On Being the “Good Friend”

By Emily Maggioncalda

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Table of Contents

Shadow Narrative……………………………………………3

Part One: Essay to Poem Translation……………….8

Part One: Reflection…………………………………………9

Part Two: Rhetorical Translation……………………10

Part Two: Reflection……………………………………….11

Part Three: Writing Arts Goals Reflection………..12

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Freshman year of college. Personalities are blooming, teenagers are

maturing, and pounds are being gained. I arrived at Rowan with a keen sense of

who I wanted to be in college: an involved, responsible, friendly character that

was always willing to go out (or stay in) and have a good time. My first day at

Rowan, I knew I would love being there. My RA, Becky, greeted me with a hoarse

“Hey!” that somewhat startled me. Right away I thought to myself, “Woah… one

of the narks.”

As I signed in and received my key, I found out that she was from my

hometown. She had a conversation with my Dad in which they pointlessly

discovered all of the people that they know in common. After the schmooze fest,

as I knew this would be someone I needed to keep on my good side if I wanted to

have a good freshman year, I hiked my oversized bags up to the second floor.

Approaching my door, 202, I saw four very tan girls moving in around the

same area. My teeny new roommate, Lauren, was moving in her things with her

family. We met for the first time, sharing an unbalanced, awkward hug. Keep in

mind- my roommate was the type of girl who when I asked if she liked “going

out” on weekend, she responded: “What do you mean? Like going outside?”

One girl moving in across the hall from me was Kaylene. As soon as she

introduced herself, I found myself remembering the unique name as that girl who

friended everyone on Facebook before she knew them, other than knowing they

would be attending Rowan in the fall. “Here we go,” I thought to myself.

To the right of my 202 lived two additional Latina girls, Kristin and Kelsey,

as I quickly realized that I was officially the minority on our side of the hallway.

Although the group of friends was quiet and awkward for the first hour or so, the

four girls and I soon found ourselves very comfortable around each other. Coming

from different locations in New Jersey, we enjoyed the same type of music,

similar foods, similar movies and TV shows, and we really enjoyed laughing

together. Within a couple weeks of living with the varying personalities of my

friends, I knew that they would be a huge component to my college career.

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Our RA (or Nark as I referred to it before), was a sophomore in college. She

seemed to always be upset about something, stomping her feet, rolling her eyes,

blowing hot fumes out of her nose. Although she was constantly troubled, Becky

was slightly enjoyable to be around. After all, she thought we were all hilarious-

and who doesn’t enjoy someone’s company that compliments your humor?

Becky would always try to hang out with our group of friends: the four girls

and I and boys from the corresponding hallway. We thought nothing of it; she was

doing what she was supposed to be doing, right? She built a community among

the residents of our floor and made our transition into college easier than

expected. However, as a couple of months went by, I found that we, the residents,

soon became Becky’s RA. She struggled in school, balancing the demands of

academics and the RA job… and we heard every moment of it. We all knew to

not bother Becky when we heard her booming footsteps rage down the quiet

hallway. I quickly began to realize the possibility that this job was not right for

her, and that I was doing more “counseling” than she was.

Becky’s relationship with my group of friends transitioned frequently, from

the awkward nights when we were breaking the rules and trying to make sure

she wasn’t aware, to the uncomfortable silences when she would say “I just wish I

could come out and party with you guys.”

The general consensus of the group was that we all knew how “needy”

Becky was, and what things were right and not right to say in front of her. Her

constant want to be around us and share our experiences turned into somewhat

of a nuisance, feeling like she needed us more than we needed her. We all felt the

same: that Becky was still our RA, not necessarily our friend… and we could often

tell that she felt differently.

Winter break soon arrived, and majority of us didn’t even want to go home.

We wanted to stay and celebrate the holidays with the friends we had become so

close with. A month without each other?! How would we ever survive?

But our parents picked us up one by one, we gave hugs and we parted for

the holidays.

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Missing my school friends so much over break, we would always keep in

touch by group video-chatting or group phone calls. One night, in between

Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I was chatting with Kaylene and our RA, Becky.

To avoid any misunderstandings; majority of the time, I did enjoy Becky’s

company. But with the daily struggles that she went through, her company was

also a huge damper on our lives as well. In this setting, a group phone call using

Skype, Kaylene, Becky and I were all on the phone through our computers,

laughing and exchanging stories of our families during the holidays.

