Category Archives: College

College, Main, My Life

A Long Journey Ends

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When I get really stressed out, the pressure manifests itself in the form of back pain. Cramps form in both my lower and upper back, and spread until they meet somewhere in the middle. By 8 a.m. last Saturday, I had already taken one round of Ibuprofen, and had a second round of pills stashed in my pocket for later.

I’ve never been one to count my chickens before they hatch. Even though I had already successfully defended my graduate project the week before and seen my grades posted online, I refused to admit I had graduated until I had walked across the stage, shook hands with the dean, and physically held my diploma in my hands.

Saturday began with an intimate induction ceremony into Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honors society for journalism and mass communication. The criteria for grad students to get nominated was maintaining a 4.0 GPA throughout the entire program, and as such there were only two of us from my program there. After a few words from each of the school’s deans, the twenty or so journalism and mass communication students walked across the stage one at a time to receive our honors cords, which will become a permanent part of our regalia.

An almost two-hour break between ceremonies gave us plenty of time to move from one building to the next. After donning our caps and gowns, graduates were moved from a holding area in one building to the McCasland Field House. In the Journalism and Mass Communication college, there were 270 graduates, 17 (I think) of which were grad students. My two fellow professional writing classmates and I were the third, fourth, and fifth people to walk the stage, so we spent most of the ceremony watching the other 265 people cross the stage from our front row seats, whispering comments that only creative writers could come up with. The professional writing students got the loudest and most raucous cheers of anyone as we walked across the stage. (This is patently false, but as a writer, I felt empowered to change that part.)

There were handshakes and smiles and photos and suddenly it was all over.

A few hours later, Susan threw a post-graduation party for me at Charlston’s, where we were joined by several of our dear friends and family members. Susan purchased an incredible cake that looked just like a book with a diploma draped over it and a graduation cap sitting on top. The cake tasted as good as it looked! Even though Susan asked everyone not to bring gifts, several people gifted me bottles of alcohol, coffee mugs, and candy. You can’t say they don’t know me! My buddy Jeff got me an autographed book by Christopher Moore (one of my favorite authors) and his mother gave me a one-of-a-kind handmade Star Wars quilt. The best gift of all was being able to share the day with so many close friends and family. It was a great way to wrap up the day.

When I get home after a day like that, I can physically feel the stress leaving my body. My legs twitch as the muscles in my back slowly release their grip. As I snuggled into my recliner, wrapped in my new Star Wars quilt, I thought back on the day. The pomp and circumstance of graduation is a bit silly when you think about it — the ritual of people walking around in robes and funny hats, congratulating one another. I almost didn’t go to graduation, but in retrospect I’m glad I did. It’s not about the ceremony itself, but what the ceremony represents: the hours and years of work that got us all to that point. Every person who walked across that stage, and every stage, has a story of how they got there, the sacrifices they made, and the sweat they put in. Before going I felt like graduation ceremonies were a little self-serving, and, after having sat through one, I’m okay with that.

As I closed my eyes, I thought about all the people who helped get me to this point — my professors, my family, and most of all, Susan. It was my wife who discovered the professional writing program at the University of Oklahoma, and prodded me to enroll. She was there before the beginning, and carried leftover cake from the restaurant after the party ended. Without her, none of this would have happened.

My final thought before drifting off to sleep was that my back didn’t hurt anymore.

College, Main, My Life, Writing

Winning Two Jackpots

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In the fall of 2017 I began work on my grad project, a novel titled The Human Library. On April 19, I delivered copies to the three members of my graduate committee. Two weeks later on May 4, I returned to the University of Oklahoma to defend my work.

I spent those two weeks preparing. I wrote an outline of my novel. I made lists of all my characters. I noted every problem with my novel, and came up with ways to improve it. I went through the hundreds of handouts I’ve received and notes I’d taken over the past two years and re-read them all. I even googled “how to prepare for your graduate defense,” with mixed results.

