Culture Shock

As some of you may or may not know, I am not just an English major. In declaring, I diversified and multiplied my options. I'm also a kinesiology major.

This is my first quarter at Western taking mostly kinesiology classes. Previously, I've mostly worked on English classes and science prerequisites, and though it's only been one day, entering the world of kinesiology and the PEHR (Physical Education, Health and Recreation) has been a bit of a culture shock.

The differences in syllabi alone is worth mentioning. Compared to syllabi from my English classes, these have been downright scientific. I've never seen footnotes on a syllabus before. Granted a lot of the information is so detailed it almost feels like the professors think themselves talking to dullards.

In class, the contrast between English and Kinesiology is as stark as a football coach next to a science fiction writer. In some cases, I wouldn't be surprised if that were actually the case. This isn't to deride my Kines profs, from what little interaction we've had it's apparent they're quite intelligent. But it's so... targeted: physics and bodies and athletics. Even in my survey course when suggesting possible research projects, it was all optimized movement of legs during running and analyzing arm reach during the swing of a baseball bat. Okay, I made those up, and it's not like the English department (or other humanities for that matter) is all that different in their specialization with their overlap of literature, philosophy and history.

I suppose it's mostly a culture shock. The personalities of the type of people drawn to both my majors just seem so wildly different.

Among the English majors you can tell that the majority of them do so many other things. They're in sports and active and have interests outside books. Kinesiology majors I've seen are focused much more, oh how do I describe this? Physically. On bodies and sports and the like, but it's even hard to imagine them crossing the line in the other direction and talking about books or poetry and meaning. Which isn't to say English majors are better. No, it's just a different kind of intellect, a different side of the brain. And this is going to take a few weeks to habituate to.

Which means again, we find Danny bitching and moaning about straddling the fence between two disparate worlds. Though it's not an uncomfortable place being between. Liminality may be dusky, but there's always light.

The true-life account of a conversation I have at least once a week

“So, Danny, what are you majoring in?”

“Um, I'm actually double majoring.”

“Oh wow, really? In what?”

“English Lit and Kinesiology.”

Short pause.

“That's an interesting combination, what are you going to do with it?”

How the conversation reaches this point changes, but the exact wording of the exact same questions is surprisingly stable for the number of times I've had to explain myself.

I like English. I've known since about the eighth grade that when I went to college I would most likely would end up as an English major. Sure, there was a period in high school where I considered a Journalism major, but this was only because it was similar enough to English and would have allowed me to continue in my passion for journalism. I realized pretty quickly after getting to college that my passion wasn't for journalism itself, but for the journalism community I had build up around me in high school.

So as I neared the end of my sophomore year, I was struggling. I was running out of GUR classes to take and needed to declare in order to get into the upper division classes I would take within whatever major I chose.

As I sat with this decision, I knew I didn't want to be one of those people who starts at university straight of high school and takes forever to finish their undergraduate degree because they waffled and wavered and switched majors five times. I didn't want to get so far in a program only to realize it wasn't for me with a year left before graduation.

So I looked around me. I had one professor tell me that if I went into English I should be prepared to work in a non-English field. There are so many people majoring in English out there, but only so many jobs related, and with the critical thinking abilities you get through an English major you're able to go into things like teaching or data analysis or even law should you apply yourself in that direction.

As an English Lit major I've learned to deconstruct a text, to pick it apart and analyze it in order to see both the broad implications and the minute interrelations between facets. This appeals to me. I love reading something and just mulling it over until I see the socio-cultural, political, narrative, historical implications. For example, rereading books by Orson Scott Card with the knowledge of his conservative politics has completely reshaped how I interpret them.

I'm a better feminist, queer and activist because I can better understand the plurality of discourses at work in any given conversation. That kind of bigger picture, holistic mindset is something I've learned to strive toward.

But at some point I realized this isn't what I want to do. I want to do this and I want to apply it everywhere in my life, but it's not something I want to make a career out of. So I looked at what else fascinates me and eventually concluded that the only other fields of study that really held my interest were related to human bodies.

There are multiple reasons for this, not the least of which stemmed from watching my mother go through physical therapy the latter half of my high school career. As an extrovert with an interest in serving people, a health-related field seems natural in a way. That and my experience rowing on the crew team gave me an appreciation and understanding of myself I never knew I had.

Yeah, in all reality I was the weakest guy on the team, but I was consistent and determined and absolutely captivated by the dynamics of movement involved: the kinesthetics, chemistry, and physics behind each muscle contraction, the leverage necessary to generate each little movement, all of them have captured my attention. And it taught me to be physical, that I can do something with my body beyond just move from place to place.

Growing up I was always a bookworm, eschewing the outdoors and ball games of my peers in favor of flying through the works of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and countless others. In a similar way, I've come to appreciate the human body as a book I want to learn to read. Not just muscles either; the whole thing, from nutrition to psychology to immune responses.

And as a double major with English, I can do that. If I take the time to understand material, I feel like I can explain it and make connections clearer than I would be able to otherwise.

That's not exactly why I'm double majoring, which has far more to do with me being stubborn and wanting to be well-rounded.  But it helps explain why I would choose such disparate majors.

Here!

This is an essay I originally wrote for my AP Junior English class instead of simply raising my hand during attendance. I found it while looking through a creative writing portfolio in search of something I could share during the Story Time group I occasionally visit and think it worth revisiting. Expect a revised and deconstructed edition within the next few weeks.

Danny Canham

AP Junior English

Jan. 30, 2007

An Essay

I am here to announce my presence, for it is my presence here that makes me not there, and it is the thereness of the not here that differentiates the place from where I am present from the place or places where I am not present. Here is a place usually designated as the location in space referred to in conversation between two or more persons, or in short, one’s surroundings. In this case, however, here is an exclamation declaring myself not absent so that I am not marked as such in the attendance book, such as insert name of person missing from room, who is gone today. I, unlike repeat name, am not missing, but am at school, hopefully by now learning or having learned something from the teachers whose job it is to instruct me and the other students enrolled in their classes in their given subject. It is for my sixth period AP Junior English teacher, Miss Fulton (soon-to-be Mrs. Waller) that I write this essay, describing hereness, thereness, and how I must be in a state of one and not so much the other for this essay to make sense, for if I was there and this essay declared I was here, I would not be turning it in to declare myself here, as is the intent.

As implied above, hereness involves and requires a now, a present time and space. It designates both though only describes location, but since space and time are connected (read some contemporary books on physics or ask Brian Svoboda for more on this), here actually can describe both, though it is a limited and perspective description that would be better understood were it to have its place in relation to another place described as well (this time ask him to explain relativity). Usually when used in conversation, here is accompanied by a gesture of pointing down, as “come here” and “right here.”

There is a far more vague concept than here to understand when giving location, simply because it can include any place that is not here when unspecified. There is the polar opposite of here, despite only differing in spelling by one letter. That letter is T. In meaning, there indicates a past or present somewhere else from here.

Important as it is to be here in the moment, from any other person’s point of view, you are there. The only time more than one person can be here or qualified as here by another is when they are being counted as part of a group. “He/She/IT is here” is really “here (with us).” Just as I am here as a part of the class. It is being here and not there that makes me not absent. Yet at the same time, in other classrooms and pretty much anywhere in the world except this classroom, I would have to be considered there. Even here though I am there. I am there on the other side of the room and there in that chair. It is a mild difference, but a difference all the same.

So remember, Here is me and mine, there is everything and everyone else, and of course, I am here today in class.