Is Twitter Making Us Better Writers?

The limiting of language and thought to 140 characters has been bemoaned since Twitter became a "thing."   It's the butt of many jokes, despite the obvious and indisputable power it has proven to be in the realms of news reporting and marketing.

But could the popularization of Twitter be a watershed moment in the evolution of our language?

The major languages spoken around the world today are living languages, always evolving. We know that each generation of students has an increasingly difficult time understanding the works of Shakespeare, and even the documents and writings on which the foundation of this country (the United States) was built!  And though this is sad, it's not necessarily the students' fault.  The students are not more stupid than their predecessors, the material isn't any less relatable; it is just that the ways in which we speak have evolved since those times, making them difficult to follow.  I remember sitting in my high school history classes, reading primary documents and getting frustrated. "Why does this sentence never end?? Where was the subject of that sentence?? This one seems to end in the middle of a thought, for Christ's sake!"  It took a lot of work to unlock the key to reading such a verbose language style. The reason was that I trying to impose today's rules of proper writing on yesterday's literature.

Though language arts have largely been neglected in favor of STEM education (don't get me started there), today's English classes still teach certain style preferences: Sentences should not run on too long or contain more than one thought.  A strong sentence has a rigid structure of subject-verb-object, with one or two prepositional phrases thrown in for color, max.  We DIAGRAM sentences, for fuck's sake.  It is highly formulaic.

So it's no wonder our language has evolved to be shorter and more concise, and this is neither worse, nor better. It simply is.

Advanced students are also taught how to most effectively convey their thoughts, usually with use of the Golden Rule: "SHOW, don't tell."  We learn to use the active, rather than the passive voice.  We learn to get away from vague statements and to provide specifics details, to prove or demonstrate our claims. "Show me how the man felt when he saw his lover, don't just tell me he was sad!" yelled many a Creative Writing teacher.

Therefore, given today's rules of what "good" writing is - conciseness, specificity, directness - could Twitter actually be improving students' writing?

If you've ever read a paper written by an average high schooler, you probably know how much help they need in this department.  Thanks to what I told you not to get me started on earlier, the quality of writing - as judged by the ability to meet current standards of good writing - has drastically diminished in recent generations.  I teach an undergraduate science laboratory class and have encouraged an increased emphasis on writing even in these "practical" classes because students obviously aren't getting enough of it elsewhere. I was alarmed when I graded the very first white paper assignment from my students and felt that I was not in fact reading college-level work, but rather had somehow mixed up my stack of papers with that of a middle school science teacher! One of the largest problems in my students' writing has consistently been an inability to actually say anything.  I get the 2-3 pages I asked for, but there is only about a paragraph's worth of actual information.

We've taught our students to fill up space with words, without teaching them how to say anything.

I removed the page requirement and told my students for the next assignment that I didn't care how long it was; I cared about the content.  If they could tell me everything I needed to know in under a page - do it. What I got was again papers between 1 and 3 pages in length that still didn't convey clearly many of the main points.

Obviously, there was a problem.  There was no critical thinking going on in here; all I was getting was a regurgitation (and usually some bastardization) of what I had said in class or what was printed in the manuals in front of their faces.  Perhaps to some of you I seem harsh to say these were brain-dead papers with absolutely no thought gone into the structure, flow, or syntax and much less the actual implications of their work.  But I would remind you that most of these students were upperclassmen about to graduate from a premier institution of higher education in this country, and before you suggest it, none of them were science majors.

So what does all this have to do with Twitter?  My hypothesis is this: By forcing us to convey as much information, and as much feeling, attitude, and nuance as possible in 140 characters, maybe Twitter can help teach a generation how to communicate effectively by today's standards.  No one has time for the verbosity of the 18th century anymore, but it's much harder to say more in less time anyway.
I believe Twitter could have a profound influence on language.  It can improve the writing skills of today's youth by forcing them to be more concise, and it could also further the evolution of language towards a denser style.  Perhaps one day, our great-great-grandkids will have trouble reading the pleonastic works of today :)


Click below to watch Stephen Fry - one of the most effective communicators I've ever seen, with one of the largest vocabularies I've ever heard - talk about this same idea with the ever funny Craig Ferguson.

Troubled by Your Practices: A Letter to PNC Bank

My letter to PNC bank.  Please share and send one of your own.