Last Friday at 10 a.m., I entered a conference room. My heart was racing. There’s only so prepared a person can be for an unknown process. I knew the members of my committee would be asking me questions, and assumed everything about my novel and everything from the program would be in play. I also expected pressure — it’s called a “defense” after all, not a “friendly discussion.”

I took a seat at the head of a v-shaped conference room table. The door behind me was shut and locked, and the defense process began.

I won’t share the details of what happened in that room, only to say that questions were asked and answers were given. Suffice it to say that all the members of my committee had read my novel and knew it well. Parts of it, they knew better than I did.

Two hours later, the committee voted, and I passed. I passed! Handshakes and kudos were exchanged, photographs were taken, and a hard copy of my novel was deposited in the Gaylord library, where it will remain forever.

Once the paperwork settled, I had an hour to kill before my next appointment so I drove down the street to Riverwind and sat down in front of a quarter slot machine to relax. Five minutes later, this happened:

By the time the machine was done counting, I had won $1,550 (6,200 quarters). I couldn’t believe it! This is, without a doubt, more money than I have ever won in casinos, combined. I have certainly never won enough for an employee to take my license and personally hand me a 1099 tax form before getting paid, but that’s what happened.

Susan asked me what it felt like to hit a jackpot, and I realized that I had hit two in one day. The one at the casino was a fleeting one. Casino cash comes and goes. The real prize was finding OU’s Professional Writing program, enrolling, sticking with it, and graduating from it. The knowledge and experience I gained from that program was the true jackpot.

College, Main, My Life

Graduating with Honors: Kappa Tau Alpha

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In the fall of 1991, three months after graduating high school, I walked into Redlands Community College. I walked out two years later with no degree and a 3.25 grade point average. After another year at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, I still hadn’t graduated and my GPA had dropped to 3.10 after pulling a 2.75 there. As much as I enjoyed journalism, there was zero chance of me being nominated for any sort of honor society based on my academic achievements (or lack thereof).

It took me a few years to get my head on straight. In the fall of 1999 through the spring of 2000, I completed 16 credit hours at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC), enough to finish my AA in Journalism and Broadcasting. Equally as important (to me) was that my GPA at OCCC was 4.0. Sure, my cumulative was only a 3.3, but a change had definitely taken place.

For some reason I thought (or, perhaps, hoped) that my past college sins would be forgiven when I enrolled at Southern Nazarene University (SNU) to work on my BA, but that was not the case. All those classes I blew off more than a decade prior followed me there. I began work on my BA at SNU in the spring of 2003, and graduated in the spring of 2005. During that time I maintained a 4.0 GPA — straight A’s for two years. I thought that’s the GPA I would graduate with, but those old grades came back to haunt me. When I graduated from SNU, my cumulative GPA was 3.485, which rounded to 3.5 — good enough to graduate Cum Laude, but not the 4.0 I was hoping for.

After a refreshing ten-year break, I enrolled in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2015. I read that maintaining a 4.0 average in grad school can be tough for full-time students, and even more difficult for adult students such as myself, with full time jobs and families. Some people claim that grades in grad school aren’t as important as the lessons and skills you learn. I’m guessing whoever said that didn’t have a Type A personality. I wanted to learn all the lessons and skills, and maintain a 4.0 while doing it.

Which I did.

Last week I was nominated to join Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honor society that “recognizes academic excellence and promotes scholarship in journalism and mass communication.” According to their website, “[m]embership must be earned by excellence in academic work at one of the colleges and universities that have chapters. Selection for membership is a mark of highest distinction and honor.” This isn’t one of those hokey generic honor societies that will accept anyone who pays $100 to appear in their yearly book of “people we tricked into paying $100 to appear in this book.” It’s the real deal, and I’m taking a moment to pat myself on the back over it.

