education

Is That Crazy Enough For Ya?

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In the ‘60s and ‘70s, women in literature were portrayed far differently than they are today. With today’s image of women, characters like Katniss Everdeen, Lisbeth Salander, Lucy Pevensie, Hermione Granger are some of our generation’s role models. They are praised for their strong will, independence, and successes. Prior to the creation of these characters, readers were often exposed to a different side of women: the crazy side.

Beware, there will be spoilers!

The first book we have is Valley of the Dolls by Jaqueline Susann. With this tale that follows the lives of three women, who are also dear friends of one another, one character truly stood out the most: Neely O’Hara. Her actions made me want to rip my hair out, shake some sense into her, and most of all throw my book across the room. She stands as one of the prime examples of how women have been mistreated in the entertainment business and how that shaped their future. Neely juggled drug addiction, alcoholism, weight gain/weight loss, along with attempted suicide on many occasions for a mere amount of attention from the media – and somehow still thrived. Her lowest point in the novel was when she had been admitted by her friend, Anne Welles, into an asylum for the insane after a suicide attempt that made her lose everything. She was deemed insane, but in reality she was just battling with severe anxiety due to her image in Hollywood being threatened by the newest, up-and-coming starlet. Instead of those around her trying to give her the appropriate resources for success, it was easier for them to put a false label on her problems and forget about them.

Another book, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, follows a woman in the 1950s during her stay at a mental hospital and tells the story of her recovery. Esther Greenwood reflects Sylvia Plath’s own journey after being diagnosed with depression. Plath’s trajectory to recapturing her mental stability takes the same dives as Esther’s, but instead of having a hopeful ending, Plath passed away by her own hand in 1963. The Bell Jar considers the treatment of women with mental illnesses, as well as having an optimistic view on recovery. For Esther, being a woman means being under constant pressures about marriage, being forced to not excel in the workforce, and her body only being a vessel for her future children. All things that many women take for granted today.

A third example is Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. The initial prognosis for the young Miss Kaysen was that she was living with depression. She was diagnosed by a psychiatrist she didn’t visit regularly or know. This lead to her admittance into McLean Hospital in 1967. Upon evaluation, the 18-year-old is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The most important aspect of Kaysen’s retelling of her life is how she describes the treatment within the hospital. She notices the difference between how the medical personnel treat the sane and the insane. She also takes the time to examine mental illness versus recovery. Having a first-hand account of what it was like to be a woman with a mental illness, really brings home the validity of the issues the previous novels highlighted. “Crazy” was a solution, an answer, rather than an illness.

The last novel on the list is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. The ‘70s did not treat the Lisbon sisters as well as many thought. The suicides revolved around the family of seven: Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon and their five girls. All five daughters had ultimately ended their own lives, but the start of it was with the youngest sister: Cecilia. After her initial attempt to end her life, she told the doctor that he didn’t know what it was like to be a 13-year-old girl. She felt alone and her heartbreak pushed her into a depressive state, but the ignorance of her parents forced her into a deeper hole than expected. Upon questioning, no one noticed whether the girls had or had not given off warning signs. The idea of this novel is to explore how their mental illness was overlooked by all members of the community, including the Lisbon parents. Education about these illnesses and what they look like has certainly come a long way. Something that used to not be talked about at all, is now not an uncommon topic among parents, friends, or co-workers.

All in all, female characters in literature have evolved to become more independent and stronger. Although our generation has been exposed to the more sane side of women, we needed the women who had succumb to the dark side of their minds; for the readers who could relate to their troubles, for the readers who need the realistic representation of the world written in a novel. Sometimes we need to know where we come from, the trials and tribulations, to see how we’re going to change where we go.

World Book Day, April 23rd

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Reading is one of the most important life skills that one will ever learn. Reading creates all sorts of positive changes- from reducing stress, to creating a better sense of self and independence, to empowering our brains to keep growing. We should be encouraging those around us to read each and every day (especially our children), even if it’s just for five minutes, but there is no better day to preach the wonders of reading than this Sunday, April 23rd because it is World Book Day!

