Winterizing Wonderland

While attempting to winterize my motorcycle yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t help but to grin like an idiot over my last adventure that I took on this bike. It was about three weeks ago, on a Wednesday, when I chose to sleep in past 6:45 am, and thus drive to the University. On Wednesdays my only class is an hour-long Russian class that starts at 2:30 in the afternoon. I thought that it would be simple, but I was wrong. At least I left for class 2 hours early…


Unfortunately the night was anything but restful. I tossed and turned—never finding comfort—never settling my mind. My six hours of unconsciousness was riddled by constant awakening. Eventually the morning came and I got up and got ready. I accomplished some homework and cleaning before I decided to take off for the University. The only problem was that I couldn’t locate the key for the motorcycle. I searched all through the house—looking under beds and couches, on top of desks and dressers. My dad told me to ask my mom about it, so I did. Apparently Flo had taken it on Saturday to church and the nursing home. Why that key ventured around Elk River and Zimmerman is beyond me. With the help of my entire family, the key was discovered. My mom had placed it in her crochet bag.


After wrestling the bike out of the garage (no simple task), I couldn’t start it. I trotted into the house and grabbed the key for the Suburban and drove it down towards the motorcycle to jump start it. As it ran and warmed up, I went back into the house to collect all my things. At that point I realized that my headphones were broken. I had enough time, so I decided to head towards Wal-Mart to purchase another pair.


After maybe five minutes in the store, I came back out to the motorcycle only to find that it wouldn’t start again. Why? Hadn’t it had some time to recharge in my ten-minute trek across Elk River? Luckily there was a woman placing her cart in the return, so I asked her for help. She drove over to me and hooked up the jumper cables. It fired up instantly. Maybe I needed to drive it a little bit longer…


Apart from the dust and dirt blinding me every so often, the ride out of Elk River was nice. In Ramsey, as I was passing RV World, I felt something hit me in the left ankle. It didn’t hurt, but that was the strange part. What object could have hit me at that speed that I would have noticed it but not been hurt by it? Coming up on Armstrong Boulevard, I looked at the light and saw it was green. Feeling around and finally looking down, I found that the side panel that covers the battery had fallen off. When I looked up, the light was turning red. Thankfully the brakes were recently worked on. Despite the fishtailing and the racing heart, it was all good.


I turned around and drove back past RV World, until I found a spot to turn Southbound again. I kept my eyes on the side of the road ahead of me until the cover came into sight. With the blinker on, I pulled into the ditch, but dared not to shut the motorcycle down. Retrieving the side panel and putting it back on is unnerving as cars scream by on the highway.


When everything was secure, I jumped on the motorcycle and drove several more miles until I was approaching Sunfish Lake Boulevard. The light ahead was red. Traffic was stopped, so I grabbed the clutch and slowed down while downshifting the gears. What I assumed was neutral in actuality was 1st gear. So, when stopped behind someone at the light, I released the clutch which caused the bike to jump slightly and died. Unfortunately, I couldn't start it again, so I pushed it through the turn lane and into the median ditch. From the ditch I was able to get ahold of my mother for some assistance.


Needing to get to the Shell station to my left, I waited until the turn lane cleared and pushed the motorcycle onto the road and to the line. Unfortunately the light had turned red, so I took the bike onto the sidewalks. All the while, however, other bikers looked at me with disapproving glances, and truckers hollered at me from their perches to ride it… I am sure it looked like I stole the motorcycle.


At the gas station I took off my hoodie because it was a little warm in the sun pushing the bike. I didn’t want to loiter, so I decided to buy something to drink. As I was putting my hoodie in my bag, I realized that I could not find my motorcycle key anywhere (not like anyone was going to drive off with the motorcycle). Frantically passing around the store looking at the floor, a Latina woman working at the Cousins Subs counter asked if I had lost something. She told me to describe it. I told her it was a single key for my motorcycle with a rubber Goldy the Gopher keychain. She lifted the key from behind the register and my hopes from despair.


My mom showed up in Trav’s car several minutes later and we jumped the motorcycle again. From there I raced to Russian Class, where I was 15 minutes late.


After 35 minutes of Russian, I went back to Lot 37 to discover that the motorcycle, again, wouldn’t start. Luckily there was a line about a mile long again, so I started asking everyone if they had jumper cables. Amazingly no one did—not until the twentieth person. I found an off-duty service worker who could help me. And it was so simple. I could have jumped it with a AAA battery. Needless to say, I skipped filling it with gas and just drove it straight home.

Society Gone Wilde: A Survey of Morality and Reality in Oscar Wilde

After critics harshly reviewed the first publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde added several new chapters as well as a preface, in which he stated, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Needless to say, Oscar Wilde was not the only proponent of this sentiment. The creed “Art for Art’s Sake” established opposition to the notion that art should advance a moral function within society. Advocates of the Aesthetics Movement upheld that art had value within itself and did not need to pass moral examination or justification. Morality—the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, proper and improper—should not be the lens through which people attribute value to art. In essence the Aesthetics believed their audiences would be able to separate all preconceived notions of the time to observe the core beauty of the artwork. Truly art has value that far surpasses the struggle of morality and immorality, but it seems all together fantastical to believe that artists can neutrally create art and audiences can neutrally receive it. Oscar Wilde unveils a piece of his artistic vision when he states that: “Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety, and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination” (Millard 42). Aestheticism is the bridge that connects Realism and Modernism; it is the ideology that created Dorian Gray and began to unravel the ideologies of Victorian England.

The most ironic aspect of The Picture of Dorian Gray is that, as Oscar Wilde wrote in response to an 1890’s critic of the novel, “… it is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment” (Millard 43). If Oscar Wilde is a member of the Aesthetics Movement, as well as a proponent to the cliché “Art for Art’s Sake,” why did he create a work which is contrary to all that his belief base rests on? Is he that poor of an Aesthete, or is he trudging forward in the unraveling of Victorian ideology and morality by separating himself from Romanticism and Realism? Critic Christopher Millard argued in 1912 that Wilde had “a wholesome dislike of the common place, rightly or wrongly identified by him with the bourgeois, with our middle-class—its habits and tastes—lead [Wilde] to protest emphatically against so-called ‘realism’ in art” (Millard 189). I would suppose that Wilde’s protest against Realism stems from the fact that Realists, in their heart of hearts, are Romantic. They are Romantic in the sense that they thought they could capture the essence of real life in a single, still shot. They are Romantic in the sense that they believed all that goes into the history, nature, beliefs, and development of a space or a human could be deduced into a single moment. In essence, Realists believed, as the Romantics had believed, in a universal truth that could be discovered through art. As critic Shelton Waldrep stated, “Wilde believed that Realism was being superseded by a new type of Romanticism. He believed that Realism did not reflect the new spirit of the age.” (Waldrep 106). The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel, yet the “Picture of Dorian Gray” is a portrait. Therefore Wilde attempted to critique Realism simultaneously through two different mediums.