No, I don’t think grades are more important than lessons learned, and in some cases, I don’t even think grades are a good indicator of whether or not any learning took place. In my case, my GPA reflects the amount of time and effort I put into this program. I spent my first year of graduate school catching up with students who already knew the campus, the professors, the software, and so on. The grades I earned only partially convey some of the sacrifices I made; the early morning and late night writing sessions; the lunches I spent sitting in my car, eating tacos and reading books about writing; and the 80-mile (round trip) treks to and from school, up to three times a week. There were weeks I traveled for work and wrote short stories while holed up in a hotel room. Then there was “the semester from hell,” where one day a week I woke up at 5 a.m., began work at 6 a.m., drove from work to school at 2:30 p.m., attended class until 9 p.m, and returned home around 10:30 p.m.

There were a few times I was tempted to skimp on assignments. A couple of semesters ago I had to write a series of reports based on some scientific articles that were pretty difficult to get through, much less comprehend. The assignments came during a period when I was really busy at work, and I was having a hard time finding time to focus on reading those articles and writing the reports. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider skipping the assignment, but that was the younger me talking. I trudged through the assignment, spending more time than it deserved and I had to spend. The time and effort paid off.

In a couple of weeks when I graduate from college (most likely for the last time ever), I’ll be doing so with honors and a Kappa Tau Alpha cord around my neck. In the big scheme of things it may not mean much, but it means something to me.

College, Main, Writing

75,000 Words, 285 Pages, 1 Deadline

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One of the main characters in my novel has a glaring flaw. A couple of scenes still feel clunky. I may or may not have a plot hole.

If it weren’t for deadlines, I might have gone on editing my novel forever. There’s always something that can be improved. Rough parts can be made better. Good parts can be made great.

Wednesday night, my deadline came. With Susan waiting out in the driveway, I saved the final copy of my novel to a thumb drive, and off we went. Thirty minutes later, I walked out of Office Depot with 570 pages (285 pages x 2) and a pack of cardboard paper mailers — the required delivery system for graduate projects everywhere.

Thursday afternoon, I arrived at the University of Oklahoma with those same two boxes tucked under my arm. In all, I delivered three copies — one digitally, one to a mailbox, and the third directly to the chair of my graduate committee. Over the next two weeks, those three professors (who, between the three of them, have published more than two-hundred novels) will read, critique, and hopefully not snicker at my work.

At the end of those two weeks, I’ll meet with those same three professors and defend what I wrote in a process that, at least in my head, resembles the “Trial by Stone” scene from The Dark Crystal.

At the end of my two-hour defense, the members of my committee will take a vote. Thumbs up means I graduate. Thumbs down, they poke my eye out. Okay, I don’t really know what happens if you fail. I’m going to spend the next two weeks skimming all the notes I’ve taken over the past two and a half years to make sure that doesn’t happen. The one thing I won’t be doing, for the first time in eight months, is working on my novel.

The end is in sight. Wish me luck!

Rob O'Hara in the University of Oklahoma

College, Main, Writing

A Break from Spring Break

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Susan, her mom, and the kids are in Ireland this week for spring break, and I’m in Oklahoma.

As I mentioned last week, I am wrapping up my novel for my final school project. If everything goes according to schedule, I’ll be turning my novel in during the second week of April, and defending it two weeks later (after the members of my committee have had time to read it).

I started work on my novel last September, and over seven months, things have a way of changing. For example, one of my characters started the book with long blonde hair, and by the end, somehow it had morphed into a red-orange pixie cut. Oops. In another chapter, I noticed that one of my characters magically teleported from one location to another. Also, oops. Fixing all the grammatical errors that pop up is an important part of editing, but I’m finding that’s the easy part. It’s harder to catch all those little flaws in logic, especially now that I’ve read my manuscript backwards and forwards a dozen times. The story makes sense to me; whether it’ll make sense to someone coming in fresh remains to be seen.

