Oral History Program Timothy Heaston Interviewed by Matthew Gerrish 21 June 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Timothy Heaston Interviewed by Matthew Gerrish 21 June 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Heaston, Timothy, an oral history by Matthew Gerrish, 21 June 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Timothy Heaston. It is being conducted on June 21, 2008 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah in the Forest Service Tanker Base building. The interview concerns his experiences and history as an English student at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The goal is to gain an understanding of the lifestyle and hardships of a Weber State student. The interviewer is Matthew Gerrish. MG: First off, who are you and what's your major at the University? TH: My name is Tim Heaston. I am an English major with a creative writing emphasis, and I am half way through my junior year. MG: So why did you choose to become an English major? TH: I've been writing since I was about seventeen, and nothing else seemed like it would hold my attention for the rest of my life, so I chose English. MG: Fair enough. As far as Weber State University goes, what made you decide on going to that university over some other school? TH: A big part of it was the closeness to my house. I mean, I've grown up my whole life in Layton right there, and so it was just kind of always assumed that I would either go to Brigham Young University or Weber State, and then in high school my grades weren't stellar, and so not quite relegated. But Weber was my best option at that point. MG: Is there any disappointment that you didn't get to go to BYU? TH: No, no, because I like my long hair, and Weber has no honor code. MG: That something I was unaware of. I didn't know that BYU required a haircut there. TH: BYU has an honor code. Weber does not. MG: Interesting. 1 TH: We volunteer our honor. We don't have to have it mandated. MG: Was the commute, I mean obviously that had an influence on your decision. TH: Yes. I did almost three or four semesters at the Davis campus, which is like eight minutes’ drive from my house and so I was almost done as a sophomore before I had to go up to the main campus. MG: How do you like the Davis campus? TH: I love the Davis campus. One of the really cool things was the class sizes. I think my biggest class was math 1010, and it was about forty to forty-five students there on a given day. There were probably sixty enrolled, but my smallest class was Spanish 2010, and it was six students, and so most of my classes didn't have more than ten or fifteen. I really liked that because then you get to interact with the professor. You get a lot more feedback and I liked that a lot. I thought it was cool. MG: Yes, it is a lot nicer. I mean obviously we were just talking about the commute and stuff. What's your take on the parking situation at Weber State? TH: Laughter MG: At the Davis campus or the main campus? TH: Davis parking is great. You get a 'W' pass and you never run out of parking. There's never a problem, and I got there early everyday anyways, so that wasn't a problem. I would like if I could use my 'W' pass to park somewhere other than the Dee Events Center parking, but that's pretty much it. I take the shuttle after I park at Dee because there is never any room. I don't have really late classes, but I don't have the seven or eight o'clock classes, so by the time I get to my nine o'clock classes there is absolutely no parking. 2 MG: Yes. I know that game. So obviously you are living from home going to school. What are your tuition costs and how do you pay for school? TH: Up until now, I've had my school entirely paid for by grants, by the pell grant, and the SEOG grant, I think is what it is. This semester I have about 3,500 dollars, and so the rest of that I am going to have to pay for. But up until now, I've had it entirely paid for by the gracious people of Weber State and the U.S. taxpayers. MG: That includes all of the above? Books? TH: Yes, for everything. Throughout the whole year I've been getting about 6,000 dollars. Whatever is left over, they send me a refund check in the amount that was left over when my tuition was paid so then that covered books, and travel costs. So it made it nice. I don't have to pay rent living at home, and then I wasn't paying for school either. MG: Awesome. I was going to ask you what your financial struggles that come along with being a student are, but since you pretty much covered that, are there any outside struggles that come with being a student? I mean obviously you are not going to have time to work full time. TH: Yes. I wish I could save up more money, and so it's hard when I work just part time. So when I'm done with school I won’t have as big a nest-egg as I would like. Then again, I'm getting paid to go to school and so that money that I might be paying has been nice. It's been a good balance. MG: Score. As far as the schoolwork goes, what have been some of the favorite courses you've taken at Weber, and why? TH: Well, I've really liked my English courses. I've had some great English professors. I had the same Spanish professor for three Spanish semesters, and she's fantastic. 