4min chapter

Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour cover image

Gail Newman & Mari Ruti - Against Neoliberal Self-Optimization: Marion Milner and D.W. Winnicott

Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour

CHAPTER

How Did You Become Interested in Teaching German?

Gail: I really think that every bit of my work, both my scholarship and my teaching is very connected with the experience over and over again of working with people who are trying to express themselves. She says she grew up in an un-intellectual or even not consciously but effectively anti-intellectual household. "I didn't even know I had academic interests," said Gail about her early days as a clarinetist.

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part of the learning process and you learn more from your failures, so being forced, again that's trial by fire and that's admirable and now Gail, do you have a story that you feel like you can share with us too and how maybe you got interested in German? I know that I saw that you were at the University, you went to the University of Minnesota for your degrees which I have to give credit for in terms of their press especially because I kind of started off in comparative literature and literary theory and they've had a wonderful sort of run of publishing, so yeah Exactly and it started, well lots of connections to what you were just talking about, the press, that series started right as I was finishing graduate school and my dissertation advisor, my doctor father, my doctor father as they say in the German speaking world, together with God God's sake who was chair of of of Compllet at the time founded the series but I'm also really resonating with your description of the sort of learning, teaching, trying, failing, dynamic to learning and teaching foreign language. I really think that every bit of my work, both my scholarship and my teaching, regardless of whether it has to do with German specifically is very connected with the experience over and over again of working with people who are who are taking that big risk of trying to express themselves without, especially adults, you know, older people who are taking the risk of going into a space that's not familiar to them and that they can't do, and yet nonetheless trying to say something and I'm very humbled, humbled by my students all the time, as far as my own origins in the field are concerned, you know, unlike Mari, I grew up in a middle class household, an American household, I guess sort of suburban, actually sort of excerpt of Albany New York, pretty horrible but you know not not on a farm My parents were both educated, my mother's parents had also gone to college and one of them had an advanced degree so technically I grew up in an educated household but in lived reality, it was a completely un-intellectual or even not consciously but effectively anti-intellectual household, I was, sports was the thing and in my house and so I felt I didn't have really any outlet, I didn't even know I had academic interests, I just, you know, went to school and did what I was told I was actually a musician first, first and foremost, I was a very serious clarinetist, I sometimes think if I had played a string instrument I might still be a musician, I didn't really have a clarinet, but it was my only option, either that or flute because when I was learned, you know, when I was in elementary school, girls weren't allowed to play brass instruments and there were no string instruments in the school, oh no, so I had the choice between flute and clarinet and it's like that's obvious, so I took clarinet but anyway I was a clarinetist and I went to the Northwestern School of Music first and realized pretty quickly that I had by the people who were surrounding me that I had neither the talent nor the temperament to be a professional musician and with regard to music I had no interest in teaching it, I only wanted to play it, so then I had to be like, what am I going to do instead and I remembered a really good high school German teacher, so I knew I wanted

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