Island Voices Volume 4

Abstract

This is a compilation of student essays from the writing program. Preface Writing is never finished. Every semester we tell our students, It’s a process of getting it wrong, and doing it again, over and over, until it’s almost right. Almost finished. That’s the best writers can hope for. The Irish poet Yeats first published his famous poem “The Second Coming” in 1920. It undoubtedly went through several drafts before he submitted it, since he later revealed that he had begun to imagine the “rough beast” of the poem as early as 1904. And yet, after six years of composing and revising, and after all the attention the poem garnered upon publication, he continued to revise it up until his death in 1939—twenty-five years after first imagining the poem and fifteen after publishing it! If I remember rightly from my graduate studies, he published a half dozen different versions of the poem. Always trying, and never succeeding, to get it “right.” So it’s fitting—and right—that we celebrate these nearly finished essays from our first year composition students of 2006-2007. Our congratulations to the authors for succeeding in being published so early in their careers, and for getting their essays “nearly right.” Yeats would be proud, as we are, though he might wish them luck with their next version. This year’s collection is the first to be published electronically. The CSUCI library has graciously provided us a space on their Institutional Repository (a digitized collection of works generated here at Channel Islands) where this and subsequent editions of Island Voices will live in perpetuity. Moving to a digital version has meant several changes from last year’s volume: first, we can include more essays and more genres, which makes this collection a better teaching tool in our classes. One way that is evident in this edition is the inclusion of examples of both MLA and APA citation formats, which means our students have models of the two most prominent styles for crediting sources. (A list identifying which citation style is used in which essay is below.) Electronic publication also means the collection is available to anyone with access to the CSUCI website, greatly expanding our potential readership. And finally, a digital version can be revised or augmented at any time. This has made the process of assembling, formatting and proofreading these essays much easier for us. One note about editorial changes to these essays: we’ve made no changes to the student texts without consulting the authors themselves, with the exceptions of minor changes made in formatting, mechanics and citations to maintain a consistent style throughout the volume. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Camilla Griggers, who designed a stunning layout for last year’s volume, which I have ripped off whenever possible. And to Scott DeLoach, who did the bulk of the proofreading on the student submissions. Without them, these Voices would have been silenced. Read on! Bob Mayberry Editor