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As a literary agent, it’s no surprise that this day means a whole lot to me. But, this day goes way beyond my career, it strikes a very personal cord with me. My friends at Amazon are encouraging people to share why they read so well, here it is.

There are so many different reasons why I read, but I think what really hits it home for me is that reading is the easiest and least expensive vacation you will ever get. I don’t think I have ever come out of a reading session more stressed or frustrated than when I started. In fact, I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t noticeably more relaxed after reading just a few chapters of whatever book has my attention at the moment. A book is the one tool that is available to us on a daily basis that allows us to transport ourselves somewhere else. While reading we can visit any place in the world, be whoever we want to be, and experience new adventures. I don’t know of a better “break” from the chaos and natural stresses of our every day lives than that. Reading allows us to totally disconnect and recharge. Reading creates a safe environment where we can just be with ourselves (and the characters of course), which is becoming harder and harder to find in a social media driven world. Reading is the best therapy we can give ourselves.

Why do you read? #LovetoRead

Write on.

Educational Waves in Writing

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Writing is one of the oldest forms of expression. It allows us to communicate with people who might be hundreds of miles away or even a complete stranger. But, over the past ten to fifteen years writing has dramatically evolved.  Simply put, the act of writing in everyday life has drastically increased. Before the explosion of Facebook, Twitter, and blogging the available writing venues were very limited. If you didn’t need to write for your job, you might write an opinion piece or letter to your local newspaper or a birthday card to a friend or loved one. You might even write in your own journal or diary, but that was likely only seen by your own eyes.

With the onset of social media, people started making daily posting about what they were feeling and thinking about at that moment, what they were doing that weekend, what vacation they were going on next, or how they felt about current events and local happenings. Twitter thrives off thousands of people writing thousands of words each day. The accessibility of blogging websites enables anyone to write about whatever they want whenever they want to. Social media gives us an instant audience that we never before had. At the end of day, if you are actively using any form of social media, a large portion of your  free time is taken up by writing. Whether you are writing heart felt realizations or complaining that your coffee is too cold, you are writing and communicating in a way that our ancestors never have.

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With the increase of the importance of writing in our daily lives, I have been interested in seeing how the education of writing will change. I recently came across an article in the Columbia Spectator about Barnard’s new first year writing program.  Changing a first year college course syllabi is a difficult thing to do because it has been so ingrained in the fabric of the school’s educational experience for years. You don’t want your students to miss out on essential lessons they will need to have a successful schooling experience, but each year the students are different, their experiences are different, and the world they are coming from is different than the last. As students adapt to the world in which they live, therefore our educational system must adapt as well. The course change made at Barnard is a big step, but a necessary one. Many people can’t go a few hours without at least writing a few sentences and Barnard is recognizing a need for a change in writing education in order to prepare their students for success out in the real world.

The first-year writing program will focus more on writing technique than the previous program. There will be fewer books and more of a focus on writing instruction. It always somewhat baffled me that in a first-year English course, there wasn’t much writing at all. You maybe had two to three essays throughout the semester with no real discussion revolving around the assignments. The professor would put a few marks on the paper and you would move on. Most of the time was spent reading and discussing what we had read. Why do we neglect such a large part of our everyday lives? Writing is hard to avoid, so why do we avoid it in the classroom? Is it our pure ignorance to the changing times or are we purposely trying to set our youth up to fail? A large part of an education is learning how to be a functioning part of society and having the appropriate skills to get us from one life stage to the next. Writing is one of those skill sets we all need to succeed in today’s world. If we aren’t learning how to write in the classroom, where do we turn to next? Kim Kardashian’s next tweet? I certainly hope not.

I am very happy to see advancement in the Academic world in response to what is happening in the real world.One cannot succeed without fully accepting the other. We can talk all day on this blog about how to write, when to write, and why we should write. But, if we aren’t practicing those skills in our day to day life then when we will ever truly succeed?

