lame...

Good morning,
I realize this is kind of lame and we're kind of past the whole "paradigm shift" drama, but I was listening to this (one of my favorite songs) just now & thought hm... think of an old-paradigmer singing this in times of change (especially the refrain). Here is Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" (I also like the Smashing Pumpkins version in case anyone was wondering; in fact, first I heard the song, it was Smashing Pumpkins):

I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Mmm Mmm...Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
even children get older I'm getting older too
(Gutiar solo)
Well i've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder even
Children get olderI'm getting older too
ohI'm getting older too

Ahh, take this love, take it down
Ahh climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring you down

Emily's story

It is with some degree of a confessioners shame that I admit that I am “one of those people” who has always wanted to do one thing. J It is my personality to love only a few things and love them deeply, and I cannot remember a time when my love for words and stories, was not the deepest love of all. (Oh crap, do I sound like a Whitney Houston song?)

I have never spent much time distinguishing between which type of story to love. Was it Mark Twain who said journalism is lies about real people and fiction is the truth about fake people? I will read it all, and my head spins now with names and titles, authors and phrases I have never forgotten… Even the words in cookbooks. All of the possibilities in those recipes! (I would have invited Socrates to my picnic, but something tells me he wouldn’t want to come!)

The first moment I can remember on my journey to “communication” happened when I was 12… I have never made excuses for my painful shyness and general awkwardness but it may have had something to do with why I thought I was hot shit laying in my bed with the covers over my head, wearing a gigantic headlamp that made me look like a coal miner from South Africa, reading a book I could not put down. (Yes, I really did think that if I hid under my bed with my gigantic headlamp that my parents wouldn’t be able to tell that I was still awake.) I was reading Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and I was crying, my hands trembling. I could not believe the words I was reading. They belonged to me in a way nothing had belonged to me before. This book, these worn sheets of paper and ink, was my mirror, my life raft, my escape. The words meant everything to my 12-year-old self. I read them again and again.

Words like these: "She was made up of all of these good and these bad things...She was the books she read in the library...Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrells she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk...She was all of these things and of something more...It was something that had been born into her and her only."

And words like these: "Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

I was 12, but reading that book was the first time I felt exhilarated by words. I wanted to write like that. I wanted to make people feel the way I felt. I wanted to “communicate” with words, to tell stories that made people feel alive. That made them burn the way I was burning then... And if I couldn’t do that, then maybe I could just make them feel a little less lonely. Even for a few pages.

It is funny and a little bittersweet to think how little has changed in 20 years… :0)

Brian's story

My journey to Communication has been a little more circuitous than most, itseems. Going into my undergraduate work, I was one of the few people who knewexactly what he wanted to major in - English Literature. English was always myfavorite subject in high school (I was always the type of kid who waspermanently attached to a book growing up) and I never even questioned what mymajor in college would be. That being said, I was also a huge pop culturefanatic (I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly in the third grade). Butit never even entered my head that you could study pop culture in college. Myeducation seemed fairly clear on that matter. Reading books was what one didfor work, and watching television was what you did for fun. This all changed,of course, when I met the professor who would eventually become my advisor formy undergraduate and master's work at FSU, Dr. Edwards. Like me, she came topop culture studies through the back door (she began as a specialist in globalliterature before a paper on the multicultural limitations of Disney cartoonsopened her eyes to media studies). Needless to say, this completely changed myacademic track. Rather than studying contemporary literature (as I had beendoing), I completely shifted gears to television studies. Of course this wasall from an English perspective. I was basically taking the textual analyticaltools that I had been trained in from my previous classes and applied them totelevision texts. It didn't take long for me to discover that this practicewasn't exactly favored within my English department (or most Englishdepartments, for that matter). Media studies is still something of a contestedarea within the English discipline, and although the discipline certainly has astake in media studies, it still is quite marginalized. This became ratherclear when I began applying to English programs for my Master's degree and wassoundly rejected from the vast majority of them. After that experience, I satdown with my advisor to reassess my future in academia (I was convinced that Ididn't have one), and she suggested that I think of switching gears (again) toCommunication departments. Media studies, it seemed, was much moreinstitutionally accepted within Comm departments than in English Departments.And so during my Master's work I began taking more and more classes within ourCollege of Communication to begin building up experience within that disciplinein preparation for my Ph.D. applications. It seemed that the decision to switchto Communication was a smart one, since I was accepted to those programs (a muchnicer feeling than the mass rejection from two years ago). Of course, now thatI'm here I'm swinging even farther away from my English background, as I'm nowlearning that you can explore the types of questions that I want to exploreusing quantitative methodologies (which is a much better fit for my admittedlyanal-retentive personality). My academic journey, then, seems to be more like aperpetual exclamation of "I didn't know you could do that!" rather than a structured plan.

