I’m not the kind of person to just accept what I’m told. I might even be willing to admit that I have issues with authority. This isn’t to say that I’ll attack or antagonize someone in charge just for the sake of doing it. I just want to make sure that I’m clear on the how and why of the reasoning behind certain things.

For example, when I arrived at Northern Arizona University’s Master’s program, I went ahead and planned out the whole two years. Of course, I made some adjustments along the way, but I was pretty sure of what courses I wanted to take and when I wanted to complete those courses. My first semester, I took ten hours, which included a teaching practicum and a one hour writing center seminar. I was informed that I would be required to take the writing center seminar for every semester I worked in the Writing Center (potentially four semesters, though I ended up only working there for two, since I began teaching Eng 205 my second year). I couldn’t help but ask what the point of it was. I thought, “this is one hour of every week that I can’t get back.” Let alone the fact that the content of the “course” was going to probably be repeated each semester.

When I asked a second year student about this, she simply said, “I’ve had to take it every semester, so you will too.” Where is the logic in this? It makes me think of a sorority/fraternity gone wrong: “well, every semester we shave our heads and dance around in peanut butter after drinking five kegs of beer, so of course we’ll do this again!”

When I sat down for my advising meeting with Barbara Anderson, I asked her about the course. She didn’t even realize that this was a requirement. She asked Dr. Woodman, the head of the department, about it, and he didn’t realize this was a requirement either. Nobody had stopped along the way to ask, “what is the point of this and why are we doing it?” Upon my simple question, the required writing center course was replaced with meetings as needed. Everyone rejoiced.

I recently realized that UNC-Asheville posted my senior manuscript (a collection of 20 something poems about body modification) online. Upon examination I realized two things: 1) my contact information has been available online for the past two years (including my cell phone and my parents’ address. SCARY) and 2) my line breaks were completely botched and my manuscript was filled with typos. I got really freaked out and angry. Did schools Google me during the MFA process and look at these butchered poems? This isn’t me! I don’t misspell “slink”.

So I wrote an email outlining the issue, why it happened in the first place (thanks to Derrick’s technology know-how), and why I was upset. I told Derrick, “God, I look like a psycho poet here,” but the university responded promptly and apologized: They never realized that this was happening in the first place. If I hadn’t asked, peoples’ private information and ruined shape poems could’ve continued to appear on the internet for…well, ever! I sent them a correct PDF of my manuscript, and it’ll be posted sometime within the next few days. Then I’ll have a link on my poetry page for you fine people!

I’m not saying that I’m an unsung hero here…though of course I am :)…I just want to encourage everyone to ask questions. This seems so obvious and so stupid in a lot of ways, but so much about this world is overlooked/unnoticed/unknown. And so many of the times I’ve asked questions, it’s ended up helping other people for the better. My selfishness has a purpose.