On Endings

Wow. What a ride.

It's funny how, throughout this semester, we have been consistently discussing internal journeys. All along, I didn't notice how this English course in itself sparked a change in me... In how I write, and in how I look at the world.

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it once more: I love the idea of traveling, despite the fact (or perhaps, because of the fact) that I haven't traveled much. Last semester, when looking for English classes, this one caught my eye because of its name: Viaje en la literatura. Journey into Literature.

These last couple of months, I watched movies movies that I would've never thought to watch, and I've read novels that I would've never chosen to read out of my own accord. After years of wanting to keep a diary or journal, I started writing one and didn't give up on it. There were days when I didn't want to write anything, and those moments were stressful. Forcing myself to write was horrible... But when inspiration actually hit? It was the most rewarding feeling ever.

Getting lost inside my writing and following the "flow" of my consciousness gave me incredible insight on myself -on who I was, on who I am, and who I want to be. It's very hard for me to have a clear picture of myself. I'm always wondering how others perceive me. What do my friends really think of me? What image do my family members have of me? What do I think of myself, and how reliable is that perception? Journaling helped me realize that I can't invest so much time and energy trying to out into exact words or boxes every single aspect of who I am. It is hard to paint a picture of the beach, because the waves are constantly moving. I can't expect myself to have everything figured out about my identity, because I changed, and I'm changing, and I'll change.

Before this blog assignment, my only experience with online posting was with Tumblr (microblogging), which was more about sharing good content than actually creating it. With this blog, I forced myself to put my writing out there, no matter how scary it seemed. I had never taken a class with this sort of assignment. Writing a blog and writing a journal were amazing, refreshing activities that helped with my growth as a student and as a person. This English class was unlike anything I had ever done before, and I say that in a good way.

My blog URL is "A ship in the harbour." It comes from one of my favorite quotes: "A ship in the harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are for." I want to travel, among other reasons, in order to leave my harbour, and have new experiences. I haven't left the harbour this year, and I don't know if I will. But this semester was not useless. It helped me prepare my ship, stock up on supplies, and get the sails ready. It may not have pushed me off the shore, but it certainly prepared me for what's in store.

I recently found another quote that I like a lot: "Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease." Now, I finally realize that I'm not looking to escape- not really. I'm looking to explore.

So here's to all the explorations we've done, and all those we'll do in the future.

A Small Place To Call Our Own

Simón Bolívar, an famous Latin American revolutionary, had a dream of unifying all South American countries and creating a sort of huge mega-nation such as the United States. He did not achieve his dream, but I believe that it could've been possible. Nowadays, all South American countries seem distinct and separate. However, they have many unifying qualities in terms of history and culture. There is no doubt in my mind that, if things had gone right, they could've joined together.

This is what first came into my mind when reading Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place.  Kincaid is from a small Caribbean island called Antigua, also known as Waladli or Wadadli by its locals. Reading excerpts from her novel, I almost got goosebumps. Her opinions and her descriptions of her small island nation resonated with me, since so many of her issues she talked about can be applied almost identically to Puerto Rico.

Both Antigua and Puerto Rico are relatively small Caribbean islands that had indigenous populations and were eventually colonized by Europeans (in both cases, first by the Spanish and eventually the English, although in our case the latter didn't last long).

In her novel, Jamaica is angry and bitter, but I do not blame her for it. I don't think anyone could. You don't have to be a revolutionary in order to acknowledge the damage that was done by colonizers who decided to settle in America. They were imposing, violent, and cruel. This is not an opinion, this is a fact. It is said that time heals all wounds, and some people may be OK with forgiving and forgetting... But Kincaid is not one of those people:

[...] they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that

Are you saying to yourself, "Can't she get beyond all that, everything happened so long ago, and how does she know that if things had been the other way around her ancestors wouldn't have behaved just as badly, because, after all, doesn't everybody behave badly given the opportunity?" 

 [...] you loved knowledge, and wherever you went you made sure to build a school, a library (yes, and in both of these places you distorted or erased my history and glorified your own) 

She is angry, and rightfully so. Her writing feels refreshing to me, because I've grown up with this neutrality mentality that I apply to everything. I try to listen to all sides of any given story. I do my research. I try not to get involved in aggressive discussions unless it's absolutely necessary. Most of all, I was always told that there are right and wrong ways to express anger and discontent. 