Oscar Wilde always reserved distaste for Realism in art. His distaste for Realism set his art on a progressive path which ventured away from the standards of Victorian England. He advocated that “the aesthetic movement produced certain curious colours, subtle in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost mystical tone. They were, and are, our reaction to the crude primaries of a doubtless more respectable but certainly less cultivated age… It reacts against the crude brutality of plain realism” (Millard 74). Wilde’s insight was written in response to a critic of his recently published The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel, Wilde argues, is “poisonous, if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim for” (Millard 74). In all actuality, as it was pointed out, “Aestheticism was not ultimately a view about art, but a view about life” (Lamarque 205). University of York professor Peter Lamarque furthered his views of Aestheticism by saying that it is “unappealing in many respects: it overemphasizes beauty in art (indulgent or decadent beauty at that); it inclines toward formalism in art criticism; and in art making it tends to prioritize appearance and design over substance and seriousness” (206). Aestheticism called for society to change the way that it viewed art and life; Aestheticism urged audiences to be more critical and less judgmental.

Oscar Wilde ran astray of Victorian England’s moral expectations on numerous instances. Wilde quotably stated that “all art is quite useless” (Wilde 4). Yet he did not believe in this notion. Wilde believed that art’s aim was “to reveal art and conceal the artist” (Wilde 3). Unfortunately for Wilde, he was never able to master that trait. With mass production and popularity of the arts on the rise, Wilde sought recognition and wealth. Lecturer Elana Gomel advocates that “even though the novel is about painting rather than writing, Wilde shows that different kinds of art are essentially similar in their underlying dynamics of production and consumption” (Gomel 80). Wilde’s interest in production and consumption came after the overall reaction of the first publication. He immediately began looking to publish a second edition. Researcher James Swafford believes that in The Picture of Dorian Gray “one isn't quite sure what sort of poison one has ingested” (17). However the story of a well-dressed, conspicuous consumer tormented by a bourgeois conscience grew in popularity over time. The ingested poison manifests itself as a preview to Modernism and the sickness of consumption.

Wilde's famous statement that life imitates art prompts people to analyze “the relationship and possibility, as Wendy Steiner has recently argued in The Scandal of Pleasure, that our culture is confusing the virtuality of art with the reality of life” (Swafford 16). Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray “functions as an example of the paradoxical nature of his thought expressed through a highly metaphorical version of realist fiction” (Waldrep 105). In the book, Dorian Gray was under the impression that a book poisoned him, where after his life was never the same. Dorian Gray believed in a utilitarian approach to experiencing art. Art had a function for society, whether good or bad. Therefore Aesthetes invite society to enjoy what Wilde calls “‘the unique result of a unique temperament’ for its own sake, not for the sake of developing or displaying our moral or political virtue” (Swafford 15). Society should rally behind experimentations of art, and separate from the dysfunctions of reality.

Due to Wilde’s belief in studying subjects of a bad nature, he conspired to create the character Dorian Gray. Elana Gomel states that “Dorian’s initial aspiration is to ‘write’ himself into the portrait, and thus to achieve the immortality and immutability” (Gomel 80). The tragic realization for Dorian Gray is that he succeeds in selling his immortal soul for the sinful pleasures of the flesh. Losing the sense of sin and righteousness—the sense of morality—Dorian is transformed from a higher plateau of development to a lower platform. Within the creative mind of Oscar Wilde, Dorian is anything but calm, meticulous, or conscienceless. Wilde advocates in a letter to a critic that Dorian Gray is “extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and is haunted all through his life by an exaggerated sense of conscience which mars his pleasures for him and warns him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the world” (Millard 73). Dorian Gray reasons himself into trying to kill the conscience that has plagued him for years. Dorian resolves to destroy the picture. However, by doing so, by killing this nagging conscience, he kills himself.

The biggest danger of Realism in art is that it can sometimes be confused with truth in reality. Dorian Gray surrounded himself in lust, possible homosexual relationships, lies, murder, and suicide—amongst other nameless sins. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was convicted of “acts of gross indecency” with other men. During the trial, “Wilde and his texts were read with terrible simplicity: beneath all the posturing and posing was moral rottenness” (Swafford 17). The character Dorian Gray, through the assistance of fine art, is a beautiful creation. However, his tale is a “vivid, though carefully considered, exposure of the corruption of a soul, with a very plain moral pushed home, to the effect that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly” (Millard 193). Due to the fuzzy lines that separated art from reality, Oscar Wilde was judged for as a source of corruption to the soul of Victorian beliefs and Realist ideology.      

Swafford highlights that “the real danger of art deemed subversive may not be that it infects the culture, but that it provides an opportunity to define threatened boundaries more rigidly” (17). The Picture of Dorian Gray highlighted and solidified Victorian English society’s boundaries. Sexologist Havelock Ellis recognized that amount of public disgrace put on Oscar Wilde was instrumental in creation and distinguishment of the categories of heterosexual and homosexual. Several years later, Alan Sinfield penned in his work The Wilde Century that “even attempts to challenge the system help to maintain it. Perhaps art cannot be effectively ‘subversive’ at all” (Sinfield 15). Challenging the current trends and beliefs of Victorian England became a powerful objective and motivation for the Aesthetics.

Moral subjectivity is one of the most paramount concerns for the Aesthetics movement as it attempted to shed Victorian morality and bridge the transition between Realism and Modernism. In 1873 Walter Pater, an Oxford professor, wrote in the conclusion to his book that “all is in flux and that any ‘clear outlines’ we perceived are merely our own mental constructs, impressions that we group together under an image and lend an illusory coherence by assigning a name” (Swafford 14). Pater’s ideas are the cornerstone to all things that the Aesthetics movement was built on. By following his logic, spectators of art can only understand momentary impressions. Spectators absorb their impressions. Thus spectators live to experience life for the sake of other things, but not for themselves. Through these means finding truth, much less any sort of absolute truth, in art becomes painstakingly problematic. Through extensive research James Swafford concluded that Oscar Wilde viewed art as “‘the telling of beautiful untrue things’ or the offering of a truth ‘whose contradictory is also true.’ Style and form matter, not moral purpose. In fact, ‘ethical sympathy’ is nothing but ‘an unpardonable mannerism’ in an artist” (Swafford 16).

Using a piece of fiction as evidence against a person on trial caused a further separation of Wilde from any form of Realist art. When Walter Pater, a close friend and mentor, had read over The Picture of Dorian Gray, he stated that Wilde was rather “‘impersonal’ with his style and it seemed as if he did not ‘identify himself with any one of his characters’” (Raby 79). The truth of the matter is, however, that Wilde offered up his own theory of the characters that he identifies with: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps” (Raby 79). Oscar Wilde, therefore, viewed himself as one who worships “physical beauty far too much, as most painters do, and dies by the hand of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd vanity” (Millard 44). The world looked at Wilde as being a spectator to life, and one that introduces others to evil. But Wilde said that he wanted to be like Dorian Gray. What does that mean? “Again and again Wilde challenges the reader's expectations” (Swafford 17).