Allison's story

Here's my post. I'm so bad at this, I had trouble finding it...sigh.I would say that my journey to communication started with my mom. As a littlekid she was always telling me that I shouldn't let people tell me I couldn'tdo things because I was female. Fueled and informed by this, I would get inarguments with my grandmother (who lives in Hadley) about gender issuesstarting from about the age of 6. I remember watching family feud with her anda question on the show was "name things that men do better than women." Shestarted listing things: "well, they're stronger, they know more about cars,they can fix things around the house..." I got angry and came up with counterarguments for everything she said. Ultimately she decided that women hadbetter handwriting (I still show her my chicken scratch to this day).Anyway, my interest in gender issues never really went away. Though I hate theterm, people called me a "tomboy" growing up. I was interested in sports andhad little interest in shopping (which is still true). When I started mycollege career, I played for the university soccer team, which I considered mymajor until midway through my sophomore year. When it came time that I had topick an actual major, a friend of mine (Rosie) on the soccer team told me thatcommunication was a cool major, so I went with that. Quite amazingly, I think,Rosie is also getting her PhD in communication at the University of Utah.After I started taking classes in communication I really felt at home. It wasreassuring for me to hear people apply technical terminology to the genderissues that bothered me. So, in short, I would say that it was something aboutthe world that my mom pointed out to me from an early age that led me towardan interest in communication.Allison

From Thanu

My story of how I came to communications is a simple one. I had always wanted tobe a writer and a journalist. Like many South Asian girls coming of age at thetime when Arundathi Roy's 'God of Small Things' and other political writingswere gaining prestige- it was like a sign, "Look, I can actually do this!" Italso became a feasible money-making dream in the eyes of my parents, whose rangeof choices of what their children could be (doctors and engineers) expanded to"Well I suppose you can be a writer if you are EXACTLY like Arundathi Roy andtherefore make money like her."I helped run my high school newspaper, and wrote small articles for the BangkokPost and other such city newspapers in Bangkok, Thailand (where I grew up.) Iwas always unsatisfied and upset by the ways in which editors would edit downone's story, sometimes changing the meaning all together.When I got to college... I took a class called "The Culture of Imperialism"which was my first introduction to postcolonial studies and political economy.It changed how I viewed my world, and for the first time I understood the realways in which colonialism had touched every aspect of my life- from the strangephenomenon of being taught by American teachers in an international school inThailand (all of whom were paid more than local teachers), to the ways in whichall of us Asian students strived to 'Americanize'. My second semester atHampshire College, a friend from UMass told me to come to a class being taughtin the communications department. The class was called, "Global Media and SocialChange" and was taught by Paula Chakravartty. That class really made everythingclick for me. I appreciated studying media in a larger context, understandingthe connections between political economy, history, and the media. I feltempowered and felt that I was gaining a sense of self, and therefore anunderstanding of the world and how it is that I wanted to change it. I liked theinterdisciplinary nature of communications- I felt I wasn't limited. My dreamwidened from just being a journalist/writer, to dabbling in film/video and newmedia, blogging, etc.I study communications because it does not limit me.-- Thanu

unrepentant trespasser...

My story is non-linear and non-traditional, and I echo Lily’s attribution of folklore as one of my foundational experiences of “communication.” By now everyone knows that I used to be an engineer, etc. etc., ad nauseam, but I think it is particularly because I was a successful engineer that people are surprised by just how much I dislike science and engineering. As someone trained in linear and non-linear mathematics, I think this is where the non-linearity comes in. I genuinely want nothing to do with a major portion of my “previous” life, except perhaps someday to critique it roundly and soundly.

A couple of years ago, in the midst of my burned out phase Alexis asked me what I really wanted to do, and my gut-level answer was simple: teach. She pressed me on what I wanted to teach, and refused to accept my initial (and logical) thought that I would naturally teach engineering. She suggested to me, pointedly, that the very things I detested about engineering would be the things lauded as virtues by engineering curricula and therefore the things that I would be forced to teach! I couldn’t stomach the thought, but what else could I teach? Alexis has her degrees in Sociology and Philosophy, and she helped me through an intense period of mutually narcissistic navel-gazing.

