Table of Contents

Table of Contents Let's Rewind Analyze That! Off the Map Change I Could Get Used to Extreme Makeover: Essay Edition I Have a Voice! The Cure to World Hunger: My Mother’s Cooking Knocking on Heaven’s Door My Community

Let's Rewind

Hello all! Or should I be saying goodbye? Anyways, my name is Jimmy Creek and I will be saying goodbye to this class in a little less than a week. However, before the fond farewell, I would like to offer up this chance to get to know me a little bit better and to understand my experience in English 101. First off, a little bit of history. I come from a long line of interesting people that led extraordinarily interesting lives, but unfortunately, the buck stopped at me. I grew up in a bland town called Maple Valley, full to the brim with a lack of diversity. In an act of pure heroism, I decided to break away from my plain vanilla life and to take a diversity course in the hopes of meeting a whole host of people with different perspectives, but not to actually chance my own outlook. This became greatest failure this semester, and I couldn’t be more grateful. My appreciation for this class came from its impeccable ability to challenge and stretch the bounds of my opinions on tradition, community, and identity.

I showed up in this class expecting nothing from it, but in turn was given the chance to see a whole multitude of different viewpoints on identity, community, and tradition. Identity to me was nothing more than a mixture of who one was and who others around that person wanted them to be. However, after reading story after story, I came to realize that identity was so much more than that. Identity was no longer something to be defined, because it was different for everyone. For one person, like Gloria Anzaldua, Identity could mean the language we speak, while for others, identity could simply be who we are at school. There is no way to know this about anyone without engaging him or her and finding out, a guarantee of a pleasant surprise in store. With this newfound blow to my small-town paradigm, I trekked forward, a new target in sight: community. I thought to myself ‘surely community could only be defined by where one grew up and nothing more’. I could not have been further from the truth of things. Community is where we make it. People can find community anywhere a group of people can be found. The only thing holding anyone back is that connection that draws the line between a group of separate individuals and a community. At that point in the semester, I decided that I knew nothing. There was no way that I could see the whole picture with my limited perception. It was only after sharing my life through my traditions that I realized that I was as much a part of the picture as everyone else.

As for this portfolio, I decided to go with my first essay entitled “” for my revision. I chose this piece in order to adapt it to my fresh take on diversity and identity. For the critical thinking portion, I went with my timed essay of “Off the Map” because I think that my analysis of the movie was of the highest caliber in comparison to my own work. To awareness of audience and voice, I decided to go with my blog on tradition. It was the piece that I enjoyed writing the most and I believed it to be the best possible example of my voice as a writer. An acquired taste for most readers, that’s for sure. Finally, for writer’s choice I went with my community blog because it was the piece I was most passionate about, and I think it best captures my versatility as a writer (the little that I have). Without this piece, I don’t think the e-portfolio would be complete.

I’ve never been too good at goodbyes. For the most part it turns into an awkward glance down at my shoes and then I end up walking the same direction as the one I said goodbye to, so I slow down in order to widen the gap and not draw attention to the fact that I made an ass of myself. So instead of goodbye, I will offer up advice. This goes out to anyone curious about taking this class in the future. I say go through with it, but take it seriously. My gravest mistake during this semester was to think that I wouldn’t learn anything from this class. Because of that, I was left with a grade reflective of that mistake, and despite my greatest efforts, I learned much more than I thought I could from the other students in this class. So thank you English 101D OL, I will never forget you.

Off the Map

In the movie Off the Map, what it meant to be an outsider was challenged for me. From a distance, It looked to me as though Mr. Gibbs was the only outsider. It was an open and shut case. As Mr. Gibbs approached a naked Arlene Groeden in the garden, he knew that things would be a little different with this family. The longer that Gibbs stayed with the Groedens on their farm, the more he realized everything he had been missing was everything that they had come to take for granted. However, as I started to pay closer attention to the movie and the intentions of the director, I noticed that things weren’t as simple as labeling Mr. Gibbs the only outsider. That’s when I realized that becoming an outsider, whether it be someone from the outside world or someone feeling like an outsider in their own world, was all based on perspective.

