This visit was a really interesting one, as I talked a lot to my partner about how storytelling, and writing in general, helped with the expression of emotions. We told our stories about spring pretty quickly, and went on to discuss the story project as a whole. Our stories are both centered around family and the loved ones in our lives, and e talked about how we could say things through the written stories that we didn’t usually say to people in person. By writing our stories down we were able to be more emotionally venerable then when we were just talking to someone in person. My story partner mentioned this again at the end of our visit in the large group recap we did, which I thought was really inspiring. I was happy that our partners seemed to actually be taking something away from this project as I’d hoped they would. It makes me grateful that I got to be a part of this project and it makes me excited to bring them to campus soon.
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One thing that really stood out to me during this visit was my story partner’s excitement regarding the physical nature of our project. Not only having his story written out in physical form, but that he would have a physical booklet of everyone’s stories to keep. He was especially excited about the fact that he would be able to show the story he told to the people in it, specifically his best friend and her family. I think that this aspect of our project was something I really overlooked before, how the telling of stories can not only bring together the teller of the story and the person listening to it, but also the teller and the people they are telling the story about. I think this visit especially helped me realize how important a project like ours can be to people who have stories to share and the ones in their lives who populate those stories.
During our third visit to the detention center, I was paired up with Mitch and two other story partners. It was clear that the two other partners knew each other, which helped conversation flow naturally. We told stories about helping people out or being helped ourselves to start before moving into stories about our happy places. One major theme that cropped up in our group was that of family. It was clear that to everyone involved, family was very important. This was especially clear when we were telling stories about our happy places. An interesting thing I noticed was the precedence of “found families”, or a group of people that aren’t biologically related to you but treat you like family anyway. My partners from the detention center and myself both shared stories of this sort of found family dynamic. One of my story partners chose this story of found family to be the one he dictated to me to type up. It seems to me that family, biological or not, was a big motivator for my story partners to get there lives back on track. I felt like these similar experiences helped me understand more about the people I was sharing stories with, and a little more about myself as well.
I think our second visit to the detention center was a lot more promising than the first. While I had a good time with the kids I talked to during our first visit, the Post-D group seemed much more willing to participate in our project. Mitch and I paired up with a Post-D student during the visit. He told us a story of when he first got into basketball and how he grew to love the sport, and other sports, because he had a good friend who played with him. When talking to us about his dream life, he mentioned that he wanted to be playing basketball in college. One thing that really stood out to me from the conversation I had with him was how much he had already thought about his future. He had thought about jobs he could get and colleges he was considering applying to and even mentioned that he had a bank account set up for the money he got while working in the detention center. He seemed intent on moving past this point, and getting his life back on track. It was a very encouraging conversation, and I think it’s a good sign for the rest of the project.
I do think our first day at the detention center could have used a little more structure to it. Brice and I spent time with five 9th and 10th graders. We talked about our project and the structure of what we were going to do over the course of the five weeks, but that only took up a little bit of our time. After that, we just talked with them about a bunch of random topics like music and college life. It was actually pretty fun and the kids seemed like they were having a good time, but I think it would be really hard to create a storytelling project with the group as is. I think if we plan activities that can fill the time we’re there it can take away some of the problems we might potentially run into if we leave the project so unstructured. Some of the kids in our group seemed to express an interest in graphic novels, so I think our best bet might be to focus on that as a means for our storytelling project. We could use markers, pencils, and other craft supplies and have the artistic kids pair with some of the less artistically inclined kids. We would have to see if having one big group graphic novel or multiple small groups works better, but I think one of those would be our best option.
When reading Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, the part that I found the most interesting was tied to a brief case study the author discusses that revolves around the trauma of two people, Stan and Ute. These two were in the same car crash together, the source of their trauma, but they reacted in very different ways. As van der Kolk writes on page 65, when the accident occurred, Stan tried his best to escape the car working hard to try and get his crushed door open. He was unable to do so, and had to wait for someone to break his windshield and help him out. During this time, he had to watch helplessly as people died in the accident. Ute reacted very differently. She, unlike Stan, made no attempt to escape the car, and instead sat silent and motionless until the pair were rescued. And even then, she had to be pulled out of the car as she made no effort to get out herself.
The part of the story that I find most interesting is when van der Kolk describes a study done on the two regarding their trauma. During the study, both Stan and Ute’s trauma responses were triggered and brain scans were studied. The fascinating part of this is that when the pair had their trauma responses triggered, they reacted in the same way as they did during the crash. Stan’s blood pressure rose, he started breathing quicker, and he began to sweat, as if he was working to get out of the car all over again. Ute, on the other hand, had almost no visible reaction, going blank the same way she did in the car. Stan’s brain scan shows a lot of activity, whereas Ute’s shows basically none at all.