Kincaid's frustrations are not politically correct. They are not presented in elaborate, carefully worded speeches.  They are the rants of the oppressed. When injustice is long-lasting and insidious, how can reactions to it be anything but furious? "Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you".

A Small Place also made me consider tourism in a whole different light. Here in Puerto Rico, tourists are talked about in a humorous matter. We laugh about their big hats, expensive cameras, and American clothes. We imitate their accents when they try to pronounce El Morro o San Cristóbal. Kincaid's approach is much more sarcastic, and forces us to question the effects tourism can have on a cultural level:

What a beautiful island Antigua is-- more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen, and they were very beautiful, in their way, but they were much too green, much too lush with vegetation, which indicated to you, the tourist, that they got quite a bit of rainfall, and rain is the very thing that you, just now, do not want, for you are thinking of the hard and cold and dark and long days you spent working in North America (or, worse, Europe), earning some money so that you could stay in this place (Antigua) where the sun always shines and where the climate is deliciously hot and dry for the four to ten days you are going to be staying there; 

This tone reminded me of a documentary I watched a couple of months ago for another English class,  titled Life and Debt. The film discussed the island of Jamaica's economic history, and contrasted colorful, fun scenes featuring tourists with locals telling stories about the country's politics. Curiously enough, upon further investigation, I noticed that Life and Debt's writer was - you guessed it - Jamaica Kincaid. 

Neither travel nor tourism are inherently bad. I would never make such an accusation. However, we must acknowledge that the essence of tourism comes from a place of superiority and privilege. In a capitalist society, tourism is the act of saying, "I can afford to temporarily leave my country and experience a quick, convenient piece of someone else's culture." Again, this isn't necessarily bad. But it is sad to think that strangers get to visit Antigua and enjoy without seeing the complex issues the island is going through. Tourists get a picture-perfect experience, while locals struggle:

[...] if you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument? You are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen the hospital in Antigua, you have not yet seen a public monument in Antigua.

[...] That water--have you ever seen anything like it? Far out, to the horizon, the colour of the water is navy-blue; nearer, the water is the colour of the North American sky. From there to the shore, the water is pale, silvery, clear, so clear that you can see its pinkish-white sand bottom. Oh, what beauty! Oh, what beauty! You have never seen any thing like this. You are so excited. You breathe shallow. You breathe deep.

I love traveling. I would never want to stop myself from traveling, and I would never try to dissuade someone from enjoying a wonderful trip to another country. But we must think critically when we visit other countries. Some people might argue that the point of a vacation is to get away and relax. Personally, I don't think being aware of our surroundings and the history behind them would diminish anyone's tourist experience. If anything, it would give more depth to our understanding on the place that we're visiting, and why it is the way that it is.   

Down The "Rabbit Hole" We Call The Internet

I'll be the first to admit that I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet. I'm addicted to it. Sometimes I'm productive: I look for scholarships and internships and I do homework online. But sometimes (well, most of the times), I simply watch movies and use Facebook. 

So when our English professor said we had to do online research regarding Puerto Rico, I was excited but also curious at how this was going to work. As it turns out, we had to work in groups in order to dive into the World Wide Web and find out what people were saying about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. 

This sparked a sort of internal journey for me. Here in Puerto Rico, we love to poke fun at ourselves, and sometimes we even go as far as to heavily criticize our nation.  Throughout my life, I'd been told a million different things about how other people viewed our island. "Other Latin Americans laugh at the way we speak!". "Americans are always so ignorant and racist!". "Spanish people hate our usage of Spanglish!" A couple of weeks ago I found myself thinking: how much of this is actually true? And how does it affect me and the view I have of myself as a Puerto Rican?

I did tons of online research with my group and ended up with an overwhelming amount of information. We analyzed and condensed it all into one presentation:

We presented our findings in a English conference, specifically during a panel titled "Perspectives of Puerto Rico: A Journey Through Cyberspace." One would think that I would've been less nervous than normal, considering that before this panel I had already spoken publicly and alone. This time, I would be working in a group. Easy, right?

However, this panel seemed to spark more controversy than the previous one. The identity essays lead to friendly discussions and various people sharing their opinions on themes like home and globalization. While we were presenting our online research, in contrast, one professor argued that we Puerto Ricans are hypocrites: that we live in denial about our situations and then "whine" or "complain" when someone else points out our flaws.