At the beginning of spring break I promised myself two one-day trips, but I’m behind (my own self-imposed) schedule and decided to cut it back to one. This morning, I drove to Tulsa with a list of antique malls I wanted to visit. For whatever reason, the antique malls in Tulsa seem to have more of the types of things I’m looking for (vintage lunchboxes, 70s/80s toys, and DVDs) than the ones located near me. Plus, it’s always fun to take a mini road trip and go exploring.

In you Google “antique malls in Tulsa” the first three hits are I-44 Antique Mall, Generations Antique Mall, and Next Generations Antique Mall, which are the three I visited today (along with one thrift store). I found a ton of great things, including two lunch boxes (Fall Guy and Annie), a Sesame Street thermos (I already have the lunch box), a Garfield alarm clock, three Muppet Babies figures, a Pac-Man coffee mug, a World’s Fair hat, a Karate Kid action figure, one book, and one CD.

I also found 15 DVDs and Blu-ray discs: Season One of the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mysteries, Lords of Dogtown, Total Recall, Vanishing Point, Jackass 1 and 3, Milk, The Goonies, The Thing, Zero Dark Thirty, Superbad, Big Trouble in Little China, The Rise and Fall of ECW, The Black Dahlia, and Fargo. I’ve seen almost all of those movies, but most (if not all) had extra features that warranted purchases (including the two-disc special editions of Superbad and Big Trouble in Little China). DVDs were $2/each and Blu-rays were $3.

My shopping excursion offered a nice mental break from multiple days of sitting behind a computer, editing a novel.

Kiss the Blarney Stone for me, guys, and I’ll see you in a few days.

College, Main, My Life

A $69.50 Robe

I left work a couple hours early Thursday afternoon to visit the University of Oklahoma and submit the final paperwork required for graduation.

Perhaps its from years of dealing with computers, but I prefer things to be linear and, if at all possible, chronological. Purchasing a cap and gown two months before I defend my final project almost seems presumptuous on my part. I realize graduation is a massive undertaking that involves hundreds (thousands?) of students and must take a long time to coordinate, but preparing for graduation before turning my final project in almost feels like showing up to an interview wearing a company’s uniform.

It was the summer of 2015 when Susan discovered OU’s Professional Writing program. Prior to finding that program I had no intention of going back to school. Master’s Degrees are expensive, and this one in particular wouldn’t have any impact on my current job. But the more we dug into the details of the program, the more excited I got. This program teaches writers how to take ideas and turn them into finished products, and it spoke directly to me.

That fall I enrolled in Short Story class, and the rest is (almost) history. The funny thing is, I enrolled in that class even before I had been accepted into the university’s graduate program. Talk about putting the cart before the horse! In the end that class didn’t even count toward my degree, but I’m so glad I took it. It plopped me into a room full of students already in the program and showed me I could hang. With that tiny sip of confidence, I was ready to charge ahead full steam forward, and have been doing so ever since.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about school as the final date comes and goes, but I’ll tell you something interesting. Almost every time I’ve graduated from something, be it a college or even a training course, I always felt like something was coming to an end. This time, it feels like something is about to start.

College

Another Semester in the Books

Sunday, while Susan and the kids were at the mall finishing up some Christmas shopping, I submitted my final paper of the year, bringing the end to another semester of school.

This semester I “only” took six credit hours in the form of three classes, compared to the spring semester when I took 10 credit hours. I still wonder how I managed to pull that off. This semester I took Autobiography in Adult Education, Independent Study (essay/short story writing), and Project, in which I wrote 40,000 words of a novel.

Last spring I finally hit that magical 2:1 ratio by putting in two hours of work at home for every hour I spent inside a classroom. When you take ten credit hours, that means dedicating a total of thirty hours a week to school. My workload this semester was similar. Autobiographies in Adult Education was the first and only online class I’ve taken for my degree. It was three credit hours, and I’d estimate I averaged three hours reading and three hours writing a week for that class. My Independent Study class was only one credit hour. The amount of time I spent writing for that class varied, but I’d estimate it was about one hour each week. Finally, in Project, I was required to turn in a new chapter of my novel every week. While Project only counted for two credit hours, I spent about eight hours a week writing and editing my novel. So for six credit hours, I spent twelves hours a week outside of class writing. I guess that 2:1 ratio is here to stay.

