Mid-Session Check-In Blog

March 26, 2011

Dear Laura,

I am enjoying the college experience after being out of school many years. I find education more challenging now than ever before. I have heard the saying, “the older you get, the harder it is to learn.” This seems to hold true for me. I have always been a pretty good writer, but the algebra and chemistry classes are a frustration. I really thought it would be the other way around being an electrician an all. This English class, in general, has brought out strengths and weaknesses in my writing. Most of my writing in the past has come right out of my head, so my challenge has been getting back into the practice of research and documentation. I have learned new technologies, such as blogging and making videos, which have brought me up-to-date with the world. This will all prove very useful in the future for technical writing and publishing journals.

Lord Byron

The reading content you have chosen has been very interesting to me. I am not one to place people in a high position just because they have published a book or play.  My favorite of the bunch so far is Tim O’Brien. His stories bring back memories of my younger days. His style of writing, for me, is of a high quality with a depth which provokes one to think rather than react. The poetry has also been intriguing. I had difficulty finding the same depth with the other authors. I do believe if I were to experience the “Sand Storm” in play form, or even in a public reading  by the author, that I would feel more emotional about it. Somehow, by just reading the script, it lacks the impact it might otherwise carry.

Literary analysis is different from normal research in that I have been able to incorporate my own view point into the text. Where a regular research paper contains straight forward facts, critical analysis demands personal insight along with the use of facts to support a point of view. I seem to do pretty well with this form of writing but see room for improvement. My goal is to become more succinct in my delivery and to become more comfortable and  competent in my MLA citations.

Sincerely,

Dan Wirt

An article about Non-Traditional Students 

The Sand Storm - A Play

     It is somewhat difficult for me to write my reaction to this play.  Call it spoiled if you will but I have become biased toward Tim O’Brien’s stories. Perhaps “The Sand Storm”  might have a greater impact on me if I were to see it performed in all of its sensual format. Something meaningful seems to have been lost in a mere reading of the script. My initial reaction was, this guy, Sean Huze, is just another angry whiner who needs to grow up. As I read the pages, I could feel anger directed at our government and society. At times this anger seemed like that of some little kid who didn’t get his way.

Iraq-war1: mediafreedominternational.org

     This tone carried through a great deal of the play. Most of the monologue involved graphic descriptions of dismembered bodies. There seemed to be little real emotion or human factor attached with these shocking scenes and I was left with the attitude that says, “yes, war is horrible, tell me something new.” My point is, the play, as a whole, seemed to be a little on the generic side for me. Some of the flavor of this play was a failed attempt to place Iraqi Freedom on the same level as the Vietnam war. There was and forever will be only one Vietnam. The armed forces before, and currently participating in the Middle East are volunteer forces.

     In the last few pages, Sean Huze does present us with moments of the emotional, introspective impact war can have on a man when Cpl Rodriguez tells us, “Maybe some of us are walking dead, soulless shells of the men we were” (Huze 17). For me though, even that line, as deep as it may sound, has a hollow ring to it. I did not come away from a reading of this play with anything more than I already know about war. People get mutilated and killed, do things they never thought they were capable of, and come back changed people. The real deep emotional lesson of being human did not come across clearly to me.

Here is the Schedule for: The Elephant Space Theater if you want to go see the play.