Gomel explains that, as we see in The Picture of Dorian Gray, there are three separate entities that go into art: the artist, the model, and the audience. “The three main characters of the novel—Basil Hallward, Dorian Gray, and Lord Henry Wotton—contribute to the final product of the portrait, and their rivalry over the possession of the painting reflects the problematic of its dominant subjectivity. Whose true image is it: the painter’s, who puts the colors on the canvass; the model’s, who lends his beauty; or the connoisseur’s, who interprets and thus completes what he sees?” (Gomel 81).  For Basil Hallward, “there is too much of [himself] in the thing” (Wilde 15). “Like the writer who identifies with a character, Basil paints himself into another’s image. As he explains to Dorian, the picture is an expression of his own aesthetic vision rather than an attempt to render his friend’s personality” (Gomel 81). When Basil swears to destroy the picture, weepy-eyed Dorian springs up from the couch to stop his friend, declaring that to destroy the creation would be “murder” (Wilde 31). For Basil, this creation has too much of his own ideas in it. For Dorian, it is too real to who he is and his own existence. By destroying the portrait each person would in essence have lost a part of themselves. Through the censorship and limitations of art, all of society would lose a part of its own identity.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was the recipient of approximately 216 articles of criticism, which were scattered through different periodicals. Wilde admitted that he had “read no more than half” of those responses to his story (Millard 125). Even still, his dedication to the advancement of understanding of Dorian Gray was unparalleled. He read criticism and wrote daily to rebut the misconceptions of his audience. However, in 1895, after his last trial and conviction, an English newspaper proclaimed with unmistakable pleasure, “The aesthetic cult, in the nasty form, is over” (Lamarque 205). Despite this proclamation, Oscar Wilde promoted that all things belong to art, and that it is possible that an artist can create a work that is considered moral without his objective being to create something that is moral.

Works Cited

Gomel, Elana. “Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the (Un)Death of the Author.” Narrative, 12.1 (2004): 74-92

Lamarque, Peter. “The Uselessness of Art.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Summer 2010: 68(3): 205-213.

Millard, Christopher Sclater. Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality. London: Frank Palmer, Red Lion Court, 1912. Print.

Raby, Peter.  Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.

Sinfield, Alan. The Wilde Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Print.

Swafford, James. “The Provocations of Art.” Humanities. July/August 1997;18(4):14-17. Print.

Waldrep, Shelton. “The Aesthetic Realism of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.” Studies in the Literary Imagination. Spring 1996; 29(1): 103-112. Print.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Andrew Elfenbein. New Yok: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print.

Analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "A Defence of Poetry"

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote his essay A Defence of Poetry as a response to Thomas Love Peacock’s The Four Ages of Poetry, as well as to the views of the Utilitarian philosophers and the material-minded public. Although Peacock’s satirical tone was recognized by Shelley, the tone harmonized well with peoples’ belief that poetry had no true function in society. What was intended to be a trilogy of essays written in defense of poetry’s social importance by Percy Shelley was never completed; the final two essays were never written. The portion of A Defence of Poetry that does remain was not even published until nearly twenty years after Shelley’s death—unable to truly dialogue with Peacock’s work (Shelley 789).

Encountering the contents of Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry can prove to be a cumbersome process. Within his work, Shelley lays little ground work for what would constitute a typical defense of something. As a matter of fact, instead of even narrowing down a particular poem or two, Shelley defends an entire genre of art. To complicate the matters even further, Shelley’s broad definition of poetry and poets creates a denser atmosphere of abstract contemplation. Defence contains minimal amounts of useful analysis of successful literary work, no history of poetry, and no insight to deeper understanding of the rules of composition. Instead Shelley offers a philosophical analysis of the role of the poet as a unique individual, one who sees harmony within the world. Shelley stresses the connection between all forms of art and poetry proposing that, no matter the content, they all come from the same source: Imagination.

Being a Romantic himself, Shelley shared a belief in the creative and destructive powers of nature as well as the belief that the natural world was able to maintain a stronghold on one’s imagination. However, as displayed in his work A Defence of Poetry, Shelley seems to be standing high above the other Romantics when measuring the limits to his unwavering connection between beauty and goodness. He was also a strong advocate for the belief that arts can improve society. This is a position that he greatly presses his audience in A Defence of Poetry to accept as well. Shelley, though a Romantic, was different from his contemporaries in his approach to poetry. He was more philosophical in his assessments as his words paralleled Plato’s thoughts that, in order to regenerate man, they must fall in love with goodness and beauty. Strangely enough though, contrary to aspects of his Defence, Shelley also follows themes such as political liberty, and political unrest.

In A Defence of Poetry Shelley’s emphasis is on the universal and permanent qualities, truths, and values. Shelley’s definition of a poet is far-reaching beyond the scope of the literal meaning. Poets are those who have creative minds that transcend their time and place, as well as see eternal and general forms of value. A few of the noted “poets” that Shelley recognizes are: Lord Bacon (philosopher), Shakespeare (dramatist), and Jesus (prophet/Son of God). Shelley says that poets are “those who imagine and express [the] indestructible order” of truth and beauty (Shelley 792). It is Shelley’s thesis to push the concept of literature as a universal experience by challenging what it is and what it does. Defence is a “claim for the indispensability of the visionary and creative imagination in all the great human concerns” (Shelley 789). Literature was still coming into the notion that we have today. Shelley understands Literature to be writings expanding. Its scope is expanding. He believes literature to be: creative, non-imitative, universal, beautifying, and expressive of eternal truths.

There is a sense of egoism in Shelley’s writing when he states: “Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity of man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others…” (Shelley 796). In this way it is easy to observe the hierarchical view that Shelley reserves. The divinity of man is granted wisdom and understanding of the eternal truths of God. With this knowledge in their heads, they create a work, which is translated through their genius. This work is handed down to the public, who must elevate their minds to comprehend and decipher the meanings. Needless to say, Shelley does not share the same sentiments as Wordsworth in using the language of common man. For Shelley, he seems to understand it as: Geniuses are writers for literature.

Another aspect that is challenged in Defence is the difference between stories and poems. Shelley gives little credit to stories, calling them partial catalogues of detached facts that distort beauty. Poems, on the other hand, are universal creations based on eternal truths which beautify. In the battle between story and poem, readers can see that Shelley is making a case for why literature should be studied and why it is more useful than history: “Poetry allows imagination and gives flesh and blood to the detached facts of history” (Shelley 800). Likewise, Shelley rebuts the idea that poetry is immoral. Poetry expands and nurtures the imagination, imagination enables sympathy, and sympathy (understanding another’s situation) is the basis of moral behavior (Shelley 796).

Looking into this connection between beauty and goodness within other works by Shelley, there is little evidence of the passionate argument he presents in Defence. In “Ozymandias,” arguably Shelley’s most famous poem, barely touches on the notion of beauty, love or imagination. It also has little to do with historical events. Similarly, his sonnet “England in 1819” is very politically based and does not speak about beauty or goodness. The only aspect that connects these two poems with Percy Shelley’s ideas are that they are shroud in imagination, which is the “mind-acting” to create “universal substance” (Shelley 790). But where is connection between beauty and goodness? As opposed to being shroud in reason, which is merely “mind-contemplating” over longwinded “shadows” of analysis (Shelley 790). However, in his version of “Mount Blanc,” readers are able to get a sense of how Shelley perceives beauty and nature.