At the end of each semester, my body shuts down for a day or two. It is, I believe, the physical manifestation of stress leaving my body. Sixteen weeks worth of writing, stress, balancing work-life-school and trying to maintain my 4.0 average takes its toll. Friday evening, it was all I could do to stay awake until bedtime. Saturday, I alternated between taking naps in the living room, naps in the bedroom, and long baths. On Sunday, I must have taken three or four naps in my recliner. This morning, I feel better.

As of today, I’ve completed 30/32 hours required for my Master of Professional Writing degree. In six weeks I’ll start my final semester — one more round of Project, in which I’ll finish up my novel and prepare to defend it before a panel of professors who also happen to be published authors. No pressure.

With a risk of sounding like some sort of award acceptance speech, I have to thank Susan and the kids for all their understanding and patience over the past year. Writing, especially under deadlines, is a solitary and often lonely practice. Several times a week, I disappear to my upstairs office to poke words into a keyboard. I’m going to make all of this worth it guys, I promise.

College, Main, My Life, Writing

The Purple Star

This semester, along with two other classes, I began work on my senior project — a fiction novel. Each week, I write a new chapter for my novel and present it to the head of my committee. During our weekly sessions, my professor reads the chapter and provides me with immediate feedback.

Project is the intersection where form meets art. For two years I’ve been reading and learning about story structure, plotting, character development, and pacing. Project is where students write their own stories, applying the structures lessons we’ve (hopefully) learned. Next semester, after my novel is finished, I’ll present copies of it to three professors of the professional writing program. A few weeks later after they’ve had time to read it, I’ll be asked to defend my choices just like a dissertation. My stomach knots just thinking about that day.

I was a lot better at writing when I didn’t know how to do it. When I didn’t know how to write, the words sure flowed. Every single night I wrote something — blog posts, articles, short stories, reviews… heck, I even cranked out a couple of self-published books. When I look back knowing what I know now, it’s hard not to pick those things apart. That’s not to say that some of them weren’t good, but most of them contain flaws that bug me.

The first chapter of the novel I turned in felt forced. It was wordy and weak and didn’t have much to do with the novel’s overall plot. My professor didn’t say anything, but inside, I already knew. The second chapter I delivered was met with slightly more puzzled looks. On week three I left home with a third chapter for my professor to read, but by the time I got to her office I decided not to let her read it. Instead, we had a talk about going back to the basics — applying the lessons I had learned. She also told me I start my stories too early, which is true. I’m working on it.

After agreeing to scrap the first three chapters, I put everything I had into the next week’s chapter. I wrote, then second, and finally third-guessed myself. Originally I had taken a generic story structure and tried to write a novel that would fit inside those parameters. After that, I tried taking my story and cramming it into an established format. That didn’t work, either. After working and reworking, I had a moment of zen — or so I thought. I quit trying to force a poorly drafted story to work, stopped trying to force myself into applying rules that weren’t helping, and just wrote.

I just wrote!

It’s hard to explain what the difference was, but things started falling into place. I wasn’t sure I was doing things “right,” but at least it finally felt right. The story, plot, and scenes finally began to fall into place. I began to tell the story I wanted to tell. I separated my scenes and sequels, and made sure my scenes ended with a setback. I was no longer changing my story to fit the format; now I was simply rearranging things to fit the structure we had already learned.

When I met with my professor the following week, I was a bundle of nerves. I was so anxious to hear her feedback that I literally had to leave the room as she read my chapter, and returned just as she had finished reading it. Before giving me feedback, she asked what I had done different with this chapter. It all came spilling out. I told her (or at least tried to explain) what had clicked. I (politely and respectfully) began to rant about form — about structure, and plots, and characters. All of it. I told her about changing my story to fit into a cookie-cutter form, and writing a story to fit into a form. By the time I was done I had no idea what words were coming out of my mouth.