I think that the fact that both Stan and Ute relive their trauma in the exact same way they first experienced it is extremely interesting. I find it even more interesting that Ute’s reaction to the traumatic events was informed by coping mechanisms she developed in childhood to deal with her verbally abusive mother. This part of van der Kolk’s book showed me that trauma is not simply some monolithic problem. It has a ton of variability on a personal level, and it’s a topic that would take many years of study to even begin to deeply understand.
Over Thanksgiving break, my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side drove up from New Jersey to visit. My parents and my aunt and uncle have all been friends forever, even before they were married. So I figured, who better to get a story from? I told the four of them over dinner one night about the assignment and asked them for one of their best stories. The four of them had all lived together in the Bronx for several years, so I was sure I would get some wild stories from those years. And I was far from disappointed.
I didn’t just get one story. I got a deluge of them. We talked for hours, my parents, aunt, and uncle reminiscing about when they were younger while my brother and I just listened. They told stories about finding a coating of lint in a meal a friend cooked for them once, about accidentally letting their dog run onto an equine racetrack during a race, of how they all met, of course, and much more. But there was one story that stuck out to me more than most.
My aunt is a veterinarian who specializes in racehorses, hence the racetrack story I mentioned before, and went to school at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. However, she did all this after dropping out of the first college she attended and working for a bit as a racehorse jockey. So, when she decided to apply to Columbia, she asked her friends, my parents and uncle, for a little help. Together, they went to a local restaurant in the Bronx to help my aunt write her college essay.
They told me they went around in a circle, adding, subtracting, and editing for hours on end, laughing and messing around as much as they were working. They decided to draw on my aunt’s unique experience as a jockey as the central pitch of the essay. Not only was the essay good enough for my aunt to get in, but it was good enough for all four to remember specific lines from it even all these years later.
This story stuck out to me, not necessarily because of what it was about, but how it was told. My aunt was the one who started to tell the story, it was her essay after all, but before long, everyone else was interrupting her, providing details she may have forgotten, re-telling certain moments from their perspective, or just making jokes about the whole experience. Watching the four of them working together, and sometimes against each other, to tell this story was a near mirror image of the story itself. I could imagine the four people in front of me laughing and writing together, all working toward some common goal. My parents ceased to be my parents, my aunt wasn’t my aunt, and my uncle was no longer my uncle. Instead, they were four best friends, reminiscing, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company, just like they did in the Bronx all those years ago.
We held class on Zoom due to Thanksgiving travel plans. Briefly mentioned that there is one more slot open for the Tuesday night option for the project in the spring. Talked about our personal story project and the preliminary ideas we had about how we were going to present our stories. Might have a whole day of Moth stories during the last week of class, maybe outside. TLC (Technology Learning Center) could be a good resource for this project.
Introduced the Great Thanksgiving Listen project by watching a video. The project, run by StoryCorps involves people collecting stories from the people around them and submitting it online. All the stories will be put into the Library of Congress as a collection. Our task is to collect a story over break. In our prep note for next class we will relate the story we collected, discuss the process of collecting the story, and what makes it a story.
We looked at an example where two boys interviewed their father. We talked about the unstructured nature of the video and how it was a little different from the other stories we’ve seen. Brice brought up how there was very little reflection on the part of the boys. However, the questions the boys asked pushed their father to tell stories about himself. In this way, stories can come out of a discussion.
We thought about who we might collect our story from and how we can listen them into story. We brainstormed questions we could ask to connect with the story teller. We also thought how after we could use follow-up questions to prompt them into storytelling. Professor Dolson also mentioned that listening to stories being told to other people, potentially while traveling, could also be a viable option. Holiday times in particular are good for storytelling. Stories could also be collected just through normal conversation without asking any questions.
We should all try to read each other’s prep notes before next class so we can come to class ready to talk about the stories we’ve all collected. We will discuss why we think stories are so important and what effect we see stories have.
The book written by the directors of The Moth had a lot of really helpful tips that I’m definitely going to keep in mind when I’m working on my story. For example, something that really stuck with me was the necessity to make sure a story is varied. Stories aren’t as engaging if they contain only scenes or only reflections. You need a mix of both in a good story. I also thought the book pushed pretty heavily for a “show don’t tell” style of storytelling. They seemed to emphasize using details to imply important character traits, emotions, or realizations instead of just saying that those things existed outright. I think this in particular is something I might struggle with when planning my story, so I’m sure I’ll look back at the tips in this chapter for reference.
Professor Dolson’s personal story was really interesting to listen to. I thought the connections she drew between the neighborhood where she parked and her own home were really clever and they made the story feel very well structured. By tying the beginning of the story to a detail at the end, Professor Dolson gives her story a circular feel which makes it feel complete and satisfying. I also think the use of background music helped to add emotional weight to the story. All music is culturally coded to invoke some feeling in us, and the music choices Prof. Dolson makes, mostly trending toward somber or serious music, added an additional layer of gravitas to the story.