It's Good to do Good

(Back in Oxford! I wrote this the other day, and plan to send it in to the Argus, IWU's newspaper, yet it will probably shortened/edited a bit. The higher-ups probably don't want me encouraging students to shrug off the yoke of their professors. Just kidding. Kind of.)

We live in a world of universal standards, and in worlds of our own self-imposed expectations that linger in our minds and intimidate around every corner. And for many of us, this is especially true regarding academics, having attended school for the past fourteen-or-so years of our lives: Is this essay, this thought good enough? How will my professor find it? Is my work amounting to anything? Studying abroad at Oxford since fall, I find that these standards of goodness have become all the more predominant in my mind, even crippling so sometimes.

Academics here are structured quite differently than they are in the States (it’s kind of fun to refer to the US as “over there”) and most everywhere else except Cambridge. These two universities, since their inceptions in 1167 and 1209 respectively, practice the tutorial system, which means that, instead of frequently attending classes with others, students meet one-on-one or two-on-one with a professor (tutor) in their subject once a week, presenting a prepared essay. There are also optional, and encouraged, lectures to attend. Other than occasional class-like seminars, students largely participate in independent study according to their major and choice of topics. That studying and writing is done mostly in isolation is both wonderful and nearly suffocating at time: the intellectual freedom is refreshing and awakening, yet the independence often makes room for impossible standards to creep in: You’re nowhere near as intelligent as the author you’re reading! That’s not a worthwhile idea – too obvious! You’re probably wasting your time trying. Of course, those specific words don’t enter my mind when I’m trying to think: they stroll in as vague senses, engulfing or subtle, that want to lounge about for a bit and distract.

I don’t think that the desire to do good work is entirely a burdening thing: we wouldn’t have some of the wonderful things in this world if people didn’t respond to that itch inside themselves: Shakespeare’s plays, the pyramids of Egypt, the Mini Cooper. Whatever you look at and think, or feel, “That’s good” was probably created by people responding to the desire to do good, things that could have been created insipidly, to extrinsic standards, yet weren’t. There was some necessity involved: Shakespeare needed to put food on the table, the Pharoah demanded they be built, the British Motor Company wanted a fuel efficient car in response to a 1956 oil shortage, yet the creation of these things within their bounds seems infused with a kind of freedom, almost a joy. Turner’s paintings. Sufjan’s music. Spongebob Squarepants (of course, these are idiosyncratic and claim no universality…).

What, then, about these standards that try to choke off what we would create, say, do? I think that that question leads to another: what makes something good? When can we rest, content, with what we have said, or written, or drawn? Being a rather awful poet, I often wonder, for those who work and think through poetry, how does one know when they are finished with a poem, when they have a sense of its completeness? When can we have any satisfaction with what we’ve done? I think a hint to an answer has to do with the inherent desire for goodness that we have that becomes entangled with others’ standards. And I think we are trained this way when it comes to creating. It’s the difference between solving a math problem and writing an essay: one is right or wrong, the other is good or not good. I’d be wrong to say that anything you create and feel good about is automatically good: we need the comment and critique of those wiser and different from us, especially those we trust. However, when it comes down to it, only we can determine if that desire in us has been satisfied.


It’s easy, incredibly so, to get lost in impossible standards here at Oxford, to grow into a habit of seeing all I write and think as inferior. And yet, I think to how this place probably started: a group of friends eager to learn about themselves and the world. They wanted to read and write and do good things. With today’s ease of publication and communication, there is so much white noise meaningless and detached from real life, especially when it comes to academia. But, in the midst of necessity (that essay is due on Thursday!), there is opportunity to do good work, to do something that means something in your actual life, which means that it will also mean something for someone else, if in a unique way for them. “Good is a social word;” writes Bert Hornback, “its Anglo-Saxon roots also gives us the words gather and together. Good includes self with others.” Listen to that desire. Go into the world and do good. It’s what we’re meant to do.

826? More Like Great26!

Two summers ago, while in Sandwich, Illinois, I came upon a book in a used bookstore after eating a sandwich with a few friends from high school – an annual outing. My heart leapt when the book’s binding registered on the ever-growing wish list in my mind and, as sometimes happens, I sensed a certain providence in the discovery, a sense that I was meant to find that work then and there. A friend of mine recommended Dave Eggers’s achingly sincere, enjoyable, and tragic autobiography A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius some time before the convergence, planting the seed that would prepare my receipt of the book. While an affecting, inspiring, book that reached me on many levels, what is even more interesting is where the book has helped point me.