Gibbs was, by all my previous definitions, an outsider. He had never been far enough outside his own life to experience what the Groeden’s had, but he knew it was time for an escape.  Gibbs was changed the moment he was stung by a bee, a first for him, and the second he tried their delicious water. Gibbs’ related the Groeden’s in such a powerful way because they had everything he had ever needed but didn’t know he wanted; a mother that cared, a father faced with the same depression he had been struggling with all his life, a daughter thirsty for knowledge, and time. Lots and lots of time. The longer that Gibbs stayed, the more he began to feel at home. This was proven when the boat hauler asked if the family had received any of his calls, in which Gibbs replied “We don’t have a phone.” Gibbs saying that meant that he considered himself part of family and his days as an outsider were over. Bo stated it best when in reference to Gibbs she said, “Someone I considered as a link to the outside world has actually been swallowed in the quicksand of mine.” However, Gibbs’ would not be the only one to finally find his place.

Charlie Groeden was a man that had become an outsider in his own life because he had lost anything to relate to that could tether him down. For the entire film, it seemed as though he had simply become a spectator to his family and friends, on the outside looking in. The arrival or Gibbs changed all this, however. Charlie began to see more and more what he was missing out on in his own life. With every night-chat between the depressed lumps of Charlie and Gibbs, he began to get a peek into what he was missing out on. I’m not sure why Charlie went to Gibbs for a friend, maybe he had seen glimpses of himself in Gibbs’ demeanor or maybe he simply needed an outsider to feel comfortable with, but Gibbs and Charlie slowly became closer throughout their time together. Eventually Gibbs opened up Charlie’s eyes when he commented to Charlie during a late talk, “I admire you more than any man I’ve ever known.” He admired Charlie’s life in a way that would finally snap Charlie from his depressed haze. Shortly after saying this, Gibbs bursted into tears, and in that in that moment, I believe that Charlie got a look at what his family had seen for the past six months, and in that moment Charlie finally broke through the glass that made him a spectator and rejoined the world, all simply because he was able to relate to one person in a moment of sincerity.

All in all, my perceptions of outsiders were crushed. I had always believed an outsider to be someone that was from a far away place, and that it took an incredibly long time to be considered an ‘insider’. However, I realized after watching this film that I was dead wrong. Charlie had spent his entire life with his family, in the middle of nowhere, with no phones or electricity to distract them from each other, had become an outsider in his own life. Then there was Gibbs, a man from a far off land, sent to audit a family that he would come to call his own. Both these men spent far too much time as outsiders. However, lives were changed in a moment; a single moment of related clarity between two kindred spirits that would shatter a father’s depression and finally plant Gibbs’ roots in the desert sands of New Mexico when he had been running his whole life.

Knocking on Heaven's Door

          Last but not least, the writer’s choice. For this piece I decided to give it up to my community blog. I believe this best encapsulates who I am as a person. For me, that far outweighs my abilities as a writer. Who I am is my belief. My faith. Because of that fact, I went with this blog because it gave me the opportunity to share that with the reader. An example of this would be when I wrote, “It is this habitual and stubborn faith in an invisible, but evident God that gives me the strength and desire to never abandon my faith”. This is just one example of an essay that is a complete portrayal of my hope. Without showing the reading myself, I don’t think that this portfolio would be complete or even worth reading.

My Community

Reading the bible is community... These words resonate within me as I look up from my bible, take a look around the church I find myself sitting in and register what I see. I see a lost people; lost within themselves or within something greater. I see a single entity; one made up of hundreds of people with different lives but similar hearts. What is it that ties these people together? It is the brokenness of our lives and the knowledge of our own mortality, fallibility, and ambition to seek out the only one to ever do it right. In the act of putting our own selfishness aside, we find each other. We are brought together by hope and held together by faith. An ineffable emotion given by something higher than ourselves is what we crave, and when brought together in worship through our reading of the Word... well, as the Good book says, 'ask and you shall receive'.

I look back and see someone sitting alone, maybe seeking out isolation or maybe not having a choice in the matter. More than often I find those who seek acceptance turned away, intimidated by the sea of undignified belief flowing over the crowds, or maybe having that laundry list of presumptions confirmed in one sense or another. This feeling that makes them race for the door is just as easily removed as it is gained by a kind word or gesture from the frequent fliers in the church. However repeatedly this attention becomes misplaced in introspection or introversion. Sometimes people get so caught up in the act of reading the bible that they forget what it truly teaches and what it really looks like to be in a community full of neighbors loving each other.

