Carry It Forward: Shakespeare

                While reading any Shakespearean work, it’s very easy to get caught up in the unfamiliar language, and lose the meaning of the writing entirely. Because of this, one might question his use of such complex and intricate language in the first place. I learned last year that this difficult language actually serves a significant purpose poetically, but after knowing this, I then found myself asking, "Is that all there is to Shakespeare?".

               

        Last year, I was introduced to the idea that Shakespeare’s word choices were much more significant than I had previously thought when we talked about how his less-than-typical writing style allowed for beautiful poetic expression. For example, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet was written in sonnet form which contributed to his overall work from a poetic standpoint, instead of just a normal paragraph. Also, that Shakespeare sometimes moved words around so that he could have lines that rhymed against each other, even if this meant that the sentences were grammatically incorrect or looked different. It was definitely interesting to me because previously I had barely been able to read Shakespeare and now I was being asked to read it well enough to appreciate how it was written. Now I finally knew that at least there was some sort of reason for all the out of order phrases and poetic speeches trademarked to Shakespearean plays- but it was a shallow understanding, and only enough to get me through one reading of Romeo and Juliet. I understood the value of Shakespeare’s writing style form an aesthetic standpoint, but not much else.  The novelty wore off and by the time we had finished the book I had exhausted myself trying to decode his language and get through to the actual plot of the play. I had been appreciative enough of the meaning behind his writing style to struggle through the book, and I wanted to like it, but my mind and soul were still actively objecting to my reading of it. Poetic or not it was hard to read!

                 

              In our discussion on Friday, I was again involved in another discussion of the value of Shakespeare’s writing style, and I promise you I prepared for the worst. I was ready to hear more about how poetic he was and how beautiful his writing sounded when read aloud; all of which I already knew and appreciated, but wasn’t enough to interest me in his writing style. I crossed my arms and listened politely anyway, ready for yet another poetry lesson a la Shakespeare.

Instead, we began to talk about Shakespeare’s use of sexual puns.

My class had discussed this a little last year, as there is no shortage of sexual puns in Romeo and Juliet, but had never really explored much into it. On Friday, we went around the room raising our hands, offering theories on why he would bother to include even one, let alone many, of these puns. He first theory was the one that my class had basically decided to accept last year, that Shakespeare had bills to pay, and that sex sells tickets. After that a couple more theories were tossed around too, but nothing that seemed groundbreaking to me yet.

I never expected the claim that eventually followed: that these sexual puns were an attempt by Shakespeare to illustrate the sexual nature of human beings in general. Looking back on the idea, it’s definitely not an entirely false claim by any means, and the idea that Shakespeare would realize this and explore it in the way that he did is fascinating to me. Finally! Something about Shakespeare’s writing that genuinely fascinated me! I was just excited to be excited. Shakespeare wasn’t just a great poet; he was a great thinker whose thoughts, while difficult to access, were worth getting to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the aesthetic beauty of writing and I love how Shakespeare sounds, but it’s reassuring to know that beneath all this outer beauty there is a goldmine of incredible ideas, because that’s the reason I love reading: for the ideas.

Now that I have finally been assured that Shakespeare’s writing style isn’t just beautiful aesthetically, but also full of ideas worth getting to, it is my responsibility as a reader to keep this in mind the next time I am struggling through a Shakespearean passage (and there will be no shortage of these times) to keep me motivated to find the ideas that I know are there. I’m hoping that by doing this, I will be able to get a lot more out of King Lear. Last year I found myself getting easily frustrated by the difficult passages and I ended up sacrificing my understanding because of it. Carrying this idea forward, I will remind myself to delve deeper and reach for the true meaning of Shakespeare’s beautiful words.

Inconvenient Truth: Career Choice

               Since I was a toddler, I’ve been told that I can grow up and become whatever I want to be. I was brought up to believe that as long as I work hard and dedicate myself, I can become anything from a construction worker to the president. Now that I’m older, in high school, and starting to really think about my future, I am becoming more and more aware everyday that this is not really the case at all.

                 

               Throughout my childhood, my answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” has changed many times. My first career choice was zookeeper. The next was astronaut. And then puppy trainer, and then baker, and then firewoman, and eventually lawyer. As you can see, the choices have become more and more “realistic” (as my dad called them) as the years have passed.

What do I want to be now that I’m finally starting to approach the choice for real? I’m thinking about being a doctor. If you had asked me in my aspiring zookeeper phase whether or not I would have even considered being a doctor, I would have thrown a few dozen plastic zebras at you. I hated hospitals and doctors; the idea of being one would have completely repulsed me.

What I didn’t know then that I do now, is that being a doctor is an extremely “realistic” job. Doctors make better money than zookeepers. Being a doctor will impress people more than being a zookeeper. There’s a lot more job security in medicine than in zookeeping. As a four year old, aspiring zoo keeper, these reasons might not have impressed me very much, but as a high school student thinking about what to major in college, these reasons are having a greater and greater influence on my decision.

The belief I held throughout a majority of my childhood is a lie, and the inconvenient truth is that you really can’t be anything you want to be when you grow up.  People are restricted (whether it be monetarily, socially, etc) into certain kinds of jobs. How many zookeepers do you know? Exactly.

People have tons of factors to consider before they can even start to think about what career path they might want to embark on.  Will I make enough money to support a comfortable lifestyle or a family? Will my job choice affect how other people view me? Am I talented enough? Am I smart enough? Can I get this degree? Can I pay for this education? It seems enough to drive anyone crazy, but somehow most people manage to make a choice one way or the other. The problem is that more and more people are choosing to do things based on these criteria rather than what they are really passionate about.

