora had to say on this issue of agenda driven editing.  In Walker’s essay I kept expecting her to uncover some late work that would address the subject. As Zora died quite poor, I feel it is safe to assume that she was no longer under the patronage of Ms. Mason.  I wonder if it was Zora’s paycheck driven consent to this editing that kept her mute on the subject later in life... or perhaps her objections were made and simply edited out.  

In our exploration of the various definitions of the American essay, language and voice have come up from multiple perspectives.  In general the main gist was one of accessibility to the reader or the rhetorical nature of the essay to connect with and persuade an intended audience.  As we delved into some examples of 19^th century female essayists I was struck by the tone, language, and voice of Mary Abigail Dodge, writing under the pseudonym of Gail Hamilton.  At several times during my reading I had to flip back to the title page and check the publication date.  Her voice seemed to me radically out of place for the time period.  It sounded as if a feminist from 2008 was reviewing Dr. Todd’s essay in retrospect.  She affectively used this tone to make her discursive opponent look like a simpleton.

In addition to calling into question Todd’s logic, she uses an extremely sarcastic voice to do so.  In Dr. Todd’s essay, he portrays women as not only the weaker sex, but also lacking in the powers of reason.  He offers up lack of patents as proof of this argument.  Dodge flips the argument by portraying Todd as the character lacking in reason by following his arguments to their ends, “Does he mean to say that no man shall vote for town-officers till he has invented a sewing-machine?”  Her language oozes with contempt. She follows this up with a demonstration (in a logical proof) of what Todd’s argument truly implies, “The female mind is strong; the female body is week: therefore the female mind must be spared, but the female body may be worked indefinitely. Q.E.D.”  His arguments contradict themselves. It seems to be a challenge for Dr. Todd or any man for that matter to call her reason into question. 

While attacking the logic of Todd’s essay she simultaneously undermines his language skills.  She describes his misuse of the homonym “bear” as, “another happy grammatical touch.”  Dodge is suggesting that Dr. Todd lacks reason in addition to the basic skills of communication. Her use of the word, “happy” again suggests a sarcastic tone to the message. 

This essay, “Women’s Wrongs” stands apart from the other contemporary essays read in class because of its aggressive and sarcastic tone.  Rather than taking a meandering route to explain why women need education, or setting up parallels between men and women, Dodge simply demonstrates her superiority (in multiple categories) over one celebrated and educated man.  She set herself up as one definitive example of an educated woman who can successfully navigate the perceived domain of men. Further, her language suggests that it is easy. 

            I am curious on how this essay was received in Dodge’s time.  Were people receptive to this tone and style or did it work to her disadvantage?  In either case I greatly enjoyed the her style.

I must admit that the idea that an essay is a formless form that resists definition is entirely new to me.  In fact I don’t believe that I had ever, before beginning this class, spent even the briefest of moments contemplating just what an essay was or how it functioned in the world today. I suppose if I had to examine my previous thoughts, the essay would have reflected the standard, page-length, answer to an exam question. In a more creative format I recognized National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” as providing examples of the essay investigating the human condition.  In the cobwebbed recesses of my mind I can remember being affected by Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience at some point in my undergraduate studies.  I thus recognized the essay as a vehicle of social protest and commentary, but was not introduced to the notion that the essay is itself inherently a protest to all forms of authority…. but I really like this idea. 

            In a world of laws, from proper use of grammar and punctuation to mandatory seat belt use, patiently waiting at a stop light despite being the only car for miles around to getting busted for nail clippers by TSA agents at the airport, it is somehow comforting to know that the essay exists. I guess it appeals to the rogue side of my character, that angel or devil on my shoulder that says, “yes” to another helping of something I shouldn’t eat, “no” to being responsible and doing things ahead of time, and “absolutely” to another cold beer.

            At this point, knowing that I soon have to come up with a working definition of an essay, I can say without equivocation that I have no such definition.  The closest that I can muster would be that an essay is perhaps an affiliation of ideals bound together by the mutual desire to resist hegemonic control and inspire non-conformity.  In reading Heiliker, Lukacs, and Adorno, I can’t help but see the essay as an almost Disneyesque vision of freedom with an animated stallion leaping high over the split rail fence of a corral and galloping away (wild mane flowing in the wind), or perhaps Mel Gibson’s screaming of the word “freedom” during his final moments in the movie Braveheart.