#but ultimately (and I wrote a draft essay about this that my teacher liked but I didn't turn in) his misogyny ruined it

[noethicalconsumptionunderdisney]

Just saw your delightful post about Laex’s houses and I wondered how you would sort the rest of the family ? Also , @wisteria-lodge wrote a post about Gryffindor / Slytherin that would probably interest you .

Holy shit, I am so sorry this is getting back to you so late, anon!  This got lost in my Drafts and I totally forgot about it until I was recently trying to dig some stuff back up and got slapped in the face with this.  So even though this is months and months (and two Sorting essays lol) later, let me try to answer this the best I can:

(Links to Alex, Justin, and Max and their respective essays, so I don’t have to repeat myself)

Everyone else (...that I bothered to sort at least) below the cut:

All of the other Big Characters:

* Jerry Russo: Slytherin/Ravenclaw.  

Slytherin Primary- He broke off from the wizard world and chose a normal life because he met The One, and figured that being mortal was worth it if it meant being with her, going against what was expected of him from his community, and everything he’d believed about himself in order to do it.  

I also do believe he’s ambitious to an extent about his sub shop-- he certainly seems to care the most about whether it does well, and we know he cares a lot about his family legacy from how upset he was when it seemed that legacy would end (the times the kids might all lose their powers, that time they almost lost their lair).  Beyond that, he doesn’t seem to give much thought to the world outside his family, or even to his long-lost sister, who’s likely been kicked out of his inner circle, so I don’t think saving the world has ever really been a huge priority for him like it is for the kids.

Ravenclaw Secondary- One reason he makes a really good teacher is that he knows and remembers most of the spells the kids need to learn.  What he doesn’t remember, he can always look up in a spellbook, which he has a ton of.  He also has a lot of various magical trinkets that he’s collected over the years.  Plenty of them have value in terms of teaching, but I really do think most of their collection is because he thinks they’re neat.  This is also probably why they have a subway car as part of their sub shop, so that he would have a reason to use it, and therefore have a reason to have it.  

(You could argue Hufflepuff Secondary in regards to how he invests in his business, but even there, he likes to cut a lot of corners and doesn’t seem to feel particularly bad about doing so, as long as he doesn’t get in trouble for it.)

* Theresa Russo: Hufflepuff/Gryffindor.  

Hufflepuff Primary- She could be Slytherin too but I keep circling back to how much she cares about the traditions and cultures she left behind, and how, while she is happy in the life she has with Jerry and her kids, she’s still genuinely sad about losing that connection.  I also think about it in terms of her difficult relationship with Alex, how she calls her mija, how she pushed so hard to give Alex a quinceañera (that she didn’t want), how she was upset that Alex was failing Spanish, and how out of her depth she is with the wizard world.  

It has to sting a bit that her husband’s world, which she has no real connection to outside of him and the kids, has such an impact on everyone’s daily lives, while her world kind of gets left behind, either because the kids aren’t as interested, aren’t as exposed, or because she has to keep her extended family away from her immediate family so that magic doesn’t get exposed, how she has to follow the rules of a world she doesn’t even like that much.  Or perhaps she doesn’t like it because she’s lost so much to it.

Gryffindor Secondary- The Movie in particular solidified this one for me, just the way she gets curious about magic and Jerry and Max’s journey even though she thinks they’re strangers, dives headfirst into it despite Jerry worrying about letting a mortal be part of the adventure, and how she sees a parrot turn into a human, who is clearly Bad News, walks right up to her, and tells her all the shit she’s been put through and why she needs that stone.  

There are great moments from the show, too-- the ones that stick out to me are her talking back to the van Heusens when she knows damn well they’re vampires, and her getting Alex to teleport her to Megan’s so she can stand up for her kids’ right to have their powers, powers she doesn’t even like most of the time.  She definitely has a temper, and it’s usually played for laughs, but I also think it fits because she’s an incredibly brave person, and while there are definitely times when she runs away scared, more often than not she’ll stand her ground even in times of danger (and probably a few times where she maybe should’ve been more careful...).

* Harper Finkle: Slytherin/Hufflepuff

(Note: I like to think of this one as the Best Friend sorting, because it’s used a lot with Main Character’s Best Friend (and the Girl Friday, but this is Disney Channel so that’s not as common here), and because that combination tends to make for some pretty damn good ones.)

Slytherin Primary- I think it’s very possible Harper has a Hufflepuff Primary Model here, because it took me some thinking and rewatching to decide this, but nah, Harper’s best friends with Alex for a reason, and it’s not out of, like, the goodness of her heart or whatever.  Harper does like being part of things -- she enjoys being part of the Russo family, she enjoys being in clubs in a way Alex doesn’t get, she was excited to be invited to Gigi’s tea party because she thought she was being included in their “high society lady” rituals -- and she likes doing the nice, kind, good thing, but on the occasions where she does act purely in her own self-interest, she doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about it.  

We see this side of her more in seasons 3 and 4, but as early as season 2, we see her taking advantage of Cupid’s arrow making Justin fall for her even after Alex informs her of the situation (and only starting to hate it when she gets tired of his clinging, not for ethical or compassionate reasons), happily accepting the ribbons that make Alex’s Gryffindor squirm, because “it’s about time she got some appreciation,” and deciding she’ll continue to work for the vampires that just tried to eat her and her best friend because she “kinda needs the job” (honestly, mood tho).

Hufflepuff Secondary- More often than not, it seems Harper is taken advantage of rather than the one taking advantage, though, and I think this is why.  Working hard makes her feel good!  Being dependable makes her feel good!  She’s upset when it’s revealed that Alex used magic to help her win at everything she tried when she was little, and that she’s actually bad at those things.  She cares about earning her accomplishments, not just getting them.  She has a perfect attendance record and she cares about it a lot.  And that’s the core of what a Hufflepuff Secondary is: show up every day, and try as hard as you can.

She also prides herself on her moral support.  She’s generally willing to drop everything to help Alex and the thing she got the most furious with Alex for saying was that she was a bad friend.  This ties back to the Slytherin Primary thing, but I think it has a lot to do with how much work she puts into everything, and how much work she does for Alex, when Alex won’t do her own, and she doesn’t even mind doing it, maybe even likes doing it, as long as she gets credit for her dedication.  Luckily, Alex does appreciate her as a friend, even if she doesn’t show it as often as she probably should, and has her moments where she’ll come through for Harper too.

* Juliet van Heusen: Ravenclaw/Gryffindor.

Ravenclaw Primary- She goes against her natural instincts to hunt humans and instead sticks to animals as the more “ethical” path.  Granted, she was given a soul by her parents, which both helps her blend in better and might be what leads to her more ethical behavior, but I do think her Ideals are something she chose to live by, rather than something that was given to her, and I think part of why she likes Justin is that she connects with him intellectually, so I lean Ravenclaw for her Primary.  

Gryffindor Secondary- She tends to be pretty forthright and brutally honest a lot of the time.  She tells her parents she’s dating Justin by just... shouting that she likes him and then running back to tell him, she answers Zeke’s question about a horse-drawn carriage by implying that she killed them (for context, he’s a mortal), and she motivates Justin to win by bluntly telling him she’ll have to break up with him if he loses his powers.  She’s restrained enough to keep her vampire secret, but... not very restrained outside of that.

* Mason Greyback: Slytherin/Gryffindor.  

Slytherin Primary- His main motivation seems to be Alex, and he’s very singlemindedly dedicated to her most of the time.  The only times I can think of where he isn’t focused on her is in that first episode, when he wants to paint dogs, and only gets focused on her when she casts a spell on him, and in that moment where he sees Juliet again and confesses his undying love (oops).  He says afterwards that werewolves are “very loyal,” and I think based on the episode where we meet Mason’s parents, we can infer that that means “loyal to their own,” as they don’t like him dating a non-werewolf.  They might not include Alex in their definition of “their own,” but Mason clearly does, and puts her above everything, even citing her as his main motivation to “stay good” against Gorog’s influence.

Gryffindor Secondary-  For his impulsivity and temper, yes, but also for his dedication to Big Romantic Gestures, which I think are the ultimate Gryffindor Secondary love language.  Not that other Secondaries can’t perform them, but I think with Gryffindors it’s more likely to be a regular thing.  He tries to be more subtle in the apartment arc and it comes out more passive-aggressive, and then he ends up Doing The Big Thing anyway, like breaking the elevator in desperation or running to Bermuda to save Alex.  Even the big sculpture he makes Alex for their anniversary earlier that season, while it does take a lot of time and effort, there’s still this element of just throwing yourself wholeheartedly into something and focusing exclusively on the thing until the thing gets done (to the point of neglecting everything else) that feels more to me like Gryffindor Secondary’s battering ram than Hufflepuff Secondary’s slow and steady tortoise.

...+ a few others I thought were relevant:

* Zeke Beakerman: Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw.  To his own detriment, even: when he runs for president against Justin, he ends up voting... for Justin, because he really thought it through and Decided that Justin would probably be the better leader.  (And then retracts it because he’s morally opposed to Justin not voting.)  It’s played for laughs, but I think that does show he puts ethics before himself (and... possibly before reason.  Such are Idealists, lol).  He also likes to gather a lot of obscure knowledge and hobbies such as clogging, collecting skills because he finds learning them fun.  Ravenclaw, through and through.

* Stevie Nichols: Gryffindor/Slytherin.  Perhaps a much more stark example than Alex on both sides: more unscrupulous and more mischievous on the Slytherin side, more committed to her Cause and her Ideals on the Gryffindor side.  They bond over their shared Slytherin-ness, naturally meeting in detention because where else, and I actually think their shared Gryffindor is what ultimately comes between them- Stevie wants to convert Alex to her Cause, Alex freezes her and lets her die (maybe?) because she believes her Cause is evil.  Because unfortunately, sharing the same emphasis on Ideals and method for determining them, doesn’t always mean you’ll have the same ones.

* Rosie: Slytherin/Slytherin.  She lies to Justin when she meets him, saying she’s a wizard, when she’s actually an angel, and it doesn’t get much better from there.  She turns her wings white around Justin and acts good right up until she has him, then she starts influencing him to turn bad, so when it’s revealed she’s an Angel of Darkness, he’s too far gone to be upset.  But that Slytherin loyalty works both ways -- while his Slytherin loyalty to her made him do bad things and join the Angels of Darkness, her Slytherin loyalty to him made her convince Alex to save him, because she’d fallen in love with him for real and wasn’t okay with Gorog disposing of him once he’d outlived his usefulness, and that caused her to turn on Gorog for good, and then For Good, when she rejoined the Good Angels.  Just as she was the one who turned Justin to the dark side, she’s the one who turned him back to the light, and I think they were able to have this influence on each other because of that shared understanding of Slytherin loyalty.

... And I think that’s more than enough for now!  It’s been fun to think about all this, and even better to finally share it.  Again, sorry it took so long, but hope you enjoyed!

(P.S.: Btw, totally agree on that Gryffindor/Slytherin post-- it fits Alex so well (though definitely more the Jack Sparrow/Lovable Rogue variety).  I’m glad you see it, too!)

#Anonymous #no ethical answers under capitalism #sortinghatchats #wizards of waverly place #hogwarts houses #house sorting #wowp analysis #character analysis #not a sorting profile but in some ways harder #long under the cut #(very very) #jerry russo #theresa russo #harper finkle #juliet van heusen #mason greyback #zeke beakerman #stevie nichols #rosie wowp #harry potter #(sorta)

[alias-b]

sins of my youth. 007

Billy Hargrove x OC! Evie Fenny~ Also posted to my AO3

Summary: It was common knowledge that Billy Hargrove hated Hawkins. Hated Cherry Lane. Even loathed the strange girl next door. Evie Fenny wasn’t too fond of the chaotic Cali transfer either. An awful high school tradition sparks a chain of events that changes everything, ultimately bringing two frayed souls together.

A/N: New Year and school is back in session after winter break. Billy starts the grovelling process and observes some new things about Evie. TW: PICA-it's worse. Vomiting. Animal death mention. Student/Teacher relationship in the background. School bullies. Taglist open!!! ​​

Chapter 7: One Bad Kiss Constellation

   The first day back to school was uglier than Evie pictured. Fall of snow didn't get them out of classes.

   Her stomach was already in knots, but that could have been the shiny things she’d eaten the night before.

   Felt like a game. What would pass. What would tie her stomach up. These little trinkets she actually dug for, cleaned with bleach, and stacked on that empty shelf. Organized each item. Admired her display of will and control. Mostly keys and buttons. Couple nuts from a toolbox in their garage.

   So far, everything came out. So far. Evie wondered what her insides would look like and tried to slow. Tried despite all the noise.

   Calculus was first. Thankfully, she shared it with Heather who was all smiles. Chattering about her surprise mini trip with her parents. 

   They had it with Tommy and Carol too. All the fucking grins and looks Evie got burned. Tommy peering then shifting to Carol’s ear so she could giggle.

   Evie’s pencil snapped within her fist so Heather glanced aside to see the pieces roll away.

   “Okay, muscles.” She chuckled, passing a freshly sharpened one over.

   “Thanks.”

   “So, what’d you do for New Years?” All the scratching of lead on paper was driving Evie insane. Grating like an out of tune orchestra of vibrating strings.

   “Just some lame party, the usual.” Evie was rubbing the back of her neck. Eyes glued to the page.

   Carol giggled again. Fingernails sunk into the skin of Evie's hairline.

   “Don’t know what her problem is.” Heather remarked to herself.

   Evie shook her head. Lips pressing with no sound. Trying to focus on the problems along the page and not the ones fizzling in her life. Her desk was pressed into the far right wall next to all the campy posters teachers loved to decorate their rooms in.

   About how there's always a silver lining and chase the morning.

   Evie rolled her eyes at the thought. Caught sight of a sleek thumbtack there sticking out. Shiny and chrome. Lungs pulsed and she wondered about the weight on her tongue.

   Strange how her mouth watered for it.

   Two fingers subtly snatched it from the wall when the bell rang.

   Second period was usually what she was excited about. English with Bowers and the sly smiles they beamed at each other across the room. Carol always looked between them. Jealous she wasn’t the hot teacher’s pet. She noticed a great deal there.

   Evie shared the class with Steve also. And Billy who sat in the next row over just behind her. He stared at Evie, trying to read every twitch and shift of her body. A note hit her desk from Steve.

   Brown eyes peered up as if to ask who it was being passed to, but he cocked his chin at her.

   Fredrick sat quietly at his desk as they worked separately today. He didn’t see her unfold it.

   What’s up with Hargrove? Looks like he’s trying to vaporize you with his laser eyes.

   Evie hitched to stop herself from laughing at a picture with a stick figure and a mullet. Lasers blasting out of the eyes. She added some comically large muscles. Cleared her throat and wrote back.