The presentation rant late, and we were unable to hold a Q&A portion after all of the presentations. It was a real shame, since I would have enjoyed talking about that particular subject with that professor, as well as my fellow classmates.

I guess I want to use this post as a way to express what I never got a chance to say. 

I disagree with what the professor was trying to say, although I do understand where she was coming from. Puerto Rico is not perfect. We call our land the Island of Enchantment. We take our pride wherever we go. We love talking about Puerto Rico to other people and trying to convince them to visit us. 

But I wouldn't go as far as to call ourselves hypocrites because of this. Yes, a lot of times we can manage to be surprisingly optimistic about our surroundings. But make no mistake: we Puerto Ricans know how and when to criticize, too. Nowadays, not a single week goes by when I don't hear my friends or my family members discuss politics and the economy. Think about it. We are constantly complaining about all the small and big things that are wrong, and what we do to fix them.

A open letter to that professor: In the end, as we had already mentioned in our presentation, it doesn't come down to what is said regarding Puerto Rico, as much as how it is said.

Americans talk about Puerto Rico and, in a lot of cases, have no idea what the historical, social, cultural, and political context of what they are saying. There remarks have xenophobic, racist, and classist undertones, as we saw in "Taki Mag".

Boricuas complain about the island in the same way we complain about a sibling, a family member or a friend: We know they're not perfect, but we wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. 

Home, Language and Difference

I've always been told that I talk too much. I can't deny it. I talk too loud, I don't always think before I speak, and I'm frequently a victim to spoonerisms. I'm embarrassed to say that every day, I find a new way to put my foot in my mouth.

I guess that's why I love public speaking so much, and one of the reasons I'm studying communications (Public Relations). It feels great to know that I can take my predisposition for speaking and actually hone it into something professional and effective. Years ago, when I was in high school, I participated in a oratory competition. It was the first time I had ever done anything like that, and I was representing my Honor Society Chapter. Needless to say, I was extremely nervous. How else would a first timer feel? I wanted to make everyone proud, but first timers don't win first place. 

They can, however, tie for second place. 

Last week's English conference reminded me of this experience. After years of not participating in any sort of public speaking activity, doing the "Interrogating Identity: Home, Language and Difference” felt like a breath of fresh air. 

Three of my friends were able to come and see me, as well as my father. I was the last one to speak. I had practiced the speech in my mind, but I still messed up some words every now and then. While I was speaking, I feel like my five senses augmented: I noticed small details in my paper and in the crowd, I was more conscious of my breathing, I could hear my heart beating, and I was acutely aware of how I was using my mouth to pronounce each word. 

I also became very self-conscious of that essay I had written weeks ago. Even though I knew it had been peer-reviewed, it didn't feel as great as all those other essays that had been presented. But then again, maybe I'm being too hard on myself. It definitely sparked discussion, which for me is the most important thing. 

After we were all done, it was time for the Q&A portion of the panel. Two professors, as well as one of my friends, made great questions. We talked about culture, about the Internet, about Jamaica Kincaid, and about Puerto Rico, among other things. 

In my two years of college, I have been to many conferences and panels. Sometimes they were extremely interesting. Sometimes they nearly bored me to sleep. Now that I've had the experience of being behind that podium, I realize the importance of always paying attention to the speakers, no matter what. Talking in front of people can be fun and dynamic, but it is never easy. When we get bored, it's normal to give into the temptation of drifting off in thought or of playing with our phones. But when people talk, it's important to listen. 

Whoever walks up to a podium and starts speaking -whether it's to a huge crowd or a handful of college students- deserves to be respected. There are many tips online about how to prepare a public speech. The suggestions are always the same: public speaking requires skill, practice, and professionalism. If I learned one thing from this experience it's that it also requires something else: guts.

Journey Through A Journal

Before this class, I had been wanting to begin journalizing* for quite a long time. I have at least half a dozen unused notebooks of various sizes spread out around my room. Keeping a journal was just the sort of thing that seemed to work better in theory than in practice. It was easy to buy pretty journals when I saw them in stores, and then promise myself that I would start using them. But when push came to shove, life got in the way– I had school and chores and a social life.

Like most college students, I find myself constantly complaining about tests, group projects, and complicated assignments. College is not easy. In fact, it's extremely stressful. Yet, something must be said about deadlines. I might curse deadlines on occasion, but there's no denying that at the end of the day, they are the simple best motivating tool I've ever encountered.