To break this in-cohesion is what I seek. I want to throw away the suppositions that have gripped those that find themselves in church for the first time. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t also wish to gain the acceptance of the community, but I know there is something so much more satisfying in bringing that community to those who may need it more. Not to say that the church needs to be full of guys like me, because frankly one is almost too much to handle. In fact, everyone in this community counts. Everyone is a different part of the body of believers that should be delivering their hope to the people. This hope all stems from the communal act of reading the bible. It is this habitual and stubborn faith in an invisible, but evident God that gives me the strength and desire to never abandon my faith. All this rooted in the bible, an eternal reminder of what a true community should look like.

Extreme Makeover: Essay Edition

          I’m not sure when the idea of identity formed. Did the cavemen think it up, as they sat around the first campfire and pointed grimy fingers at the odd man out in his leopard skin loincloth? All I know is that somewhere down the line, people started to let others define who they were. In fact, others’ opinions have become like a cataract, clouding how we look at ourselves in order to find our own identity. People will bend and shape their own image in order to fit the mold set by society and peers. We end up blindly follow examples of those more likeable characters around us and begin to transform our physical and emotional character, until our new self is nothing but a mutilated version ofwho we used to be. 

          Physical appearance is playing a larger and larger role in developing identity as young kids. From a young age, we are told that we are beautiful for who we are, however once we enter high school that all goes out the window. For some reason, how classmates view students can forever change the students’ perception of who or what they want to be. For Lucy Grealy, this insecurity manifested itself in how she looked. In fact, her favorite memories were during the one time a year that she could cover her face up; Halloween. Grealy testifies to this in her essay by writing “…I began to realize why I felt so good. No one could see me clearly. No one could see my face.” (Grealy. 67) Before long, she found herself resenting the people around her because of what she had to go through. Even after hearing a story about her new college roommate had survived being run over by an iceboat she commented on it by saying “After all, she’d lived, hadn’t she? ... So what was the big fuss about?” (Grealy. 71) This simply goes to show that living a lifestyle of self-consciousness can have repercussions.

However, physical insecurity is only one example of what people deal with in terms of how others view them. For Gloria Anzaldua, there was less insecurity with how she looked, but more emotional pressure from society on how to act. This pressure, displayed through the demand to change her language, ultimately morphed her into she was as a person. From an early age she was told by her society that she was “…speaking the oppressor’s language by speaking English.” (Anzaldua 79) However, she was then told by her teachers that “If you want to be American, speak ‘American. If you don’t like it, then go back to Mexico where you belong.” (Anzaldua 78) On one hand she felt a push to learn English to assimilate, but a pull to uphold her Chicana roots. This dichotomy between her two cultures resulted in a rebellious streak for Anzaldua and even led her to define herself by her language. She proved this by saying “I am my language.” (Anzaldua 83) While this could be seen as a better outcome than being resentful, it also isn’t necessarily who she would have chosen to be if those cultural pressures weren’t there.

We fight our entire lives to become someone we are not. People and society tell us how to look and act, and we abide because not to be accepted is a fate worse than death. Queen Latifah, aside from being my personal hero, is an incredible example of overcoming these insecurities and pressures that peers and culture set on us. She said it best when writing “What I am is a young black woman from the inner city who is making it, despite the odds, despite the obstacles I’ve had to face in the lifetimes that have come my way.” (Latifah pg. 33) Until people are satisfied with being themselves and surrender themselves to the fact that they cannot please everyone, they will never stop striving after an identity that is not our own. Overcoming the physical and emotional demands that people put before us along with the demands we set for ourselves is the only way to accomplish this.

Change I Could Get Used to

For my revision piece, I decided to go with my very first paper on Identity entitled ‘Identity: What Makes Us or Breaks Us”. I chose this because it was the essay I had written before learning a lick about MLA, analysis, and good paper writing in general. Before revision, I had written a thesis that had no particular meaning whatsoever. It was a sentence without any bearings. This set the mood for the entire paper in a way that made it nearly impossible to follow along with. For example, my first transition sentence was “From an early age we are told that we are special and unique, capable of anything we could ever dream up. However, all that goes out the window once we enter high school”. This sentence had absolutely nothing to do with my thesis. After going back and completely readjusting my thesis (“We end up blindly follow examples of those more likeable characters around us and begin to transform our physical and emotional character, until our new self is nothing but a mutilated version of who we used to be.”) and transitioning sentences between paragraphs (“Physical appearance is playing a larger and larger role in developing identity as young kids.”), I think I finally have it just right.

