Blogging in Good Books - Week 3-4

I am hoping that as we move into the reading of My Friend Dahmer and The Lovely Bones that students will post not only to their own blogs but also in response to each others' blogs (including mine).

I am truly enjoying reading everyone's blogs in EN 110 but am surprised that no one is posting in response to anyone else's blog. Perhaps the discussion in EduCat (our NMU Moodle system) is working well, and we don't need the blogs to extend the conversation. Perhaps it's hard to remember to go to the list of student blogs that I created and posted each week and visit them. Perhaps everyone's busy. I'm not really sure.

My intention with including blogs in this class is to encourage students to express themselves through a new format, to encourage conversations between/among students, and to encourage reflection upon the books we are reading.

Thanks for listening. I hope that sharing this will inspire people to share more and to talk about how blogging in this class is/is not beneficial to them individually or as a group.

Kia Jane :)

Moving from The Quiet Room and into The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

I'm thinking =====Thinking:

As I finish up reading the postings and blogs and papers in response to The Quiet Room, I am blown away by students' insight into how the stories in Lori Schiller's book seem to complicate the stories we have already heard about mental illness through film, television, advertising, etc.

We are bombarded with advertisements about various medications that can help individuals with mental illnesses such as depression, OCD, schizophrenia, etc. This is new to those of us who grew up in the 20th century and got our medical information from friends (often in whispered conversations) and from doctors (and sometimes, only if we asked for help).
FOr instance, I have seen this commercial many times this week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGymr78FtbU

And this one, more recently, about Seroquel XR:
http://alittlespark.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/new-seroquel-xr-commercial/
Note that the blogger makes a reference to the cloud that follows the depressed people around.

I'm wondering if Lori Schiller made a commercial for Clozapine, what it would look like.
I'm thinking it would include clouds, blobs, Voices, and some weird outfits.

Did you know that in 1994 Lori Schiller (Baach)was"approached by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals (now Novartis), the makers of Clozaril [...] to tour the country on their behalf" - giving speeches about her life with support from her mother who traveled with her? Wow!  ("Afterword" - added in 2011, p. 267)

If I were doing a commercial for the various medicines I've been on over the years, I think I would have to include music as a key part, and I'd have to invite Adam Ant to be in the commerical (even though he lives with bi-polar disorder and I have anxiety and dysthymia (low grade depression), I have loved his music for 30+ years, and I think he'd have a lot to say about living with  mental illness. :)
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/q-a-adam-ant-on-returning-to-music-from-bipolar-disorder-20130219
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/9809653/Adam-Ant-interview-You-should-never-feel-ashamed-of-madness.html

Kia Jane

Reading Essays about The Quiet Room and Films About Mental Illness

I am really impressed with the class's ability to discuss similarities and differences between The Quiet Room and various films students self-selected (including Girl, Interrupted; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Silver Linings Playbook, etc.). My students are talking about character motivations, actions, personalities, relationships, struggles, and choices. They are also sharing a lot of insight into the reasons for mental illness stigmas and stereotypes.

As I am grading their essays in response to the assignment to compare/contrast Schiller's book with a film  (or to "The Yellow Wallpaper" if a film is not available), I find myself going back to the text of The Quiet Room, looking at specific passages and considering Lori's illness and how it developed in her life as a teenager and into her twenties and thirties. I am thinking also about the people I know who have mental illness and how their diseases changed over time, in most cases getting worse unless treatment (medical, psycholocial, social) was sought and followed consistently.

I know, too, that one of the movies that I watched on Lifetime, called Obsessed (2002) which starred Jenna Elfman, was a film that I believe could be compared easily to The Quiet Room. This film, which was based on a true story about a woman named Diane Schaefer, who was obsessed with a cancer specialist Brennan Murray,  features a character named Ellena Roberts, who imagined a relationship with a doctor and who had a hallucination about a woman named Charlotte who seemed to be her friend. Even though the movie was not about schizophrenia (but erotomania), the fact that Ellena frequently interacted with a hallucination and was not aware of the reality in which she lived made me think of Lori's discussions of her visions and Voices.
Thanks -
Kia Jane

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325322/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm#cast

http://www.examiner.com/article/obsessed-true-story-based-on-diane-schaefer-dr-murray-brennen-erotomania-case