I never got around to writing journal entries on my own because no one gave me a deadline. In other words, no one was forcing me to. There just wasn't any sort of pressure to do anything, so I kept pushing it back, swearing that I would get around to it "eventually."

I guess that's one of the reasons I enjoyed writing journal entries for this course: because I finally got motivated to do something I'd wanted to do for a long time. I ended up doing around 40+ entries [I'll verify the number and edit this post later]. The rules were pretty simple: the entries had to "flow" out of our heads. Back in January, the professor said something along the lines of a stream of consciousness or a stream of thoughts. Do you know that feeling when you're talking to someone, and all of a sudden you get distracted and lose your train of thought? That's how I personally interpreted this activity: you had to get on a train of thought, start writing, and not get off the train until at least ten minutes passed.

It's definitely easier said than done. The rules were pretty simple: we couldn't cross anything out; we didn't have to worry about grammar in general; we couldn't overthink or get too logical; we had to "go for the jugular"; and no matter what happened, we couldn't stop moving our hand.

When I first started writing the entries, I felt stiff. There's no other way to describe it. It was supposed to be a writing exercise that freed us from the limitations of academic writing, but strangely enough, the writing felt forced. It didn't come as naturally as I'd originally thought. As the weeks passed, however, something began to change. By my 12th or 13th entry, I realized that little by little I was making more and more mistakes– but I was caring less and less about making them.

The first rule was definitely the hardest. As I was writing, I tried my best to let my thoughts flow... But whenever the timer ended I found myself re-reading what I'd just written, and my hand always itched to fix any mistakes. Even if no one was going to read the entry, it felt weird to see simple grammar mistakes and not cross them out.

I decided to do one of my journal entries immediately after watching one particular movie. Usually, ten minutes to write a journal felt like an unnecessarily long amount of time. But in this case, I felt like it just wasn't enough. I had so much I wanted to write down, so many ideas going through my mind simultaneously, that I felt like I could write for hours. I definitely loved that feeling.

The process of writing a journal was one of the best experiences I've had in any college class. I've spent so much of my time focused on my external journeys, that I never took time to appreciate all the interestingly complex internal journeys that I go through every single day.

[To be further edited]

What does it mean to "help"?

In my first Down On The Island post, I reflected on the teaching profession and on Jim Cooper's general experiences as an educator. Now, I want to emphasize on the eighth chapter of his memoir: "Helping."

Cooper mentions helping in the context of dealing with students that were consistently cheating on their assignments. He talks about how cheating is something that happens in all schools in all parts of the country. However, he appears startled at just how common this practice was in the island. He claims that he had "never seen it done as openly and outrageously as it was in Puerto Rico." Other American teachers, his coworkers, were more than started; they were downright furious

As one of them exploded after visiting a few classrooms, "No wonder the students don't understand us or know what we're talking about. Their teachers not only let them cheat, they teach them how, they encourage them."

Fortunately, Cooper did not get exasperated. Instead, he acknowledged that cheating in Puerto Rico comes from a very different place in comparison with cheating in the States. Here in the island, he explains, cheating is usually about teamwork and about students helping their classmates. It demonstrates cooperation instead of competitiveness.  

This was in great contrast to the attitudes taught in a great many if not most American families and schools [...] You are in competition not only with your classmates but with the students in other classes and the students in other schools. The way to win, to get ahead is to beat out helping the others, your competition, so you get the prize, the gold star, your name on the honors list. It's the attitude summed up by the old army expression, "I've got mine."

In other words, an American student might cheat by using their own notes, in order to get the best grade. In contrast, a Puerto Rican student might give their classmates the right answer without thinking how that will affect his ranking in the class. People like to think of academic cheating in terms of black and white, right and wrong. But in one instance, is a sign of selfishness, while in another, is a sign of helpfulness. 

One of the younger Puerto Rican faculty members [...] finally summed up what, in a sense, was the attitude of many of the Puerto Rican teachers [...]: "I'm really sick of you continentals saying that we don't care if the students cheat, that we urge them to cheat. You miss the point completely. I'm interested in my students learning the right answers to questions. If they can learn more easily by copying from a neighbor's paper than they can from me, what difference does it make?"