To whom it may concern:

I am a relatively new PNC customer and chose to bank with PNC over other competitors out of convenience.  I have been very pleased with the services so far and have enjoyed being a PNC customer.  However, I recently discovered that despite the Green Commitment touted on your website and in customer communications, you lend a lot of money to companies involved in mountaintop removal coal mining.

As a native West Virginian, this is incredibly troubling to me and upon learning about this association, I immediately felt dirty and guilty about my ignorant choice to bank with you.  You cannot fund this destructive practice in good conscience.  Mountaintop removal (MTR) has buried over 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams, and has poisoned the wells that so many mountain communities depend on completely with toxins like lead and cadmium.  MTR is associated with degraded downstream water quality and the destruction of some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world.  Did you know that? Did you know that the forests of Appalachia are second only to the rain forest in biodiversity?  And did you know that the "reclamation" process performed by coal companies after they've leveled a mountain cannot regrow forests because the soil has been removed and the rocky moonscape has been seeded with invasive species of grass?  

I know all of this and more.  I know it because I grew up there, and I've been fighting against this practice that impoverishes and poisons humans unlucky enough to live near MTR sites since I was 16 years old.  I know because now I hold a degree in environmental studies and am almost done with my masters in environmental science.  

What I don't yet know is what kind of company you are.  Are you the kind of company that plays word games but has no moral fiber?  Last year, a representative of your bank said you no longer funded companies with a majority of their business tied to MTR, but that was an easy commitment to make, since no one's business is primarily MTR.  It's really not good enough.

You have to completely divest your company from this practice if you want to keep customers who are even half way informed about the environmental and human capital destruction this practice causes.   It's really in your best interest, because as long as the people of Appalachia are under the thumb of King Coal, they will never have enough money to put into your bank.

You have an opportunity to do what's right here, and I hope you are brave enough to take it.  If individuals like me can be brave enough to stand against injustices like MTR, then a big powerful company like you should be too.  If you prove to not be as brave as you need to be, you'll lose customers like me left and right.  And I'll lead the way.

Sincerely,

Nicole Holstein

West Virginian native, D.C. resident

Activist, Student, Marketing Professional

Something I’ve just been reflecting on is how truly short life really could be, or perhaps should be, if it were not for the benefits of modern medicine and science.  And this reality hits me because I realize that, at 22 years old, if I was still alive, I would be completely useless and a burden to society if I lived in, say, medieval times.  

At 22 years of age I have had three surgeries.  Two on a torn meniscus in my left knee, which, assuming I tore it in whatever my field of work would have been (peasant farmer) and not in volleyball, would make movement very difficult and painful.  My third surgery was the removal of my wisdom teeth, which arguably would not have really affected the quality of my life back then.  But as a 3 year old, I severely broke my arm and needed surgery, but the local doctors were uncomfortable doing such an intense surgery on a child so young and small.  Thankfully with their expert care, my arm is only very slightly bowed (really only noticeable to me).  But a broken arm in the past, especially broken so severely so early in life, would likely have meant a useless and painful limb for life, or perhaps even death.  Even assuming none of these external influences disabled me, my eyesight is horrendous.  Like, seriously horrendous. Without glasses or contacts my hand must be, very literally, 2 to 3 inches from the end of my nose before it is in perfect focus.  This would have left me completely useless! I could not move around the town or maybe even my own home without guidance, I could not perform any work, or recognize someone’s face from across a room.  Yet here I sit, in the 21^st century, so fully healthy.  I am strong and lean, tall and highly capable of anything.  All my limbs work and my eyes are aided enough to make these long hours staring at computer screens perfectly possible.  I’m an avid reader and dancer.  And I feel like I have so much to offer the world, like I matter, and I will and am being given the opportunities to do things that matter.  Which makes me wonder, what did all of those people of the past have to offer that they were never able to give, because they were struck down or made lame so early in life?  Did they not matter as much as I do?  Surely they just mattered in different ways. They were part of the process that lead to my generation being so lucky and provided for, and that is not small matter, for one thing.  And I suppose I am part of that process, too; we are not the end all to be all.  Perhaps future generations will feel sorry for mine because of how much we suffered from things like colds, HIV/AIDS, and Alzheimer's.

In any case, I am very grateful to be 22 and alive and productive, and still be considered at the beginning of my life.