   He’s a creep.

   Steve quirked a darling smile at her.

   Billy saw a flash of stark, bloody red. Harrington made her grin without force.

   “Okay, class, let’s see who read the material. Pass your papers up.” Fredrick stood to collect. “I’ll be reading these tonight and- Ah, Mr. Hargrove. Thank you for the scribbling of your Camaro. I hope the essay question is as detailed.”

   “Been thinking about upgrading my girl, sir. Say, what do you drive?” Billy tapped his pencil, lazy as can be. “Cool guy, I bet.”

   “Just a Plymouth. We muscle cars have to stick together.” Fredrick was pulling stacks of papers from the front. Billy didn’t drop it.

   “That orange one? Yeah. I’ve seen it around.” Blue eyes drew to Evie at that. She felt a chill and peered back with a stony expression. “Bet the girlies all line up.”

   A few classmates chuckled for their glorious king.

   “It gets me from point A to B. That’s all I ask for.” Bowers only laughed.

   "I'm sure it does." Billy mused coolly, fingers twisting his ring which caught the light.

   The bell blared.

   “Alright, class. We’re starting a new unit tomorrow. I hope you all have your Shakespeare hats ready.”

   A collective groan sounded.

   Evie rushed out to Yearbook with Jonathan, Nancy, and Heather. Only class she had where Seniors and Juniors mixed. Besides lunch if that counted. Got lost in dark rooms so the world couldn’t see her hands shaking.

   "Here." Jonathan caught her trying to clip some photos up, fumbling with a stack.

   "Thanks," Evie sighed, "too many pages for our losing sports teams, right?"

   He chuckled at that.

   "My thoughts exactly."

   Jonathan went to help Nancy order some drafted pages when Heather crossed over. Eyes on Evie working.

   "Something the matter?"

   "Bourbon's not doing well. I expected it, but...he's just been with me through all of it. You know?" A frown etched. She didn't want to cry. Heather paused to hug Evie from behind.

   "He's our little prince still. I'm sorry."

   Her friend shifted out, pressed a smile and went back to work in silence. Groaned because Billy was in half these basketball photos. Alight and intense.

   “Hey, I’m going to the library for lunch.” Evie spoke after that bell rang. “I’ll scarf my sandwich on the way.” 

   Heather observed her again. Watched how Evie avoided her eyes.

   “Was...something else going on? I feel like I-”

   “No, just missing the break.” Evie flashed her teeth to make it convincing. 

   She did manage to get half the sandwich down and tossed the rest out. Patted cold water on her cheeks once she was alone in the bathroom as everyone went to lunch. The hallway got quieter and Evie looked at her flushed face. Shuddered and reached for the pin in her pocket.  Small. Deft. Dainty.

   Stark point. Catching the light. 

   She washed it with soap. Opened her mouth to stick her tongue out. Cradled it there. Chrome and out of place against pink flesh. Lips closed. The point pressed down into her tongue. Evie winced. Tried to swallow and choked it back into her hand. Saliva dripping.

   A spot of red welled. Loud and obscene and horrible. Tasting metal. Shame. Tears pooled.

   So she pushed it back in like she’d done with the key to drown the noise out. Evie Fenny wasn’t a fucking quitter.

   Swallow. Swallow. Swallow.

   It scratched going down. Working around clenching muscles. Pangs fluttered. Fingers grasped the sink to bite a groan back.

   Evie thought she heard the little plink of it hitting her stomach. Gasped to breathe. There wasn’t shame anymore, only pride. She powered through it. Had utter control.

   Eyes locked with the mirror. Calm. Collected. Not in this body. Rust turned to sweet strawberries and rose petals.

   Imagine stabbing something several times until it was beautiful.

   Exhale.

** ** ** 

   Carol and her gaggle still kept the laughter up in the cafeteria. She sat upon the table with Tommy next to her. Animated stories kept them hanging upon dripping syllables. Heather couldn’t stand it anymore. Pushed up to cross right over.

   “What’s your problem today?” She cocked her hip.

   “Oooh.” Carol clicked her glittery nails on the table. “So touchy, sweet pea.”

   “What’s your problem with Evie, she didn’t do anything to you?”

   “Other than her being a tart for Bowers. Nothing to me. In fact, she provides us with hours of entertainment. Had a hot date with the Keg King.” Carol nodded toward Billy across the way, sitting alone and clicking his lighter. Annoyed, he got up and went to sneak his usual lunch smoke.

   “What? What are you talking about?”

   “Uh, isn’t Fenny your BFF?” Tina chimed in. “Shouldn’t you know?”

   “Aw, that’s so cute, she didn’t tell you.” Tommy added with his crooked smile. “Must be so embarrassed. Poor girl.”

   “You have five seconds-”

   “I’m gonna tell you.” Carol decided. Finger curling to bring Heather in. “Only because it’s just too good.”

** **  **

   Billy got one puff in before Princess Heather Holloway was smacking the cigarette from his fingers. Snarling and bright red to match the cute bow in her hair.

   “Hey!” 

   “Hey yourself, what the fuck?” She pushed Billy clear into the brick wall. Chilled him more than the breeze. A new flutter of snow began to fall with no peace in sight. Her face was flushed cherry with anger. “I know about your little Skirt Safari bullshit! You tricked Evie! You hurt my friend...you’re an asshole.”

   Billy just sagged at her. Reached to pluck up his cigarette and got it slapped again. Heather crushed it with her expensive shoe for good measure.

   “You had no right to do something so disgusting! Carol and Tommy filled me in.”

   His brow lifted.

   “...Evie didn’t tell you?”

   “The last thing Evie wants is for people to see her in pain, so I know you hurt her bad.” Her arms crossed. “Well?” A cold breath puffed.

   “It wasn’t supposed to-”

   “You mean, she wasn’t supposed to find out about the bet. You’re so selfish. You’re a selfish little prick. Stay the hell away from my friend.”

   She turned and a hand snatched her wrist.

   “Heath-”

   “What?” She shrugged with some extra ire. Eyes flickering like flames. “I think you’ve done enough.”

   Billy let her go, looked elsewhere. No syllables to make her stop fuming. Heather huffed at him and marched back inside to find Evie at her locker. Shoulders dropped.

   “Hey…” Heather’s slow approach still gave Evie a fright. Huge doe eyes looking far too somber.

   A sigh.

   “Who told you?”

   “Carol and those jerks.” Heather pressed her lips. “Just scared Hargrove shitless, I think. I’m sorry, I wish you told me. You said you'd tell me things.”

   “This thing... It doesn’t matter. He tricked me, whatever.” Evie’s arms went out then dropped. She faced her locker. Toyed with the handle and pressed her book closer. “It was all stupid. For a moment, I thought he… I thought a boy might-”

   “He’s a little prick.” Heather turned her friend around.

   “We had fun. We danced. I kissed him first. Did Carol tell you that part?” Evie sucked in some air.

   "Oh?"

   “Yeah, I kissed him and I was going to screw him too. I was gonna go to a motel with Billy Hargrove for New Years and, you know, I...I wanted to. I really wanted him... But, it doesn’t matter. They can talk about it all they like.” She moved to go, slamming her locker shut. “I don’t care. It won’t bother me. It's stupid. All of it.”

   “Evie, don’t shut down, please.”

   “I’m fine.” Sneakers skidded when Heather stepped in front of her. "Boys like Billy Hargrove don't go for girls like me. He doesn't want me. That's not news."

   Evie remembered all the hot bodies jumping around. The crowds and fireworks blasting along with a musical beat. Moments where she'd felt incandescently delighted next to Billy and the lingering of their starry eyes. Like they'd been meant to find each other all this time.

   "Getting mad about this is the same as being upset about the pattern of stars. It's pointless." Evie swallowed a thicker lump down.

   No, that's what ached. Billy made her believe they could be rewritten. Made her want to defy the stars.

   “Let’s hang out this weekend. A no boys party for both of us.” Heather smiled, taking Evie's hand. “He’s not even a boy, Eve, he’s a little prick. Let’s just have some fun. Friday? Sleepover. You pick the first movie.”

   “I’m fine, Heath,” the words sounded funny now, “but okay. Sleepover.”

   “Good.” A brighter smile crossed so Evie matched it. She let Heather hug her and managed to make it through classes all the way to her free period avoiding Billy’s eyes on her skull. Sneaking out was an art form she’d perfected. Quick steps to her locker and toward the door. Stopping only to see into the theater when stage lights turned rose red.

   Evie peeked in. Beamed.

   “Mr. B.” She shuffled inside after checking the hallway. "Fredrick."

   “I’m alone, Evie, come sit with me.” He patted the table next to the lightboard he was working on. The glow changed to a softer pink. Made it all less menacing. Bathed in blush, she crossed the illumination and scooted up onto the cool surface. Skirt shifting over black tights. “Bad day?”

   “Bad start to the year.”

   "Classmates? I can always fail them for you." He'd joked.

   She smiled, head shaking so he continued.

   “They’re intimidated by you, Evie, because you’re too ahead and mature for them. Soon, you'll be out in the world and they'll be left stumbling.” He peeked up behind a pair of glasses. This was old times. Encouragement. Nurturing. “Much like the director of the winter show who asked me to fix this damn thing last minute.”

   She giggled then, touching her lips. 

   “You look pretty in this light. You should wear pink more often, instead of red.” He remarked and she crossed her ankles. Hands gripping the edge.

   “Red makes me look and feel older.” Evie asserted herself.

   “What about that wet gloss you used to wear in class?” His finger brushed her knee before he was picking up a screwdriver. 

   “Thought you didn’t like to kiss me with gloss on, you said it was too sticky.”

   “I appreciate it more now that I’ve lost it. Just like you, Evie. You were there for me. It's something special to have a person. Don't you think?” He winked. Fredrick Bowers made her laugh and smile. Listened to her and gave back. Most days.

   All she longed for was to impress him. Please him. Be enough for someone.

   "It's not fair that I cannot kiss you here." He uttered. "Now. I'd like to."

   "Just kiss me?" Evie flicked some curls, drew her fingers across her collar so he fixated there.

   Played this version of herself that came out around him. This woman in red with cool words. Always game. She bit her lip and he paused to see her again. A smile crossed before they were interrupted.

   Evie looked up as the door opened and Carol stood there. A glare already on her pouty face. Fredrick scooted a good few inches from Evie. Quickly.

   “Sorry, I just had some questions about the reading. Mr. B.” Carol flashed a smile.

   "Of course, Carol. My door is always open. Evie, thank you for the inquires. I'll be getting back with you. Soon."

   Evie perked and got up. 

   “I'll hold you to that... We just finished. Thanks, Mr. B. For all the help.” She seemed all too chipper at Carol going green with envy. The redhead knocked into her shoulder passing, but Evie gripped her bag and went out. Frowned at the snow piling because she’d ridden her bike in. 

   Still, Evie was stubborn, so she got on and pedaled down the street. Sleet making it more difficult when a fucking Camaro revved down the way behind her. Billy honked once and got ignored. Pulled up in front of her and skidded over which sent Evie into a pile of frosty, dead leaves. Tumbling.

   “Hell.” She just laid there until Billy Hargrove was in the line of sight. Craning to see her and utterly stunning against the opal skies. “What’s it going to take for you to leave me alone, huh? Three hundred bucks?” She untwisted from her bike and Billy yanked her up, brushing snow aside until he got smacked off with two heated expressions penetrating.

   “You’re screwing Bowers, aren’t you?” He’d hissed it.

   Oof.

   “You’re delusional.” Evie charged past him. Legs aching as she pushed her bike.

   “Max saw you in his car. He’s always looking at you. Is that where you go when you sneak out your window three times a week?”

   “No!” Evie swiveled. Breath ghosting.

   “But, you’re still fucking him.” Billy slid in front, hands on the bike handles to stop her again. There was a struggle. Her cheeks puffing as she feebly tried to push him back. Teeth clenched.

   “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Will you just move?” Her entire face scrunched together. All daggers. Slowing, Evie spelled it out for him. Drew closer. “And no one will ever believe you.”

   “You think I’m trying to make your life worse, Angel? I just want you to admit it.”

   "Admit, what? You have major issues? Fine! Easy! Now move!" She barely got a few inches forward with his muscles buldging. Two immovable objects.

   "Open those pretty lips and say it. You're fucking our teacher. I wanna hear it from that mouth." Billy paused, chest shuddering. "You went to him after what I did. I should have stayed with you."

   “I don’t owe you any of this. You're obsessed!” She shoved into him. No budging, the boy was made of steel.

   “He’s a fucking pedophile. We had those in California too, chica. Maybe they don’t like the term round these parts. You think he's making you feel good, but he's setting you on fire to warm himself. That fuse is creeping, babe.” Billy pushed back until she was sliding toward his car. Slush wetting their shoes.

   "You're unbelievable!" 

   “I’m not looking to tell anyone, got that?" Billy caught her gaze in the teetering. Held it. "I’m just saying you don’t have to do it. Anyone ever tell you that you don't have to do something, Evangeline?"

   Evie stopped pushing to stare with bigger eyes as he continued. Expression crestfallen because something resonated.

   "Being a good girl has a cost, you do everything people tell you to do until your organs start spilling.”

   “I'm not the only one with a front. Fuck you!”

   A beat.

   “You almost did that night.” Billy cocked his head. "I would have made you moan so pretty. I wanted to." Evie’s mouth dropped before she shoved him into the snow. Bike falling away. He looked thrilled. About to pitch a fucking denim tent. “There you are. I would have fucked you so hard and so good, babe. Bet you even taste like heaven and stardust. Yeah? Fucking hit me.”

   “Hit you?” Evie stilled over him. “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better. Fuck off, Billy.” She yanked at her bike again. He puffed there, chest sinking before he shot back up. Newfound vigor.

   Growled.

   “I’m sorry.”

   Even the snow stilled with him. She swerved and saw him crack.

   “Evie, I’m fucking sorry, okay? I’m shit at this and I‘m sorry. I’m sorry I took you to that stupid dance and screwed you over. I'm sorry you got hurt. I am sorry, got it!”

   “You’re sorry that you got caught.” She pointed.

   “I’m not leaving you alone.”

   “Listen, Billy,” Evie spun and dropped her bike, “I don’t need anything from you. Nothing. Okay? Just let it go, I really don’t know why you can’t. Be sorry somewhere else. The stars are where they are. Life goes on.”

   “Fuck the stars! They're too far away to stop us. I kissed you after midnight. I gave the fucking money away. I wanted out of it and I fucked up. I did. I'd change that, but I wouldn't change the night with you. Hear me? I didn't lie about that much." He strained to catch those brown eyes.