The range of influence that Percy Shelley’s words have on the word has changed in the 160 years since the publication of A Defence of Poetry. In a postmodern society, there are no eternal or universal truths. The world has become overtaken by the rule of subjectivity—everything depends on something that depends on something else, etc. The high pedestal that writers sat on in Shelley’s epoch has since been brought down to the point where everyone is a writer. In his book, entitled So Many Books, Gabriel Zaid states that “the human race publishes a book every thirty seconds” (21). On top of that fact, it seems that poetry is being read less and less. Poets, as Shelley would understand them, seem to be a dying breed—drowned out by the excessive amounts of “literature” that is flooding the market. Shelley says that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World” (Shelley 802). But is that a statement that is still true today? Or, in the midst of postmodernism, have poets become irrelevant? It is a shame that the world was never given the other two parts of A Defence of Poetry. Perhaps that way we would be able to truly discover how to apply the principles of poetry, as Shelley understands them, and maybe we would still be able to work towards the moral improvement of man, or any improvement at all.

                                                                  Works Cited

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “A Defence of Poetry.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2. 7^th ed. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Jack Stillinger. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. 789-802. Print.

Zaid, Gabriel. So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in the Age of Abundance. Trans. Natasha Wimmer. London: Paul Dry Books, Inc., 2004. Print.

Fernweh

Over the course of my life, I have had a lot of time to think as well as listen to music. Most days I have my iPod on shuffle. It flips through my entire musical collection offering the most eclectic sound a person could imagine. Since Valeria left, I have ventured away from KQQL (KOOL 108) to listen to other radio stations. Most of the hip hop on the radio is nauseating in the sense that if you casually listen for an hour, you may believe that the song never changed. Everything sounds the same these days. It didn't always, that is a fact I know. Although, still today I find some songs that I enjoy. I even find songs that can inspire me. But, for the most part, they have become fewer and farther between.

I want to know how to make beats. I have millions of cool ideas in my head. Of course everyone says that though. Still some days, when I am feeling a little bullet proof, I even imagine so much as fine-tuning the category of Midwest Hip Hop. There is East Coast, West Coast and Dirty South. Each of which have a distinctness to them. But what about Midwest? What about Twin Cities Hip Hop? It exists and thrives, but what the distinct features of it. Selfishly, how can we make Twin Cities Hip Hop distinct from the rest of the Midwest? In my quest to identify the distinctions that make the Minnesota sound unique from the rest of the Hip Hop scene, I suppose I will start with something very near to my heart: Whyte Chokolate.

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For all of those who do not know, this was the beginning of our recording career. During a Saturday afternoon in Hutchinson for Camp Meeting, Brandon and I escaped over to the house of Chris Emerson (aka Gician) for an improv recording session. Brandon and Chris jumped straight into the rhymes. This caused me anxiety and a bilious tightness. My flows were weak because I was too overly concerned about saying something of value, something profound. Throughout the session, however, I think we all became more relaxed around the mic and our true personalities began to shine through. The result will eternally be remembered as "Sally Struthers":

  Sally Struthers (feat. Gician) by xavyer 



Life seemed to take us all in different directions. Brandon headed down to Berrien Springs to continue college at Andrews University. Chris finished up high school at Maplewood Academy before leaving Minnesota to study in Tennessee. As for myself, college in Nebraska wasn't working and life was changing. In January 2008, I moved to Ukraine to teach English in Kiev with Nat Beedle. On the eve of my birthday that year we were walking around the center of Kiev talking about music. When we went back to our flat in Akademistetchko, the very western limits of Kiev, we recorded this little jam. I sent it out to Brandon, but never got a reply on it. It is still something that I would love to finish, whether alone or with Brandon and Chris:

  Akademistetchko by xavyer 


After living in Ukraine for several months, spring and summer were finally coming into season. Gician had a few songs up on the Internet that I took interest in. You see, Chris has always had a great amount of motivation and work ethic. He finds beats that he likes and records rhymes to them with little to no hesitation. This admirable attribute has been the driving force behind my quest for trying to write more rhymes. When I heard this, I was in a rush to head to the school to teach. The beat rolled around in my head all day and I started trying to freestyle to myself. Needless to say, there had to be a remix. So, I patched up the beat in Garage Band on Nat's Mac Book, loop it over several times and responded:

  The Big Race (Remix) by xavyer


As I have already mentioned, Chris is amazing and highly focused. After hearing the remix, his own creativity was boiling over. The result is one of my all-time top-five favorite Hip Hop jams by any artist at any time in history:

  The Root of Hip Hop by xavyer

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We are all still in separate locations -- hundreds and hundreds of miles expand between us. This summer, five years after "something was created," I hope to re-create that magic. There are free beats out there that I have found intriguing. There are still many ideas in my head . . . if only I could pry them out. Nevertheless, the quest is yet before us. Stay tuned because I hope to add songs that will rock people's socks off. If anyone is interested in helping out, just let us know. Fernweh.

NFL Europa and Babushkas

It is a pity that NFL Europa had to close up shop and high-step back to the United States. Although, it is understandable why they blew the whistle on the whole operation. It makes perfect sense: the demographics simply are not there. Europeans, in general, find the sport of American Football to be brutish and ridiculous, starkly contrasting with the elegant, time-tested sport of soccer (football). For most Europeans it is incomprehensible how a 6' 2” (1.88 m), 335-pound (152 kg) man, nicknamed “The Refrigerator” could be called a professional athlete—much less a footballist. Even if one could get past the Steel Curtain, past the Monsters of the Midway, past the Purple People Eaters, an even larger stumbling block is the very name of the sport—football. Well, it is a crafty combination of both history and laziness. Why is it named football if they never use their feet? That is a preposterous question. Of course they use their feet, it is not as if they are running on their hands for sixty minutes. Sure, I understand that they rarely kick the ball in American Football, but have you ever tried to play soccer with an American Football ball?

If NFL Europa had been able to hold on to the league for another year, I could have opened the world's eyes to the untapped, potential talent of Ukraine. I am not referring to the stereotypical Slavic men that are seen in James Bond films, nor am I talking about the invincible Ivan Drago of Rocky IV. I am talking about the бабушки—the grandmothers. Babushkas are a uniquely powerful specimen. Babushkas are an incomprehensible, irresitable force. Bashukas are tough—tougher than Ford Tough tough—tougher than Office Linebacker Terry Tate. They have endured and outlasted Communism, famine, government changes, wars, economic crises, and the violence of Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Unshakably they live their lives with their gold teeth glistening in their mouths like embers that fuel their blazingly purple-tinted hair, which illuminates like a hot flame everlastingly ignited atop their heads to signify their never-surrender attitude.

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The rushing breeze of the passing metro cars gave no relief to the scorching temperatures that were melting Kiev in the midst of a humid, heatwave summer. Standing on the outdoor platform of the Livoborezhna metro stop, I was bound for Pecherska, where ELC's main office was located. After a difficult early morning, rushing around Kiev teaching private lessons and business classes on only a couple hours sleep, I was headed to my weekly Wednesday meeting with my boss and fellow teachers. The blazing mid-day summer sun beat down on the city, summoning sweat from my every pore. My once-pristine undershirt began absorbing the sweat which caused it to turn tan like the crust of perfectly baked bread.