"Why do you think our country is in the state it is, regarding hunger, health, obesity and poverty? What major or underlying issues do you feel are the ones we need to address to help eliminate poverty?"

This was the prompt for  this weeks VISTA reflection.  My housemate and I laughed a bit over this because it's a pretty tall order! As if anybody really has the single answer, or that it could even be expressed in a blog.  Nevertheless, we both understand the importance of reflections like this and of critically thinking about our issues so that we can, together, work to solve them.  It's not really up to one of us to brilliant expose the root causes of and best solutions to poverty in our country, but it was funny to pretend it was anyway.

As John Green would say, "The truth resists simplicity."

Hunger, health, obesity, and poverty.  Those are four MAJOR complex issues.  But  they are all asked in one question because they are largely inseparable.  Which makes them all that much more difficult to address because no one issue will be solved until the other three are.  And I would definitely add a fifth to this list: environmental quality.  This too is vital if we're going to solve the other 4 problems and we won't get anywhere with them until we start considering environmentalism as part of the group.  


I said this could not all be expressed in one little blog post (dear God there are ENDLESS numbers of books written on these topics!) so this is going to be rather limited.  


To begin with, let us acknowledge that these are not 21st century problems, like they are sometimes thought to be.  They are ancient problems, even obesity, though admittedly that specific facet has reached epic proportions in the last half a century.  What is different is that now we believe that these issues are not inevitable and they are not the natural order.  We believe that every person has the basic right to enough food to live on and a minimum quality of life.  We also recognize that society has the tools to make that a reality and the fact that a large portion of human beings still live without these basic rights is a choice we have made (or perhaps failed to make).  These ideas have come to us through our changing cultural values of the equality of mankind; and that is a very 20th century idea.  Yet even though we've obviously now decided that this state of affairs is unacceptable, we still can't figure out how to change it.  And that, in my opinion, is because we are trying to fix them through the offices of the systems that created them.  These are ancient systems. Systems that emphasize the individual and not the community, systems that define success as an amassing of personal advantages, like wealth or objects or a bigger living space.  If you think about it, you realize these are evolutionary instincts gone wrong.  Thinking about the individual is fine in the State of Nature, but we left that and chose society in order to better provide for ourselves and better protect ourselves.  We needed to stop thinking individually then but we've never quite managed it.  In a way, we are both independent of the ecological web and still very much a part of it, which is a confusing place to be.  We've been able to escape most of the roughest parts of life in the web by making ourselves top of the food chain, learning to protect ourselves from diseases and physical injuries, mastering the creation of stable shelter, the production of plenty of food, etc. etc.  And so I think that makes us think that we aren't part of a system anymore, rather that we are above it.  Nature has always been something to be conquered and tamed and we forgot our place in it and the new responsibilities that came with that choice.  


This getting so complicated I'm losing even myself.  But when it comes right down to it, I think our main problem is the belief that we have to climb over each other to keep our head above water, and get what we need and want.  And we don't believe that we can all rise there together.  


Now, that is an underlying issue that is more difficult to address than any of the 5 mentioned at the beginning.  So what we have to do in the mean time, while our culture slowly comes around, is work to provide those with nothing the means to make themselves what they need.  To me, this means first and foremost addressing environmental issues, since they are so ingrained with social justice issues.  Good soil and no poisonous water, chemicals, or air means more and better food and a healthier and more productive life.  That, in turn, leads to more economic opportunities, which leads to more political rights and representation.  The earth is at our feet and it has to be the base of our pyramid to quality life too.

Partially, this blog will serve as the blog AmeriCorps require me to keep while I am in my service this summer.  So many of my posts will be prompted and about certain subjects or reading material or documentary.  Which is fine.  Because I love my work, and I love the issues we deal with as part of our service.  The first thing they want is an introduction to myself, which you will find below. Warning. This shall be boring. There comes a time, usually right as you're entering the "real world" that describing yourself is actually like repeating a well-memorized speech.  You've done it so often, on job applications, social media sites and profiles, to teachers and parents and anyone else you meet ever. It starts to sound boring even to you.