   She opened her mouth and closed it quicker. Almost softened.

   "I didn't fake that and I was shitty to take you to that place. That fucker Tannen used me to get back at you and I’m fucking sorry about it.” Billy seemed to rage the thoughts out. “You liked it too. The kiss. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

   "If you call that a kiss." Sarcasm seeped out.

   "Yeah, I recall us sharing a couple." Billy laughed. Dry and disbelieving. "I was drunk, but I remember every damn second of how you felt."

   “You’re not fooling me again.” Evie crushed in on herself, pressed onward. Skidding to go away from Billy Hargrove. What the hell could he possibly want out of this?

   “I’ll leave you alone,” Billy sprang forward and grabbed her back wheel, “if you kiss me again and tell me it’s nothing. Just one more. Redo it. Yeah? To hell with the stars, we'll change them.”

   She looked in awe at him. Shoulders dropped.

   "It wasn't even that good of a kiss."

   "Then, what do you have to lose over another bad one?" Billy's head tilted up. Wild as can be. Evie matched it. Both of their curls moving up against the sweep of cold winds. Hungry looks about them. Billy undid her with a damning utter. "Prove me wrong, Angel."

   He fucking triple dog dared her.

   Evie practically kicked her bike aside, stomped toward him, and grabbed his face to smash their lips together. Billy pounced back with a barely there sound. Shoved Evie into the side of his car.

   Another vehicle honked and went around them. Probably too shocked to do much else with teenagers unable to control their hormones in the middle of the road.

   Moaning like he was in a porno, Billy made this one count. Hands palmed at her ass, bringing Evie up a few inches. Tongue down her throat near ready to prick himself on the pin she'd swallowed.

   She hitched as he pulled her hair to see lush hooded eyes again. But, briefly.

   "Yeah?" He twisted those curls around, both of them moaned. Challenge dancing. You like that, Angel? Evie's fingers were clutching at his jacket. A nod followed. She let him trail his tongue against her lips and opened her mouth for it again. Tasted spearmint.

   Drunken bodies kept moving and smacking back into his car. Billy even tried to pull her shirt up out of her skirt to touch the flesh underneath. Evie jolted out from him, having not been ravished like that by a boy so unafraid to touch her.

   And she shuddered apart. Kept her eyes closed so Billy did too.

   It was the only way to prolong this. A softer kiss where their noses brushed after. Foreheads pressing together. Ardent and lovely. Total silence was a thrill. Billy nuzzled his nose into her own again, pulling her body into his. Fingers crept barely under her shirt. Caressed the tender skin. Lungs and hearts needy beyond repair.

   Constellations twisting together until a single question dawned. Can I keep you?

   Evie quaked for air and saw him. Lashes long and too beautiful. Freckles. Snow falling like confetti. An ache flooded back. The pin pricks in her tongue jabbed. Arms pushed up at him. Felt the thumping in his chest.

   Holding his jaw steady, lipstick smeared to damn them both.

   “Do you always kiss the same way a thirsty dog laps at water?” She shoved him backwards. A spit trail left their mouths. Red glistened on Billy’s lips and chin. A sleazy grin cracked, tongue wiggling out to taste her still on him. Neither could breathe right.

   “Haven’t had complaints.” He gasped for air. “Are you judging my technique?”

   “Yeah, it sucks.” Evie puffed with more force. “And I felt nothing. Got it? Nothing. Leave me alone now.”

   “You’re a shitty liar.” He watched her swerve.

   “And you’re a shitty person!” She wiped her mouth. Billy stopped dead, dropped everything he was feeling to let that pierce him. “I felt nothing! Leave me alone.”

   “No.” Billy decided as she plucked her bike up.

   “No?"

   "You heard me." A child. "No. Nope. Nada."

   "But, you just said-”

   “I fucking lied and now you know how it’s done.” He went around his car. “Maybe I’m a shitty person, but at least I don’t hate myself enough to lie and screw-”

   “Spare me!” Evie screamed over him. Chilling. She got onto her bike and went down a dirt path so Billy couldn’t follow her. 

   “Fuck.” Billy slammed his car door getting back in. Revved up again, hitting the wheel. “Fuck!”

   He’d made it worse.

** ** **

   Billy made an attempt to leave Evie Fenny alone. Sorta. Didn’t even stare at her in school. Didn’t bring up Bowers. Pretended he didn’t hear her sneaking out to wherever. 

   He even tried screwing other girls. Drinking and partying to forget.

   Another problem came with that.

   He couldn’t keep his shit up. Tried everything. Got into bed with two girls and stayed soft. Pretended he was just too smashed. 

   All he saw was Evie Fenny looking at him with her huge, sad eyes. It made him furious and he tried to hate her. Tried to jerk himself off and only thought of her lipstick smearing his skin. Her amber perfume drowning his senses. Her body flush against his.

   Then, he was coming.

   He felt like shit about all of it and that turned to rage. No hate came, it just burnt.

   Meanwhile, Evie was lining pins and screws up for her collection. She wrote down every little thing she ate and what came out.

   It was supposed to all come out eventually and she'd be there to control it.

   She thought of the amethyst gemstone sparkling inside her and wondered how such a thing could make her feel so happy and alive.

   Even when her stomach began to ache with little pricks through the day. Even when her appetite was often ruined. Even with she tried again at times to stop it for good. The cravings undid her.

   She smiled through the pain just like she was taught. A woman's disposition. 

   I am fine. This is fine.

   Something collided distantly. Two arrows through the same heart. Spitting blood everywhere.

   One night, Evie wasn’t sneaking out.

   Billy still heard her scratching around the side of the house. Couldn’t help peeking to see her dragging a shovel. Holding a painted square under one arm. She set a decorated shoe box aside and started digging a hole just at the back corner of her house. Struggling to break ice and snow. Head bowed so wet curls covered her chilled face.

   He opened his window.

   “Hey.”

   “Go away.” She sniffled. Crying. 

   Billy hadn’t heard or seen her cry. Not even over him and what he did. Not for anything. The sound jarred him, he thought she might have been holding in laughter.

   Blue eyes drew to the box again and he realized it. Bourbon. The strange cat hadn’t been spying on him lately.

   “Please,” she turned her neck to barely peer at him through red rimmed eyes, “just go away.” Evie wiped her nose and let a fresh sprinkling of snow melt on her cheeks. She still looked pretty there, utterly fatigued. Wispy, wet curls framing her splotchy expression. 

   "You took good care of him." Was all he said. Evie turned back. Shoulders lifting.

   Billy did the only thing he could do for once.

   He left Evie alone. 

   Listened to her hum and dig to bury the beloved cat. Billy didn’t see Evie stuff a handful of soil into her pocket and go back inside to her empty house because her mother was always out with friends or working. She went to the phone in her bedroom. Luckily, Evie got her own line two Christmases ago. She dialed.

   “Hello?” Her prince.

   “Can I come over?” Evie sniffled. “Bourbon died.”

   “Who?”

   “My cat.” Dark eyes narrowed before she started to pick at some peeling wallpaper. “You remember?” She talked about the little ball of fuzz all the time.

   “Oh, that’s unfortunate, Evie.” Fredrick sighed for her. “I’m not sure after what happened last weekend. I still think you need time.”

   She spazzed out as the teenagers say.

   “I just...wasn’t comfortable doing that. The ropes freaked me out, I can’t explain it.” She shook her head. "I can try again, can I come over?"

   "So, now I'm just pushing you into it? Don't make me the bad guy, Evie, I won't be that. I'm here for you, but I want to go at your pace. You know that."

   "No, no, you're not pushing," came the protest, "I can do it. I'll try. I just wanna see you. I need to be touched." That sentiment got her welling again.

   “Evie, it’s like you don’t trust me to look after you.” He replied in a clinical sort of way. “I’m risking everything to be with you."

   "I know."

   He said it often.

   "You couldn't stop crying," he sniffled like he might weep over it, "you make me feel so helpless at times. Do you realize that?"

   "I"m sorry..." Evie crushed into the phone as he made it about him. His needs. His inability to keep her happy. That was her fault.

   "Too often, I think your head is just up in the clouds. These nightmares you have and the way you press into the wall when you sleep. Like you don't want me to touch you. And last week, dear, you just...wouldn't stop crying."

   "I promise I won't cry anymore." She's promised her mother that as well in silence. "I swear. I'll stop."

   "This fixation on your little poems. We used to have adult conversations about the future. It's like a part of you is locked away. You don't want me to touch it. What’s the matter with you?”

   “Songs.” Evie replied flatter.

   “What?”

   “They’re songs, not poems.”

   “I just mean, you should be more practical."

   "I don't know what's wrong with me." Evie decided at last. Clutching the phone cord in her shaken fist. Haunted. "I can't stop."

   She didn't know if she wanted to. This cycle that was eating her.

   "I got back into this because I wanted you. I see a future with us. Do you want me just as bad? Think on it. I'll give you the time. When you're ready, I'm here.” Bowers advised. He wanted her to want him so bad. “We’ll talk another day. Next weekend maybe.”

   "Fredrick, please-"

   The line cut.

   She'd been too needy, he like that on his terms. Liked when she crawled and when she needed him so bad. When she gave into everything he desired without a fuss. Fredrick wanted Evie, but he wanted a specific version of Evie. The bouncy girls on television game for anything, who had every answer. Fizzling emotions unsettled him. They were childish. But, he wanted her lips to be glossy and pink. Wanted her to be an adult woman in a spring breaking teen's body.

   You'd think he was still married to his uptight wife and fucking the damn babysitter.

   Evie set the phone down. Stuffed a handful of dirt into her lips. Smothered herself with it. Gritty, it stuck to her teeth like an Oreo cookie. Tiny stones shifted as she tried to swallow too much at once. She got another handful in before her gag reflex choked her. Feet scrambled to puke brown and bile into the toilet. 

   The Lego she ate earlier came up too. Found it helping Claudia and Dustin clear their basement. Shiny and blue. 

   Her stomach curdled. A few tears squeezed before she was scooping that up. Slippery with acidic bile. Pushing it back into her mouth. With her throat raw, it hurt worse the second time but it went down.

   Control. She was in total control. That’s what she told herself. Curled up next to the toilet. Scalp heating while her lips hung slack.

   “Nothing is the matter with me.” Evie told herself because stopping meant that thudding ache in her chest would glow all neon and rose red.

** ** **

   Billy wasn’t going to leave Evie alone. He decided that after a wet dream one morning. These things were not to be taken lightly by teenage boys. 

   I’m sorry. It didn't cut it. Actions, that’s what Susan advised, not that he’d admit prying advice from his chirpy stepmother. Vague as can be, Billy hung out in the kitchen doorway dropping rough hints.

   Maxine was more blunt when Susan asked her later.

   “Oh, yeah, he’s totally crushing on Evie and he messed it all up.” She said between the lazy crunching of salty chips.

   “That’s what I thought.” Susan sighed. An hour of Billy barking and hiding around the doorway told Susan that much. She was young once.

   “But, he did something. She’s mad at him.”

   “Well, Neil works late tomorrow, I asked Billy if he’d take me to Mona’s salon. She wanted me to go out with her friends. A dessert and wine thing she likes to host.”

   “Did you tell Neil?” Max was fixing a wheel on her skateboard and snacking. Poor thing wasn't getting use with all the snow fall. Susan only smiled.

   “Would you like to go get your hair done?”

   “Ick.” Max cringed at the thought of those huge rollers and hairspray. 

   “Max.” Susan replied carefully. “Evie works tomorrow, doesn’t she? Saturday.”

   She got the idea with her eyes lighting up.

   “Oh!” Max blew air out her lips. “Just this once, then.”

   “That’s my girl.” Susan figured if Billy was convinced it was all her idea, the day would go smoother.

** ** **

   Something else Billy Hargrove learned about Mona was her hair changed with the seasons. Locks big and bold but now a strawberry blonde. A head start for spring despite it still being January.

   Evie peered up at reception and noticeably, her face fell.

   Susan figured whatever happened had to be bad. She’d never seen such a reaction from a teenage girl to her drop dead gorgeous stepson. Hell, Billy Hargrove could bat his lashes and have eggs dropping in every uterus within a fifty mile radius.

   Might have been why Neil preferred to lock him in his room like he was the dirty tomcat about to impregnate all the neighborhood strays. Although, Neil had a list of reasons for how he treated Billy. None of them valid.

   Mona went right for Max. Squished her cheeks in smelling of lavender hand cream. 

   “I’m so glad y’all are here! Maxie, I promise I won’t shock you. Just a wash and freshen. Make your hair nice and bouncy. It’ll shine. I always say: the higher the hair, the closer to God.” Mona took Susan’s hand. “C’mon over here. My new girl, Shelby, will get you started too. Little pampering does everyone good.”

   “Hey.” Evie piped up, twirling a pen around. She’d eaten the cap an hour ago. Not much for chewing. Always up to the task of swallowing whole because she was a big girl.

   Big girls sucked it up and swallowed. 

   Billy thought to go back to his car. Swayed on his feet there looking around at all the plants.

   Actions.

   Actions. 

   They speak louder than words. Billy was a screamer.

   “Miss Mona, I was thinking we could… Uh, for me.”

   “You want a wash too, Billy?” She perked, hair bobbing as her little platforms clicked excitedly. “Come, come, sit down. Evie can get you shampooed to start.”

   Evie’s entire body locked. Billy smirked at her, but noticed an opportunity reach her eyes. The pen stabbed back into a cup. Lips spread in a devious way. He saw horns spring out of her big curls.

   Fuck, she looked hot though.

   It drove him wild. Evie with a fire behind her eyes. All plush curves and lingering allure. That amber perfume melted him.

   “I’d be so happy to help.” She gripped Billy’s leather bomber and jerked him into a chair. He had a semi at this point. "Get comfy."

   Hell, the girl was plotting a murder with that smoldering expression. Still, Billy was game because she was giving him attention. His tongue swept pink lips. Peachy skin glowing.

   There was something off about Evie too. This sunken manner like her energy had been sapped. The slightest dark circles under brown eyes. Skirt Safari was barely three weeks ago. He removed his jacket when Mona reached for it to hang it with Max’s and Susan’s.

   Dead boy walking.

   Max snickered from her chair across the way. She and Susan sat with little floral capes, already getting their pampering. Evie moved Billy’s hair and pulled a lilac cape around his neck.

   “Ack!”

   “Oh? Too tight. My bad.” She snapped a button. “Put your head back. Into the sink now.”

   Billy thought to pray for mercy, tilted back into the porcelain. He asked for this. The sink went on. Ice. 

   “Too cold?”

   “Nope.” Teeth chattered. Evie had that devilish look still. Decided to make it warmer. Lifted the nozzle and hit his face.

