This is the most recent video I've completed for a class. Part truth, part fiction, part over-exaggeration, part misunderstanding, part confusion, and part awesome--this is both my favorite and least favorite of the videos I've done lately. The idea was to take a paper that we had just written and turn it into a video. Below is the paper I wrote, and at the bottom of the page, you'll find the video. I hope you enjoy. Mabes and Downing, if you ever see this, I hope you'll both forgive me for my over-the-topness and still realize that you two caused it.
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I’ve always hated the first day of classes. Don’t get me wrong, I like the excitement of starting a new semester, but I can only sit through so many rounds of “introduce yourself to the class” before I lose my mind. This is one of the few instances of my education during which I envy my science major counterparts. Sitting in a lecture with 200 other E-Bio or IPHY students usually means the professor will choose to forego large group introductions. Being a double major in two of the disciplines with the most intimate class sizes, English and Theater, autonomy is not a luxury I have been afforded.
I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if the introduction sessions weren’t all the same—“Tell us your name, where you’re from, what you’re major is, and something interesting about you.” By the end of day one, I’m no longer surprised to hear that, in my five o’clock acting class, Sally went to Jamaica this summer, or that Billy can speak 3 languages because Suzie or Bobby in my two-thirty English class can claim equally impressive feats. Then there’s my favorite question of all, asked nearly without exception in my major specific classes: “Why do you want to be an English major?” “Why do you want to be a theater major?”
Standard answers range from, “Because I like to read and write,” to “Because I’ve always loved to perform.” I admit that I too am guilty of occasionally offering up this kind of easy-out answer. I can’t help but think though, in the way one thinks about such abstract things, that with such answers, we are cheapening our passion. What makes a man choose to devote his life to the study of some area without a passionate reason for doing so? I think back to my high school language and arts teachers. I wonder what on this earth could have compelled them to have completed their own studies and voluntarily chosen to then instruct others in their disciplines. Surely it is not because they like to read, to write, to perform, merely.
I received a phone call the other day from an old friend. He told me that one of my favorite high school English teachers is leaving. After thirty-some-odd years of teaching, he’s moving on. I think about him sometimes; about what he would say if he, the man who inspired me to dedicate my life to the study of the arts, would say if he caught me uttering a “because I like to read.” I can see him now, staring knowingly at me with his sunken, smiling, ice-blue eyes saying, “Really, Bec? Haven’t I taught you better than that?”
And I realize, that he has. I realize that I have an answer for him. For everyone that asks me why. My answer is because we are more. Because what we do here is not about knowing the difference between a semicolon and comma, any more than art is about know the difference between a stroke and a stipple of the brush. What we do here in English, in Literature, in art, and in performance is more than the sum of the parts of all the menial skills and rules and rhetorics of any given discourse. We are scholars of the most ancient discipline known in the universe: the legacy of human kind.
In “English” there is more study of language and transference than in any communication class. A well-written novel speaks volumes more to the nature of the human psyche than Freud ever did with his Id and Ego. There is more justice in pages of works of writers gone before than in any law student’s textbook. What we do here is more beautiful than a hundred sunsets; for, we give the people words, emotions, and visions to describe that image in ways never before thought possible. In doing so, we capture moments in time, wrap them in shining satin ribbon and allow them to be kept in all their splendor for eternity, or at least until parchment and ink crumble to dust. What we do takes more courage than anyone would dare to believe. Each day, we arrive to our classes and workshops, our seminars and recitations. We reach into ourselves to separate human body from emotion. We trap these emotions in glass bells and poke them with sticks. We watch them do tricks, expose them to the elements, and with microscopic examination, we observe them with all the objectivism of a seasoned biology student. But, that alone is not what makes us courageous.
It is that at the end of the day, when we have witnessed the most vile and violent natures of our own selves, that we return home. We see that the world is corrupt and cruel, tainted and tormented, soiled and sinful. Yet, we find strength to return to our families, friends and not despair. Because we know, I know, that what we do here makes a difference. And that, is hope in the darkness. It is enough to make it through another day. On with the sunset, for the sunrise will follow.
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