The Cure to World Hunger: My Mother's Cooking

I am an actor. I am an actor and I will never be convinced otherwise. Maybe a little explaining is needed? Well then, let me start from the beginning. Before I start, let ye be warned, this will be nothing less than a cynic's tangent. So hide yo’ wife, hide yo’ kids, because things are about to get volatile. Now, let's get down to business. Every year my family has a huge Christmas Eve blowout. I don't know why the Creek family chose Christmas Eve to throw the festivities, but it has always been tradition to eat to explosive proportion, and then open up our presents which, if you're a big fan of disappointment, will never disappoint. Perhaps, for some reason, everybody fattening up the day before Christmas gives a head start on yet another failed New Year's resolution. And maybe this event wouldn't be something that I blacked out on my calendar with a jumbo sharpie if it weren't my entire extended family in my parents' singlewide trailer. Claustrophobic yet? However, the very worst of it would have to be the cooking.

My mom is under the misconception that she can cook. I don't know when or where in the world she got this notion, but it's as if Martha Stuart got hit with an extraordinary amount of Gamma radiation that turned her green and deadly whenever she was near food... that is my mother. It's like God gave her taste buds as a joke! Anyways, all this bashing is beside the point. Every Christmas Eve, in order to uphold silly traditions, my mom cooks what she would like to call a honey roasted ham, an abomination that has nearly turned me vegetarian on many occasions. This is always to be followed up by her culinary take on the sponge. The Germans in my bloodline that have passed down this family recipe from generation to generation like to call it strudel, but I call it a sponge because it has the uncanny ability to suck every bit of moisture out of a person's mouth. However, the fun doesn't stop there.

While my mom may be killer in the kitchen (I wish I weren’t be literal here), she is not the only one diagnosed with this terrible cooking disease. In fact, on Christmas Eve, the disease becomes an epidemic with my household being the quarantine zone. I think it might be a gene passed through the generations. Anyways, for some reason everyone in my extended family insists that they bring their own baked goodies to have them judged alongside my mom's own Chernobyl-stricken monstrosities. And who better to be the judge them than yours truly? That's right, I am the lucky judge of this poison-eating contest, and it is an honor that I wear proudly. It seems that when it comes to judging, I never clock off.

So why am I a great actor? Need I even answer that question? For no one else could hide his or her contempt for such a holiday get-together behind a smile as well as I. However, in the grand scheme of things, I realize how important this is to my mother and the rest of the family. I put on a smile, both fake and genuine. Fake because I hope that someday they will realize that I am not smiling, but simply baring my teeth and then they might put and end to feeding me their home-made urinal cakes, but genuine in the knowledge that this is one of the few times I get to see my family together. And when it comes to my family, as much as I love to harp on them, I do love our time together.

I Have a Voice

          For my piece on voice, I decided to go with my all time favorite tradition blog entitled “The Cure to World Hunger: My Mother’s Cooking”. I chose this with two hopes in mind. The first hope being that I could portray my voice and audience awareness as best as possible. A blog is meant to be casual after all, almost like a one-sided conversation. This is why I put statements in there like “So hide yo’ wife, hide yo’ kids, because things are about to get volatile.” I don’t believe that this line would shed a credible light on my more formal essays. Being able to learn how to do blogs has done wonders on developing my voice as a writer. I’ve never been given the reigns on a paper the way I was with the blogs. Because of this, voice and audience has become something that I am gradually becoming more and more aware of. Oh, and the second hope of mine is that my mother is to never read this.

Analyze That!

The term analysis has been a huge jerk to me. I know that it is impossible to label a term as 'a jerk', but give me a chance to explain. At the beginning of the semester, I could never seem to quite understand what I was doing with analysis. However, as the semester progressed, I believe I was finally able to grasp at what analysis was. For this piece, I chose to go with my timed essay of “Off the Map. I chose this piece because I was impressed with what I was able to do with it with the time allotted to me. I was able to take statements from the movie and use them to support my own idea in the essay. For example, the essay was written on the definition of being an outsider, and I was able to take notice that when Mr. Gibbs said, “We don’t have a phone,” that he had discovered his home with the Groedens, simply by using the word ‘we’. For those of you who weren’t able to watch this movie, I both apologize for my vague reference and recommend you see that movie. It will change your life. Not really.