Write on.

Where M.F.A Dreams Meet Reality

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In the Education Life section of The New York Times they ran an article yesterday that dealt with M.F.A. programs. It was titled, Why Writers Love to Hate the M.F.A. I enjoy to write and I enjoy to read, so continuing my education in the field has always been something in the back of my mind. But, after my real world experiences the one thing I believe my generation (millennials) should be overly cautious of is whether the means (an M.F.A program) is the best way to the ends (a writing career)?

Here’s the truth as I see it. If you are a super intelligent, very diligent worker, your goal is to become a literary teacher/expert, and you may already possess a doctoral degree in some difficulty worded literary arena then an M.F.A in Creative Writing would be perfect and beneficial for you. First, you would likely get a free ride. You would have a decent shot at a tenured track job at some fancy liberal arts school. You would also likely ace the program. But, if you are a regular everyday person, who graduated college a few years ago and has some boring job you just aren’t happy with, an M.F.A program might sound tempting to you. Maybe it’s the golden ticket out of the rut you have been living in. Just because you love to write, have a slew of short stories you have written and saved on your hard drive, are an active blogger, or just have great ideas and story lines spewing out of your brain that does not mean you should go to an M.F.A program.  Let’s think about your goals for a second.  Are they to write? Are they to just keep on writing because it is something you love to do?  I am going to speculate the answer is yes. I am also going to tell you to keep your job and keep on writing.

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Here’s why. The path through any M.F.A program will be hard and academically challenging. Many of your ideas will be smashed, not to say that is not a good thing, but if it happens over and over again you will start to lose you self confidence for no reason. At this point, a regular individual who simply loves the act of writing is (on a regular basis) is having their ideas destroyed and picked apart. On top of that, they cannot match up intellectually or grammatically with the doctorate in Medieval Literature who sits to their left, nor the doctorate in Victorian Romantics who sits to their right. The professor, when reading papers by other classmates who are trained at a much higher level than the average writer, is going to scrutinize over your work harder than anyone else. By the end of the program (if you survive), you will be beaten and bloodied, your spirit will be tarnished. Oh, and you also owe between $30,000 and $72,000 for your degree. Think about it- just two years ago you had a job you weren’t too fond of, but you did not have these huge loans. You also felt like writing was the best thing in the world and now, well you probably are going to want to take a break from writing for a bit and vacation on a nice secluded island (but, you can’t afford it.) To top it all off, you aren’t going to get that “good” job you thought you were because you did not do as well as other students and you now have little confidence in your work, hurting your ability to sell yourself. The article suggests that success from an M.F.A. degree is going back to your career and doing some more writing, which is exactly what you were doing before. Really makes you want to send your application in pronto, right?

If you like to write, my recommendation is to keep writing. Do not go to get your M.F.A., at least not yet. I do think an M.F.A program has so many great advantages and can open doors left and right for the right person. Once you have built up enough confidence in your work, maybe do some self publishing first and gain a small (or possibly very large) fan base. Use that energy and positive support to write your next book, this time possibly your biggest hit yet. You may also get picked up by a large blog and write for them too. Gain your writing spirit and make that spirit so strong it cannot be broken, because people will always try. Then, maybe, go get your M.F.A. At that point you will not care about what your classmates and professors think. You will not care how “poorly” you are doing in your class, if you are trying your hardest. You will now have the opportunity to absorb and learn everything the program has to offer, instead of dwelling on the pity things. You will also have a much better chance of getting some form of scholarship with a developed writing background and post M.F.A. you have a fan base you will be able to share your fine toned work with. You won’t have to go searching for one, hoping that one day you will find it.

Education is the most important thing in life, but unnecessary education is very dangerous. Don’t make a decision based off a dream, make it based off of your own reality. Are you ready for the next step? If not, just keep writing. Write on.