"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
-H.P. Lovecraft
-H.P. Lovecraft
Welcome to The Wrong Side
Top 4 Video Games in Which You Can Safely Explore your Violent FantasiesWe all get angry. We all have those little "psycho moments." One bad thing leads to another and you find yourself fantasizing about ramming your car through your neighbor's front door. Maybe he never returned your lawnmower. Maybe his cat keeps shitting in your flower bed. Whatever the issue is, you need an outlet, So why not grab a controller and saddle up for some good old virtual violence? These four games will allow you to safely vent your rage while mowing down proxies of your real-world antagonists. 4. Fable (2004) Have you ever wanted to ascend to godhood only to turn on your devoted followers at the last minute and become a tyrannical demon? In the fantasy role-playing game Fable, players assume the role of an unnamed hero destined for either fame or infamy. Fable's morality system tracks your deeds, both good and bad, and ultimately shapes how the world reacts to your presence. Do peasants stare in awe at your divine aura and applaud your every footstep? Or do they run screaming at the sight of your horned visage? Personally, my favorite playstyle involves performing only good deeds right up until the game's final moral dilemma, then diving headfirst into darkness, slaughtering the good townsfolk I had helped just hours before. If you've got a massive ego and a thirst for power, Fable might be right for you. I'm looking at you, Donald. 3. Gears of War (2006) Have you ever wanted to fire a gun? Operate a chainsaw? Do both at the same time? In Gears of War, players are dropped into the boots of Marcus Fenix, a grizzled space marine with a penchant for cigars and one-liners, and embark on a grand adventure in which you mutilate hordes of alien lifeforms with a variety of weapons and finishing moves. Gore is an essential part of the Gears of War formula; enemies pop like balloons filled with pasta sauce when fired upon with a heavy weapon like the shotgun. However, no weapon is quite as brutal as the Lancer: a machine gun sporting a mounted chainsaw bayonet. The first time I split a baddie in half with one of those, I had to reevaluate my standing with God. 2. Grand Theft Auto V (2013) Have you ever wanted to live the life of a gangster? Have you ever wanted to manage your own criminal empire and rake in loads of cash? Or have you ever wanted to run down the street naked while throwing grenades as hordes of policemen? The latest entry in the Grand Theft Auto series brings us to Los Santos, a satirical metropolis and leading candidate for the worst place to live. This place makes Detroit look like Palm Springs. Because of the game's open-world setting, players can forsake the narrative in favor of terrorizing pedestrians, robbing convienience stores, and evading the police. There's a ridiculous array of weapons at your desposal, from handguns to rocket launchers to literal tanks. Whether you're plotting the assassination of a rival or simply setting fire to the local fast-food joint, Grand Theft Auto V has something for every aspiring ne'er-do-well. Just remember, it's all a game. 1. Mortal Kombat (1992-Present)
Have you ever wanted to punch the crap out of your sibling and then execute them with an elaborate series of cartoonishly violent finishing moves? If so, I would suggest some family conseling. The game that spawned the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) game rating system, Mortal Kombat is the pinnacle of violent video games. Players participate in on-on-one fist fights against eachother (more recent entries have added a "tag-team" feature), which usually culminate in the victor performing a Fatality on the loser. Fatalities are these insanely brutal executions that range from simple neck snaps to complete skeletal evacuation. It's synthesized senseless death that seems to have an almost desensitizing effect on players, myself included. Which begs the question: are these games the product of a society that has a love affair with violence? A love affair that has been instilled in us through years of seemingly endless conflicts abroad and countless tragedies at home? Nah, it's just good old entertainment. Probably.
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How high schools are failing to prepare students for college composition and the role of the Writing Center in dismantling these obstacles.Sally hadn’t written an essay since her sophomore year English class. Now a Biology major, she was hoping to pursue a career as a veterinarian. There was just one problem: her Behavioral Science professor had assigned a ten page research paper about the ecology of geese.
