Undergraduate / Woody Allen's life; Transfer to Reed College [4]

I am easily influenced by those I admire (sometimes not in the best of ways), and after watching the 2011 documentary of Woody Allen's life, I learned that he got his start writing as many as fifty jokes a day, sending them in to a nearby newspaper as fast as he could get them out on paper.

Following his lead, I wrote up an application to intern at my current school's newspaper. After learning I had been accepted, I slept very little and began churning out the criticism (both film and literary) and opinion pieces that had been simmering inside of me for quite some time. I promptly emailed them away before I even met the editors, and was sure I would soon see my name in print. To my dismay, I was ignored almost entirely, and told I would have to do some lowly reporting before I could think of being published. Infuriated that so much hard work could be ignored, I pulled a George Costanza and quit right then and there.

Although I was left as clueless as George (and probably just as overconfident and unrealistic in my abilities), I don't think it was a bad decision. The student newspaper is funded by the Communications department, and its purpose is largely to provide experience for more seriously aspiring journalists, and not opinionated maniacs such as myself. However, as someone easily motivated to both read and write, I also think I should have had more freedom to explore where as a writer I best fit in. And for myself, I do not find this freedom in my current English department, or in the extra-curricular activities I wish to pursue.

The English department is largely theory-based, and not organized by genre, authors, or surveys of historical periods. For instance, when there are course offerings in dramatic literature, it is likely it will be organized via disability studies, or feminist writers, or black and latino writers. Not only that, but English majors must fulfill a broad set of requirements (such as 15 mandatory credits in pre-1900 literature) that do not give me the opportunity to follow my own interests. At Reed, given the less stringent requirements, I can choose to study only American literature through its various forms and major authors. I have just as much a love for Hemingway as I do Daniel Clowes, Robert Frost, Tony Kushner, and Edward Albee. I do not feel they are disconnected from British or European literature (Hemingway was influenced greatly by Russian writers; Kushner and Albee by the major dramatists, most of whom are European), but I am mainly interested in studying and writing about American literature. Reed has historical requirements similar to UW, but the focus and breadth of the course offerings will allow me to read the major authors that have influenced Americans, and not just the literature that has influenced theory. And ultimately, I will have the platform of my senior thesis to expand on an original idea that is most important and dear to me.

Clearly I am not a scientist, and at Reed, given its much smaller environment in comparison to UW, I will have more intimacy while learning the subjects that do not come as easily to me, but are no less fascinating and worthwhile.

The extra-curricular institutions at Reed seem less bureaucratic (the Quest takes open submissions, for example), and I feel I would thrive and grow in an environment more devoted to freedom of expression and exploration on the part of its participants rather than vocational training.

My academic record shows my ability to work well given an environment that does not entirely suit my needs and desires, however I feel that in Reed I have found the place where I can develop more as a scholar and as a person, and where I will be in control of what is most important to me: my education.