Non-linear shift... Perhaps gazing at one’s navel is good after all -- it reconnects one with the messy humanity of one’s birth... Growing up as a “transnational” made me experience life in terms of stories. Certainly I had to tell stories over and over again, often to explain to yet another bureaucrat why my messy and unresolved life did not fit in the neat boxes on the forms they wanted me to fill out. Then I had to tell stories about my religion to my “friends” who believed strongly in the stories of their holy texts which told them to cleanse me out of their lands. Then I had to tell stories about my “friends” to my relatives “back home,” who were all too eager to draw confirmations of their own holy convictions. A childhood of conflicting and contradictory stories made me deeply skeptical of religious stories, especially the neatly packaged ones that I concocted for my own survival... And yet I found solace in the messy and unresolved stories of the Hebrew Testament when I was suicidally depressed in engineering graduate school at the turn of the century. So I became that most insidious of pop-culture villains: The American Evangelical Christian. I became a Sunday School Teacher, a Youth Group Leader, a Missionary-wannabe, one of the in-crowd, one of the ones who thought Bush was a Godly Man of Faith.

Uh-oh, my non-linear narcissistic survival instincts are kicking in again... It is no mere coincidence that I left the evangelical fold at about the same time that I became disillusioned with engineering -- my critiques of logical positivism are linked to my critiques of evangelical systematic theology. Story: I am currently searching for my immunization records -- UMass says I will not be able to register for Spring '09 unless I can show I have been immunized. I have been poked and prodded and inoculated and injected so many times since I was seven years old, every time I crossed yet another border, and I do not have any precious “records” to show for it. What are y’all trying to immunize against anyway? And maybe there is a metaphor here -- social scientists probably wonder if I carry the positivist disease, humanists probably wonder if I carry the scientific disease, and artists probably wonder if I carry the analytical disease... And everyone probably worries that I still carry the Jesus disease.

I often find myself performing the rhetoric of betrayal: “Don’t worry, I’m not one of THEM... I used to be like THEM but I am not anymore...” Sometimes I forget who I am not.

Let’s finish this thing. I want to teach stories, to teach young people (of all ages) to become more aware of the narratives that are alive and kicking all around them and in them all the time, to engage with people in hearing and performing and criticizing the world of stories that both form and change our identities. At least, that is what I told Leda when I met her a year ago. I had a vague sense that I wanted to do “folklore” but I did not know the terms or jargon or lingo of the “field” and I still do not know what “field” I want to be in. Leda encouraged me and invited me to sit in on her Comm Theory class last Fall. I also met Stephen Gencarella, who likewise encouraged me and invited me to sit in on his class titled “Theories of Language as Action and Performance.” Both classes blew my mind -- I still remember my reaction when someone mentioned Marxism in Leda’s class last Fall and I did a double-take. In my world of high-tech industry, my MBA friends hated unions and Marxism was a dirty word synonymous with “failed economic experiment.” I did not understand what Marxism had to do with Communication, but I was profoundly stunned by the very real connection of the work that Leda and Stephen did with critical social issues.

A couple of months later I had enough of an amateurish understanding to write a final paper on Marxism and folklore for Stephen’s class, based on Raymond Williams’ book “Marxism and Literature.” I enjoyed writing that paper so much that I applied to the M.A. program here at UMass as well as the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. [My shameless insecurity compels me to add that I got accepted into both places...] Alexis and I agonized over the decision, and I decided to come here mainly because I want to work with Stephen and Leda and Claudio during the first few years of learning my “new” career. At least, that is what I tell them -- UMass also let me teach (yay!) but if you really press me on it I’d have to say the economics worked out pretty well too, because IU gave me no funding. Sure, at UMass I make only 10% of what I used to make as an engineer, but it’s more than the absolute zero that IU offered...

So that’s my “story”... I am here as a brazen interloper and shameless traitor, with no “business” being here and with a long history of ungrateful betrayal. I don’t buy any talk of Founding Fathers -- I am a subversive subaltern with a non-academic chip on my shoulder. And I like my chip, I call it George :-) I am here to explore and to question -- this field is so broad that it encourages me to not feel insecure about being puzzled. And I am here to figure out where to go next!

On my way to Communication

I found myself in communication studies much how communication studies found itself - at the intersection. Bouncing between interests in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and theology, I was constantly inquiring into that which is closest to us, but found each discipline to (at least from my position) close off the possibilities of the others in conversation.

I found myself, like many students, with passion yet without direction. I refused to give up on each of these subjects, but choosing a discipline was itself a choice to give up the others.

Enter the Communication Studies Department at Arizona State University West. With a focus in critical, rhetorical, and cultural studies, the department stood at the intersection of my interests at the time. My first class on Rhetoric and Argumentation proved to be the most interesting class I'd been to yet, and drew me into a love of Communication Studies.

I had never tried very hard in school until that point - I just wanted to get through to get a degree - but I went from a mediocre-at-best student to joining the honors college in one semester. Communication Studies literally saved my education by giving me something to care about.

So where I find myself is where I began - at the intersection, yet focused on Communication. It allows for perspectives I don't find in most disciplines.