Hi folks,

Not sure anyone still visits this since I’m not updating it anymore (and because I’ve completed my Lumos project), but I just remembered that I’d said that I would upload my presentation. So here it is. It contains the overview of my project, as well as some (hopefully) helpful points to consider when planning your Lumos or study abroad project.

Enjoy!

Mein Deutschland

After spending quite a bit of time on trains traveling through the rural forested areas of south-western Germany, I’ve seen a lot of different small towns, and if ever something has tempted me to go off on Platonic metaphysical speculation, it’s these small German mountain villages. They’re so eerily similar that it seems like neither the strictest of German building codes nor the geography could have created such remarkably uniform instantiations. The Idea must be something like this: every town will sit in the valley in between at least two, if not mountains, than high hills. The houses will be huddled together in these valleys like cold people huddling together for warmth and safety, and will bear roughly the same color pallet. Always pale colored, plaster walls, ranging in color from a washed out red that looks like a muted pink, to grey, to similarly washed out versions of light blue and light green. The rooves will always be clay tiles of dark red or orange, and slanted steeply as to bear the load of snow more easily. The background of the village, no matter where you stand, will always be a forest of evergreen trees and other green vegetation, and you will find a few dispersed throughout the town as well.

The only things that interrupts this almost uniform description are the splashes of vivid color on franchised grocery stores and advertisements. I know there are literally armies of Marketing teams that test these color schemes for companies to get the perfect combination that stands out without being too gaudy, but it seems to me that no matter what the design, these splashes of color will always stand out too much in these little towns. I know the intended effects: have a design that stands out from others, that distinguishes your store from the others, that entices people to enter with promises of quality and consistency. But out here, “auf dem Land,” these bright colored advertisements and logos are bound to seem gaudy and out-of-place. Designed to compete with each other in urban environments, where there are a thousand more distractions, these splashes of color on the landscapes of these small German towns just look like unnecessary highlights.

In a more sober and scientific mood, I can imagine perfectly reasonable explanations that explain this uniformity: everything looks washed-out because it has been washed out, no one wants to spend extra money on ostentatious decoration, the houses have been around for a long time, there is social pressure to conform (just like there is any- and everywhere), and one of the last concerns of a grocery store chain is how a bunch of people in a rural village will feel about the change in color pallet of their town’s landscape. But I still find it fascinating that this is what necessity has produced here in southern Germany, and not something else. Whether divinely inspired or naturally mechanistic, it’s still unique.

I just recently passed the halfway point of my project, and consequently feel obligated to be reflective and sentimental about the first part of my trip. I feel doubly obligated due to the fact that I have had a major change in my living situation, and am leaving my home of the last 5 months behind. The only problem is that I have been so busy during this week, I’ve hardly had time to sit and reflect. So, if this post doesn’t bear the sentimental and reflective load it should, I ask you readers to forgive me, and consider it a debt I’ll make up to you eventually.

As I said, I have decided to move, and in fact already have. It was a decision I thought long and hard about, but now that it’s done I’m sure it was the right thing to do. When I planned this project, I tried to account for every possible circumstance or problem that might come up. But as is always the case, the carrying out of the plan revealed a few errors of judgment I could never have predicted before coming to Germany. I did an excellent job (if I do say so myself) of making sure that I would have plenty of opportunities to practice my German and be available to teach English. Those aspects were, and of course still are, the most important parts of my project here. I also chose to live in a more rural part of Germany in order to “get a different perspective on life in Germany,” by which I meant different than Berlin, one of the biggest cities in Germany. And while living in Enkenbach-Alsenborn did grant me this different perspective, it also reminded me of something about living in the country which I had somehow forgotten after 5 years of Nashville city-living: there’s not much to do, and there are not many places to go. While Enkenbach-Alsenborn has much to offer in the way of beautiful trails through the woods and peace and quiet, it has somewhat less to offer in terms of nightlife, socializing, and places to work. One thing that I know about myself is that I need to have different places to go to do different things – I like to work in cafes and libraries and I like to have fun at bars and restaurants. Enkenbach-Alsenborn has an unfortunate shortage of all of those things.

So after a few months of trying to make the best of my situation, I realized that the much simpler option would be to just move. After doing the math and talking with my partner organization, I worked out an agreement with my host family that would allow me to continue my teaching project, but also live closer to the friends that I had already made (but seldom saw) through my language class in Karlsruhe. The whole moving process was a test of the language skills that I had developed over the last five months, and I know now that even though I lacked some things in Enkenbach-Alsenborn, my time there gave me language practice that has over the last two weeks proved invaluable.

So now it’s back to the city life for me. I’ve acquired all the necessary things that one needs for an apartment, and I’ve even got the heat to work (mostly). I am excited for the new opportunities and experiences that I’ll have here, and am at the same time grateful for the ones that preceded them.

I hope all you readers are doing well! We’ll talk later.

