This week’s reading went just as
well as when I reported it out last week.
Nearly everyone in the class was around 100 pages, and four students
read 150 or above! That’s really
exciting, and I hope that more students start to read well beyond the page recommendations
just because they are enjoying their books.
While all of the students seem to
like reading and do great with that, not all of them are embracing the process
of writing the blog. I noticed more of a
dividing line this week between people who are going through the motions with
their blog (or not completing it, in a few cases) and those who are using their
feedback and excelling. One student
really impressed me this week because he seemed to shift from the first group
to the second. This is John-Luc. I opened his blog this morning and was
immediately struck by the new background and how great the entire page
looked. Then I started reading, and I
was even more impressed with the connections that he had made. Instead of highlighting today’s post, though,
I’m going to show the one he wrote earlier in the week. It’s light, funny, but thorough, and it makes
it really obvious why “Board Sports” is his first topic. It also made me think
of my first experiences surfing, which were pretty rough. Because I’m interested in his topic and now
that he is doing such a great job with his posts, I might follow John Luc’s
blog even if I wasn’t his teacher, which is pretty awesome.
Below is the link to his blog, and
you can also click on his name on the right of the page to check it out.
And here’s the first entry from this
week that made me laugh, yes, but also showed me that he was getting it.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
“Kook means ‘beginner surfer.’
It is not a neutral term; it carries a slug of derision, a brand for the
clueless, for those without hope, without grace, without rhythm” (1). The board
sport world is known for its language.
Instead of sounding like chatter around the cafeteria, any event in this
industry has this one tone of voice that everybody shares, and it is chalk full
of new vocabulary. Terms such as gnarly,
spitted, stoked, shacked, pitted, groms, bunk, sesh, and shredded are often
used all in the same sentence. In my
opinion, this is a very notable quality of the action sport industry as a whole. Going back to the word “kook,” everybody is a
kook at one point. Similar to other
sports, in surfing, kooks are often ragged on, called out, and sometimes are
punished if they disrespect another surfer of higher ability. In all honesty, it is very comparable to
hazing. The faster the kook phase
passes, the better. This is all based on
natural ability for the sport, as well as a conscience for general respect. With the term kook comes the term “kook move,”
which are actions often carried out by kooks.
Examples of kook moves are dropping in on a wave that someone else is
already “shredding,” getting in someone’s way on your paddle back out to the
lineup (where people wait to catch the waves), and claiming every wave that rolls
into the lineup. As a novice surfer
develops into a real surfer, he or she goes through their kook moments, and
they stay in your mind to remind you what is right and wrong throughout your
entire surfing career.
Photo: Ed O’Donnel
Like
all other surfers, I have gone through some pretty humorous kook moments, moments
that I would now call myself out on, openly laugh at or pick fun at the action
with the guy straddled on his board the left of me. One time out at Jenness Beach, I was getting a
little board with the lameish waves rolling in to the crowded beach, and a
little agitated by all of the surfers around me. I knew of this spot from a buddy on the north
point of the beach called Straws. Straws
is a reef break, meaning that the break is formed from a steep change in
seafloor elevation. So I got out there
after a long 15 minute or so paddle through deep water. Instead of a beach break most reef breaks,
including Straws, have only one spot you can drop into the wave, and these
kinds of drop-ins are brutally tough for a beginner surfer mainly because they
require precision that only experience can get you. It was my turn in the respected lineup; I
paddled into it and got spun tail over nose as the lip of the wave brought me
from its 6 foot peak to the two and a half foot deep water below, head
first. I was laughed at, actually called
a kook, and I went back to the beach break.
Anyways, everybody goes through this phase, but the reward of such a technical
skill such as surfing makes it worth it.
Photo:
James Kelley Photography
I’ve
had my own kook moments surfing in California with some pretty experienced guys
(who were nice enough to keep trying to help me even while they laughed!), and
if I were to head out there today, I’d have more. That was one of the great things about reading
this blog. I could relate to it, so I wanted
to read more. Also, I loved John-Luc’s
style and tone here. I’m really looking
forward to seeing how the rest of his blog turns out.
This weekend I finished a book
called Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand.
The author, Helen Simonson, writes about the tension between making
progress and holding on to tradition.
This manifests itself in a variety of ways, but the one that relates the
most to my chosen topic is the conflict between old and new money. That’s something that comes up in the
literature of both my American and my British literature classes, though this time
there was a slightly different spin. No
mystery to really be had, though, so I’m still considering my next book choice.
CJF
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