She sat with her fingers on her temples, whispering over and over about how this assignment would be the death of her, while I poured over her hastily composed essay. With my purple pen in hand, I riddled that crinkled sheet of printer paper with comments and circled grammatical errors like they were my crush’s yearbook photo. But most importantly of all I told her over and over again that everything was going to be okay. That it wasn’t her fault. Central Connecticut State University’s Writing Center is located in the basement of Carroll Hall, a dorm-building-turned-refugee-camp for the displaced English department. It’s a poignant representation of the state of college composition: a tacked on afterthought. As a Writing tutor, it’s my job to help students develop strategies and techniques for solving issues present in their writing. Whether they are a freshman struggling to compose their first research paper about geese, or an ESL student attempting to grasp the basic principles of English syntax, my role is to resolve these challenges to the best of my ability while encouraging autonomous problem solving on the part of my students. The role of the tutor is not to instruct, that duty belongs to certified teachers and professors. Yet more and more I find that the quality of student writing has diminished. Every semester I find myself faced with a student who simply cannot articulate their thoughts on paper. And it isn’t their fault. They just haven’t been provided with the tools necessary for composition of any kind, whether it be a lab report or a persuasive essay. But who's to blame? According to Dr. Lee Einhorn, CCSU’s Developmental Writing Specialist, “high school writing instruction rarely focuses on the two most important skills—writing to a real audience (to understand and be skilled in the different approaches necessary to write for, say, a hiring manager, a professor, and a fellow student) and critical writing (writing to investigate and analyze claims and arguments to determine their validity).” Understanding one’s audience and being able to address that audience in the appropriate manner is a necessary skill for any college student hoping to land a job after their senior year. But high school’s don’t seem to grasp this concept, and if they do they seem to be going about it the wrong way. “First of all, grades aren’t all reflective of effort, difficulty, or skill as much as they are a reflection of how comfortable a student is with the rules and teacher expectations,” says Dr. Einhorn. “Second, because parents and administrators have become so influential in the educational process, teachers now spend the majority of their time inventing inane, gradable tasks (like grammar quizzes) in order to post meaningless grades online for parents and admins to consider; rarely, if ever, do those tasks or grades reflect actual student knowledge, ability, or effort.” The prioritization of grades seems to be the current trend, and its consequences are evident in my own student’s writing. Is appealing to the rampant narcissism of parents worth sacrificing the skills necessary to secure their child’s future? What’s most troubling for me is that high schools consider this adequate preparation for college composition. Outside of the Humanities you’ll find that professors rarely ask for a paper longer than three pages. But when they do, their assignments are usually research intensive and challenge students to search outside of their own opinions for conclusions. This can be difficult if a student has only ever been required to write persuasive essays. So how do writing centers fit into all this? According to “Formative Assessment and the Paradigms of Writing Center Practice” by Joe Law and Christina Murphy, “the almost century-long history of writing centers attests to an inquiry-based, individualized pedagogy directed toward the primary aims of formative assessment in providing in-process commentary that offers direction, guidance and analytical critique to emerging writers” (106). In short, our job as writing tutors is to guide writers in composing cohesive and grammatically correct papers that reflect their own critical thinking capabilities. But so often I encounter a situation in which I have to assume the role of an instructor and explain a fundamental grammatical principle in order to help a student make sense of their own ideas. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to spend an entire tutoring session explaining the function of verbs to a native English speaker. But what’s the big deal? The big deal is that no matter what your field is, you’re going to be asked to write. You have to know how to take a concept and break it down into easily understood English so that it can then be distributed to your boss, your co-workers, and oftentimes even the general public. This is the thing that your career advisers, your teachers, and even your parents are forgetting when they tell you to pursue Engineering or Biology because “that’s where the money is.” By this point, you might be asking yourself if there's any hope. Is my child destined to have trouble describing the flight patterns of geese for the rest of their life? Luckily, a select few, including yours truly, are here to help. CCSU’s Summer Bridges Program functions as a gateway for students desiring a smoother transition into college composition. “A program like Bridges,” Dr. Einhorn explains, “seeks not only to educate students in skill areas; we seek to address students as human beings and help mentor and guide them through their early collegiate experience in order to ensure that the new and overwhelming challenges that they will face do not discourage or impair them beyond a functional point.” “For example, let’s say you’re a first generation student—so no one in your family has gone to college. You show up to campus nervous—you worked hard in high school, and though you struggled as well, you made it through. Still, you have no idea what’s awaiting you in college. Then you show up in your first lecture hall with 100 other kids and the professor starts talking about concepts you don’t know while passing out a syllabus that you’re not even sure how to interpret. And what are office hours? And what is your lab supposed to look like? How does someone learn to study this material? What do you do to prepare for a test?” The Summer Bridges Program is just one potential solution to these questions, questions which, theoretically, should have been answered prior to a student’s college application by the numerous career advisors and counselors that claim to have that student’s best interests in mind. Having considered all this, I feel as though my role as a writing tutor is to be a sort of personal liason between these disenfranchised students crawling out of high school with only half the knowledge that they should have, and the future that expects them to know how to communicate effectively as human beings. As Dr. Einhorn says, "our outcomes are not only to increase skillsets ... but also to increase their resilience, their response skills, their mental and emotional awareness and strength, their ability to rely on friends and mentors for support, and ultimately, their retention and graduation rates." Works Cited Law, Joe, and Christina Murphy. “Formative Assessment and the Paradigms of Writing Center Practice.” The Clearing House, vol. 71, no. 2, 1997, pp. 106–108 www.jstor.org/stable/30192095. Einhorn, Lee. (2016, December 5th). Email Interview.
Yesterday the Bucket Lady Came to Town
At sunrise You entered through the gates on the back of a bony old horse. You left it hitched by the ancient fountain, all cobblestone and rust. My stomach squirmed at the sight of you, tall, gaunt, naked save for a metal mask, an upturned bucket weathered by a thousand miles. You lumbered through the square on bare feet, wicker baskets tucked under your hairless arms. I sat on Father’s shoulders as you offered the townsfolk treasures, remedies from a foreign land. In your pale palms you held exotic flowers, magic roots, a bouquet of tongues ripped from the mouths of dead men, You spoke like wind through a churchyard about their potency, how they held the secrets to bronchitis, gangrene, cancer, death. I heard Father spit, heard the dull ping as his saliva splattered across your iron face. Yet, as the crowd jeered and laughed, I alone saw you kneel and thank the sun for shining. |
AuthorIan Mentus is an English major at Central Connecticut State University. He is currently studying literature and Creative Writing, and serves as the Poetry Editor for the Helix Literary Magazine. He has also been nominated as CCSU's representative for the 2017 CT Poetry Circuit. When he isn't in class or tutoring in the Writing Center, Ian can be found haunting the Library Starbucks. ArchivesCategories |