When I finally stopped talking I realized I sounded like a mad man, a fact my professor confirmed. Before I could say anything else, she asked if she could show me the corrections she had made to my most recent chapter. I hesitantly agreed, and she proceeded to flip through all fifteen typed pages, showing me that she hadn’t made a single mark.

She then flipped back to the first page and drew a star in purple ink at the top of my paper. After confessing she wasn’t entirely sure what I was so worked up about, she said this was the best chapter I had handed her over the past two years. “Do this a few more times,” she said, “and we’ll have ourselves a novel.”

I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry, so I laughed while sitting in her office and cried a little when I got back to my car.

Whatever finally clicked, clicked good. Last week I turned in the seventh chapter of my novel, and while there have been a couple of weak and confusing plot points and lots of minor suggestions, it seems like I’m finally on track. I don’t know if the story I’m writing will have any mass-market appeal, but I’m enjoying writing it, and things finally seem to be coming together.

College, My Life

A Rough Semester Comes to an End

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Wednesday, January 18, 2017, was the day I realized I had made a mistake. It was 9 p.m., and my third class of the evening had just ended. I was exhausted, and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. That day, and every Wednesday for the next four months, I woke up at 5 a.m., started work at 6 a.m., worked eight hours, left work and drove directly to Norman, ran to make my 3 p.m. class, sat through three back-to-back-to-back classes until 9 p.m., and then made the hour-long drive back home. As I stepped out into the cold January wind that Wednesday evening, I decided two things — that ten hours of graduate school is too many for an old man with a full-time job to take, and that on Wednesdays, I should start bringing a protein bar with me to school.

Mondays were easier — I only had two classes on Mondays — but boy did I grow to loathe Wednesdays. And Thursday mornings, for that matter.

Yesterday, with the click of a button, I turned in my final assignment for the semester. (It would have been more dramatic had I dropped a thick stack of papers on someone’s desk, but almost everything is electronic these days.) I’m a free man, until the fall. I’ve got eight credit hours left to complete, and I can’t imagine them being as grueling as these ten were.

As I neared the end of the semester, I ran out of steam — not just for school, but in life. Last month, I collected a milk crate full of electronics from upstairs that need to go out to the garage. It made it to the front hallway, where it’s been for weeks. My home office is a disaster. I need a haircut, and probably a shower. My blog, ,y podcast, and all of my writing projects outside of school, have been neglected. Tonight, with a beer in my hand, I let the stress of a long semester flow out of my body and look forward to having a few months away from school.

Below is a list and brief summary of the classes I took last semester. I did the math earlier. I was writing in journals outside of class 5 hours a week, watching 1 movie per week, and read approximately 16 books (9 fiction, 7 non-fiction). Add in the work spent on assignments, and I’d say I was approaching that golden number of spending approximately 2x the amount of time outside of class working on projects, which meant 10 hours a week spent in class and 20 hours a week spent outside of class working. (The 4 hours a week spent driving to/from Norman is not included in the equation.)

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Writing Young Adult Fiction (3 p.m. – 4:15 p.m., M/W)

In this class, we read and learned about Young Adult (YA) fiction. In YA stories, the protagonist(s) are teenagers, and the stories are told from their point of view. Modern examples of YA franchises include Twilight, Hunger Games, and Harry Potter. Here were the major assignments from YA class:

  • Read seven YA novels
  • Maintain a reading/watching journal (1 hr/week)
  • Maintain a writing journal (3 hrs/week)
  • Write and revise a YA short story
  • Write 1/3 of a YA novel

    This was my first class of the evening, and a warning of what was to come. We only ended up reading six of the seven novels, which were Six of Crows, Three Dark Crowns, The Thousandth Floor, This is How it Ends, Salt to the Sea, and The Sun is Also a Star. I moderately enjoyed a couple of them. For each book we had to write two pages worth of notes, and come up with writing examples for the class.