My name is Nicole, a 22 year old graduate from Marietta College.  I chose to double major in Environmental Studies and Political Science there because it has long been clear to me that I was supposed to dedicate my life to environmental causes.  I remember very clearly the day, in a Kroger's parking lot in early high school, when I looked at my mom and said, "You know, I don't think I want to be an Astronomer any more," (my life ambition for a few years at the time). She asked me why and I repeated the revelation I had just experienced in my head a mere second ago. "If I'm going to spend my life doing one thing, I think it should be something that makes the world better."  Now, don't get me wrong, astronomy serves that purpose too! I still love astronomy and if I ever restarted the Game of Life and had to pull a different Career Card, I would want it to be Astronomer. (Man, the Game of Life really should incorporate some cooler careers.....).  So I told my mom I wanted to be an environmental scientist instead.  And I will be.  I studied Environmental Studies in college, which is void of almost any science, but when I was describing my epiphany to my mom, environmental scientist was the only term I knew.  But now, I'm going into grad school in August, where I really will be studying Environmental Science so I guess I was right from the beginning after all.  Oh the power of God.

Anywho, this summer I'm an AmeriCorps VISTA Associate, which means that my service term is only 10 weeks and not an entire year like a full VISTA.  The organization with which I was paired is Harvest of Hope here in Marietta.  HoH is a faith-based nonprofit whose mission it is to increase the quantity and ease of access to healthy foods for the area's hungry and underprivileged.  This area of Ohio has a lot of need and is one of the poorest areas of the state.  You wouldn't know it by the area around the college though....
HoH is run by an incredibly sweet and invigorating retired woman named Karen Kumpf.  She started the organization in 2005 when the local food pantries were facing too much demand and couldn't meet the needs of their customers.  She works for no pay and has learned everything about running an organization on her own.  Now, HoH is much bigger than here, with many different programs, a team of dedicated volunteers, and board of directors.  She is really inspiring to be around because she is so full of energy, and so gifted and passionate;  she is a natural leader for this organization.  Her clear mindedness, wisdom and patience, and her inspiration make her a force to be reckoned with.  She says all of that comes from God and that she couldn't do anything with HoH if she wasn't God driven.  Well that really shows.

I was really glad to be paired up with Harvest of Hope because so much of what they do touches on my own passions for healthy, sustainable living.  There is so much overlap between environmentalism and, well really any other cause you can think of, but especially with poverty, hunger, and health.  Community gardens give nutritious foods to cultivators for basically free while strengthening local economies, communities, and reducing the demand on the industrial, emission-heavy, polluting agriculture business that dominates American culture today.  I jumped at the chance to apply for my school's AmeriCorps VISTA Associate position because I knew I wanted to do some sort of AmeriCorps job anyway, but I was having trouble finding a year long commitment that worked for me; plus I was really vacillating on whether I should delay grad school for a year or not.  So I waited to see what would happen; what would be placed in front of me, and which path would be made clear to me.  It got really difficult because everything came down to the wire, but then everything happened at once and I knew it was going to be ok.  A grad school offered me a financial aid package which, combined with its location, I just couldn't turn down, and I was awarded the Associate position.  A full VISTA job is still in my mind for the future maybe, but I feel good about this year's outline, which is really about as far down the road as you can think at this point, practically.  AmeriCorps, and nonprofit work where I intend to spend a lot of my professional career, both appeal to me because of the element of direct service.  I've been involved in grassroots activism...forever...and it has shaped me to truly believe in and be excited about community and people power.  So if I get to think about and work to improve the real issues of people's lives (and these are issues that are universal which makes it all the more awesome) and I get to help people help themselves and build big, systemic, and important changes from the bottom up-what better job is there??

"I go to seek a Great Perhaps" was the poet Francois Rabelais' last words, which are referenced many times by the author John Green, especially in Looking for Alaska.  John is one of my most favorite authors and a mind and soul that I admire and look up to.  The title of my blog, thus, is more a nod to him rather than Mr. Rabelais, whose work, I must admit, I have never encountered. 

Rabelais was likely referring to the hope of the afterlife, that mysterious idea of something new and wholly different.  But the Great Perhaps, or the idea of something better, something fulfilling, and whole and real, does not necessarily have to wait on us to pass through death to find it.  John's character in his book says he will not wait for death to find the Great Perhaps, but will search for it here in the present, "for real friends and a more-than-minor life..” Now, I'm not sure there is ever anything minor about anybody's life, but I know it can seem and feel like it, and surely there is wisdom in the drive to fulfill your potential, live life fully and joyfully, and to fulfill your purpose. 

"I came to seek a Great Perhaps"

-John Green, Looking for Alaska