MY Self-Assessment, MY UM Project--My Truth

Disclaimer: Before you read, please know--I have not re-read, or proof-read a word of this. There might be typos, even spelling mistakes. There might be sentence fragments. My God. Anything but sentence fragments. However, it is the truth that comes when I take what is in my heart and put it in my hand.

“He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
--HDT

Our World Literature class was born out of a hope, a hunch, and the raw material that takes the form of words spoken by the prophets, both past and present, from abroad and those from these shores. The hope was to create an uncommon school because the hunch was students wanted, needed, something more than the simple answers they are told to memorize, to recite, to believe. It was born during a time when I was hungry and rooted in the notion, “I rebel, so we can exist.”
I was hungry for something more than the common English class—a place centered on the students asking questions and the teacher providing the answers and then given a value determinant on how well those students were able to re-shape the previously spoken answers. My hope was that if I rebelled from the norm of what was common practice in regards to what a teacher should do, or be, that students would become the life-blood of the dialogue; and the hunch was that they would exist more fully as students.
However, at this time, in this moment, I am filled with doubt, and I am not sure that the experiment has reaped the rewards the offering was designed to generate. At moments, I have a felt a ripple; I felt that ripple on your convocation when the words of Camus were given life again—I felt that ripple even though I was in another state, away from you, even though the words were declared by a voice that was not my own. Yet the ripple is not a wave—and in my bones I feel as if…
Somewhere near Jepp, a little off the beat and path, someone has spray painted the words “This Machine Kills Intellectuals.” Perhaps this is another ripple—but the wave I feel, the wave I see, says something else, “Man has no time to be anything but a machine.” So, I wonder which statement is correct, and I currently ponder what machine is actually killing the intellectual?
Dr. Cornell West is one of my gurus—but he is also my brother. Recently, I was sent a speech that Brother West gave, and I read these words:
"Everywhere I go I try to say something that unnerves people," he told the audience that filled the Smith Opera House to capacity, because, as Socrates said, "an unexamined life is not worth living…Giving up certain assumptions, reexamining dogmas you brought from home--it's a form of death to live more abundantly, more deeply. Courage is the enabling virtue."
In the beginning, I had the courage to unnerve people by giving them the opportunity to examine their life more deeply using the tool of universal truths and world literature as a magnifying glass. In the hope that this process would bring to life the language that would allow death, transformation, to take place—and for courage and virtue to take the form a newly created, and free-thinking, student.
In the beginning, I held true to Kafka’s word—I held it very close, it was a cloak that I hid my fear behind, under, within—I waited. However, now it is the middle, and perhaps, the time for waiting has come to an end. Maybe, I need to stop waiting for your questions, declarations, and answers—and maybe, I need to start providing you with some answers. So, while it is the middle, let me for a brief moment, go back to the beginning.
This story, the story of world literature, started when I was hungry, and it was a hunger, a story that will not pass on…it is a story of, a vision of student’s today. Before I begin, all I echo is—this has been planned but the purpose has yet to be discovered:

-The Dancing Mind: Q: Are student’s at BA that the Princeton student laboring for so long under a false curse only to realize that the only work that matters is when your mind dances, independently, with another? A: Yes, and it is my duty to awaken them to this truth as soon as possible—before they are that Princeton student…

-Shorris, “Education As A Weapon,” (But this was optional). Shorris writes, “You have been cheated. Rich people learn humanities; you didn’t. The humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning, to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is turned against you. I think that humanities are one of the ways to become political, and I don’t mean political in the sense of voting in an election but in the broad sense…I told them Thucydides’ definition of politics.” Q: How can education be a weapon and what is Thucydides’ definition of politics? A: Education is a weapon that allows students to transform themselves into the people they wish to become and people the world so desperately needs them to be. His definition of politics is power—power to realize the essential truth that he tells his students at the end, “May you never be more active than when you are doing nothing.” But again this assignment was optional—meant to be done alone—when they were not ‘active.’