The conversation was somewhat long, and I remember feeling very tired

and ready to go to bed. As I started to say goodnight to them, Becky stopped me

and said “Em… wait, we kind of have something to tell you.” I heard Kaylene

giggling from her end of the line, as I started to think Becky was trying to make

a joke.

“Kaylene and I are kind of… dating,” Becky said.

I immediately began to laugh. I began to belly laugh. The thought of these

two girls, one whom I often considered crazy and my friend who I had seen

make-out with boys at parties, dating? That was truly hilarious.

I continued my laughter and again started to end the phone call “All right,

ya crazies. I’m really going to bed now, though,” I said.

“No… Em it isn’t a joke we really are seeing each other.”

Complete silence.

Still complete silence.

“Oh my gosh… you weren’t joking?!” I asked, literally not being able to

fathom this possibility.

“No, we really aren’t joking.” Becky said sternly, as if scolding me during

quiet hours.

“But, what? What? How? Kaylene, what? Wait. How? What?” I stuttered

and (to myself) laughed.

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I had absolutely nothing against GLBT lifestyles. However, finding out that

Kaylene, who appeared to be very interested in many different boys, was now

“hooking up” with our unstable RA… I really had to let this one digest.

“For how long?” I asked, being sure to not sound as weirded-out as I felt.

“A month or so now,” Kaylene answered, Becky correcting her with a

“Actually a month and two weeks.”

“What the hell? So you guys were sneaking around in December when we

were all at Rowan before break?” I asked.

“Yeah… but we really like each other. Like this isn’t just a little fling,” Becky

proclaimed.

“Ok… I mean… I guess that’s cool? As long as you guys are happy,

whatever,” I responded, still weirded-out but sincere.

I quickly added, “Who else knows?!”

“You’re the first one we told,” Kaylene told me. “And we don’t really want

you to tell anyone else. We don’t know when or how we’re gonna’ tell the rest of

the group, but we wanted to tell you first because of how trustworthy you are

and we knew you’d be comfortable with it.”

Awkward- I wasn’t comfortable with this. Not because of the whole same-

sex thing, but because Becky was our RA, and she seemed unstable to have any

relationship with anyone, let alone one of my best friends from school.

“Ok. So I can’t tell anyone? Lauren, Kelsey, Kristin… none of them know

any of this?”

“Nope,” they responded in unison.

As we returned back to Rowan later in January, I found myself carrying

around this shocking and uncomfortable secret and wanting to tell the rest of my

friends. But I didn’t, I kept my trust points and kept the secret from the group.

But it continued to affect the group dynamic, as I thought it would. Becky and

Kaylene would act bizarre around the group, texting while sitting right next to

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each other, making plans by themselves, and the most bizarre- Kaylene leaving

parties after half an hour to go back to the dorm and “hang out with Becky”.

Soon, Kaylene felt comfortable with the relationship that she shared it with

the rest of the girls. As they found out, they looked at me strangely wondering

why I wasn’t as shocked. “Yep… I’ve known,” I explained to my friends.

Gasping, they replied with an outrageous “WHAAAT?”

From that point on, through the ups and downs of Becky and Kaylene’s

long-term relationship, I have always been the person in between them. When

they were having issues, I heard both sides. When they broke up for good, I

babysat them both. At this point in my life, I have finally told both of them that I

am done being their middleman, and that I am now my own RA, not Becky’s or

Kaylene’s.

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Part One: Content Translation

Keeping

A new secret

just for me? You shouldn’t have.

Instant pressure,

My knees and thighs begin to shake just from keeping it.

Keeping it, but it’s keeping me.

A polka-dotted, friendly, obese secret

following me around.

You really shouldn’t have.

But this secret, oh it’s so friendly!

Smiling and nodding and thanking me

for keeping it

company, as it’s fat limbs and belly rolls now piggyback me,

cackling and snorting while my steps become slower and shorter.

But this is friendship, this is kindness,

This?

You shouldn’t have.

Being the good friend,

I will keep keeping.

As your words attach to me

and make me rickety with their weight.

Really, you shouldn’t have.

Next time, I’ll wish you wouldn’t have.

As I continue to foolishly believe that I’m keeping,

and keeping is how friendship should be kept.

