Time out with Sarah:Our editor had a chance to sit down with Sarah Marshall and discuss her development as a writer. The question on everyone’s mind: How did you get where you are today?
Sarah: I began writing poetry in high school, but I didn’t really get serious about it until the first few years of college. It was a way for me to write down all my emotions and thoughts that at the time I was unable to express otherwise because I was so shy. My poetry was private; for me only. It was dramatic; relative to young adult psychosis where every experience is felt by the smallest sensory atom within my female body. I didn’t know who I was, so my poetry was the preliminary means to finding that woman: the real adult that was to emerge years later, but first had to experience situations and sensations that many friends had already been in and done. I was naïve, to say the least, and it was time I grew up. My cautiousness had protected me long enough, and while it had its benefits in contributing to my morals and ethics as I am now, it was time to let down the barriers and grow. By the time I got into college, in the late 90’s, my passion for school work had waned substantially, unless it had to do with Spanish. I would do anything for Spanish. My first year of college was a bust, though. Since I was still in the immature stage of late teenage insecurities, and because I was becoming increasingly shy, class to me was like walking on stage for the first time. Instead of being one of a few hundred, I was a giant amongst ants. That is the way people like me, at the time, insecure, shy and quiet, view the world around them. The world is a stage and therefore your oyster….wait isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? Rather than trying to prove that theory right, my friends and I spent the majority of our time sleeping, talking, and engaging in other more unproductive activities. To compensate for the lack of discovery in class, I began diving into poetry as deep as I could, maybe to hide. Or maybe I was looking for my voice, spending every possible moment in the coffee house, sipping Raspberry Mochas and scribbling in my journal until my grade point sunk so low that I was politely asked to leave Central Michigan and return to my home with my tail between my legs. Only I didn’t go home in shame for not completing my first year successfully, but I took that experience, after I had poked enough fun at myself for the circumstances surrounding my leave of absence, and I stepped into the newer me: The emerging writer. Taking what little I had learned at university and a lot more of what I learned from writing and applied that to the new student at the community college. I became less of a liability to my parents and more of a self-determining student. What was your schooling like? Did you have it all growing up or were you a rags to riches type? Sarah: I was comfortable. If we struggled as a family I was unaware. I came from a small community we call a village; the Village of Corncob. There were 72 students in my graduating class in 1996. Diversity equaled one black student; most were from low to middle income middle class families and/or farmers. My family was middle class, with single mother for half my school career and then remarried for the other half. I had a hand-me-down car that I drove to school, when I could really have just walked the two blocks like I did growing up. The village of Corncob is basically made up of two main families: the Brigs and the Thors. Both families are large, respected, wealthy, successful, and well-known. I was one of the Brigs. I was also the black sheep. We were taught to always keep our reputation in the foreground, and never disgrace the family. School and sports were important, work was for later. I think what was good about having a small town, and I still believe this, is that everyone knows each other. The teachers are involved in the community and communicate with the students and their parents. The teachers were our neighbors. The school was not exaclty wealthy, but we had a computer lab, which I never used because I took Spanish and Art instead, we had a small library, and athletic teams and equipment. I did not see tracking or ability grouping, but I’m not sure if it is because I was more focused on boys and friends, or because it just didn’t exist in my school. Honestly, I don’t think there were enough students to group. It seemed more to me that there were a few “really smart kids” and the rest were average, maybe a few below average, but we were never separated. You either graduated then went to college or you graduated and went to work. It was what you were raised to do, or what you chose to do. I remember some of my friends chose not to go to college simply because it wasn’t their thing. But I do know that if you didn’t leave Corncob after graduation, even for a short time, you didn’t leave Corncob at all. When did you really begin to delve in to your writing? Sarah: That’s easy…Spring 2005 was the beginning of a new chapter in life for me, although I was completely unaware of just how much it would change every particle of my being. When I enrolled at Western in 2003, with intentions on becoming a teacher, my first choice was English, and then I thought, Spanish as a major would be beneficial. Spanish always seemed to come second nature to me, and being one of the fastest growing languages in the United States, it seemed like the logical choice to have under my belt. And besides, it would give me an opportunity to go back to Spain since study abroad was a requirement. After taking a few classes I began to remember what I loved about the Spanish language, its pronunciation, grammar, and most of all the daily use of metaphorical speech with a language that sounded so enchanting as it rolled off your tongue. I couldn’t wait to be a part of the atmosphere that was Barcelona, and the culture that was Spain. Every day I used the language as much as I could, in restaurants, classes, conversation, books, anything to become more fluent. I jumped in with both feet and didn’t think twice about it. I was loving life. On the other hand, my roommate was having a difficult time with the language, because her college didn’t have the level requirement Western did to study abroad. So with her we spoke a lot of English to compensate. Our sponsors would tell us that using English instead would hinder our abilities and we would consequently learn less of the language. Think about the opportunity you are spoiling when you are not thinking in Spanish they would say. And they were right, I didn’t get everything I could out of it, but I got a lot. Enough that by the time I returned to the states and back to class, I had a hard time with my native language. I began to misspell words that were cognates in Spanish because I couldn’t remember how they were spelled, was it two c’s or one… Instead of looking up all the words in the Spanish dictionary, I was looking up all the English words. My language didn’t make sense to me anymore. It was ten major steps forward in a foreign language, and about five backwards in my own. I was amazed at the same time that I was frustrated. I felt as if I was a foreigner in my own country, but at the same time I felt I had accomplished something. They say when you start dreaming in Spanish you’re on the right track. Well, I don’t remember dreaming in Spanish, but I do remember having conversations. And what amazes me even more still to this day, is all the conversations I had with Señora Marta, I remember as if they were spoken in English, only Marta didn’t speak more than two words of it. Studying in Spain for a semester really gave me that push to write. I used my curiosity and timidness to communicate on paper how I was feeling. It was a sort of therapy for me so that I could move past the insecurities and grow as a person. I had to be on my own there and I wanted to be that way as well. Because I had such a grasp on the language I was able to experiment in writing in Spanish. Not only was that a way to practice the language, but it forced me to be aware of the functionality of it as well. So by the time I returned home, writing in Spanish was my comfort zone. It helped me to get through the reverse culture shock and kept me company as I adjusted back into a life I once knew, without the friends I lived with on a daily basis in Spain. |