As the train came to a complete halt and threw open its door, I was hit by both exiting passengers and the overpowering scent of body odor. Sure, it would take a little longer to go to the center of the city and transfer stations underground, but the cool tunnels of the deep Kiev metro sounded more refreshing than climbing Jacob's Ladder at Arsenalna to ride a sweaty bus several blocks. I would rather take my chances Barry Sanders-ing my way through the crammed underground transfers to change lines. In essence, it was more practical to spend extra time and walk than risk passing out on the bus of heatstroke and missing my stop.

My buckled knees gave out beneath me and I crashed onto the pleather bench seat of the metro car. This car was packed with hungry lunch-time travelers daring to venture out into the summer swelter and piling into a burning metal-wagon with no ventilation. The windows of metro cars in Kiev must be welded shut; it's seldom a crack is made to allow some relief from the sauna steaming inside. Ukrainians seem hypersensitive to breezes that come into a speeding train. They would rather not risk becoming sick; they would rather die.

At the next station, sticking to the seat where I am reclined, I watched a Babushka board the train carrying two cumbersome bags filled with only-God-knows-what. Their whole lives must be packed in those bags. These elderly women always put on display such a pitiful show of how frail and weak they are. But God help anyone who would try to help them carry those bags. Acting as if she is so fragile that she will crumble to dust if she cannot have a moment to rest her aged, aching bones on the seat where my skin has fused together with the pleather. Well, if it is truly so difficult for them, then why are they always carrying around two monstrously full bags? Perhaps they would feel less wear and tear on their bodies if they learned to take it easy.

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As I have said before, Babushkas are a different kind of specimen. They live in a society and world of their own. If I had been able to start my dream franchise in NFL Europa, the Ukraine Purple-Haired Babushkas would have been a force not to reckon with. I would have signed several Babushkas to my offensive line and, undoubtedly, the fullback position. Generally speaking, Babushka are not built for acceleration, but, when they reach their top gear, it is hard to slow them down. The sheer force and wrath of Babushkas are not recognized until one comes into contact with such creatures. Even then, the incomprehensibility of these stocky, cubic compressions of iron have proven to be a doomsday for many young children, and innumerable rugged men. Of course there are disadvantages to establishing a professional sports team comprised namely of senior citizen women. But the fact that these geriatrics play ruthlessly by no rules, cancels out the fact that they need to rest several minutes after each down. Their tenacity makes up for their weathered physical conditions. It is not always about bringing the pain to your opponent. It is about intimidation—its mind games.

Babushkas are short and thick. It is uncommon to find them without their signature heavy bags. These bags are the source of their power. To take the bags away is like shaving Samson's head, like taking spinach away from Popeye, like handling kryptonite around Superman. Simply slap helmets on them (not because they need it, but because it is required in the rule book to play the game), hand them two bulky bags and pitch the ball to your star running-back—the gold-grill wearing Nastya Nikolayevna. Babushkas' skin thickens to the density of a rhinoceros' as their eyes focus in on obstacles appearing in their way. They snort and snarl apocalyptic fires from their brimstone nostrils while deflecting people left and right. What would happen when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object? You mean, what happened? Their explosiveness gave birth to a hybrid between the unstoppable force and the immovable object—the Babushka. A new star is born when two worlds collide. And when Babushka's course is plotted out, nothing shall deny her as she trounces the defence for a 99-yard touchdown. Finally, after clearing out everyone in her path, leaving broken bodies wasted and injured, strewn all over the field, she rumbles over to the bench and stands in front of the kicker to intimidate him into standing up and forfeiting his seat as well as his manhood. Babushkas are like wolves: traveling in packs seeking out the weakest of a herd to prey on their misunderstandings and feast on their timidness.

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Despite having just sat down, overwhelmed by my lack of sleep from teaching until 9:30 every night and waking up in the early-morning to teach more, I stood up for her to sit down on my perspired outline that sizzled and popped in the sun. I did not want to stand up, but it was determined for me when she stepped on the metro seeking out the nerveless person to parade her theatrics in front of. While I sit she yells at me about my lack of respect for elders and my laziness and how I am bringing shame upon my entire gender (not knowing that I am an American and seldom understand her insulting squawks); when I stand she praises and thanks me saying that chivalry and respect still triumph in this backwards world. I suppose that I can stand a little longer and cling to the rails for support. My transfer station is only a few minutes away.

As we pull into Arsenalna, the lights flicker on and off to alert people's attention. An announcement plays overhead about which station we will be arriving to. Even the monitors in the car display the location name and a small picture of the cannon that is situated near the street entrance to the station. Square dancing around each other, people jostle on and off of the tightly compressed train ushering in more fragrances, more moisture, and more attitude. Overhead there plays another announcement about our soon departure from the Arsenalna station, warning passengers to stand clear of the doors. Without warning, awakening from her hibernation, this bully Babushka, who bounced me from my seat, realizes that we will soon vamoose from her station. She nimbly springs to her feet, grabbing both bags as she starts hastily pumping her legs in cartoon-fashion in mid-air before landing on the ground to start bulldozing through the crowd. She shall not be denied. Thirty people are still flooding into the car as she rams her shoulder unexpectedly into the small of my back and hurls me forward against the current. Suddenly, I am transformed into her human shield slamming against each person between the Babushka and the door, my face slapping against the exposed chests of perspiring, hairy men until I am launched into the refreshingly cool marble walls of Kiev's deepest metro station. Oh, the unrequited prices we pay for our generosity!

Brushing away the birds flying around my head, I leap to my feet scrambling to the metro car. The doors close. The train pulls away. Here I stand at the wrong station, as that crotchety wild boar bumbles to the escalator, wiping everyone's sweat from my face and wringing out my clothes.

Discourse Markers

Examining the Usage of Discourse Markers in Ukrainian Students Speaking English at the University of Minnesota

Introduction

            The process of learning a language (whether it is a native or a foreign language) takes a lifetime to master. The path to mastering a language is filled discourse markers. My research includes two respondents (Lera and Pavlo) answering questions in an interview setting as well as observing natural conversations they have with each other and myself. Both respondents in this article learned Russian and Ukrainian as their first and second languages before learning English. Inspired by the work of Lakoff and Holmes, this work is meant to evaluate the manner in which men's and women's speech differ.  The purpose is to accurately evaluate their usage of discourse markers, such as um/uh.

Methodology/Data Collection

            The respondents that were chosen for this study share several similarities. Lera and Pavlo are citizens of Ukraine. Pavlo comes from L'viv, which is located in western Ukraine near the border with Poland. Lera comes from Crimea, which is the autonomous republic in southern Ukraine, via Kiev (the country's capitol city). Both respondents are 22-years-old, and in their first year of studying at the University of Minnesota. They speak Russian, Ukrainian and English fluently. Each respondent comes from a middle-class family in major cities, thus allowing them to each begin learning English in elementary school. Feeling a need to improve their English communication skills, they both attended tutoring sessions and discussion groups. The only variable is the respondents' sex—Lera is female and Pavlo is male. I selected to study this group of respondents due to my connection with Ukraine. I taught English in Ukraine for approximately two years between January 2008 and August 2010. The many positive experiences that I shared with Ukrainian people has motivated me to continue my interactions and partnership with them.