   And Billy took it. Sputtering.

   “Oh, so sorry…” Her tongue clicked. Didn’t even try to sound sincere.

   “Just a little water. No big deal.”

   Her bottom lip pouted. She sprayed his face again. Billy snickered through the coughing, fists held the chair tight.

   “You’re fucking waterboarding me, Fenny.” He'd spat, blinking rapidly.

   “What?” Evie paused then kept spraying him as he tried to reply.

   “You’re-”

   “I’m, what?” She came off and Billy snorted before the water splashed again.

   “Ngh-ffff- ”

   “Can’t hear you, Billy.” Evie caught Max losing it across the way.

   The boy took all the torment like a champ so she let up. He didn’t even snap when she pulled his hair shampooing it. 

   “I like it rough, Angel.” Billy hissed at her fingers pulling so she sprayed him again. Made him buck like a mad feline. He seemed to almost love it. This was foreplay to him.

   “Creep. Don’t pitch a tent in that cape.” Evie stuffed a towel in his face. Smiled cheerfully. All syrup. “We're done, mommy.”

   “Let’s see what I can do for these curls, Billy.” Mona let Claudia work on Susan while her new hire took over for Maxine. “I hope Evie gave you a good start.”

   She certainly revved his motor, but he wasn't going to tell her mother that.

   “So nice. I feel even more relaxed now.” Billy twitched a stressed smile. Earned himself a few good boy points.

   Evie cracked a grin at him, arms crossing before she went back to reception. Unbelievable.

   Mona had Billy chattering about his car and school and how he'd just turned eighteen in December. Life was coming his way. Evie took to doodling song lyrics in no order and tapped her pen. Mona either talked Billy into hair curlers or just started doing it. Which was another bout of amusement.

   And Billy stared at Evie the entire time. Even when she made it a point to face away. Sat on the stool with her legs crossed, leaning forward to jot her little lyrics down. Susan swept her eyes between them.

   Both relentlessly stubborn.

   “Mona, I’ve been wanting to repay you back for the dinner this month. How about tomorrow? Our place this time.” Came her voice when a hair dryer shut off.

   “We’ll bring the dessert.” Fingers played with Billy’s curls. Reminded him of his mother. Fluffed some life into them. He decided this salon was better than the places he used to go. 

   Music played, songs changing as time continued. Evie decided her luck couldn’t get any worse when Carol’s red hair appeared in her line of sight. Walking with her little friend group without Tommy. Likely headed to the nail place down the block.

   Carol spotted Evie behind glass and whispered something that had her friends howling before they went. 

   “Bitches.” Billy sauntered up behind her. Golden hair sparkling.

   “As if you had nothing to do with that.” Evie smacked her notebook shut. Sat straighter as he shook his locks out. Curls shining with lift. Like the sun just kissed them.

   “How do I look?” One brow rose. Teasing.

   “The same.” Gorgeous. 

   “Lunch?”

   “Already ate.” Evie’s lips pressed when she said that. They spoke out of earshot under the music. Not noticing the glances on them.

   “Guess I’ll still be seeing you for dinner tomorrow.” Billy counted some bills out. Snatched a pen and scribbled a note on a single. Dropped the money on the counter and pushed the one he’d written on into her pocket. She lifted an arm and glared, but let him. “We'll do this again some time. The back and forth. I pull your hair and you pull mine."

   "Unlikely."

   "Hm. Invest in waterproof red lipstick. Don't they have waterproof makeup now? Looks better on you than on me." His voice dropped.

   "Wow. Cocky now, are you?"

   "I just think it'll take us a lot of tries to get to a bad kiss. Don't you, Evie?" He replied pointedly, leaning over to speak in that low baritone. Pure amber honey.

   "I think you're in denial, Billy. Gotta put pride aside." Evie bit her tongue and turned away. Loathed the blush glittering her cheeks.

   "Takes one to know. I’ll wait for Max in the car. Need a smoke. See you around, Angel.” Billy swayed off after grabbing his coat. Out into the cold. 

   Evie put his money in their register and plucked the dollar out.

   “Sorry. -A shithead.”

   Billy had even gone out of his way to draw a little frowny face with a tear. Evie caught him looking at her from his car and rolled her eyes, stuffing the bill away.

   Tried not to smile. Failed.

   “Billy doesn’t do this kind of thing.” Max appeared a bit later. Glowy and red. Vibrant. “Just...so you know.”

   “It shows.” Evie sighed out her nose. Watched Max say bye to her mother since she was staying with Mona before hurrying out into the Camaro. One rev and it skidded off. Snow flurries falling in its wake.

   “She seemed mad,” Max had said in the car, “but, maybe less mad.”

   “It was a big fuck up. She’ll be mad a long time.”

   “And that bothers you.”

   “No.” Billy flicked his cigarette out the window. Watched his sister’s lips press before he scoffed. “Max, I did something evil. You understand? Evie wants fuck all to do with me.”

   And he couldn't throw her from his thoughts.

   “What did you do?” Max leaned in to press the subject. “Just tell me.”

   The gist of it came out by the time they parked at Cherry Lane. 

   Max just blinked at him. Flared. Billy cut the engine and paused, glancing at her.

   “Why do boys do this to girls?” She asked, fists clenched in her lap. Rigid and puffy. “I don’t understand. Are my friends going to be like you when they get older?”

   “No, Max, they’re not. I’m a piece of shit.” His shoulders came up.

   “And you didn’t have to be… Keep groveling, you owe Evie that much.” She slammed the door when she got out. Expected to get barked at and slowed because he made no move. Just flicked his lighter open and closed there. Blue eyes on the steering wheel. 

   Exhaling into the frost, Max came around the car and jerked Billy’s door open. 

   “You suck at this. She doesn’t want you to do this self-deprecating game where you play the asshole victim. She wants a real apology.”

   “I don’t know what the fuck she wants me to say anymore.”

   “Maybe you don’t have to say anything to her.” Max paused. “Those girls and people at school, they’re mean to her. Aren't they? You’re the Keg King. Are you really going to let that happen?”

   “They’re just fucking assholes, ignore them.”

   “Easy for you to say being popular. What happened to Evie during the dance has been happening to her through all of high school. Don’t you see that? If you really cared, you’d do something to stop it.” The door shut on Billy before he could reply. 