3 MG: What was her name? TH: Dolores Jasmer. I've had a lot of courses from John Schwiebert in the English department, and I think he's awesome. His style is totally teaching through writing, so we read a lot. But then we write on it, so we can use that reading to further our writing. That’s what I want to do, and so that's been a really good basis for me to build on. I don't know. I haven't really had a class that I disliked. I didn't really like having to do TBE, just because I knew most of it already. I think most people at Weber do, except maybe some like non-traditional students. No offense to them, who haven't been raised with all that, like we have. So I liked the professor. She was really nice to me. But I didn't particularly care for the course. MG: What have been like your least favorite experiences, or classes you've had up at Weber? TH: I honestly haven't had very many bad experiences. I've had great professors. I had a poetry professor who was a little long winded, but he was passionate about his subject matter. He didn't really stick with the syllabus which was kind of frustrating. He'd say we were going to have to have something turned in by a certain day and then he'd push it back. Then he'd forget about it for a month and then he'd just completely toss it out the window. That was nice. It was a good class because all we did was read poetry, but we didn't have a lot of feedback from it. We'd read it and we'd talk about it a little bit in class. But there was never anything associated with it, never really any assignments. MG: A situation where you'd just grade it with a number, and no feedback. TH: Yes, and even then there wasn't much to grade. We only ended up turning in like three assignments the whole semester, and then the final. 4 MG: That's got to be the nice thing with your major, is that it’s all subjective. TH: Yes, most of it is. I don't have a lot of finals in any of my English classes. MG: I envy you. So obviously you talked about some of your favorite and least favorite courses. Do you feel you have any incentives to do any extracurricular, because they have stuff going on all the time, but I personally know that I don't really do any of it, and as far as the sporting events go, seminars, and they do all sorts of stuff. Do you attend any of that, or have you? TH: No. A part of that is because I work every day right after. I just leave from school and I go to work for the better part of the year. I think if I lived on campus it would be different, and if I were at traditional college age it would be different, but I didn't start school until I was twenty-three. I'll be twenty-six in December now so there's not a lot of incentive for me to get involved with any kind of outside the classroom extracurricular activities for whatever reason. MG: Yes, given that Weber is a commuter school, does it come off to you as if it has less of what you call school spirit compared to other universities like BYU or Utah State or whatever? TH: Yes. I think so. I think there is a different level of camaraderie between college students who live on campus, who live kind of a college lifestyle, who don't always necessarily work, because for whatever reason, you know, they’re going to school full time. They're really focused on that. Yes and so, if it's a scholarship situation, that's great. But I think with our school it is kind of hard, because most people that I know at least work parttime, a lot full-time, and so there's not a lot of left over room to go to movie screenings, 5 or poetry jams, or whatever, although I would love to do some of that, I just don't have time. MG: Well awesome. I'm in the same boat as you as far as attending those things. Do you feel that Weber State can do a better job of trying to get the students involved? TH: I think they do a pretty fair job about advertising things, about trying to put together things that students who want to go would enjoy. I just think it’s kind of a hard situation there in, being in a commuter school. I think they do a good job. I think students that want to go, go and the students that aren't as inclined to go, it's hard to pull them in. It's hard to find whatever it is that would spark their interest that much. MG: I see. I was going to say, I was going to go back to the Davis campus, and obviously you enjoy that campus more because of the smaller class size and easier parking and stuff. Do you utilize that campus more than you do the main campus? Or, have you had any online class experience? I mean anything outside of the main university. Do you use a lot of that? TH: I am taking an online class this coming semester, but I haven't had any other than that. I make a lot more trips to the Davis bookstore than the main bookstore, because it is so close. So I try and look and see if my books are there. If they have that same course offered there, then I'll go and buy the book there instead of driving all the way up on campus. Otherwise I'll just do it like the first day of class or whatever. But, when I was there at Davis, I spent a lot more time in the bookstore, and the food court. I spent a lot more time there, then at Weber, which is weird to think. But when I'm at Weber between classes, I just sit there and read or whatever. But when I was at Davis the mentality was different. So I would go and walk around the little bookstore, I'd buy something to eat, 6 and just sit there in the common area, and watch T.V., or read, or work on