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Part One: Reflection

I began the translation process by reading over both my original shadow

narrative draft and my second draft. I took different colored pens to the hard

copies of these drafts, circling which words made me picture this secret as if it

were a person/animal and circling words describing how it affected me. I found

that the words that I had circled in these two colors embodied how I wanted the

reader to see and feel the secret of my two friend’s relationship as a character.

The decoding process allowed me to decide on the style of the poem: free verse.

I then thought about the tone and mood of my translation. I thought about

how the secret made me feel: heavy, pressured, annoyed, bothered, burdened. I

wanted to portray these emotions through use of descriptive language in my

poem. I decided to verse the poem in a way that embodied the weight of the

secret. I began to list adjectives that, in my mind, could describe the secret if it

were a physical person. I pictured it as heavy, even obese, friendly, obnoxious,

large person wearing a polka-dotted dress with a large hat and large sunglasses. I

pictured the secret as loud, with a boisterous and jolly laugh, not understanding

of their burden on others. This helped me to picture the secret perfectly as what

it was to me: a burden that wasn’t originally pictured as a burden, that only I

felt the weight of.

I thought of Joss’ piece entitled “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Abstraction?”

The concept of individualization helped me to use details describing the secret in

ways that revealed something about how it made me feel. I tried to avoid using

descriptive language in parts of the translation where it wasn’t necessary and

focused on using them in places having to do with the characteristics of the

secret, as to place better emphasis on what I wanted the reader to grasp. I also

used Joss’ advice on word choice, as I used words such as “fat” and “belly rolls”

and “piggyback” in order to paint the character of the secret. I used three rules

to carry-out these decisions: quick/short sentences to represent the panic I was

feeling, enlargement of certain words, and to make the reader feel pressure

through repetition.

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Part Two: Essay to New Genre Translation

CL > Glassboro > all personals > miscellaneous friendship posted 2012-01-10 10:00 PM

Reply flag

“Good Friend” with secret-keeping abilities – 2w4w (United States) (two women looking for a woman)

Newly dating homosexual college couple looking for good friend to keep relationship a secret. Must be patient, quiet

and understanding. Must be willing to be “walked on”. Must know that secret will be heavy, but couple will not think

of friend as a victim or someone being put in a tough position. Must be aware that situation will become increasingly

awkward and uncomfortable, with possible affect on interior friendships inside of larger group of friends. Must

understand that couple is putting pressure on new friend to be the only person aware of their new relationship. Must

know that contract involves third party in a three-year ordeal of break-ups, make-ups and being in the middle of

arguments. Must also understand that all of these requirements fall under being a GOOD FRIEND.

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Part Two: Reflection

For this translation, I read aloud the piece of instruction stating “Think

creatively. Think of all of the texts you encounter everyday and challenge

yourself.” At first, I decided to embody my narrative through a “WANTED” sign. I

then thought of the more probably, modern-day version of this: Craig’s List Ads.

Although it may have been my sarcasm reacting, I thought this a very clear and

humorous choice for this specific narrative.

I wanted to be sure that my translation communicated how I saw the

situation. I decided that I wanted to do this by portraying the position that I was

put in through the requirements of a Craig’s List as. This way, I would be able to

reflect my emotional memory of the situation, just as Judith Ortiz Cofer describes

in her piece, “But Tell It Slant: From Poetry to Prose and Back Again.” Cofer uses

a different style of writing to throw a different “slant” on an experience. By

creating a Craig’s List Ad, I was able to describe the situation in a more extreme

way that, at the time, was how I felt I was being treated.

I then did my research by looking up Craig’s List Ads, which was certainly

the most entertaining part of this portion of my project. With an abundance of

choices, I chose a random ad and tried to mimic its language, font and color in

order to make my ad as realistic as possible. I then began the process of writing

the ad. I first looked through my original draft of my narrative, finding the

points in my writing that described the position I felt I was put in by being

responsible for this secret. After pulling out those parts, I organized them into

“Craig’s List” language- using words such as “must be able to” or “looking for.”

I then developed rules to follow while writing the ad: to be sure to use

Craig’s List language, fonts and colors, to write the “position” that I felt I had

been put in and not the one my friends thought they had put me in, and to end

the ad with the phrase “good friend.”