Researching an author post-read is a healthy activity for any curious reader (right?), and I found myself wanting to know more about Eggers and his life, what he might be up to after releasing such an earnest and noteworthy work, if he was basking in the glow of its success, swimming in pools of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, or continuing living as an ordinary individual who happens to possess a singular literary talent. Helping start a publishing house, McSweeney’s, that gives ardent, sometimes undistinguished writers a chance at a novel, or inclusion in the quarterly publication, Eggers also began a writing center in San Francisco. His idea was to create a tutoring center in conjunction with the publishing house: with the many talented and encouraging authors loitering around together in a building, why not, in their spare time, extend a pen-ink-stained hand to students in the area? Thus, 826 Valencia was conceived, a child bursting with creative energy the heart to help, quickly wandering to almost every major city in the US, Chicago included.

With the recession in full swing, I knew, this past February, chances were slim that I’d land a lucrative, conveniently scheduled three-month job while home from college on summer break. Living at home has its benefits: free food, my own room, and a bathroom. Oh, and a family that cares for me. Though our well-being does not depend upon my income, thank goodness (that would mean far less used books to buy), I felt a nagging voice in the back of my head: “You need to do something during summer. I know you’re a human being, not a human doing, but that is not an excuse for avoiding involvement.” I knew a bit about 826 Chicago: the storefront, ambiguously called “The Boring Store,” was spy-themed. Plus. It was located in Wicker Park. Plus. It was an 826. Plus. So, with determination and not a little uncertainty, I fashioned a résumé, set up an interview for February 21 and waited.

The interview went semi-awkwardly, on my part, yet they saw something in me, perhaps it was the eagerness with which I answered their inquiries, or the glint in my eye, and I was asked onboard as a summer intern. Right on! Instead of write a “a day in the life of an 826 Chicago summer intern,” I’ll proceed more in the spirit of the community there, by using various objects associated with or belonging to the center to elucidate the experience, with one admonition: to better sense the vibrant and delightful atmosphere there, a visit is necessary. The trip is worth an afternoon.

The Cast-Iron Mechanical Cash Register
Located on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, the exterior of 826 sports an ostentatious sign signaling “The Boring Store,” with ironically superfluous captions, technical jargon, and product descriptions that mostly say “we don’t take ourselves too seriously.” Inside, one finds oneself amidst rearview sunglasses, posters of international secret intelligence insignias, faux security cameras, and a fake-mustache-trying-on station. The cash register at the clerk desk, at first look, seems rather out of place: a big, cast-iron mechanical register no doubt from the turn of the century. However, after more perusal of the store, you realize what holds everything together, the undercover, antiquated, literary (there is a shelf of McSweeney’s-published works) atmosphere – the playful tongue-in-cheekness of the place and the people. And it works. All of the proceeds, the staff are quick to share, help fund the writing center at 826.

A Sunday Afternoon Hotdog Meal
Walk through a doorway next to the register, and you find yourself in the workshop area of 826, a big, open room that feels like a classroom with splashes of color, humor, and enthusiasm. Staff members and volunteers run creative workshops and drop-in tutoring for first grade through high school students year round, free of charge. During the summer usually two or three workshops are held per day, with such titles as, “Travel the World Through Chocolate,” “Once Upon a Time Again: Using Improv to Create a Fairytale Parody,” and “Mystery Mail: Surprising Serials!” (the latter of which I happened to have taught!).
A requisite of the workshops (volunteers submit proposals) is that students receive a tangible representation of their work afterward, usually a booklet compiling the writings of all the attendees. Every year or so, 826 National, the umbrella organization, accepts submissions from the 826s for an official publication. 826 Chicago recently made a book, A Sunday Afternoon Hotdog Meal, a collection of elementary-aged students’ essays concerning all things Chicago: where one should visit, must-see destinations, and where to find the best Chicago-style hotdogs.

White MacBook Laptops
Pardon the break from the single-object description imposed upon the latter half of this essay, for their was not one MacBook employed within 826, no, generally five to six were up and fashionably running at any given moment. The staff members joked that 826 was a prime spot for a Mac commercial with such a uniform technological and aesthetic preference. However, they are not a superficial bunch. Working long hours, constantly helping one another and walking to the Jewel around the corner for sandwich parts, joking with students to elicit their engagement, and somehow finding the energy for patience and wit – they are a lovely and persevering bunch. Much of the encouraging, spontaneous atmosphere of the place, no doubt the only way to foster creativity, is owed to their heartening personalities, and the students are better for it.

There you have it! The place is great, wonderful even. It’s a place where imaginations are urged to wake up, funny bones tickled by oversized feathers, and hearts are encouraged to feel. And the joy is a contagious thing.

(Note: The picture included is of me (on the right) a few of the interns, and a handful of students after a play-writing workshop. Fun! This piece is also pending publication for the Glen Ellyn Bookstore's online journal.)