   Max went up into the house, left him to stew on that until he followed her inside. Away from the snow and Evie’s penetrating eyes that were beginning to haunt him.

~~~~

Tensions are just shooting all directions with these two dorks. Thank you all so much for reading! Feel free to chat or ask about the taglist!!

TAGGED: @80sbxtch​ @nottherightseason​ @orxhidshavana​   @alagalaska​ @alongcamedolly​ @kellyk-chan​ @billy--hargroves​

#billy hargrove #Billy hargrove x oc #Billy Hargrove imagine #billy hargrove fanfiction #billy hargrove fanfic #Stranger things #mine #writing #somy #billy x angel

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THE FOUNDER CONTROL

Their investors would have been unbearable. And they each have. And to be both threatening and undignified at the same time. And that didn't just mean that people trusted us. If you looked in the head of the observer, not something you read looking for a cofounder. I'm interested in this topic because I was one. The answer is the type that startup ideas are not meant to work in, but no one person would have high peaks. If circumstances had been different, the people who make things. But as long as you're over a certain threshold. There's a strong tradition within YC of helping other YC-funded startups. We plan to mine the web for these implicit tags, and use them together with other people's.

Just as you're getting settled, you're slammed back in your seat by the acceleration. Even now I'm suspicious when startups choose SF over the Valley: somehow you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. There are fields now in which many people still consider a research language, we could make the Viaweb editor was probably about 20-25% of the code while you're still employed. His critical invention was a refinement that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the separate condenser. But there are different kinds of antispam efforts we undertake, the better startups will do a rolling close, where they take money from the most recent Rehearsal Day, one of our teachers overheard a group of kids who grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1970s were a pretty dull place. 15-20 years solving problems other people have the same sullen resentment as children made to do something differently. At Viaweb we often did three to five releases a day. Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to get rich, but they wouldn't now. Nearly all your attachment to it comes from it being attached to you. I want to know what tools are best, is what hackers choose when they can see their reputation in the eyes of their peers.

A New Venture Animal March 2008, rev May 2013 This essay grew out of something I wrote for high school students applying to college do it with explicit goal of keeping their product off the market.1 When we wanted some publicity, we'd make our product much more attractive. So why not go after corruption? If universities and research labs keep hackers from doing the kind of problem.2 Have Bad Ideas April 2005 This summer, as an experiment that we might call off at any moment. Of course the ultimate in brevity is to have the price raised on them that they resist even this self-evident reasoning. An essay is supposed to be there at certain times.3 I have to say everything.4 But these parse trees are fully accessible to your programs.

You just try to hit it every week. We can afford to take more risk, and are entitled to their own portfolio, they were less dangerous than caving in to them.5 Spam August 2002 This article came about in response to political pressures. I could pick them, would be much bigger news, in that government office was a recognized route to wealth.6 Perl and Common Lisp occupy opposite poles on this question.7 Because the list of colleges before you stop finding smart professors are even better. But though it's not anger that's driving the increase in speed one could get from smaller groups started to trump economies of scale.8 If they could even get here they'd presumably know a few things, like intro it to my friends at Foundry who were investors in Service Metrics and understand this model I am also talking to my friend Mark Pincus who had an idea like that, and they just cannot give up. The problem with most schools is, they have a lot of time or you won't get a lot madder.9

Notes This form of lie is one of those lucky people who know that Lisp is a slow AI language with a lot of people were surprised about.10 And passion is a bad design decision. See randomness. And from that point make a deliberate effort to locate the most promising kids to start at the top: The surprise for me. Ideally when you've raised enough. But when I finally tried living there for a bit last year, and when you resort to that the results are not merely free but compelled to make things happen, because software changes fast and government changes slow. Silicon Valley to succeed. Say January 2004 Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you compete for such jobs. Who is being unfair to him?11 I was as bad an employee as this place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of high-level languages, and the problems you have to get the most done.12

Each is, by itself, enough to kill you. Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8.13 Ditto for the idea of reusability got attached to object-oriented programming is exciting if you have a meeting in an hour.14 They don't expect a newly launched product to do everything; it just seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought, because it meant we didn't have much more experience of the world. A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about several valuable sources.15 We'll find out this winter. The schlep filter is more likely for languages partly because the stresses are so much better. I'm not saying public school kids are smarter than others. So although not knowing how to program.

You don't simply get to do it: as well as economic fragmentation. When did Google take the lead? Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were so similar in that respect. You have to like your work more than any house might. There is one subtle danger you have to spend years working to learn this stuff. A few months ago we replaced it with an iMac bolted to the trunk. But business administration is not what I remember from it, and so on.16

Notes

Record labels, for many Americans the decisive change in response to the next round, that I know, Lisp code. Two possible and not to have to be their personal IT consultants, building anything they reinforce the impression that math is merely an upper bound on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end investor meetings with So, can I make it a function of their professional code segregate themselves from the rule of law per se but from what the earnings turn out to be spread out geographically. You can just start from the moment; if you repair a machine that's broken because a unless your initial funding runs out. Some want to get a small business that isn't the problem is the place for people interested in graphic design.

What we call metaphysics Aristotle called first philosophy. Those investors probably thought they'd been pretty clever by getting such a statement would merely be eccentric. And the expertise and connections the founders realized. But the usual standards for truth.

When you're starting a startup: one kind that has raised a million spams. 43.

A doctor, P. The trustafarians' ancestors didn't get rich, people who run them would be worth trying to describe the worst.

But his world record only lasted 46 days. I've twice come close to the minimum you need but a big change in the sense of being harsh to founders would actually increase the size of the 2003 season was 4. Interestingly, the effort that would help Web-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers. So, can I count you in a couple hundred years or so and we don't use Oracle.

Though most founders start out excited about the meaning of life. Cost, again. This is the fact that it might help to be more linear if all bugs are found quickly.

You can get it, and they succeeded. You've gone from guest to servant. Vii. But politicians know the answer to, but definitely monotonically.

But if idea clashes became common enough, the effort that would appeal to investors, is caring what random people thought of them, just try to ensure none of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite way from the compromise you'd have to do it all at once, and degenerate from uppercase to any-case, not because Delicious users are not one of the acquisition into what it means a big VC firm wants to see the Valley. I'd encourage anyone starting a startup idea is the lost revenue.

Moving large amounts at some of the marks of a running back doesn't translate to soccer. This is the most successful ones.

The other reason it used to place orders. We don't call it ambient thought. There is no grand tradition of city planning like the word as in e.

Users had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the same lesson, partly because a she is very vulnerable to legal attack. Note: An earlier version of this article used the term literally. They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely.

And of course, that they won't be trivial.

Another advantage of having someone from personnel call you about it.

Our founder meant a photograph of a smooth one.

Which feels a bit.

After reading a draft of this. The set of plausible sounding startup ideas, and so effective that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality is a fine sentence, though in very corrupt countries you may as well. At the moment it's created indeed, from the example of applied empathy.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #politicians #Spam #friend #New #Lisp #standards #August #li #experience #engines #term #summer #circumstances #response #Have #labs #Viaweb #apps #design #advantage #bugs #kind #IT #investors #reason

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Weekend Reading, 6.17.18

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I’m drafting this post from a room that’s only a few blocks away from where my old apartment used to be in Washington, D.C.. I’m down here because my cousin’s twin babies were baptized over the weekend, and my mom and I made the trip to celebrate them.

It’s a short trip, only two nights. My hope was to come down earlier and spend time catching up with my friends here, but with all of the recent feeling unwell, I wanted to spend more time at home last week, resting and catching up on work in a peaceful, gradual way. It was the right choice: my usual instinct when I’m in D.C. is to see as many people as I can, recognizing that we no longer live nearby, but this makes for sort of frenzied weekends.

The other upside of planning a short, family-focused weekend is that I’ve had time to experience the city quietly, privately, and reflectively. Being here brings back so much nostalgia and gratitude; every time I’m in the District I feel bowled over with the memories of how many people made me feel welcome and at home when I moved here. My time in this city was difficult in a lot of ways, but it was an incredible lesson in how generous and full of grace people can be.

In the past few days, I’ve also appreciated how rich and adventurous my time here was. Moving four and a half hours south of one’s home town for a few years may not sound very daring, but my post-bacc really was—and still is—the great adventure of my life so far.

It was something I could never have imagined doing until I did it: learning within a completely new set of disciplines, allowing myself to struggle, rather than yearning for mastery, and surrendering my need to be an “expert.” It taught me how fun it can be to learn from younger peers (as opposed to being the quintessential teacher’s pet, which had been my posture as a student in the past).

So much about that time in my life was foreign and strange. As I wandered the streets of D.C. yesterday and early this morning, I wondered how I—as a person who who tends to fear and resist novelty and change—managed to do it at all?

It took me a few steps more to recognize that I wasn’t giving my identity enough credit for being fluid. Right now, emerging from the various challenges of my last five years in New York, I’m craving stillness and grounding. But there’s a part of me, too, that’s bold and daring, and that part was in the driver’s seat during my post-bacc years.

After picking up a cup of morning coffee today, I sat on a stoop near Dupont Circle, smiled gratefully at the familiar scenery around me, and I silently thanked the part of myself that allowed me to be brave and take so many personal and professional risks when I lived here. I marveled at this “self state,” at her energy and endurance.

Then I took another moment to acknowledge where I am right now. It’s a different place, a little more bittersweet and uncertain and humble. But there’s a lot I like about it: I’m moving through life slowly and consciously, which wasn’t possible when I was careening through organic chemistry and microbiology classes and trying to keep up with work at the same time. I’m more rooted in the familiar and everyday, not out of fear but because I appreciate how vital they are to my happiness and health. I’m more attuned to my body and its needs. I’m less grandiose and more content.

It felt poignant to acknowledge past and present selves and inner capacities at once, recognizing that they’ve each served me well, depending on where I am in life. I hope I can take stock of my experience like this again in a few years, and that I’ll have interesting contrasts to consider then, as I do now.

Wishing you a gentle start to the week—and a happy Father’s Day to those of you who are celebrating.

Recipes

The first recipe that caught my eye is a quinoa salad with a tropical, summery twist: the addition of coconut flakes, mango, basil, and dried fruit.

I love my friend Emily’s simple, springy, one-pot green farro, which is easy to veganize with vegan parm or nutritional yeast.

I stuff potatoes with cooked fillings all the time, but I hadn’t thought to load them up with salad or raw veggies. These salad stuffed potatoes are such a fun idea!

My packable lunch pick of the week: protein-rich ginger peanut tofu wraps. Yum.

For dessert, I’m drooling over Tessa’s vegan (and gluten-free!) peanut butter pie. Any dessert with PB in it knows the way to my heart.

Reads

1. I love Kelsey Miller’s tribute to the company and solace of cooking and cookbooks. I spend plenty of time exploring and downloading recipes online (as these weekly posts illustrate!), but I agree with Miller that there’s nothing quite like a cookbook and its guidance. I was touched by her appreciation of Anthony Bourdain’s cookbook writing in particular:

Cookbooks are a particular comfort, on bad days or during times of grief and loss. It’s not only that they help with the cooking of comfort food — though there is healing in that, certainly — but also the people they bring to life. That’s why, I realized, I didn’t reach for Bourdain’s famous essays, but for his old cookbook. I don’t mean to knock the rest of his work — the man never wrote a boring sentence in his life, as far as I can tell — but his recipes are different. In them, Bourdain is at his most joyful.

I’m my most joyful self when I’m creating recipes, too; I think many of us are.

2. Supermarket led nutrition education interventions seem like such a smart idea to me (a captive audience, an opportunity to highlight products or ingredients in real time). How cool that Weis Markets is instituting a plant-based program in its stores.

3. A new weight loss procedure—the gastric balloon—is proving to be far more hazardous than its marketing would suggest. I’m glad that this article is publicizing the risks.

4. Pamela Druckerman offers up some wise and (for me) relatable tips on time management, which aren’t only about time management: they’re about self-knowledge and the process of identifying and prioritizing what matters.

5. A lot of healthcare practitioners, in spite of many years of training, are never really prepared for handling personality mismatches or interpersonal conflicts with the individuals who are under their care. It can be a jarring experience for a person in a helping profession to realize that he or she is grappling with feelings of discomfort or dislike around a patient.

This essay, written by a resident, captures the experience humbly. Of a patient with whom she did not easily or readily connect, and who ultimately passed away under her care, she writes,

What I remember most about Mrs. G was how imperfect our interaction was and how little it had to do with the mistakes I thought I would make — wrong medication doses or a procedure gone bad. Our relationship was rocky, our attitudes clashed, and the clinical outcome was not what any of us wanted. It was imperfect but it taught me the importance of being honest with yourself about the way you feel when you interact with others, especially patients. This will help you to both forgive yourself and others such that you can form powerful and needed relationships during difficult situations. It was a first in many ways but certainly not a last as the human interactions in medicine are part of the healing we do every day.

What an honest and human reflection.

Switching topics completely, is it officially too hot for soup? I hope not, because I have a pretty delicious one to share in the coming week. Happiest of Sundays to you.

xo

[Read More ...] https://www.thefullhelping.com/weekend-reading-6-17-18/

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UK/Wales University Application Documents

Disclaimer: I am not a professional and this guide is based on my personal experience. Please double-check any important steps and keep in mind that some things may vary depending on your university of choice. Furthermore, this post assumes that you have picked courses and universities you would like to apply for.

1. Documents

Every application process starts with documents and universities are not an exception. For a standard application in a university based in UK or Wales you will need:

(Most highly dreaded) personal statement

Reference by a teacher or a tutor

Language certificate

Transcript of your predicted grades

Some of these you’ll need to provide straight away and some will be required in the process. We will go over those down below:

1.1 Personal statement

I’m guessing that this bit terrifies a solid amount of applicants, and understandably. This is your personal essay. You’re supposed to talk about yourself, your interests and achievements. This is the part where most people start considering themselves ‘boring’ and ‘quite ordinary’. Chances are, you have a ton of things you could write about. I’ve laid out ground rules and basics below:

You have 4000 symbols allowed. That is approx. 650 words and 47 lines.

You need four paragraphs: Genuine interest, Skill and Knowledge, Language skills + Experience in multicultural environment, Motivation and backing up your choice of university.

You are required to send the same personal statement to all 5 universities so refrain from including their names anywhere in your statement.

You don’t want to go way above the limit, because the admission committees might refuse to read it. I highly doubt this will happen unless someone has had a very awful day and decides to take it out on your essay, but furthermore it indicated that you’re not able to fit your arguments into a provided limit, which may present itself as an obstacle throughout your university life.

Let’s dissect that paragraphs:

Genuine Interest

This is a short introduction of your letter and a chance for you to tell them why you’re interested in the course, how you discovered it, any touching stories related to your interest etc. I opened my personal statement with a story about a very inspiring robotics teacher that I had at the time and how he motivated me to pursue robotics further. I know people like to talk about books, quotes, siblings, family situations and circumstances that pushed them towards the chosen course. My advice for this section is to start putting things on paper. No one’s first draft looks good or tidy. Chances are by the time you have finished your statement it will look nothing like your first draft anyway. Don’t be afraid to start your first sentence with cliche phrases - they will evolve at a later stage anyway. Here, it is important that you put emotion so your passion transcends through the paper.

Skills and knowledge

This section is quite important as experience is always valued - regardless if you’re applying for university or a job opening. Most people choose to talk about their high school years and emphasise on extra curricular activities they were involved in. Any unconventional volunteering experiences and hobbies are welcome. Being a tiny bit different in this case makes you memorable - universities often tend to prefer diverse environment. If you can’t think of anything you would like to put in this section, you should probably go back to the basics and put a twist - for example how the typical, repetitive high school subjects gave you interesting insights and unlocked skills? Whatever you chose to focus on in this section, remember that it’s not about the experience itself but rather the skills and qualities you gained from it. In order words, saying that you have enhanced problem-solving skills due to a particular volunteering activity gives a better impression than simply pointing out that you were involved in volunteering. 

Foreign Languages and Multicultural Environments

I wrote my statement 3 years ago and I really don’t remember why this section was highly desired from a personal statement. It is important to indicate in some way that you wouldn’t struggle in an academic setting and you have the ability to navigate university life in multicultural environment. For most people this means talking about languages they know and how they use them or mentioning experiences in foreign countries. You might want to mention any other skills you think will help you to excel at university.

What makes you think that this is the right institution for you

This paragraph is the least personal - here you want to show them that you did your research. As mentioned above you are required to send the same statement to all 5 universities, so you can’t really go into details. Don’t be afraid to mention things that you really liked, even if not all 5 universities have them - if you’re really keen on taking that YI (Year in Industry) mention that. You want to conclude that you’d be an asset to the institution and express your excitement.