Derek

One of the most interesting things about the information revolution brought on by the internet is that millions of people have been given access to a public voice that they never would have had. But it is still questionable whether this has had a positive or negative impact on writing in general. Before the internet, if you wanted people to read something you had written, you either had to give it to them personally, or go through some sort of publisher, be it newspaper, magazine, or book. Those publishers had the tools to reproduce your writing and distribute it to a community of readers that, while varying in size, was always more than you could reach alone. But now anyone can create a blog and a few social media profiles, and within weeks reach thousands, if not tens of thousands, of potential readers.

So while the internet has changed the means of distribution of information, what has not changed is the basic types of writing, of which there are, really, only two: writing for oneself (here, journaling) and writing for others (here, writing-proper). These types of writing usually serve different purposes, and before the internet they also existed in mutually-exclusive spheres, the private and the public. But now these spheres seem to be somewhat mixed up.

This is especially obvious in blog writing, where the line between journaling/writing and private/public is often unclear. This fuzzy distinction has given blogs, rightly or wrongly, a bit of a stigma as the medium of choice for wannabe intellectuals and whiny teenagers[1]. While it would certainly be unfair to see all blogs as belonging to one of these two camps, this stereotype hints at some of the big problems in blog writing today. Blogs, in general, suffer from two major problems: authors presenting journaling as writing-proper, and writers misunderstanding the implicit assumptions in starting a new blog.

But before we deal with blog writing, let me clarify what I mean by journaling and writing-proper. Journaling’s most important attribute is its freeness. When one journals, one is free to work out thoughts or problems without the scrutiny of others or the demands of the rules of language. This freedom from concerns of audience can be invaluable when attempting to work through personal problems, develop new ideas, or be creative. Journaling may lead to writing-proper, but in-itself it is often of interest only to the author. Occasionally journal-style writing will appeal to an audience outside the author, but more often than not it is too narrowly personal, too confusingly self-referential, or too boring or petty to be interesting to others.

Writing-proper, on the other hand, should be of interest to others, because the author writes in order to communicate with someone else. This is the essential distinction of writing-proper, and since the author writes with others in mind, he pays special attention to word choice, style, grammar, and all the other rules of usage in language in order to strike his audience in a particular way. Even when attempting to alter her audience in some way, whether it is linguistically, behaviorally, or intellectually, the author always tries to find the best means for conveying her thoughts. These means could look radically different, depending on whether the author is writing a poem or a lab-report, but there is always a consideration of the audience in writing-proper.

In the next part of Journaling, Writing, and Blogging, I’ll explain how blogs have the accessibility of journaling, but the audience of writing proper, and how this mixture has given blogs an unsavory reputation. I’ll then explain the problem of the proliferation of blogs, and finally how blogs have the potential to be an excellent medium for writing-proper.

When I created this project, I told myself, my friends, and many other people that one of my main goals was to “improve my German.” I believe this is a good justification for traveling because it suggests a charitable attitude towards the country you are visiting, and that you are willing to humble yourself to the role of a novice in a place where practically everyone you meet will be an expert. But the problem with justifying travel with a desire to learn a language is that you are inevitably faced with another question: why do you want to learn another language?

Before I left for Germany, I reasoned that learning German had many benefits: it would be good for grad school in philosophy, for my resume, and for reading a few favorite writers in their original language. But after a few weeks here in Germany, I faced that question in a new, more urgent way. Learning German was no longer a distant or intangible goal – it became an absolute necessity for daily living. During my first week I was practically incapable of doing almost anything alone. Heck, even ordering coffee made me nervous. One time I stood in line at a busy café for so long that I lost my nerve and left without ordering. Only later did I realize that the adrenaline rush of being nervous had woken me up as much as a cup of coffee (try new 5-hour Nervousness – with as much excitement as a cup of coffee, and definitely a crash later).

Fear not, readers. I now only have brief panic attacks while ordering coffee. To be serious, I really have become more comfortable with speaking German on a daily basis, and that’s because over the last few weeks I’ve had to use German every day in a variety of situations. My learning has been spurred on by the need to communicate. So now I have an immediate, real answer to the previously posed question: I need to learn German in order to function in everyday life.

But that got me thinking. If I justified traveling with learning German, and then I justify learning German with having traveled somewhere (namely, Germany), then haven’t I just reasoned myself into a circle? Have I actually no real reason for learning German?

No. But I was confused about one very important truth: one always learns a language in order to do something else. Language itself is a means, or a tool, good for accomplishing other things. But to suggest that learning a language is an end in itself is to misunderstand the essence of language. Not only is this detrimental to an individual, such as me, when considering why one should travel or study a language, but also to others by promoting that misunderstanding. So when someone is considering whether or not they should major in Spanish, or if they should spend a year in France to improve their French, we should always press these people further – why do you want to learn another language? If one has answers ready for that question, then one understands the purpose of using and learning languages, and is ready to study them.

And really, the stakes are higher than just misunderstanding what language is. When you’re trying to choose what to do with your life, it’s important to understand the choices you are making. And choosing to learn a language without considering the “what-for” can lead to crushed dreams and feelings of time well-wasted. But if you’re willing to admit to yourself that you’ve been thinking about your language studies all wrong, you can adjust your thinking. All that is necessary is to consider what you want to do with German, or Spanish, or any language, pat your naïve past-self on the head, and move towards a real goal.