    I enjoyed the writing assignments more. The writing journal became a chore after a few months; the reading/watching one was more fun. Writing the short story and the final project (the first act of a novel) were quite enjoyable.

    Writing the Screenplay (4:30 p.m. – 6:20 p.m., M/W)

    The title of this course pretty much says it all. Here were our major assignments:

  • Write the “story of your story” (about your screenplay)
  • Script Outline
  • Writing Journal
  • Annotated Filmography
  • Act I
  • Act II (with Act I revisions)
  • Act III (with Act I and II revisions)

    When a syllabus contains the underlined phrase “This is a work-intensive class” you should believe it. Unlike some classes where there are little assignments and big assignments, this class mostly consisted of big assignments. For the Annotated Filmography we were required to watch 10-15 films, provide detailed ploy analysis for three of the films, and discuss the rest. The original outline of my script took a while to complete, which I might as well have thrown away as my final script barely resembles it. The final version of my script came in at exactly 100 pages. Even though there are less words per page on a script as compared to a novel, I found it took just as much time to write. I had never written (or even read) a script before enrolling in this class, so it was fun to try something new.

    Theories of Professional Writing (6 p.m. – 9 p.m., Wed)

    The goal of this class was to familiarize students with professional writing from multiple eras. The class started with a section on Shakespeare’s Hamlet before before moving into modern genre fiction.

  • Three reading response papers
  • Three analytical papers
  • Two presentations
  • Four articles submitted for publication

    When I imagined what college would be like, this is the kind of class I imagined. In “Theories,” we watched The Lion King, Star Wars and two episodes of the original Star Trek. We discussed Hamlet. We read excerpts from Stephen King’s book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre. During the semester I read and wrote papers over Alas, Babylon, The Amityville Horror, and Rosemary’s Baby. It was the kind of class that gets your creative juices flowing.

    In addition to all the other in-class assignments, we were required to write articles outside of class and submit them for publication. This shouldn’t be limited to students in a single class; everyone in the professional writing program should be required to do this every semester, in my opinion.

    • College, Main

    Harry Belafonte: A Glass Half Full

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    Wednesday evening, my Theories of Professional Writing class (along with approximately 1,000 other people) got the opportunity to hear Mr. Harry Belafonte speak about his life and thoughts about equal rights and the current state of politics.

    I know Harry Belafonte largely as a singer and an actor, and for his work on 1985’s “We Are the World,” but I must admit, I wasn’t familiar with all the humanitarian and civil rights work Belafonte has been involved with. The 90-year-old Belafonte shared anecdotes about both John F. and Bobby Kennedy, and about the first time he met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Belafonte shared several stories about his time as an entertainer, but to keep things in perspective, he also reminded the audience that he returned home from World War II to a country where he was not allowed to vote.

    In regards to President Trump, Belafonte said that while much of the country sees the proverbial glass as “half empty,” he sees the fact that many topics that were once only talked about behind closed doors are now being brought out into the open, the “half full” view. In regards to voting, Belafonte said those who don’t vote are only oppressing themselves. About education, Belafonte said “Reading is a gift. Knowledge is a defense against oppression. Make it your business to know.”

    Despite the largely (I thought) positive message of Mr. Belafonte’s words, his appearance was not without controversy. The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs referred to Mr. Belafonte as a radical leftist and released a press release protesting the event. Fortunately there were no protests at the actual event (it was cold outside).

    Logistically it would be a lot simpler for me to complete my degree online, but by physically attending classes on campus opportunities such as this one occasionally present themselves. After doing more reading I can’t say I agree with everything Mr. Belafonte says and believes, but his message Wednesday night was one of education, equality and peace, three things I think the world could use more of right now.