Cooper eventually does find alternate and supplemental ways of teaching English to his students. These methods had varying degrees of success. This has got me thinking on the different "wrong" and "right" ways in which educators can help their students. In our educational system, does helping truly mean? How much help is too much, and how much is not enough?

The more I read texts like these regarding education, the more I think about all the ways in which American/Puerto Rican education should be reformed. There is an ever-growing emphasis on standardized testing, and every year more and more students suffer from stress and anxiety due to these types of evaluations.

I remember when I was a child, asking my parents about what "Montessori schools" were like. Most adults brush them off as "hippie schools," since this kind of educational approach relies more on an independent, organic learning process rather than strictly structured classes. Similarly, many parents reject the idea of homeschooling or "unschooling" because they are afraid these methods won't prepare their children for "the real world."

But what do they mean by this? Are they saying that "the real world" is full of rigid learning environments and standardized testing? Our educational system didn't appear out of nowhere. In its essence, it was created hundreds of years ago and has been barely adapted for modern times. It was made up by us, and it can be changed by us, too. As a society, we make structured learning a requirement in grade school, as well as high school and college. 

At an early age, students learn to memorize huge amounts of information with the sole purpose of writing it all down on one test, and then moving on to the next topic. We've chosen to make these skills an indispensable part of our society. Yet we recognize that the system isn't perfect. This is the education of the real world, we tell ourselves. But is it the education we deserve?

"Those who can, do..."

When I first came across Jim Cooper's Down on the Island, I was... hesitant about reading it. In this memoir, Cooper reflects upon his time in Puerto Rico. More specifically, as a professor in Mayagüez back in the 1960s. I was wary because I kept wondering what his perspective on Puerto Rico was going to be. 

It would be an understatement to say that Puerto Rico has a somewhat complicated relationship with the United States. This is definitely relevant when discussing the history of public education in our island. At one point, American teachers were brought over and were forced to teach classes in English to citizens who were, back then, barely literate in Spanish. 

So as you can imagine, when I first heard that this book featured and American professor in our island, I was curious. I wanted to understand the context behind it. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that Cooper is an impartial observer of his surroundings. Of course, in a memoir of this type, it is impossible to transform oneself into a completely neutral narrator. But Cooper writes with honesty and respect about his environment, and about all those small particularities that make Mayagüez, Mayagüez and that make Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico. 

For example, he does not write about his living conditions with a resentful tone. He, quite simply, presents what is around him:

[...] my friend Gene Hall and I were sharing one of the casetas on campus. In contrast to quite substantial cement houses lived in by Beck with and other senior members of the faculty, the casetas consisted of a row of five small, temporary wooden houses a short way uphill from the cow barns, which were rented, on very reasonable terms, to junior faculty members. 

Educating others is never an easy thing to do, and Cooper seemed to struggle a lot with his curriculum. He does, however, mention one very important thing: "Despite the failings of the syllabus, we did have one very important thing working in our favor in the classroom. The students wanted to learn English and wanted to communicate in it."

His most poignant and beautiful quote, in my opinion, is the following: "Somehow, without my realizing it, living and teaching at the Colegio had become the real world, no longer in quotes. Not much like the one I had left behind, perhaps, but most certainly real." He captures the essence of immigration, of not just traveling but actually settling in one place. The Colegio was "other", it was distanced from him... Until one day, it was not. Somewhere along the line, it stopped being a separate thing, and became his reality.

That being said, by far what I liked most about the seventh chapter, "Teaching English", is that he is also brutally frank about the struggles he had as a teacher. It seems to me that with each passing day, people find it easier to dismiss teaching as a serious profession. My mother is a teacher, and so I am a fervent defender of educators. While reading Cooper's experiences, I was reminded of the classic idiom, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." What a strange, and frankly demeaning, expression.

Interestingly enough, I believe the opposite to be true. When we're young, one of the first things that we try to do is to teach others. Children teach their friends to play games, they teach their siblings to tie their shoes, they teach their dogs tricks. It's human nature. Yet, most kids (as well as adults) get easily frustrated when they try and fail to educate someone on a particular topic. It seems to me like those who have a natural talent for teaching discover it a young age. The rest of us are the ones who have to find something else to do.

As food for thought, I leave you with Taylor Mali's fantastic slam poem, "What Teachers Make". Here is a link for one of his many performances, and here is a link to the written version of the poem. Additionally, here is a "graphic" (comic book) version of it.