What bothers me about this is that, if people really aren’t able to become what they truly want to become, how many people right at this very moment are in careers that they aren’t really passionate about? Chances are there are a lot of people who didn’t end up following what they were truly interested in. I bet that there are a lot of potential dancers and musicians who gave up on their dreams because there wasn’t enough job security. I bet there are a lot of artists who decided to do something else because they didn’t think they were talented enough. I bet there are a lot of former athletes who never got a chance pursue a professional career because they didn’t make the team. There are way too many reasons why people can’t truly become what they want to be, but that’s just a truth of life.

Right now, I am one of the lucky few, because I am thinking about a career that I am passionate about that will also satisfy all of the other influences I am under. Being a doctor would let me live a comfortable life, and because I am passionate about medicine and helping people, it would also be a satisfying career to me. If I had still truly wanted to become a zookeeper though, I would have a much more difficult time figuring out how to manage that passion in terms of a career choice.

Although the truth is tragic, somehow most people do find a career somehow, and they find ways to follow their passion regardless of their career choice. I’m sure that the potential dancers of the world still dance in their free time, even if they are an accountant in real life. As do the artists create art even if they also create toothbrushes for their job. And no one’s stopping the businessman/former athlete from playing pickup games with his friends. In a way, I can see how this would lead to a fulfilling life even if your career choice isn’t exactly what you want it to be. In fact, the “right job” (in a practical sense) might actually be what allows you the means to follow your real passion, for example a lawyer could be making money in law so that she can travel around the world.

The truth of the matter is that you can’t really be whatever you want to be. There are all kinds of restrictions that people are under that have an unreasonable amount of influence of their career path. This means that there are undoubtedly many people who were never able to follow their true passion as their career. The saving grace of this reality is that there are other ways to follow your passion without making it your career, and that it is still very possible to lead a happy, satisfying life.  

Metacognition: Ambiguity in Orlando

                Although I ended up being quite happy with the essay I just turned in for my English class, actually writing it ended up being extremely frustrating. Yes, I was frustrated that I even had to write an essay in the first place, but mostly, it boiled down to what I was actually able to write about that frustrated me most.

          

               Before I even started, I was very apprehensive about writing the essay. I was honestly not sure if I could find anything to write about. My subject, the use of ambiguity in Orlando by Virginia Woolf, wasn’t something I considered myself an expert on, and therefore I had no idea if I would find a good jumping off point to explore it. So at the beginning, my approach to essay-writing was just to wrap my head around my topic and discover all the different ways it appeared in the book, so that at least I would have examples to talk about. However, my topic ended up appearing much more that I thought it would. Now that I knew what I was looking for, it was easy to see all the ways that Woolf used ambiguity in her novel, and how interesting, clever, and purposeful each way was.

            At first this was great; I had gone from being completely confused about my topic (and really Orlando in general) to having countless examples of and reasons behind the use of ambiguity in Orlando. My essay started fleshing out immediately, and I was drawing conclusions about things that I had never even thought about before, for example the idea that writing ambiguously is actually more difficult than being straightforward in your writing. While at first I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to think about anything to write about, I now had more examples and ideas at hand than I could handle.

           There lies the problem.

  

          My essay was turning into a rambling, ten page long stream of consciousness rant about how interesting ambiguity is. And although Orlando was written in a very stream-of-consciousness way, writing my essay in the same format was not going to fly with my English teacher. In class, we had talked about the nature of essays, and how it was important to focus in on something very specific to talk about, lest you lose your reader entirely. Admittedly, this means being able to restrict your writing and even losing the opportunity to address an idea you might have wanted to explore. Doing these things would make your essay unfocussed, which would make it harder for you reader to follow your point. For example, if my topic was how ambiguity is a useful writing tool because it allows readers room to interpret ideas, I couldn’t really explore the idea of ambiguity being a difficult way to write, because it almost clashes with my topic. How confused would my readers be if I started by claiming ambiguity as a brilliant writing tool, and then turned around and called it a difficult way to write?

Thus began the tedious, headache-inducing, frustration-laden task of deciding what exactly the focus of my essay was going to be, and which ideas were going to be bounced from my essay. I was surprised by how much it bothered me to remove ideas from my essay. It almost felt like I was disowning them, even though I was extremely proud of them. Eventually I managed to whittle down my essay to what I thought were some of my strongest ideas that all stemmed directly from my topic. I realized that while yes, my essay was now much simpler, and that yes, it was missing some ideas that under better circumstances I would have included, my essay was now much more straightforward. After reading it over, it became very obvious how much stronger my ideas seemed now that there was such a strong focus throughout my essay.

What I’ve learned through this writing experience is that, even though it may be frustrating, it’s necessary to trim down your ideas in order to give your essay focus, because otherwise, all you have is a long list of ideas. By picking and choosing the ones that all follow one topic, you create one statement (a thesis statement) with several ideas behind it that act as support and really bring home your claim. As a bonus, the ideas you do choose to include all build off each other since they are connected to each other. The result of these things is a much more powerful piece of writing. I like that I’ve been able to come to terms with this a little, because it will make my next essay much less frustrating.

In the future, I will do things the same way I did with this essay: come up with as many interesting and significant ideas about my topic as possible, and then pick and choose the strongest and the most relevant to back up my thesis. This way, I don’t miss any ideas, but at the same time I don’t include every single one in my essay. However, I will be keeping in mind from now on the fact that I will have to say goodbye to a few of my ideas along the way.