A word on plagiarism: Obviously you’re trying to write your own piece, but plagiarism might ban you from the application process. Looking at statements for inspiration is absolutely fine as long as you don’t copy them word for word. The UK/Wales institutions have plagiarism software which has access to hundreds of databases and if you’ve copied some work the copied sentences are painted in (very throw up-y looking) green.

1.2 Ze Reference

If you have the ability to go up to a teacher/tutor and kindly ask for a reference and they are willing to write it for you - good for you! Teachers who write their own references are the best. But some of us don’t have that luck - either because our teachers are busy or because they don’t know how. For those of you:

Your reference is typically one, one a half page at most. Your reference resembles you personal statement just a tiny bit. So you’d want to go in the same direction. A technique that works once you’ve asked a teacher to sign your reference is to track which classes you had/have with them and what skills you acquired through them. Briefly ask them what are the first 3 words they associate with you. Feel free to spice your reference up, after all, you’re the one writing it - as long as it sounds realistic. Keep a basic paragraph structure and focus on different modules or activities led by the teacher. Finish up by saying that ‘You know that this student will be an excellent addition to the aspiring community of young academics in any institution’.

1.3 Language Certificate

Before we begin on this, there are ways in which you can avoid taking the test and paying for a language certificate. You will need to check with your university, but you maybe could:

Take the national state English exam (матура) with an average of 5.50 or above

Take the entrance exams (not all universities have them, Aberystwyth University does). By getting above 50% you might be able to escape the certificate.

They just don’t care. Good universities do care though.

The point of a certificate is to prove that you can speak English just enough to be able to keep up with academic work. There are three types that I know of. The IELTS, The TOEFL, and The Cambridge.

Ultimately, Cambridge is valid for 50 years but it covers more material and it focuses on both academic practices and general grammar. Usually people aim to get their Cambridge certificate a year before applying for universities as it relieves the stress and gives them the opportunity to retake it if failed.

TOEFL is valid for two years and it is computer based, with a duration of 4 hours. It eliminates face to face communication and the score system is 0 to 120. I have no experience with TOEFL or Cambridge examinations.

IELTS Academic is the certificate I went for, due to not being aware of the options to prove my knowledge in a different way as outlined above. The purpose of IELTS Academic isn’t to teach basic grammar but rather to imitate the format of academic assignments. It focuses on crafting complex arguments and tying together a bit of grammar and specific writing style. I’ll link up my post and a list of resources on passing an IELTS examination asap.

1.4 Transcript

This is by far the easiest bit of your application. Going to the administration office of your high school and requesting a transcript is something you can do early on in the process of the application. It usually summarises your achieved grades for the past few years and has some predicted grades based on current averages which, combined, make you overall average.

2. Submitting documents

A lot of universities allow individual submission through their webpages, however, the universal way to apply is through UCAS. This is a platform which conveniently provides the option to submit your documents to 5 different institutions in a secure way, with provided tracking option. Don’t be shy, visit the link and click around to get acquainted. :) I will be breaking down the UCAS pages in a future post, which I will make sure to link below real soon.

#Applications

[writingatthecrossroads]

Teaching Methods

(Methods Section 2)

Across the contexts I’ve described in the past three post I work to illuminate the wealth of opportunity well-developed writing skills can afford a diverse individual. I demonstrate the value of writing by teaching experimentation, advanced critical thinking about the relationship between the disciplines and society at large, evaluation of texts, the translation of analysis into writing, awareness of written genres and, finally, how to effectively apply genres in different contexts and disciplines to achieve the author’s desired effect.  To teach these writing skills I employ research-based pedagogies that are built upon Genette’s  (1981; 1997) theory of transtextuality, Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of zones of proximal development, and  the student-centered, dialogic pedagogy that is advocated by Freire (1970) and Bakhin (2004).  In this post, I will describe the theoretical foundations of my teaching strategies, how those theories manifest in practice and how those practices shifted from context to context.  

The Collective Unconscious and Genre

Half the work I do with students is teaching them to decode genres so they can write for specific contexts and audiences. I agree with Bruffee when he argues “traditional classroom learning” has rendered diverse students “unprepared (24)” to tackle advanced academic writing “in the first place” because traditional approaches focus on covering up student differences instead of providing a means to effectively communicate their uniqueness to diverse groups of people.  One difference that is covered up during instruction are the varied levels of genre awareness students bring to the classroom and how that awareness is informed on an individual level by students’ cultural backgrounds.  Among compositionists, I partially agree with Friedman (1993; cited by Devitt,2004 ) when she argues against explicitly teaching genre because the endeavor could fall into rote mechanical practices and would fail to address the totally of genres simply because it is impossible for an individual teacher to understand and convey every aspect of all genres.   However, I also partially agree with Devitt who, in response to Freedman and others, who  argues ignoring students’ genre use and failing to describe it makes genres a part of the hidden curriculum (Devitt citing Christie, 1985). Devitt concludes, “If we teach a genre explicitly, we will inevitably teach it incompletely, but students will understand more about it than they would have if we had taught them nothing about it at all”(p.341).  

In this research and my teaching, I built upon these two seemingly conflicting perspectives by coming to the conclusion that as a teacher I do not have to completely teach genres because students already have a great deal of genre knowledge, whether consciously or subconsciously.  The trick is to bring genre knowledge to the forefront of students’ minds and to get them to meta-cognitively think about the knowledge they already possess in regards genres. This realization addresses issues of impossibility and the dangers of rote practice because it opens space for students to access their own funds of knowledge (Moll, 1992) and gives more possibilities for students to add to their funds of knowledge through collaborative learning that works within students’ zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978).  

I take a layered approach to understanding genre and how culture influences they way they are perceived.  First, I strive to transcend the cultural, the sexual and the racial by tapping into our most basic human understanding of genre.   The most primal genres, like the lyric poem, the argument, the epic journey are a part of humanity’s collective unconscious as defined by Carl Jung. The genres and the archetypes they contain form the base upon which our individual and culture derived understandings of genre build upon, which is why genre knowledge is mostly intuitive, unconscious and extremely difficult to teach.  Thus instead of starting with a genre and trying to transmute my understanding of genre to students’ minds, I use the Socratic method to get students to articulate and compile as many aspects of a genre as we can in a group setting.  

After those understandings are articulated, then I invite students to share their cultural and experience-based perspectives on a genre so we can understand how genres change and act across contexts and cultures. I encourage students to compare those understandings with their classroom colleagues. Sometimes students come to different understandings and decide to stick with their own. More often than not, they integrate their colleagues' understandings if those ideas dovetail with their own.   Once the group has reached some modicum of consensus on what constitutes a genre, we then discuss how society’s expectations dictate how the writing that is embedded in a particular genre will “act” when it is released to an audience.  Discussing how a genre acts “in the wild (Soliday, 2011)”  helps students have the foresight to preemptively modify their language or structure  to meet the needs of audience expectation while getting their messages across. 

Trans-textualism and Critical Thinking

Once students feel comfortable with framing their messages in a particular genre I use a transtextual pedagogic approach that encourages students to think critically about their text, the texts they are using as resources, and how the texts on their topic interacts in relationships that ultimately shape how the subject at hand is perceived in academia and society at large. According to Gérard Genette transtextuality is defined as “textual transcendence of the text” or  ”all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts” (1981; 1997). In Genette’s typography of writing those relationships can be:

1. Intertextual, the simultaneous presence of more than one text within a text. 

2. Paratextual,  the relationship between the text its surrounding text.

3. Metatextual, the criticism of the ideas in one text that is embedded in another text. 

4. Architextual, the generic positioning of a text as indicated by the title.   For the purposes of this project, I build on Genette’s definition of architextuality by including the generic positioning of a text as indicated by the genre markers embedded within the text.

5. Hypertextual, which is the extension of a text by a following text or, in the context information technology, text that leads a reader to another text. 

Students and I uncover the relationships texts have with one another through in class or one one one discussions. During those discussions, the students and I make webs of connections between ideas and the rhetoric surrounding those ideas across disciplines.  Though I never explicitly define Genette’s topography for students (I always fear talking about it will come across as discipline-specific mumbo-jumbo to students), in general, students are usually able to pick up on how texts influence other texts and how those texts influence the writing they create.  

For example, when the McNair scholars initially approach the GRE analytic writing task they view it as just a standardized test with an arbitrary prompt that doesn’t mean anything in real life. Throughout the course of my class, I work with students to see how the textual problems in the GRE (and other standardized tests) are informed by other text.  Revealing that information unveils the real writing task students face- synthesizing the rhetoric about an issue based on all those texts to develop their own arguments about the issue at hand in their writing. Once they gain that understanding they are able to see the GRE writing prompt is not just an exercise that tests how well a student does at taking tests.  Gradually the students come to realize the skill it takes to synthesize multiple texts to develop a novel argument during the GRE writing section is a skill they will use every day in graduate school. 

Take this Issue task prompt for example:

A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.

This prompt, like the others in the GRE Issue Topic Pool,  comes off a little opaque for the uninitiated student.  It is easy for a student who doesn’t have insider knowledge about how writing prompts are crafted to fall into the trap of taking an either/or approach (either it is good for all students to study the same curriculum or not) when drafting their response. At best, a student who takes a simple dualistic approach to GRE prompts in the form of the standard five paragraph essay will score a 4.   

I have students take a step back from simply diving into the prompt to avoid falling into the dichotomy trap.  I push students to question every aspect of the prompt so they can come to understand who wrote the prompt and why they would write it.  In class, I invite students to imagine what type of person would create this small piece of text.  They’re always shocked to find out these types of writing prompts are not computer generated or written by some distant, unimaginable “testing experts.” Verbal portions of writing tests are typically written and scored by writing nerds like yours truly.  Knowing what kinds of people write the test makes it easier for students to imagine what kind of mindset manifested the prompt. 

Once students begin to understand the ghost in the machine of the test, I ask students what they think “the word nerd friends in the parallel universe of standardized testing” are trying to get at with this prompt.   I ask them if there is anything in history, literature or current events that could inform the creation of this prompt. Once we’ve had an extensive discussion, I show them other texts that have a clear relationship to the prompt we’re examining using digital resources.  In the case of this prompt, I usually show students the Common Core Curriculum, the PISA exam that sparked the creation of the Common Core, information on No Child Left Behind, background information on the people who created the Common Core, debates in the news about the curriculum and instances in history where a national curriculum was instituted for better or for worse (Nazi Germany anyone?).  We talk about the relationships and the dialogues between those texts and how this testing prompt is prompting test takers to engage in the dialogues surrounding national curriculum. 

By the end of this exercise, students come to realize the prompt is not pulled from outer space. and the word nerds are not trying to stump them.  The people who have drafted these prompts write them with the expectation that test takers read the newspaper every once in a while to get informed about the issues happening in the world around them.  Moreover, they expect test takers to have ideas of their own that they are able to expound upon.  The underlying assumption is individuals who aspire to attend graduate school are not critical thinkers and responders.  In short,  every prompt on the GRE writing portion is a gimmie because they are based on widely available texts.  Once students get that understanding, it is easier for them to investigate, compile and critically analyze texts that relate to the topics on the GRE.  Moreover, once students master this skill, it is easier for them to replicate the strategy of understanding the perspective of individuals who draft writing prompts (their professors) and respond to those prompts in a sophisticated manner for their other classes.   

The resulting outcome from the transtextual pedagogies I have used in my teaching is students come away with intertextual and metatextual understanding of texts across genres and context. Students develop sophistication of written message and their ego strength,  two variables Emig (1971) identified that affect the length and nature of students’ writing process, as they relate to drafting a sophisticated argument that takes into consideration all of the rhetorical information students have knowledge of on a particular subject.  Once students can define for themselves how texts are in conversation with each other, it makes it easier for them to enter those conversations. 

“Teaching” Genre and Style Experimentation

To transform Genette’s expanded theory of transtextualism into a viable pedagogy, I balanced that theory with the experimental grammar pedagogy that is advocated by Bakhin (2004). Bakhtin’s (2004) research on grammar focused dialogic pedagogy emphasizes style and device development as a way of moving past focusing on grammar mechanics and puts emphasis on developing sophisticated messages that are grammatically correct. Bakhtin begins his argument with the following:

“One cannot study grammatical forms without constantly considering their stylistic significance. When grammar is isolated from semantics and stylistic aspects of speech, it inevitably turns into scholasticism.”

Bakhtin goes on to argue Russian teachers, and, in turn, their students, are typically trained in the most cursory way on the interplay between grammar and stylistics. After asserting grammatical forms must be thought of in terms of their “expressive potential (p. 13)”, not simply mechanics, Bakhtin claims language teachers give generalized instructions like, for example, limiting the repetition of the word “that (p.14)” and to select forms that sound the best in the sentence.  Bakhtin concludes, “such answers are inadequate, and, furthermore, essentially incorrect” (p.15).  Bakhtin claims the outcome of this instruction is as students progress through schooling, their lively personalized style shifts to an impersonalized, clichéd, “colorless (p.23)” bookish style that mimics what they perceive to be academic writing. This shift is a crystallization of the student fear that any sense of style will corrupt their work.  Students write for the eyes, not intonation and gesture, yet their put upon erudition, unfortunately, is the sign of a “half-educated writer (p.24),” not of a writer with a sophisticated message.

Instead, Bakhtin proposes a dialogic pedagogy in which students experiment with reconstructing sentences from model texts as a group.  During this process, students manipulate the sentences in multiple ways so they can see how the meaning and style of a sentence shifts with each sentence’s iteration and to make clear grammatical changes can be more than a “simple mechanical process.” After this type of experimentation, students are encouraged to incorporate this practice into their writing under the guidance of an instructor. 

Morrell (2004) asserts the type of pedagogy Bakhtin advocates can be a vehicle of engagement for “teachers, as transformative intellectuals” (p.90) when working with diverse students. I concur with Morrell, which is why I’ve made student experimentation in writing a focal point of my teaching.  Instead of using model texts as Bakhtin advocates, students used drafts of their own text to experiment on. During the editing phase of student writing, I had students read their texts aloud so they could hear the voice they were projecting in their writing.  Once students could hear what they were projecting, students edited their work and experimented with sentences based on what sounded most effective to them while integrating their voices.  

What helped this experimental process was the contexts that I worked in were low stakes, meaning students received credit but they were not evaluated through grading. Students evaluated their own performance based on the completion of their projects, the goals they had for their own writing and whether they felt their messages were adequately conveyed to their respective authentic audiences. Self-evaluation opened up space for students to experiment more with their writing because they were not writing to meet the requirements of their professor (me). They were writing for their own growth.  My only requirement was students ensured their writing clearly articulated what they wanted to convey and that it be turned in on time.  

Students ended up presenting me with ideas of things they wanted to do with their writing and rhetoric.  Together we would discuss the myriad of options they could use to meet their goals.  Some of those approaches were generated by me but the bulk of the approaches were defined by what the students wanted to see in their work and their ideas on how to make those rhetorical moves happen. For the most part, I highlighted the well-executed parts of the text that project their voice and messages with strength and effectiveness in my feedback in addition to pointing out problematic portions of the text. Students would then take their pieces and “try out” some of the moves they developed themselves, some moves I suggested and moves we hashed out together.  Finally, students selected the rhetorical moves they thought worked best for their projects and I would evaluate the work, again, solely based on message clarity and whether it was turned in on time.  

Morell (2004) argues that the type of pedagogy Bakhtin advocates requires a different type of assessment than what we are used to. However, Morell does not provide a definitive way to go about conducting that assessment. In building on Morell’s assertion, I believe a dialogic pedagogy demands the evaluation of the writing resulting from that pedagogy requires dialog as well. Aside from evaluating the students as their teacher, for the purposes of this research, I evaluated student writing development by measuring their level of engagement with the process (Did they make appointments with me? Did they complete the writing tasks we agreed to? Did they ask me or their peers writing questions?), whether their writing behaviors changed during that process, whether they developed more skill in describing how their writing process went.  I also assessed the students based on their own satisfaction with the process and their satisfaction levels with their finished products.  As you can guess, I spent a lot of one on one time working with students throughout and after their writing process to perform these assessments.  That said, the conversations I had with students one on one influenced group discussions because the engaged students brought their new knowledge to the group.  The group, in turn, built more knowledge from the group discussions, so even students who were not highly engaged gained more writing skill by interacting with the students who were more committed.

Freire’s Dialogic Classroom