my homework. MG: Does it frustrate you, because we know that they're supposed to expand the Davis campus? Or initially we thought it was going to be a much bigger campus, and obviously that is not going to happen any time soon. You'll probably be long since graduated. Is it frustrating that by the time they have a nice big campus there that you could probably do your whole degree, you won't be able to do that? TH: Yes, it would be really nice. The hard thing with any degree is you have really specified classes that they only offer once or twice, and so it's too hard for the university, unless they expand their student body to offer those classes. Like I am taking a 'Studies in Shakespeare' course, and I don't think it's in high demand. MG: Yes. TH: So I can't imagine them offering it more than once or twice, tops, in a semester. I think they are offering one course this semester for it. So, I can see why they wouldn't have that kind of stuff at Davis, although I would love it if they did. We need to be like the U.C. system where we have like eighteen colleges, and they are all— MG: Scattered everywhere. TH: That would be nice. MG: Do you feel like, I mean obviously you are halfway through your junior year, and you are coming up on your senior year. Have you had to jump through a lot of hoops so far to get graduated, or is that still to come in your senior year? TH: I think it's still coming. So far it's been pretty slick. I have my schedule set up. I know which classes I need to take. I know I have like my one general left, which is that online 7 class, that library science class. Other than that, I think it's been pretty smooth. I haven't had to deal with any of the senior stuff. I've just been able to just focus on classes and not worry about what it was going to take for me to actually get all that stuff done. MG: Is that intimidating for you looking ahead? TH: A little bit. MG: All the technicalities you are going to have to meet to get that degree? TH: Yes, a little bit. For an English major there's probably some substantial writing involved, so that's a little daunting to think about that. At the same time, I write a lot anyway, so as long as I keep that up, I think it shouldn't be too hard to stay on top of everything. It should be ok. MG: How much writing would you say that you do at home? Is a lot of it more for personal or does it apply to your coursework at the school? TH: A lot of it's personal. I've had some really cool professors who have it set up like John Schwiebert—any writing you do outside of class, you put in a portfolio. That portfolio is graded not based on quality, strictly based on the fact that you are writing on quantity more than anything. He'd read a few of the things, but for the most part, he just wanted to know that you are writing. He’d say if you want a ‘B’, you have to write 1,800 words in this two-week period, which is nothing. If you want an ‘A’, you have to substantially exceed that, and he never said the number. He just said you'll know if you're doing it, because you'd stop keeping track of the count. That kind of stuff was really cool, because then I'd be writing anyway and so I wouldn't have to sacrifice time. I could write my own stuff for time that I could write school stuff, because my own stuff counted. I still had assignments that I had to do. I still had assigned readings that I had to respond to, 8 and I had to create pieces of work based on those short stories or fragments of books or poems or whatever. But, it was really nice, because I got to combine the two. So I never felt like I was missing out on time that I should have been doing schoolwork when I was really writing. MG: Yes. I was going to say, does it feel like you can almost kill two birds with one stone? TH: Yes. MG: You're doing your own writing but then you can apply it to wards. I don't know how the English department works as far as a senior project. Do you have to write a dissertation or a thesis for English majors your senior year? TH: I think so, yes. I think it would have to be something originally generated, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be something that I generated from a piece that I had already started and then expanded upon. I don't know if it would be a creative piece. I don't know if it would be a research piece, or whatever. MG: Alright, as far as getting that degree goes, what are your plans after graduation? Do you have plans to apply that degree to something? Or is it more of get the degree and just take it from there? TH: I want to write. I don't know if I have any specific plans, because writers come from everywhere. My favorite writer was a history major, who then went to Vietnam and worked as a nuclear physicist, and I mean he was everywhere. I could if I really wanted to find an in, I wouldn't need a degree to be a writer. Ray Bradbury got a high school education and he's kind of one of the masters of American literature. It will be helpful, just because I need to find steady work. If I could find work writing for a periodical, or a 9 magazine, or something, then that would be awesome. I would do that while I was working on my own stuff. MG: Just to get the experience? TH: I refuse to be an English teacher. That's it. That being said, I'm not getting a ‘B’ in English so I can be an English teacher. There are plenty of great English