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Part Three: Writing Arts Goals Reflection

Before taking the course, The Writer’s Mind, I thought of myself as a writer

because I simply liked to write. I enjoyed writing, and saw it as a part of my

future. I was eager to connect my two majors, Elementary Education and Writing

Arts, and better my knowledge in writing and teaching writing. There are two

objectives I feel I have understood and demonstrated throughout the duration of

this course as I increasingly grasp a better understanding of my writer’s mind:

“experiencing revision as an ongoing process rather than an end point” and

“learning craft-specific approaches to writing”.

Due to my dual major, the revision process is constantly something that I

struggle with because of the many opposing instructions and requirements I am

informed of from separate classes. Although this has caused confusion for me in

the past, I was able to clarify the revision process to a definite understanding

after reading and discussing “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical

Problem” by Linda Flower and John R. Hayes. In this article, the authors discuss

how writers often write to discover an end product of a complicated process,

when the process of discovering is really where the discovering occurs. The

connotation behind the word “discovery” implies that the writer has ready-made

ideas in their mind, rather than the writer building and creating new concepts

out of experience. It was during this discussion that I began to understand the

concepts of rhetorical situations and rhetorical audiences, involving the idea that

all writing is part of a universal discourse and all writers contribute to that

discourse as they communicate their ideas and experiences with the rest of the

discourse community. This idea completely clarified the revision process for me, as

I found that revising isn’t a way of just making your writing sound better or to

clarify what you’re trying to say, but it is a way to single out the key concepts in

your writing that contribute to a larger discourse- to find what you offer that is

different, and to expand on it.

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A specific time where I experienced the objective “learning craft-specific

approaches to writing” was during the time of craft presentations. The

presentations consisted of my peers presenting a specific writing tool to the class

using visual aids and demonstrations. I found multiple parts of these presentations

helpful, particularly learning about using synesthesia and the ten percent solution.

Synesthesia was defined as assigning unusual characteristics to experiences or

sensations. For example, the class was asked to assign a color to our best friend, a

color to our favorite kind of music, a taste or smell to a color, a personality to a

day of the week, and a taste or smell to the words “love,” “bubble”, and “sorry”.

This exercise helped me to think in a different way about my characterization

and description. I often pride myself in using descriptive language, but this

technique gave me a new tool to use which makes the reader think and feel

different senses while reading. I then used this technique not only in a revision of

my shadow narrative, but in a story for my Writing Children’s Stories class.

Additionally, I learned about the ten percent solution, in which you ask yourself

certain questions while revising in order to cut out any overused, redundant,

stuffy, confusing or unnecessary words. Personally, this strategy has helped me in

multiple classes since I have learned about it. In revising and reading over papers,

stories and even exam responses, I have found myself cutting out unnecessary

phrases and words that I have become so comfortable using mainly because of

academic writing throughout high school and college. I have become so used to

using “in conclusion” and “due to the fact” that I sometimes don’t recognize how

stuffy they make my writing. Using these craft strategies made my writing

clearer and more exciting for my audience.

If I were to write an objective for this semester, it would be: “Deepening the

meaning of what it means to be a good writer.” When the class read, discussed

and evaluated our own writing after reading the article “The Cognition of

Discovery”, I recognized that I would be considered a bad writer because of my

tendency to write too academically. According to the article, a good writer is

problem-finding, exploring things in depth and developing their own

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representation throughout their writing process. I found that for so much of my

life I had been focused on the end product: the research paper or the final essay.

Until this class, I had not realized that the process of my research and the

revisions of my essay were what truly resulted in good writing. I have learned to

dive into the ideas of my audience, explore exigency, and expand my self-meaning

while writing.

My own writer’s mind has, in a word, matured. Before this course, I never

thought so critically and analytically about my own writing. I have increased the

amount of time I spend on my writing, whether it is academic or free-write.

Instead of rushing to finish a piece, I have focused more on discovering ideas

during the writing process and developing theses after I have found new ideas to

write and expand on. I constantly keep the idea of rhetorical discourse in my

mind, hoping to contribute to larger conversations being held regarding the topic

I’m writing on. Additionally, I keep in mind the concept of “underlife”. As a

future teacher, I must remember that writing instruction is very difficult because

it completely contradicts the motive of true writing and being creative. I have

accepted that my dual major is a contradiction, and I’m eager to include creative

writing into my future teaching while allowing my students to be successful both

academically and creatively.

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