It is clear in the teaching practices I described above the dialogic classroom strategies that are advocated by Freire (1970) are interwoven into every teaching strategy I use.  Although I advocate explicit writing instruction, the explicit ideas that are discussed in class arise from student knowledge and experience.  I play the part of group discussion facilitator and a more experienced colleague.  I may be viewed as an “expert” by students, but I remind them they are experts in their own knowledge as well.  I am there to “fill in the gaps” so to speak of some of the blind spots they may have about writing. They are also there to point out my blind spots and tell me when I am missing something so we can investigate the answers together.    Taking a democratic approach where all the participants (including my teaching colleagues) contribute knowledge and hold one another accountable in a respectful manner gives rise to a safe space that is not only accepting of students diverse backgrounds but is dynamic in that it integrates students’ cultural knowledge and lived experiences into the task at hand- boosting students linguistic dexterity. 

The teaching practices that result from the integration of these theories:

1. Exposes students to diverse types of texts, literary practices, rhetorics and registers through reading & writing to promote student linguistic dexterity.

2. Encourages students to make comparisons between genres.

3. Teaches students how to critically examine texts.

4. Provides the space for students to practice writing varied genres and literary devices.

5.  Teaches students to metacognitively transfer the skills learned from one genre to another to improve writing skills.   

6. Empowers students with methods they can use to teach themselves new writing skills long after instruction has ceased.

But Wait, There’s More...!  Context Specific Teaching Strategies

The 10 Step Method for Building Vocabulary

Having the skill to building a high-level vocabulary was of vital importance to the McNair scholars.  They needed that skill to best the GRE and to take with them to graduate school where they’d have to learn sophisticated, discipline-specific language.  Before I got the instructor position I had developed a vocabulary strategy to help diverse students because the students I previously worked with consistently reported vocabulary development as their number one writing challenge in postsecondary school. 

In composition studies, it has been well documented that entering the various academic disciplines requires the acquisition of discipline-specific registers or vocabulary. Blumner (1990) stresses the crucial role discipline-specific language plays in a scholar’s academic success.  He asserts gaining mastery over the peculiarities of a discipline’s register is a prerequisite for “acceptance into the academic community (p.35).  Bean (2001) and Goshert (2011) suggest dictionary and context review strategies (Bean, p.138. Goshert, p. 63) are adequate approaches students can utilize to meet this prerequisite.Yet these approaches are not in line with the discoveries researchers in cognitive psychology and linguistics have uncovered over the past twenty years about the nature of vocabulary acquisition in native speakers and second language learners.  Linguists Herman and Nagy (1987) assert dictionaries provide insufficient background information on complex words.  Studies in both fields indicate in order to master new terms, vocabulary must be presented numerous times to students while embedded within contexts to create webs of meaning and understanding (Webb, 2007; Pressley, Levin and McDaniel, 1987; Jenkins, Stein and Wysock, 1984). Blumner echoes these linguists and cognitive scientists when he argues students need multiple opportunities to try out different registers without judgment. He goes on to suggest writing centers a place to try on different discourses, which led me to focus on crafting a fast way to teach students how to teach themselves new vocabulary.

When I created the 10 Step Strategy, I wanted to combine vocabulary building with developing research skills while tapping into literacies outside of textual literacies. I transferred techniques I learned from literary criticism and poetry analysis to the academic context and condensed those methods into ten quick steps. To integrate a research component within the strategy, I made steps 1,2, 3, 5, and 6 research based so students would have to practice digging into information on the internet and in libraries to create their own word contexts, not just have contexts handed to them by the teacher.  

Step 1,word deconstruction, also provides students with the opportunity to tap into their prior knowledge and “chunk (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000, p.32)” that information into their word root schema if they know a ranges of roots, prefixes, and suffixes as I did when I first encountered the word panopticon. In general, I made the assumption students would have limited knowledge of word roots and would have to look up the roots of some words.  I stress “some” here because when I did three workshops with diverse students in 2012 and 2013 to test the pedagogies in this dissertation, some students knew the root of “opti” and others knew “pan.” When students pooled their knowledge, they got really close at guessing the definition without me saying a thing. In this research, I found students can pool their knowledge of roots more often if they have the opportunity to regularly deconstruct words in groups.  

Steps 4 and 9 rely on visual literacy to help students who learn through images rather than words while step 7 taps into students’ orality. Typically, teaching steps one through nine strategy takes 7-10 minutes. What usually makes this pedagogy a longer lesson is drawing word maps based on the connections students make in relation to the word.  In addition to connecting instances of the word’s usage in real life through maps, I have students extend their word maps into word families that integrate other words that have the same roots, prefixes, and suffixes as the word they are trying to learn.    In every run of teaching this strategy, word maps always sparked lively critical discussions among students because the maps connect the word’s academic definition to phenomenon outside of the academy. Students reported this strategy is extremely helpful overall when they struggle to comprehend vocabulary from their disciplines because when the words are extracted from a wall of words and  into maps that are coupled with pictures, the student encodes the target word and other words into their long-term memory with chunking.

Writing in Practice, Not Just Discussion

Another strategy I swear by is making students write in class.  Yes, I make them. I don’t invite them to write like I do with other exercises.  Writing in class is required because students have the tendency to do their writing at the last minute if they do it at all.  For some students, my class has no teeth because I can’t punish their lack of work through grades.  Instead of punishing them by giving them an F, I make them perform under my watchful eye. It’s easy to intellectualize writing in classroom discussion especially for students who talk a good game.  It’s harder to put what we’ve intellectualized into practice in the moment.  

To mitigate the issues all talk and no action students experience,  I dedicated in-class writing time throughout the quarter.  After that writing period, students talk about their writing process and review each other’s writing at the end of class.  Discussing a piece after writing puts students in the hot seat.  It forces the students who have been in avoidance about their work to face their shortcomings.  It also gives all the students the opportunity to figure out what they’re doing right so they can replicate those strategies. Finally, they get knowledge about what their classmates are doing well so they can build on their successful practices. Together we go through the cycle of writing so we can see we all have the same “writer woes” of being burnt out on our topic, hitting writing walls, untangling sentences/ideas and, finally, feeling the exuberance of completing a solid draft.

During classroom writing time, I also write.  Working in front of students models what real, planned, incremental writing looks like.  Modeling incremental writing demonstrates the difference in quality between planned writing in a group context and writing a draft all alone at 5 am the morning the paper is due.  Working through the motions of scheduled incremental writing teaches students self-discipline in writing and helps them break bad habits. 

While there are other strategies I use with students depending on the circumstances, the strategies I describe above are the bulk of the work I did with the students  who participated in Aggie Voices, McNair Scholars, and the Diversity Forum. In the following posts, I will describe the results of my investigations in those contexts and conclude with an analysis of how student voice shifts based on student trust, comfort within a context and student self-confidence in their own discipline specific knowledge.  

[bigmikeinthemorning]

Responding to Student Writing by Nancy Sommers

Key Arguments

This article argues that teacher revision is not always the best applied method for reviewing students’ work. After the experiment to analyze the comments of teachers from universities, Sommers, and her colleagues found that the revisions made the students more confused. They would say add something here, but condense and expand there. The teachers’ directions ultimately took away from the students’ purpose of writing.

They also found the comments of the teachers to be interchangeable between texts. Like a cookie-cutter or an internet repost, they get old and they are not helping anyone.

Quotations

“We have studied the commenting styles of [35] teachers at New York University and the University of Oklahoma, studying the comments these teachers wrote on first and second drafts, and interviewing a representative number of these teachers and their students.” (Sommers 149)

“In the beginning of the process there was the writer, her words, and her desire to communicate her ideas. But after the comments of the teacher are imposed on the first or second draft, the student's attention dramatically shifts from "This is what I want to say," to "This is what you the teacher are asking me to do.”” (Sommers 150)

“One could easily remove all the comments from this paragraph and rubber-stamp them on another student text, and they would make as much or as little sense on the second text as they do here.” (Sommers 153)

“In defense of our teachers, however, they told us that responding to student writing was rarely stressed in their teacher training or in writing workshops; they had been trained in various prewriting techniques, in constructing assignments, and in evaluating papers for grades, but rarely in the process of reading a student text for. meaning or in offering commentary to motivate revision.” (Sommers 154)

Theories and/or Methods

The researchers conduct an analysis of text and discourse. Each of the teachers’ revisions are evaluated to determine the validity of these teachers’ comments. Of the three essays, one was typed in a computer program named ‘Writer’s Workbench.” The teachers’ revisions were compared with the revisions made by the computer. They also interviewed a representative number of teachers and students.

Reflection and Connection

When I was in the fifth grade, we had a creative writing teacher from another elementary come into our class. We were prompted to write some sort of fantasy narrative. I decided to write about my friend and I discovering a door to a magical world. I don’t remember the small details, but here’s a summary of my fantasy narrative. We were playing baseball in the backyard and, of course, I slammed a homer which sailed through the window of my house. Upon the retrieval of the ball, I stumbled upon the closet containing the secret door. Not long after that we were bareback on flying donkeys, as inspired by the hit movie, Shrek. We were going to fight some nameless villain in a castle. We fought him, beat him, and returned with the magical elixir. The End.

I remember this particular revision by this teacher because she reviewed it in front of my entire class. She said that everything leading up to the door was good. Then, she proceeded to tear apart the second and third act because they “detracted from the plot” or “made no sense” or something. It was hard to focus on the rest of her critiques; the effect of her revision was like a stun grenade going off behind me. It felt like I was being punished for my creative ideas. I am being serious when I tell you, she went for blood on that revision. She hated it; I could tell. She probably felt betrayed by me leading her on in the first act. Regardless of why she put so much effort into roasting me, it still had a traumatic effect on Young Dean.

While I cannot entirely hate on her ideas for a second draft, her style of revision was eccentric, to say the least. Still, talk about harsh man.

Question

How can teachers become better prepared for helping students improve their writing?

[creationshortstory]

Part 4- The Deeper Text

A quick recap. I am writing a short story, and have decided to try to write some of my thoughts of how I go about writing whilst creating it.

What’s New?

A more polished draft is done, and you can see it below this post. Overall this is one of those stories that quickly turned into something that felt bigger than I had originally anticipated. As a result, I am satisfied with the end result though I do feel as though it could be improved in some places. One thing I think could be improved is the antagonist name. I think Mother is too generic, and is, at the moment, seems to be a go to name when it comes to stories where a group by some kind of massive brain like entity which this very much falls into the category of. At the same time, I have no idea what else to call it, and it would also require a title change. Any suggestions, don’t be shy to voice them.

This is one of the main reasons I do post my stories, because I feel like they need opinions from other people in order to improve. So, don’t be shy if you think something is wrong, and could be improved.

However, now it is time to talk about a certain element that makes people groan. What is the deeper message of the text.

The bad rep from school

I’m sure all of you remember this scenario from school, or still do if you are that young. The English teacher brings out a bunch of books, and you swiftly realise that you are going to have to write an essay interpreting the deeper message that the book is trying to bring across. Yes, it is time to talk about the deeper messages of the text, and one very interesting thing that they don’t tell you during this period of school. The writer often didn’t write the story with the intention of making those points your writing about in the essay. I know this sounds weird especially when during said essay you had write how it author intent form the start, but it’s true trust me as I will now explain with the one I just wrote.

When I started Mother’s Town my only goal was to write a story about a town being mind-controlled by an alien plant that was growing underneath it. This was the case until half way through I threw in a metaphor that made me realise oh that’s what it’s saying. The metaphor in question is the one where I compare the town to a fictional television set where everything is perfect, and as such feels like it is taking place in a bizarre land that is fake. Doing some more thought it’s reflecting my view on the worlds obsession with living the perfect life. Everybody wants to create the illusion that their life is perfect especially on social media. However, it doesn’t take much to knock that mask off, and reveal the true rotten core that lies beneath. Mother is even a root. The root of the problem. Verity is somebody new experiencing this strange habit for the first time. An outsider’s perspective if you will. That’s my read though yours might be different, and I don’t care. Everyone is different, and as such what you will get out of it is up to you not me.

Once this was realised I decided that the best course of action was to run with this revelation rather than avoid it. Let’s call it a happy accident.

Now I know that there is the old saying that art, and politics should not mix. They’re right, but there is something that all writers need to take into account.

How we view society is going to work its way in regardless

When creating anything that can be classified as having artistic merit it has always come from an individual who has their own unique view of the world. As such the thing they create is going to in some way reflect this individual’s view of the world whether they like it to or not. A story might start of about good guys fighting evil villains who have to come to blow up the earth. On the surface there is nothing wrong until you look closer and you see that the good characters all exhibit certain traits in a positive light, and the bad guys exhibit other traits that the story shows as being negative qualities. Then you realise that the author, whether they want to or not, is telling you what they consider a good person, and what they consider to be a bad person. This is another reason why I don’t like binary good vs binary evil.

What does this mean for writing?

You may be a little confused when I mentioned the statement of politics and art not mixing, and yet I just said it is inevitable. Well here’s the thing with writing you should never start with the intent of writing something political start a basic idea, and let it come in by itself. If it’s a story that you like then the message that enters the story should be one that you agree with.

Dredging up After Earth again, in that movie they kept bringing up Moby Dick throughout the story in a way that brought the entire plot screeching to halt. This is something you shouldn’t do because as said it brings the plot to a standstill. This is something the audience should come to themselves, and it ultimately gives the illusion to talking down to your audience. Nobody likes being talked down to.

A good example is, funnily enough, Moby Dick. It’s a story that can be read with many different subtexts. Humanity battling against nature. A cautionary tale against letting revenge, and anger blind you. On the base level it is a story about a man travelling on a whaling ship captained by a crazy man who wants revenge on a white sperm whale, and that’s all it has to be if you want.

You shouldn’t be afraid if a message does appear in your text, and people start to question it. Don’t be like the people who made the video game The Division 2. For those of you who don’t know during the build up the release of Division 2 one of the creators was in an interview where he laughably tried to weasel out of admitting that the story said anything political despite it being about a terrorist takeover of Washington D.C. with you taking on the role of task force member who has to go into the city to retake it establishing the white house as your base of operations.

With that said this ends these posts. The story is done, and I don’t really have anything else to say. However, as said earlier in this post if you have any suggestions for improvement then I graciously welcome it.

All images used are not owned by me. I obtained them from Google Images.

#writing

[zipgrowth]

Why Students Can’t Write — And Why Tech is Part of the Problem

Writing is more important than ever, but many of today’s students are lousy at it. John Warner has some ideas about why that is, and how to fix it.

Warner has been teaching writing at colleges for more than 20 years. And he’s written two books on the topic, including his most recent, called “Why They Can’t Write.”

Part of the problem, he says, is technology. In some cases the very technologies that were intended to improve writing, like automatic-essay grading software, have backfired by encouraging a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to writing.

But Warner is not anti-tech. In fact, for years he edited one of the most popular humor magazines on the Internet, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency — a more literary version of the The Onion. And he thinks that the writing students do for their Instagram accounts and social media is actually great.

Watch a live taping of the podcast on April 8 and 9 at the ASU GSV Summit (or online). Check out details and RSVP here.

The problem, he says, is what kids are asked to write in schools, like those five-paragraph essays, which emphasize following arbitrary rules instead of finding the most effective ways to communicate their ideas. And he has some ideas about how to make things better.

EdSurge talked with Warner recently about his sometimes surprising ideas about the crisis in writing instruction, including why he thinks FitBits are part of the problem.

Listen to the discussion on this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen. Or read a portion of the interview below, lightly edited for clarity.

EdSurge: I’ve certainly heard professors grumble that their students are bad at writing. But in your latest book, “Why Can't They Write,” you say that students are surprisingly confident about their writing abilities, even though you see them as poor. How do you explain this disconnect?

Warner: Students may have gotten good grades on the kinds of writing they've been asked to do, either in school or on a standardized assessment. They know they've performed well on what I call “in the book writing related simulations,” which is mostly what I think they're asked to do in school. The purpose is to sort of prove that they can demonstrate a limited set of moves that make it look like you know how to write.

You’re saying they’ve been trained to essentially act like a writer, and behave how they think a writer would?

That's exactly it. In the book I say the equivalent would be if in an acting class we taught exclusively through asking students to do specific imitations of actors in specific roles. We’d have like De Niro 101 or Streep 413. And they wouldn't even be acting like them, they would just be imitating a particular performance.

So to get a good grade, they’d have to nail a De Niro impression?

Yeah. It comes from this sort of highly prescriptive practice that's privileged because they're going to be assessed on a very narrow range of abilities. That’s why the subtitle of my book is “killing the five-paragraph essay and other necessities.” A lot of my students arrive having written exclusively five-paragraph essays. And they've been told things like never use I, never write with contractions, every sentence must be between five and seven sentences. And then another student will argue and say, “No, no, no. It's seven to nine sentences, that's what I was told.”