-Camus, Nobel Prize Speech, he writes: “Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road. What writer would from now on in good conscience dare set himself up as a preacher of virtue? For myself, I must state once more that I am not of this kind. I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up. But although this nostalgia explains many of my errors and my faults, it has doubtless helped me toward a better understanding of my craft. It is helping me still to support unquestioningly all those silent men who sustain the life made for them in the world only through memory of the return of brief and free happiness.”
Q: Why is truth elusive, what is the virtue of words, what is the ‘light’ he refers to.
A: The Arcade Fire Experience—whatever you take from your heart and put in your hand…when you cease to be a still born….when you realize your father is wearing blinders…when you realize that you have spent a year without light

-Camus, “The Adulterous Woman” Q: What is the worst form of adultery? A: Being untrue to yourself, to your insides, to your gut…Q: What are you now. A: A student. Q: Are you committing in the act of adultery? A: Journal.

-Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Q: What is your rock. A: being a student. Q: Is the journey to the heights enough? A: Yes, because at that moment Sisyphus is stronger than his rock.

AND THEN CAME (Drum Roll please….)
-THE UNDERGROUND MAN. Q: Is the UM man tough reading? Do most high school students fail to understand its true weight? Is it their story? Are they, because they are students Underground? A: yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
-Q: Does 2 X 2=4 A: Yes, for the vast majority of them
-Q: Does 2 X 2=5 A: Perhaps, for the small minority that have the ability to question, to reflect, to have a the dance take place in their mind, to realize their rock, to read even though they were alone, to take what they felt, even though they did not understand, in their heart and put it in their hand.
-Q: Did you try to confuse them on purpose at certain points of your study of the novel? A: Yes. Q: Why? A: Because F.D. is filled with contradictions—and so are we as people—we only become unstuck as people, we only allow confusion to subside, when we ask questions and have the courage to answer them either in private (journal) or public (blog) forms.
-Q: Did you try and reach out to them? Did you try to help them (they seemed ‘stuck’ at so many times, and there was no syllabus, and they were really confused)? A: Yes, I did try to help them—I took up the pen (not metaphorically but literally), and I started writing them explanations…however, I am not sure how many of them find solace in them, I am not sure how many read them?

-Hamlet In Prison, NPR program. Q: How is To be Or Not to be the only question? How did it connect to the UM? A: It connected to the UM because during our reading of FD many of us were asking this same question—will we be students? But also, it is the UM’s question and the one he is so desperately seeking a solution to…simply, it is all of our questions.

-Modest Mouse, “King Rat”: Q: How does this song contain an invisible string that tethers itself to the UM? A: “Deep water, Deep Water, Shameless denial…we know, we know, we know it was all wrong.” We were in deep water, really deep water, but we contained shameless denial: we latched onto Ahab’s archaic beliefs when we should have been seeking Pip’s enlightenment.

And then you went on college visits, and then you came back, and then we finished the book.

-Avett Brothers, “I and Love and You”: Q: What have become the words that are hard to say? A: Words we think we know—I need help, I am behind, I want…In the end, we are judged on our actions—actions that grow out of the soil that is heartfelt thought.

And now, we are in the middle….but before the middle comes, I wanted to give you questions and answers, I wanted to say again this has all had a purpose. I hope some of these essential question and universal truths (answers) have given you some clarity.
But before the middle comes, I thought I would share two more ideas with you.
The First: Fight Club—what is our fight?
The Second: “All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.” Maybe the ultimate question is to be or not to be? What will be?

Maybe that is not beginning—maybe the beginning was when I introduced myself, during one of the first assemblies, and said, “I am Andrew Bishop Kasprzak, and I study English 9, American Studies, and World Literature.”
So, before we get to the middle, I will do what I asked you all to do, I will put a number to next to my title:
As a student of World Literature: 92
As a teacher of World Literature: 76

That is honesty, those our answers, this is my self-assessment, this is my Underground Man Project, and now that the answers have been provided the only essential truth I can provide is that my intentions are no longer underground.

So I leave you with one thought and one question:
“Don’t Walk in front of me; I many not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me….”
And
Why are the lights off?