Affect Feels

So this has been yet another up and down week. The quote from Brand’s piece that you had us analyze was an important one for me while reading and still now:

“Pure meaning is endowed with images and connotation. Pure meaning is saturated with affect. But the profession sidesteps this” (437).

My biggest struggle (besides grammar) after enrolling in this master’s program has been learning about the ways academia talks about anything it deems… irrelevant? And emotion seems most definitely… irrelevant?

Emotion has played a pivotal role in the ways I have been thinking and writing for my entire life, and is thus essential to writing itself. From the anxieties of emailing instructors to the safety of a never-sent letter saved in the depths of a dead laptop, writing emerges in elated days where words ripple through my thoughts like the wind on grassy hills in Ireland or trudging along with me in the darkness of worried nights and poorly-written poetry. Pursuing this degree has made me realize that writing is my life and the way I process and feel anything. But academia generally says writing is meant to be logical. Writing is objective, structured, and information laden—never emotionally exploratory, or anything like that. However,

“We need reminding that the very idea of being both human and impartial is a contradiction in terms” (Brand 438-9).

Writing may have helped me through my life in ways similar to that of a great friend, but I have come to realize this is a rarity. I believe writing and emotion to be innately tied. But for professionals, students, and people generally writing is a means to an end. For them writing is not a subject of study, let alone something to seek help with. The histories of composition, writing centers, psychology of learning, and rhetoric meet with the knowledge in fixed or growth mindsets.

I have spent years long past believing logic ruled the world, tampering down my own emotions. I have seen what I like to think of as the other side, obscured in darkness by a societal norm that “emotional neutrality is… morally the most advanced” (Brand 438). But emotion won me and now I fight for it. And, yet, another lesson I am continuing to learn in classrooms and the writing center is that emotion can win other people—and students, specifically—in emotional ways, sure... in fearful, anxiety-ridden ways.

This week in the writing center I was sitting behind the desk all worried about forgetting some part of the process. A student came in and as I was setting up an appointment with him he asked me what “Is this a required visit?” meant. I explained it in the first terms that came to mind (and may not have been the proper ones) and asked if he was asked by a teacher to come or was here because he wanted to be. It was unfair to pit want and requirement against each other, but I was trying to explain it to him in a way that he would understand. He responded quickly with “teacher’s forcing me.”

“…forcing me.”

I tried not to wince at the way he said force, but asked no questions and enthusiastically (hoping he could see the sincerity the writing center has) scheduled the appointment and welcomed him to our comfortable couch and colorful candy. He declined politely and left for the thirty or so minutes until his appointment. For the rest of the day I couldn’t help but think about how well he knew the word “forced” and imagined all of the emotions he must have toward writing in English.

And, full circle, I compare my experiences with emotion and writing to those of any person who walks in the door of the writing center or classroom. I wish to find ways to rewrite the narratives and help students build positive emotions or experiences with writing. I also know many people wish this, too, and feel daunted by a general or university-wide disinterest in writing. All of my prior knowledge from my undergraduate degree, theory in education courses, and words I have heard cohort members express collide in frustration. Sometimes I am upset that I was so lucky to have the relationship with writing that I do, because it feels—at certain moments—at the expense of those who want or need it most.

Affect exists in and with writing—it cannot be ignored any longer, or else we continue to have well-meaning dialogues with important voices absent from them.

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In other less-depressing conclusions, I have narrowed down my portfolio “thread” and am quite excited about it. It is still rough around the edges, but I am interested in pursuing the ways that we in academia can connect with each other in various ways that dissolve potential isolation and protection of expertise. I will continue to think about how I could use this idea or thread for my 503 paper.