But then they get to college, in a first-year writing class like I've spent many years teaching, and I pull the rug out from under them and say, “Every piece of writing is a custom job. There are no rules. We have to think through these problems.” And they feel bummed or betrayed or frustrated that I've changed the game on them. They understood the game and were doing well at the game, and now the game’s different. What I'm saying is, it's not a game, it's actually something substantive and real that we want to ask them to do.

What would you have students and teachers do before they get to you, instead of a paint-by-numbers approach that you say the five-paragraph represents?

A lot of that is wrapped up in my other book, “The Writers Practice.” I think they should be building their practice. And I define that as the skills, attitudes, knowledge and habits-of-mind of writers. We develop those things primarily by writing—writing to audiences, writing with purpose, writing from things we are passionate about, writing about things we are interested but don't know a lot about, which requires research and all of the sorts of things we want students doing. A lot of it is based on my reflection of my experience learning to write as a young person sort of before the era of standardized assessments and accountability.

But unlike when we went to school, don't kids today today actually write a lot? Even if it's just a caption on their Instagram photo, aren't they constantly writing for an audience?

They are. They're not practicing in school but they're writing in the world all the time. And they're doing the kinds of things that we ask of the writers practice all the time, they're thinking about audience. An example I use in first year writing, I'll say, “You guys will text your parents that you're going out. You guys will text your friends that you're going out. What is the difference between the message you text to your parents and the message you text to your friends?” And they understand instantly that they're tailoring a message to audience for radically different purposes.

"Instant feedback can be horrible for a piece of writing. It can be much much better to let the writer sit with having written for a period of time to let that filter through."

—John Warner

And it's a relatively small matter to get them to start translating that in academic or scholarly contexts. Once you give them an audience, often they've not been writing for an audience. They've been writing for a teacher in the generic sense, or an assessment which really is entirely disembodied, where they're following the moves because those are the moves that they know the invisible assessor is going to like. So as soon as I give them audience and purpose they're often off and running. And it's not a difficult or painful switch at that point.

In your book you criticize many technology innovations around the teaching of writing. Could you talk about that?

There’s Edison's quote about how the moving picture is going to replace the classroom, or the hype around MOOCs when we still thought those were going to be innovative… I think that is incorrect and it's particularly incorrect for writing. Because there's no information I can give students about writing that will help them write better. I am of the belief that writing can't be taught, but it can be a learned school of thought. I can create the conditions and experiences under which writing can be engaged with, and challenges that are interesting and get students to want to do it more. But ultimately that's going to happen within the student.

I'm thinking about your piece on being John McPhee's student. And it's a great example of that process. The teacher brings you into his world, and says this is how writers act, how they behave, how they think, what they do. And it's great to be exposed to that, but ultimately you have to go put that into your practice. So I spent a lot of time just setting the terms of the action: Here's what we're going to try to do, here are the parameters under which I want us to do it, and I then provide a soundboard and feedback.

It's easy to describe what a good piece of writing looks like, but the process to produce that writing is incredibly complicated and hugely variable depending on who's doing it, and why they're doing it and what they're doing. Which I love. That's the fascinating part of the job for me. That's why I love teaching writing. But it does not lend itself to prescription, and it particularly is not something where the kinds of technologies that are injecting themselves into the space are helpful.

People argue essay grading software can make things more efficient, and help bring down the high cost of education. So what's not to like about this idea of automated grading?

The big problem is that efficiency is not a value when it comes to learning to write. Learning to write is a process that requires failure, that requires trying things over again. That requires taking a big swing and missing. And a lot of that has to happen internally to the writer themselves. So when these algorithms intervene, they can really only score an essay. To give it, say, a four out of five. That feedback by itself is not helpful.

[People tout that software gives instant feedback.] Instant feedback can be horrible for a piece of writing. It can be much much better to let the writer sit with having written for a period of time to let that filter through. I'm sure any writer has experienced this, where you wrote a draft of something, you let it sit there, you went and did something else, maybe you went to sleep or you walked the dog or you took a shower, or you did your yoga or whatever your thing is. And you came back to it, and you look at it again, and something that was stuck in your craw, all the sudden you have a solution for it.

In the book you also mention that even other technologies outside of the classroom are hurting student writing. Even Fitbits?

Fitbit's as a kind of experience of quantification and surveillance. [It sets the expectation that we'll be monitored.] Surveillance ruins the atmosphere for writing, and learning in general, I think. I talk about an app called Class Dojo that I think is potentially doing great harm to students because it's making them hyper aware of being watched in school. And the class portals where they're getting notifications of their grades in real time. A huge part of learning to write is failing, is trying to do something and not succeeding at it.

How would you boil that down to a TED talk?

Well, my Ted Talk would be very short. And it would be “fund public higher education.” [So that colleges can pay professors to grade student writing instead of using software.]

Why Students Can’t Write — And Why Tech is Part of the Problem published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[oovitus]

Weekend Reading, 6.17.18

I’m drafting this post from a room that’s only a few blocks away from where my old apartment used to be in Washington, D.C.. I’m down here because my cousin’s twin babies were baptized over the weekend, and my mom and I made the trip to celebrate them.

It’s a short trip, only two nights. My hope was to come down earlier and spend time catching up with my friends here, but with all of the recent feeling unwell, I wanted to spend more time at home last week, resting and catching up on work in a peaceful, gradual way. It was the right choice: my usual instinct when I’m in D.C. is to see as many people as I can, recognizing that we no longer live nearby, but this makes for sort of frenzied weekends.

The other upside of planning a short, family-focused weekend is that I’ve had time to experience the city quietly, privately, and reflectively. Being here brings back so much nostalgia and gratitude; every time I’m in the District I feel bowled over with the memories of how many people made me feel welcome and at home when I moved here. My time in this city was difficult in a lot of ways, but it was an incredible lesson in how generous and full of grace people can be.

In the past few days, I’ve also appreciated how rich and adventurous my time here was. Moving four and a half hours south of one’s home town for a few years may not sound very daring, but my post-bacc really was—and still is—the great adventure of my life so far.

It was something I could never have imagined doing until I did it: learning within a completely new set of disciplines, allowing myself to struggle, rather than yearning for mastery, and surrendering my need to be an “expert.” It taught me how fun it can be to learn from younger peers (as opposed to being the quintessential teacher’s pet, which had been my posture as a student in the past).

So much about that time in my life was foreign and strange. As I wandered the streets of D.C. yesterday and early this morning, I wondered how I—as a person who who tends to fear and resist novelty and change—managed to do it at all?

It took me a few steps more to recognize that I wasn’t giving my identity enough credit for being fluid. Right now, emerging from the various challenges of my last five years in New York, I’m craving stillness and grounding. But there’s a part of me, too, that’s bold and daring, and that part was in the driver’s seat during my post-bacc years.

After picking up a cup of morning coffee today, I sat on a stoop near Dupont Circle, smiled gratefully at the familiar scenery around me, and I silently thanked the part of myself that allowed me to be brave and take so many personal and professional risks when I lived here. I marveled at this “self state,” at her energy and endurance.

Then I took another moment to acknowledge where I am right now. It’s a different place, a little more bittersweet and uncertain and humble. But there’s a lot I like about it: I’m moving through life slowly and consciously, which wasn’t possible when I was careening through organic chemistry and microbiology classes and trying to keep up with work at the same time. I’m more rooted in the familiar and everyday, not out of fear but because I appreciate how vital they are to my happiness and health. I’m more attuned to my body and its needs. I’m less grandiose and more content.

It felt poignant to acknowledge past and present selves and inner capacities at once, recognizing that they’ve each served me well, depending on where I am in life. I hope I can take stock of my experience like this again in a few years, and that I’ll have interesting contrasts to consider then, as I do now.

Wishing you a gentle start to the week—and a happy Father’s Day to those of you who are celebrating.

Recipes

The first recipe that caught my eye is a quinoa salad with a tropical, summery twist: the addition of coconut flakes, mango, basil, and dried fruit.

I love my friend Emily’s simple, springy, one-pot green farro, which is easy to veganize with vegan parm or nutritional yeast.

I stuff potatoes with cooked fillings all the time, but I hadn’t thought to load them up with salad or raw veggies. These salad stuffed potatoes are such a fun idea!

My packable lunch pick of the week: protein-rich ginger peanut tofu wraps. Yum.

For dessert, I’m drooling over Tessa’s vegan (and gluten-free!) peanut butter pie. Any dessert with PB in it knows the way to my heart.

Reads

1. I love Kelsey Miller’s tribute to the company and solace of cooking and cookbooks. I spend plenty of time exploring and downloading recipes online (as these weekly posts illustrate!), but I agree with Miller that there’s nothing quite like a cookbook and its guidance. I was touched by her appreciation of Anthony Bourdain’s cookbook writing in particular:

Cookbooks are a particular comfort, on bad days or during times of grief and loss. It’s not only that they help with the cooking of comfort food — though there is healing in that, certainly — but also the people they bring to life. That’s why, I realized, I didn’t reach for Bourdain’s famous essays, but for his old cookbook. I don’t mean to knock the rest of his work — the man never wrote a boring sentence in his life, as far as I can tell — but his recipes are different. In them, Bourdain is at his most joyful.

I’m my most joyful self when I’m creating recipes, too; I think many of us are.

2. Supermarket led nutrition education interventions seem like such a smart idea to me (a captive audience, an opportunity to highlight products or ingredients in real time). How cool that Weis Markets is instituting a plant-based program in its stores.

3. A new weight loss procedure—the gastric balloon—is proving to be far more hazardous than its marketing would suggest. I’m glad that this article is publicizing the risks.

4. Pamela Druckerman offers up some wise and (for me) relatable tips on time management, which aren’t only about time management: they’re about self-knowledge and the process of identifying and prioritizing what matters.

5. A lot of healthcare practitioners, in spite of many years of training, are never really prepared for handling personality mismatches or interpersonal conflicts with the individuals who are under their care. It can be a jarring experience for a person in a helping profession to realize that he or she is grappling with feelings of discomfort or dislike around a patient.

This essay, written by a resident, captures the experience humbly. Of a patient with whom she did not easily or readily connect, and who ultimately passed away under her care, she writes,

What I remember most about Mrs. G was how imperfect our interaction was and how little it had to do with the mistakes I thought I would make — wrong medication doses or a procedure gone bad. Our relationship was rocky, our attitudes clashed, and the clinical outcome was not what any of us wanted. It was imperfect but it taught me the importance of being honest with yourself about the way you feel when you interact with others, especially patients. This will help you to both forgive yourself and others such that you can form powerful and needed relationships during difficult situations. It was a first in many ways but certainly not a last as the human interactions in medicine are part of the healing we do every day.

What an honest and human reflection.

Switching topics completely, is it officially too hot for soup? I hope not, because I have a pretty delicious one to share in the coming week. Happiest of Sundays to you.

xo

The post Weekend Reading, 6.17.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.

Weekend Reading, 6.17.18 published first on https://storeseapharmacy.tumblr.com

[laineysullivan1-blog]

DJ 11

The high school I went to wasn’t technically a preparatory school but was heavily centered on helping students get into and be prepared for college. The ACT was a very prominent part of my overall learning throughout high school as I took it for the first time in the eighth grade and numerous times after that. Sometime towards the end of sophomore year/beginning of junior year, my teachers and administrators began to lay on the college talk even heavier than they had in the past. Every decision from there on out had to be made with the thought of college in mind. I had a few universities I was still considering during my senior year when my guidance counselors offered a “College Essay Bootcamp.” At this “camp” we read countless college essays all over the good/bad spectrum. On the last day of the camp, we were challenged to write our own essay, being that we wouldn’t need it to apply to colleges in a few weeks. I remember sitting at that computer for what felt like ages thinking of what to write. I had a fairly privileged childhood and lifestyle, never been in a life-threatening situation or had to worry where the next meal was coming from. Now that I look back on this experience, I feel bad for my guidance counselor because I was constantly rattling off 3-4 questions at a time to him, trying to spark an idea. I ended up writing about my mom, uncle, grandma, and grandpa who all ultimately raised me together. My mom had me when she was in nursing school and living with my grandparents, and my father wasn’t in the picture. I wrote about how much I loved this kind of upbringing, and really just told my story of how I was raised. At the end of the camp, Mr. Reeves gave out awards to a few people, and I received the “Best First Draft” award for my essay. Even though it was the most challenging assignment I’ve come across thus far, it got me to where I am today. 

[dreamilysublimekingdom-blog1]

Edutopia.Org

5 Highly Effective Teaching Practices

Teenager student nowadays are having a poor learning practices why I choose this topic because it is interesting. This topic can help to those student who are prone in not helping their self to learn maybe they are not interested enough with the subject or going in to school. Some are not using their mind to analyse and to think in making their decision. Learning is very important because it can help to our self in engaging to our career or let say to make our future better. Honestly I can say to myself that I am not good enough in analysing and solving a problem especially in math, maybe like the subject. Also having poor teaching skills is not good in learning because obviously the student will not learn and have interest to your subject. This topic can help to us not only to the student but it can help to us in making decision in life every day and we can gain already an idea on how to make our student active in class and making their selves in higher learning proficiency.

Hacking Teens’ Desire to Impress Their Peers

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You can get teens to work harder by giving them an audience they really care about—each other. By Christina Gil February 24, 2017

If you’re going to work with teenagers all day, you need to figure out a way to hack the teenage brain. Discovering what motivates them goes a long way toward getting them engaged and learning. One of my favourite tricks is to get students writing for each other. I first learned the power of peer audience about 12 years ago. When I gave my end-of-school-year questionnaire, one of the questions was “If I were never to collect and grade your reading logs [one-page responses to a night’s reading] and you only read them out loud to your class, how would that change the quality of your work?” The unanimous response I got was that students would do a better job on their logs. I was sort of shocked by this response—but it made a lot of sense. Most students want to do well in school and please their teachers. But here’s the fact I’ve taken advantage of since that questionnaire: Teenagers really, really, really care about impressing their peers. When I can get my classes writing and creating for their peers, they naturally work harder to craft better pieces or more informative presentations. Exercises to Get Students Writing for—and Teaching—each other the satirical how-to. Nothing quite beats the thrill of getting a laugh out of someone with something that you wrote. My favourite and most effective way to get my students writing to impress their peers is the satirical how-to—also known as an ironic process essay. Topics such as “How to Thoroughly Annoy Your Classmates” or “How to Procrastinate” or “Shakespeare’s Ten-Step Guide to Gaining and Keeping Power” get students sharing drafts, giving each other tips, and working to make their essays as funny as possible.

Reading logs and dice. My favourite way to get students sharing ideas involves their reading logs and dice. First I assign each student a number between one and six. Then they do a reading assignment for homework and write a one-page reaction to what they’ve read. The following day, I roll the die. Whoever got the number that is rolled has to read their log out loud. Students hear some original ideas, and it’s a great way to start the class discussion. I still collect their logs and grade them in the end, but they think harder and write better because their peers may hear what they’ve written. Two truths and a lie. Another fun activity that utilizes the peer audience is playing two truths and a lie. For this game, I task students with writing three paragraph-length stories, two that are true and one that is a lie. Students volunteer to read their stories out loud, the rest of the class guesses which one is the lie, and then we get the answer. Because this activity is couched as a game, students don’t feel as self-conscious about reading their work out loud. But since they’re excited to trick their classmates into picking the wrong stories, they craft interesting paragraphs full of rich detail. Jigsaw presentations. When I have a lot of content that I want students to absorb, I get them to teach each other, jigsaw style. The basic premise of the jigsaw is that students first master a small part of the material. Then they are tasked with presenting what they’ve learned to their classmates. In the end, they’re responsible for all of the material. Since they’re teaching their classmates who don’t already have all of the answers and need the information they present, they’re more likely to work hard to present that material thoroughly and clearly. A bonus of this kind of peer-to-peer assignment is that I have seen it as a way for introverts to shine in the classroom. In my experience, being an introvert doesn’t mean that someone has no desire to communicate their ideas to the world. Often, introverts have the most to say and the best ideas on a topic. But they also often aren’t comfortable sharing those ideas in a spontaneous or informal discussion. They prefer to have the time they need to work through their thoughts on paper. And even though they may not be entirely comfortable reading out loud in front of a class or giving a presentation, they’re usually a little more comfortable reading something that they’ve prepared in advance. Ultimately, what I most love about having my students write for each other is that they realize how great their classmates are. They discover that the kid in the back who doesn’t talk much can tell a hilarious story, or that the girl who never participates in class discussion has some insightful ideas on the night’s homework. And when they see what their peers can do, they set higher standards for themselves.

4 Strategies to Energize and Focus your Student

 The first thing that the student will energize and it will focus by engaging student leadership in the classroom through, this the students will make sure that their tasks get done well. Second is to involve as many students as possible, this will transform the classroom into a travel agency. Some students like to take photos and travelling, every student assigned to make an artifact so they were also busy on their own tasks. The third strategy is to give the students and urgent reason to learn because after experiencing an incredible activity or task together with their fellow students can make a reflection on this experience and their learning. The last strategy is to help your student feel success, having an end goal will inspire students to stay focused on the task at hand.

#edutopia.org 3blog/s