SEA Magazine Spring 2017 Editor-in-Chief Jason W. Kelly Assistant Editor Morgan Gilmore SEA Advisors Tracy Tennenhouse Jerry Mansfield Moorpark Review Staff Abraham Noorzay Brittany Bennet Brooke Brown Dan Huynh Daniel Weisman Elijah Boyd Hunter Graham Jason W. Kelly Kat Smith Marissa Can Morgan Gilmore Nicole Kalcic Shawn Hammon Cover Design Brittney Bennet Table of Contents An Introduction to S.E.A. Magazine - Jason Widoff Kelly An Interview with Professor Ryan Kenedy Narratives/ Expository Papers 1. Behind the Window - Jane Yu 2. Chasing Youth Through Fists and Fights: What Comic Books Have in Common with Porsche and Botox - Dylan Travers Research Papers 1. Legacies of Exile - Daniel J. Keit 2. The Ghost of Jackson: How the Presidential Election of 1828 Set the Stage for Donald Trump’s Victory in 2016 - Matthew Afshin 3. Immigration vs. Invasion: How Hamilton is Redefining the Importance of Being an Immigrant - Alec Aivazian 4. The Plight of the Woman Warrior - Morgan Konefal 5. Masculinity and American Advertising - Kaylee Jones 6. Look Around, Look Around - Emily Consaga 7. Deforestation and the Impact on Wildlife Biodiversity - Kara McComb History Papers 1. Asian Civilization 1800 to the Present - Kaylee Collins S.E.A. Magazine 2017 Moorpark College’s Student Essay Anthology Introduction Every type of class must be taken by students at one point or another in their school careers. English is one that many are more than happy to be finished with. There are things that we are good at and choose to pursue, and most of the careers people choose to pursue make them a comfortable amount of money. A career in English seems like a joke. But, like a person who dreams of becoming the President of the United States, a career in English can be both honorable and fulfilling (if the pursuit is genuine). Language of some sort must be used by everyone to communicate. And it can be done properly, or go horribly wrong. Clarity is important in every field, and English, specifically, requires excellent examples of how to write clearly which are highlighted this year by the authors that make up the 2017 Moorpark Student Essay Anthology. As students and teachers involved in the cerebral pursuit of knowledge and the validation of an education– whether we are at Moorpark College or another institution–, we find the experience of learning and communing with others while doing so beneficial to our psychological evolution. Learning from a professor who is both dedicated and well-versed in the material is enlightening to the curious student, and discussion perfectly incubates in a room warmed by eager students. However, simply being present is not enough. Participation through asking questions, taking notes, and speaking to the professor as if they are a mentor is necessary to get the most out of any class. We grow the most when we are told that our work is not our highest caliber. The essays that make up this year’s anthology are student-written and may include some errors, but they are exemplary of properly written essays that are clear and concise. Jason Widoff Kelly An Interview with Professor Ryan Kenedy Conducted by Jason Widoff Kelly on April 12, 2017 Do you have any tattoos? - No Would you rather enter through the exit or exit through the entrance? - Enter through the exit. Pen or pencil? - Pen. What do you teach here at Moorpark? - I teach English composition, literature & critical thinking, and American Literature. So that’s 1A, 1B, and 13B? - Yes, this semester. Have you taught anything else at Moorpark? Or are you going to be teaching anything else in the future? - Not that I know of, no. How long have you been teaching? - Nineteen years. Not only at Moorpark. - Not only at Moorpark. Have you only taught at community colleges or high schools? - I taught at other community colleges, and I taught at Fresno State for a while. You never taught any high school classes? - I never taught high school. Is there a reason for that? - I could not survive high school. I hated high school when I was a student and I think I would hate it as a teacher. I always thought it would be a good job to have while getting through a Master’s program, but I’m not sure if I’m right about that. What did you do to get through your Master’s in terms of work? Were you working while getting your degree? - I was working regular jobs, and I started teaching in graduate school. My first job as an undergraduate was as at a writing center at Cal State Fresno. What is the worst essay you’ve ever written? - The worst essay I’ve ever written was a forty-page paper on Masada, in an archaeology class. Oh very cool, I’ve visited there. Why was it the worst? - It was the worst because: one it was forty pages, and two it was one of those essays where I really didn’t have anything to contribute and I was just recording facts and stating what everyone else had written, so it was just this compilation of, you know, hours of reading encyclopedias and stuff like that. It was just rote and boring and very very long. What is the most common mistake you see in your students’ writing. - Hm. That’s a tough one. Well, I guess the most common mistake is sort of a lack of analysis. I think students make statements where they quote from sources and they don’t do anything with it. They sometimes just assume that it speaks for itself, whether it’s a quote from another source or a claim that the student makes, they just assume that they speak for themselves. They don’t follow it up with an explanation, and they don’t analyze what they’re looking at, and it becomes a statement of fact, in a way. I think students assume too much on the part of the reader. They assume the wrong things on the part of the reader. They assume that the reader knows what they are thinking and why, and they assume that the statements that they make are self-evident in terms of their meaning. So, for students, especially students who are struggling to expand their writing, students who feel that they have said everything in three pages, often-times it’s because of that reason. It’s because they’ve assumed too much on the part of the reader. They don’t think they need to explain anything to the reader, they think the reader already knows what they think or agrees with what they’re saying, or the reader sees the evidence that they’re providing and just makes the connection themselves. The writer has to do all of that work for the reader, in most cases. What would you say is a strong way to open an essay? - I would say not to make the mistake of thinking of the opening as a kind of gimmicky attention getter. Those really don’t work very well. They tend to fall flat. What’s an example of a gimmicky attention getter? - It kind of depends on the assignment, but often-times it’s the essay that begins with a silly question. Have you ever wanted to jump off a bridge? And then write an essay about suicide. Those kinds of questions really are just corny attention getters and I think they should be avoided. Instead, I think the writer should have a question in his or her mind which is: How do I make someone interested in what I’m interested in? How do I get somebody to be curious about what I’m curious about? So, sometimes a good way to start an essay is by setting the scene for a problem, or something like that. Create, for the reader, a sense of the environment of the problem or an example of the problem, a case study for the problem. And that usually gets the readers into it more because they make some kind of human connection with whatever the writer is writing about. What would you say is something that students do in their essays that you really like? - Well, I do really like it when students analyze what they’re saying. I like it when they provide good and interesting support for what they’re saying. I like it when students write good sentences because I read so many sentences throughout the semester that bad sentences, lazy sentences, are burdensome to read over and over and over again. So, when students are writing good sentences, I really delight in reading that because it takes so much of the burden off of me to try to unpack what the student is saying. What that requires from students is hard work. It’s hard work to write good sentences. And to write a whole paper that’s five or six pages long and to make sure that every one of those sentences is clear and the best sentence you could possibly write – I think it was Chekhov who said, “Hard writing makes easy reading.” And that’s really what it’s about. You have to really work hard to write well. And I really like it when I see my students putting in the time to do that. Knowing that there is somebody else on the other side of that paper who is going to read it and going to invest in that paper. I was going to ask you a little bit about your research on Faulkner, why you did it.