            My method of selection was non-random sampling from a University of Minnesota student group named USSR (Union of Students Speaking Russian). Lera and Pavlo were the only two Ukrainians that I met during a Small World Coffee Hour event, where every other week the USSR group (either in part or wholly) assemble. The implementation of non-random sampling was instituted because there was not a large enough group of Ukrainians to randomly select two respondents.

            The nature of my data collection was spoken data. I selected this type of data collection because I wanted to examine their usage of discourse markers in speech. I had contemplated also examining their writing styles, but deemed it of no significance because in their writing they are taught to purposefully avoid discourse markers. If one were to search for discourse markers in written data, it may be more difficult to collect data in a perused, edited text. Thus, spoken data provides a more informal, open medium to observe the usage of discourse markers. The majority of the spoken data that I have collected has come from a formal, face-to-face interview format. I implemented the interview format as a means of generating data in English. Without the prompting questions in English, respondent would gradually change what they were saying into Russian.

            The first respondent that I sat down with was Pavlo. We were at Ricardo's apartment with a small group having dinner together. Several members of our group needed to leave to buy additional products at the store. I was left in the living room of the apartment with both of my respondents. I told them both that I was writing a paper about the life of foreign exchange students at the University of Minnesota. It was a requirement for me to ask a few questions to hear their general impressions. Initially the idea was met with excitement. Then, Pavlo asked whether we could do this in Russian. At this point, I had to insist it be in English considering it was for an English class. When I took out my cell phone to record the conversation, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change and Pavlo began to look nervous. Throughout the interview, with myself and Lera in the room, he avoided much eye contact and frequently was glancing at the phone to see how much time had elapsed. Before the interview with Pavlo had concluded, and I could switch my attention to Lera's response to the questions, we were interrupted by the return of the other party members.

            When I was able to sit down with Lera, several days later, the setting was different. We were sitting in my living room discussing her university back in Kiev. It seemed to be a perfect time to discuss her impressions of her life and university in Minnesota. She was drinking tea and working on her computer as I asked her questions. Initially, while discussing Kiev, she was more relaxed. In a similar way with Pavlo, when I took out my cell phone to record her responses, she became more nervous in her responses. An interesting observation arose in the way which each respondent handled the nervousness of having their third language recorded. Pavlo's reaction to the nervousness he felt was to provide an answer to the questions as quickly as possible. Lera's style starkly contrasts with Pavlo's as Lera began to speak more slowly and carefully.

            As aforementioned the linguistic variable that I will be looking for is the usage of discourse markers, such as um/uh, which are pragmatic variables. Other discourse markers that were used by the respondents were: like, well, yeah, kind of, I don't know, actually, and anyways. Upon listening to the original interviews and examining the recorded data and transcription, it was remarkably noticeable how Pavlo used discourse markers (um, and uh) far more often than Lera. Whereas both respondents used the word like on an equal scale. Although um and uh are two different discourse markers, they appeared to be interchangeable in their pragmatic function. The reason I chose to research the usage of um/uh is because they seemed to be more noticeable in the initial data collecting process.

Statistical Analysis

Usage of um/uh in total word count

	Um/Uh	Word Count	Percentage
Lera	5	720	1 in 144
Pavlo	41	1119	1 in 27.29

Usage of um/uh in time segments:

	Um/Uh	Time	Percentage
Lera	5	8 minutes	Once every 96 seconds
Pavlo	41	7 minutes, 15 seconds	Once every 10.61 seconds

Pragmatic Functions:

There are five different features which I have identified in the usage of um/uh discourse markers:

1.     Focusing

Focusing is a technique which draws attention to a certain aspect of what the respondent is trying to communicate.

	Um/Uh	Total ~ Focusing	Frequency
Lera	5	3	60.00%
Pavlo	41	29	70.73%

Examples:

♠       “I'm studying because I, um, transferred from the University in Ukraine – National University of Kiev.”  ~  Lera

♠       “In Russia and Ukraine, it’s not – they don't give you enough, um, knowledge.”  ~ Lera

♠       “So, when I finished high school, um, I had-I have really cool friend, and she-so she started to study, um, English as her major, like interpretation or translation.”  ~  Pavlo

2.     Translating

            Allowing brief time to evaluate word choice as the respondent attempts to adhere to local vernacular and regional word choices.

	Um/Uh	Total ~ Translating	Frequency
Lera	5	1	20.00%
Pavlo	41	8	19.51%

Examples:

♠       “It’s, um, it’s difficult to receive any knowledge of language from the teacher.”  ~    Lera

♠       “She was not eligible for applying for this scholarship because she, uh, she was like a, uh, she was a senior.”  ~ Pavlo

♠       “Um, when I – so as you know – in Ukraine we learn English starting from the very first form and then to the, um, uh, the eleventh grade—until, uh, we finish the high school.”  ~  Pavlo

3.     Error Correction

            As the respondent is speaking their sentence, there is a break, filled with um/uh, that allows for the respondent to quickly evaluate their speech to make sure it follows basic Standard American English grammatical forms.

	Um/Uh	Total ~ Error Correction	Frequency
Lera	5	0	0.00%
Pavlo	41	2	4.88%

Examples:

♠       “My, um, mine scores were 96.”  ~ Pavlo

♠       “Yeah, so, I do – I do, uh, I really do like it.”  ~ Pavlo

4.     Conjunctions

            This feature is shown to be a conjunction between two different clauses.

	Um/Uh	Total ~ Focusing	Frequency
Lera	5	1	20.00%
Pavlo	41	0	0.00%

Example:

♠       “So, it wasn't too difficult to be away from my parents, um, it can be difficult to be away from my culture, I guess.”  ~  Lera

5.     Split Infinitives

The insertion of um/uh in between the two parts of an infinitive.

	Um/Uh	Total ~ Focusing	Frequency
Lera	5	0	0.00%
Pavlo	41	2	4.88%

Examples:

♠       “Where they ask you questions … things that you wrote in your essays and after this you got to do is to, um, pass TOEFL test.”  ~  Pavlo

♠       “It really inspired me to, um, start to improve my English.”  ~  Pavlo

Interpretation

            Looking through the data it becomes striking how different the results of this research are. It comes as no surprise, however, that the most common pragmatic function is “focusing.” When analyzing this pragmatic function, each respondent uses focusing to account for upwards of 60-70% of their total usage. Thus, percentages show a similarity which is not reflected in the actual word count ratio. Lera's total um/uh word count was only 5; whereas Pavlo's usage was upwards of 800% higher, totaling 41 counts. When looking at the amount of times Lera used um/uh as focusing (60%) in comparison to the amount of times Pavlo used um/uh as a focusing function (70%), there is statistically little variation. However, Pavlo's um/uh is far more noticeable than Lera's. I defer that Pavlo's use of um/uh as a focusing function is used because his rate of speech is much quicker than Lera's mindful responses. In order to keep listeners focused on the hasty ideas that he is trying to express, Pavlo utilizes um/uh as focusing expressions. 

