Virtual Fridays: Assignments from the Branch

04/20 Assignment:

For this assignment, due no later than Friday at 3:00pm, in 300 words consider a moment in your past that you might describe as a "Killing Rage." What were the circumstances? What was the outcome? Can anger ever be the source of change--a change for "the better"? If you have never felt such rage, reflect on why you haven't.
After you have posted, respond to at least 2 other posts in 5-7 sentences.

The First Response:
Have you ever been so mad with someone that you just wanted to hurt them so badly? I have! I found out that my son's father was cheating on me with this girl who had already messed with one of my boyfriends from a few years before. What a whore! Apparently she couldn't seem to find her own boyfriend, she had to keep stealing mine and other peoples also. When I first found out that he was cheating on me, I denied the fact that he was. But when everyone around town was telling me where he and this girl was at, I finally decided to go check out for myself. It was true! I flipped out on her and him in a bar, but what is an underage girl doing in a bar anyway! So that made me even more mad at him because I was at that time, home with his sick kid. I knew I could not do much to her because of her being underage, so when ever I would visit him and find her things lying around, I would burn them, break anything that could be broken, and pour whatever chemical on her clothes that I could find in the house. One time I went down to his house late at night and her car was there and the window was down, I was smoking a cigarette and through it in her car. I even poured what ever I could find on her seats. Whenever I would happen to see them outside,say at one of his friends house, I would jump out of my car and try to kick her ass, but he would stop me and that would inferiate me even more. My sister would tell me that I was insane. He was to be my boyfriend and a father to our son. Not running around with some fluzzy! To this day if I would ever see this girl, I think I would still give her a piece of my mind.

Another Response:
When I think of a time that I was in an uncontrolable state of rage, I was 25 years old and was living here in [smalltownsville USA]. I was staying in these tiny appartments on 2nd Street with a couple of so called friends. This place was a freaking mad house, with the people that lived next door and their company and the parties that were thrown on a daily basis just made it pure crazyness. One night, my friends pregnent girlfriend, who's name was on the lease for the appartment I was staying at, got into a fist fight with the tennent next door, Mike, who was a friend of mine and twice her size. I'm not really sure what the fight was really over, but she demanded that we have nothing to do with this guy and not to allow this guy in her appartment anymore. Now you must understand that this girl thought that she was the boss and had to be in control of everything, to make it easier for you, SHE WAS A BITCH. One day, around ten o'clock at night, we were all sitting in our living room watching T.V. with our front open because it was really nice outside, and M walked by and I said hey to him. This one little friendly guesture on my part sent this bitch into an outrage. She started cussing and yelling at me, "I told you I don't want him around my appartment and you talking to him when I'm here," and so on and so forth. Well, by this time I had listened to this stupid bitch's stuff long enough and basically told her where she could go and how she could get there. Long story short, she told me to get out of the appartment and not to come back, so I grabbed some clothes of mine and went next door to M's appartment to stay with him for the night to let things cool off and gather my thoughts on what I was going to do. The next day I had decided that I was going to gather all my things from her appartment and move into an appartment of my own just down the street. I went to open the door and it was locked, in the confusion and rage the night before, I had forgoten my key to the appartment, which was inside with her. I knocked on the door and no one answered, I knew that her and her boyfriend and her brother were in there because their cars were parked outside. I knocked again, this time, with out opening the door I heard her sorry ass brother say "she said not to let you in to get anything because you owe her this month's rent and until you give her that, your not getting a damn thing!" I was really pissed off now, this bitch not only kicked me out of my legal place of residence, but is now holding my stuff for ransom. I called the police department on the matter and they came down to try to clear up the situation, but do to the fact that my name was not on the lease and her name was, there was nothing that they could do. This sent me over the edge, everything that I owned, my clothes, my grandmothers bed that was given to me, my PlayStation and games, my wallet with my I.D. and bank cards, everything, was inside that appartment. I started thinking really crazy thoughts, like kicking in the door and beating the hell out of all of them and the one that really scared me and most deffinantly would put me in jail for the rest of my life, was that if they were going to lock me out of there, then I'll just burn the mother down with all their sorry asses locked in. I really came close to doing that one, but when I was on my way up to the gas station with a 5 gallon gas can to douse the place with, I had what you could call a religious experence. A friend of my mom and dads, who they go to church with and I was working for at the time, pulled up in his truck and said "I was praying for you today and God told me that I needed to come down here to find you right away because you were about to do something that you would regret for the rest of your life!" You need to know that no one knew what I was about to do except for me and God, and I would have done it if it wasn't for this man listening to what God had told him to do. I broke down in his truck and told him everything that had transpired and what I was about to do. That day changed the rest of my life for the better because I was in some serious need of help to get off drugs and to change the direction of my life as I knew it. Long story short, he took me to a christian place called the R, that was set up for guys like me who needed help with the things that I was dealing with. The place really changed my life and I am truely gratefull for it because insted of sitting here writting this down for you to read while attending college, I would be sitting in a 6 by 6 cell wishing things had turned out differently. Now I never did get any of my things from that appartment, but I did get a second chance on making things in my life different so I saw it as a fair trade.

The Kicker Response:
The only time i get in a rage is when i have to do these stupid things on [Virtual Fridays]! I thought i singed up for a Writting class, Writing and Rhetoric 1 English 101. I didn't know that i was going to be reading all of this stuff. I thought that i was just going to wright. I feel like we are just given a hole lot of useless work to do because someone higher says we have to do something on friday. In all of my other english classes that were supoose to meet on friday, we used that as a meet with the professor if you need to day. It was a time when you could go and ask them questions about how your paper was going. Not as a day when you had to rush around and wright a 5 page paper in 3 hours. I don't have three hours to do it all. I have to go to work at 2:00. And i had to rush up to Campus to wright this non sense. I know that i should have scheduald around this time, but i couldn't i needed the money to pay for this class. A class i wish i would have never taken.
I also hate it when i register for a class with a sertain profesor, and a get someone who is not who i wanted in the 1st place (no ofense). I think that the Uniuversity should take it upon its self to tell all the students that their profeser has been changed. Not told at the last second, when you walk in the door and see someone you didn't register for.
I don't think there will be a change for the better, unless someone says something.

My Response to the Kicker:
[Direct address to the student], shall I rage back at how non-academically some students approach their work at the University? At how inappropriately and unprofessionally they often address their concerns? Or at how they often don't bother to even come to class or do their assignments (assignments they may not understand the value of, yet do not ask for explanation) but still expect high marks?
Or should I rage at students who believe my "stupid" assignments (assignments that are clearly "writing" assignments) on Blackboard (designed for the convenience of my students) are "nonsense," yet lack the ability to understand the simple purpose and audience of a 300 word post (and to check it for simple grammatical errors before posting)?
I suppose not. Instead, perhaps I should just calmly remind all students that no one has forced them to take such a class and that dropping the class is still quite possible.

The assignment was designed to prepare students for bell hooks' "Killing Rage" through a pre-writing exercise in which they could reflect upon their own moments of rage and injustice; then we will analyze the essay for its rhetorically effectiveness in terms of addressing audience and use of tone. Sigh. This hurt my feelings. I just want to see my students succeed.