            Along similar lines, when Pavlo is speaking, he uses um/uh as a pragmatic function to translate more times than Lera. Lera does it once which contributes to 20% of her um/uh usage, where Pavlo uses this function 8 times for 19.51% of his total. Although the percentages would indicate Lera uses this function more frequently, transcripts actually shows Pavlo more frequently displays occurrences of using um/uh in combination with 2-3 second pauses as a means to translate his thought.

            Another feature of interest in my research was that I had originally thought that um/uh would be used as a means to correct errors in the grammatical structure of sentences. I found out through transcribing the data that this hypothesis was erroneous. In fact, Lera did not utilize this function at all, and Pavlo only used this function twice. It was surprising to find that what I thought that I heard in normal conversation seemed not to be there when I began to transcribe and analyze my data. The same occurrence appeared with my “Split Infinitives” pragmatic function. I expected to reveal more instances of split infinitive usages of um/uh. Instead, I found that Lera did not utilize this function at all, and, again, Pavlo only used it twice. Both the lack of findings for “Split Infinitives” and “Error Correction” were a surprise to me, because I had expected to see their occurrence on a more regular basis, considering each respondent may disregard different grammatical structures when answering my inquiries.

Problems with Research

            One difficulty that presented itself with my research was scheduling conflicts. Because of the busy atmosphere of the end of this Spring semester, it became a challenge to meet with my respondents for further conversations. Whenever I was able to see Lera, she was with several other native Russian speakers which made it difficult to keep the conversation freely flowing in English. Pavlo's internship, volunteering, and studying kept him incessantly preoccupied with other duties. I was only able to document one more recording with Pavlo, but we were again with other people. Perhaps he was more relaxed with friends as we walked around campus discussing architecture and the end of the school year, but one external factor that caused havoc for my research was the wind. Most of the hour and a half of time that I could record him in a relaxed atmosphere was rendered inadmissible because the quality of the recording was greatly compromised by the strong gusty winds into the recorder. Although, from hearing distinguishable clips, his use of um/uh discourse markers appeared not to change much.

            As for Lera, we have had several other discussions, but none of them were recorded. However, I observed a difference in her demeanor and speech. She was more relaxed and conversational when the audio recorder was absent. This relaxation caused a more steady and rapid verbal flow of her thoughts. Although data was not recorded, the increase of the like, um/uh, yeah and okay discourse markers was audibly noticeable. As for having Pavlo and Lera talk with each other, the idea's first attempt rendered nonproductive. While discussing the topic of the University of Minnesota and Lera's upcoming graduation, their language switched to Russian. It has proved difficult to persuade them to speak only in English.

            Another difficulty that I encountered with my research, apart from time and availability of my respondents, was eliminating one of my initial discourse markers—like. I spent time and energy researching the discourse marker, only to discover that the pragmatic functions were inaccurate and I was counting merely the amount of times they used like. The problem with all of this was more so my own misunderstandings of like as a discourse marker and like as another part of speech. In the end, it proved to be a more inconclusive aspect of my research because each of my respondents used the word like equally. It made the findings of um/uh in their speech look more remarkable.

Conclusion

            I found that the data which I collected and analyzed was quite contrary to my initial hypothesis. I expected to find that Lera's and Pavlo's frequent discourse markers would point to Lera adhering to Lakoff's findings, as well as the respondents would both use um/uh as a means of correcting their grammatical errors when their thoughts were spoken aloud. On the contrary, when discussing the usage of um/uh in the speech of Lera, her usage was far less than Pavlo's. That is not to say, however, that she uses fewer discourse markers than he does. My research only proves that, in the studies that I have conducted about the um/uh discourse markers used by Ukrainian students studying at the University of Minnesota, Pavlo displayed a stronger disposition towards using these discourse markers. My research also concludes that the focusing function was the most prominently used, which means that um/uh are not a means to determine that my respondents are unsure of their answers. In fact, this study shows that they are rather aware of the intent of their discourse markers and the functions that each carry.

            In further analysis of this topic, I would like to expand my focus of discourse markers to include more than just um/uh, perhaps I would identify each discourse marker used by each respondent. Also, if I continue to look at the differences in the usage of discourse markers between each sex, it would be beneficial to expand the number of respondents in order to collect a wider range of data. The small respondents pool caused my data to be too specified, and unable to draw conclusions for more generalized research. Also, if to continue researching the use of English spoken by Ukrainians, I would like to consider code-switching. Much of the data I collected included different variations of switching between English and Russian.

v Appendix A:

Lera’s Transcript

Speakers: Lera and Interviewer (Brent)

Setting: Sitting on sofas in my living room talking about the United States.

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Interviewer: Tell me, how do you like the United States?

Lera: I do like the United States, even though there are some things that I didn't like about the United States. But I think now it is especially difficult for me to talk about because I'm really homesick. And, because people are homesick, they tend to like less a foreign country, foreign places or whatever. But there are a lot of things that I like about the United States. Like things are clean and well organized and safe and maybe there are more opportunities here than there are in my country.

Interviewer: Okay, so why are you studying in the United States?

Lera: I'm studying because I, um, transferred from the University in Ukraine – National University of Kiev. And, um, I think at some point at my university I didn't know what I was going to do. So, I decided to get this experience abroad and maybe broaden my knowledge, broaden my perspectives. I came to the United States. And …

Interviewer: Okay, so, how long have you been studying English?

Lera: I studied English, well, I started studying English when I was in elementary school; which most of people in Ukraine start studying English, well, I lived in Russia when I started studying English in my school, in my elementary school. And usually in schools, like in Russia and Ukraine, it’s not – they don't give you enough, um, knowledge. They expect you to know a lot in language. So, it’s kind of – on one hand it’s difficult to keep up with all – all exercises and all tasks – but, at the same time, its, um, it’s difficult to receive any knowledge of language from the teacher. So, I started studying, I had a private teacher for sometimes – she was, she was a student. She wasn't like special sort of teacher or something. She was just a student who learned English really well. And, yeah, but by the time I wa – I graduated from high school, I hated English. I just hated it. So then when I entered the University, I din – I, I started studying Spanish. But by, when when-when-when it was third year in the university, I realized that I really need English. I mean, any normal person that wants to achieve something in contemporary world needs to know more than one language, so… So, I went to a private school to study English. And that’s been, like, three years. So, I would say it’s been three years of intensive English studying. And I had a lot – I had native English speakers to talk to, which helped me a lot. I think that what really help to learn language.

Interviewer: Yeah. So, what's the most difficult part of studying here?

Lera: Well, being away from home is kind of difficult. But I, I don't know, I moved out of my parent's house when I started university in Kiev. So, it wasn't too difficult to be away from my parents, um, but it can be difficult to be away from my culture, I guess. But actually, I thought it would be much more difficult to study here. Like, I-I was worried if my language is good enough to read texts in English, to write papers in English, to understand teachers, everything. Then I realized that it’s not that difficult, and teachers are helpful, and language they use is not that difficult. I think that in-in-in, like, Ukrainian universities teachers use more, like, sophisticated, scientific language, like they always – it’s like they always want to confuse you. Here its more, like, clear, simple and there wasn't too difficult to understand. But, anyways… I mean its still – I read slower than I do in Russian and Ukrainian. But, its fine.

Interviewer: Yeah. Have you been able to meet a lot of people from Ukraine, or Russia, or parts of Eastern Europe?

Lera: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of people from Eastern Europe here, from what I noticed. And I became a–  good friends, friends with some people from, from Eastern Europe – from Russia and Ukraine Belarus. And, and I think it’s—it’s kind of interesting, I think sometimes—sometimes I think that we wouldn't be friends if we met in Ukraine with these people, but here, just because we are—I guess we're all homesick and we kinda just become friends. So, I don't know. And, yeah, sometimes I hear—I hear Russian just on the streets of Minneapolis, other places here, and it’s kind of interesting. It’s always, like, surprising me but, at the same time, I don't know, I know there are a lot of immigrants.                                           

** (END 8:03) **

v Appendix B:

Pavlo’s Transcript

Speakers: Pavlo, Lera, and Interviewer (Brent)

Setting: Sitting on sofas in Ricardo's apartment.

*                                                                      *                                                                      *

Interviewer: “Yeah, it can be anonymous. Completely anonymous. Alright?”

Pavlo: “Okey.”

Interviewer: “I don't know how well this sound works, so we'll just set it there and see how it works. Anyway, so, tell us: how do you like the United States?”

Pavlo: “Um, I do like the Uni – United States of Amarica, because, uh, I think that thee Ukrainians have, uh, reellee like lot o' thing to learn from Amaricans and from Amaric – from the experience of Amaricans. Yeah, so, I do – I do, uh, I really do like it. However, there are a quite a few things that I don' really like about Amaricans, but …  Oh, I mean, uh, I don' like about Amarican lifestyle, not about Amaricans. Uh, mmm, okey, but in general, I'm really happy to be here, uh, uh, really happy that I got this chance to come here, this scholarship, and to experience this kin'a Amarican life, and take some more positive experiences with me. Okey, next question.

Interviewer: A'right, well that's pretty cool.

(Laughter)

Lera: Like TOEFL

(Laughter)

Interviewer: Don' worry about tha' …

Lera: Yeah, forty seconds of, like, ahhhhh!

(Laughter)

Interviewer: Okay, so, how did you end up getting this scholarship to bring you here?

Pavlo: So, um, mine friend – One day, I guess it was somewhere in September…um…year ago, my friend, uh, sent me a link wia Vkontakte and she sow this kin'a advertisement of this scholarship, but she was not elligible for applying for this scholarship because she, uh, she was like a, uh, she was a senior.

Interviewer: Okay

Pavlo: This scholarship 's only for ju… , uh, freshmens, um, Suphmores? Suphmores and Juniyers. And, in order to apply you got to create on de website des, uh, of IREKS. IREKS is a kin'a, its a, administAtor of des scholarship.

Interviewer: Kay.

Pavlo: Um, you gotta create an account, you gotta pos' your scores that you get your school carrently – at your carrent school. You got te post, eh, lotza, your, um, working spericence, your volunteering experience, your, um, mmm, culture experience, li… alloatza zat stuff. And, especially de, I sink de emphasis is on da volunteering experience because Amaricans reellee – are reelly into volunteering.

Interviewer: Yeah… 

Pavlo: Okay, besides that you have to write this three esseys, essays, each of them for one tousand words, and, wa, de firs one is a why would yo like to study in the USA. The second one is your idea of a leadership and who's a good leader and why and it could be any one – like a member of your family or the president of some, some country, any country or etcetra. Okey. And the third one is the letter to your roommate, your future roommate. Of course, your roommate don't gonna get it. If you, if you get de scholarship. But, its jus' zat, yeah, where yer writing about yeorself, yeor life, yeor family, yeor town. Okey. So, den, eef you are lucky, de call you and de say that you, you are semI-finalist. If you're not lucky dey just sent you a letter, send you a letter and say, “Oh, thank you very much for applying. But, unfortunately, I mean, we liked your esseys very much and you, but … (inaudible) …” Okay, and if you become a semifinalist, semi-finalist you go to Kiev for intERview with the five Amaricans – four Amaricans, one Ukrainian alumNI of this same scholarship – and were they ask you questions  which are pretty much about your, um, essays and things that you wrote in your essays and after this you got to do is to, um, pass TOEFL test.

Interviewer: Oh...

Pavlo: And there is no minimum. I mean, you just have to pass the TOEFL test, and then-then they'll, I mean, if y-they like you—if they like everything else about you, but your TOEFL test is pretty low, they—I think they're take you. Um, I mean, but not a really low, but, like, 60 out of 120 or something. Okay. My, um, mine scores were 96.

Interviewer: 96?

Pavlo: Yeah. I mean, I was, like, really? I-I thought, like, 70. Like, 70-80 – something like this. I was, “Wha? What?” At, like, the first fifteen minutes, I thought that somethings wrong. I mean, maybe it’s not the right score. Maybe it’s not the same scale. I don't know. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, that's how I got here. Okay.

Interviewer: That's great. Where did you learn your English?

Pavlo: Um, when I – so as you know – in Ukraine we learn English starting from the very first form and then to the, um, uh, the eleventh grade—until, uh, we finish the high school. But when I finished the high school, I couldn't barely speak the word; I could barely say the word. Yeah, because we were…

Lera: Same here. (laughter)

Pavlo: (Laughter). 'Cause we were not motivated at all; there was no motivation. Yeah, we kinda, we liked it, but yeah. So, and the teachers sometimes, I had some—teachers change, teachers change all the time. Some of them were really good. But some of them, they-they could barely speak themselves. I mean, they could, they know the—they knew the grammar and stuff, but they had no practice. They never seen an Englishman or American in there life. Like, yeah, okay. So, when I finished high school, um, I had-I have really cool friend, and she-so she started to study, um, English as her major, like interpretation or translation. I don't know how you call it. Okay, and, um, she was coming to my house and to, because I have-I had VHS. She needed to watch those movies for her (inaudible), and I was watching with her. I cou-I could barely understand a thing, a word. And really inspired me, it really inspired me to, um, start to improve my English, and there was also a, in L'viv, there was also American, um, American Methodist Church. Tha-tha was- that was there some organization. They had, uh, every Thursday they had, uh, (inaudible), where they had—it was kinda Bible studies. It was really fun. It was really for students, and it was really fun. People were nice there. And I was, um, coming where with my friends sometimes and there were so many Americans. And they were, like, talking English when they were talking Bible or something else, they were talking English, and at the very beginning I could also barely understand something. That was another motivation for me to learn. So, what did I do? I applied for some private school. Just some, get something like what you were teaching, and it was pretty expensive. But, um, I applied for it, and I was taking private courses for one year. Then I read three books, or four, or five, I don't know, but they are pretty thick. And they were, like, adapted literature. Simplified, they were simplified. And, um, I was reading those books. I was watching quite a few movies. At the very beginning, as usual, I could barely understand something, but then it was getting better and better and better. And I was also, um, frequently going to that, um, student center and there were lots of Americans. There I had, um, my first experience in speaking English.

** (END 7:15) **