teachers, people who want to teach English, people who are passionate about helping people understand. That's not necessarily—I want to write. I have selfish motives. MG: Does Weber State offer any openings for you to get into the field? It seems like in that field, you have to know a lot of people to get going. Is there any connections, being an English major, that can get your foot in the door? TH: I don't know. It's a hard thing. I've had a few professors approach me about maybe giving them something more refined to see if they can publish on some sort of a scholarly or some sort of college level. I mean with writing you have to get your foot in the door somehow, so that's not a bad way to go about it. Doing stuff like, Metaphor, at least gets you to understand the process of publication a little better. I think if you can find a good mentor in the program who themselves has been published or knows about the industry, I think that helps a lot. MG: Is there any one of those things you see as that mentor or do you think it is still kind of— TH: No, I definitely think there are a few professors that I could approach with something like that and they would give me serious attention. They would go to bat for me as best they could and I would really appreciate that. MG: Well, are you going to be done after your bachelors? 10 TH: Yes, it's a little up in the air. I would love graduate school. I was never a serious student until college. I really enjoy it. I would like to maybe just apply, just for the sake of knowing. If I could get accepted in some nice schools back east or somewhere up in the northwest, or you know. There are a lot of schools with really good graduate level poetry programs, and that's something I'm really interested in, and graduate level fiction writing, which would be awesome. But I think if I could just write. There's not a level of education that will make you a great writer. It's all about the ideas that you have, and your ability to put them on paper, and your passion for it. MG: Kind of a learning it by doing it? TH: Yes, and so if you have an idea. That's something that speaks to people, that's something that hasn't been over-killed, then there is no reason necessarily to go on to graduate work. Graduate work is really useful if you want to teach and I don't necessarily want to do that. Maybe, later in life, I wouldn't mind teaching on a college level, but that would probably be it. MG: Does Weber State offer any graduate work as far as English goes? TH: I think that you can do a Masters in English. I don't know exactly what different areas there are, but I know I've had masters’ students in a few of my classes who the course would alter a little for them. They had like an extra hundred page project or something they had to do for Masters credit in that class over the whole course of the semester. MG: Do you consider doing that just to kind of stay in the groove while you are still a student? Just to keep going? TH: I could think about it. If I could keep with my regiment of writing, then I wouldn't mind being in school still. As long as it gave me time to do that. The problem is that if I were 11 writing that much, I would have to have a job that would support me. So, to be writing at the level I would need to be to get a book published, I don't know if I would have time for school and work. MG: Well, personally for me, it seems like when I’m up at Weber State, like every day is kind of an adventure. I always have something new to talk about because it’s just so— sometimes it comes off as really chaotic. I mean, are there any moments or any experiences that you've ever had there, or even at the Davis campus that kind of stood out to you, anything weird or just kind of unexpected? I mean, just the overall atmosphere of the campus? How has that come off to you so far? TH: It's a strange school. It's a commuter school. There's a lot of displaced anger there. MG: Laughter TH: Yes, it's an interesting experience. Sometimes things just really catch you off guard, and not because they are so out of the ordinary, but just given the location. I remember I had that nice five-minute walk from Lind to Kimball every day. I was walking and I wasn't really thinking, because I was in the zone, trying to get to class on time. There were a bunch of kids sitting on the stairs smoking and they were totally smoking weed. I didn't realize until I got right up there and smelled it, that that's what they were doing. I remember looking around and I was like, really? It was like, for a second I thought I was at Berkeley or something, but I was still at Weber. So I just looked at them and I just laughed and I kept on walking. I was like, “That was a little surreal,” just because I totally didn't expect it there in Ogden at Weber. Yes, that caught me off guard. MG: Only college students. TH: Yes. 12 MG: Alright, well that's all that I've got for you. Is there anything at all you wanted to talk about as far as your overall college experience? TH: I've been really surprised. I thought I'd have a lot more difficult professors. You hear horror stories about professors. Maybe it's an attitude thing. I don't know. I really like class, and I really like learning. I try and take the most out of any class that I'm in, but I haven't really had professors that I've bashed heads with, that I really haven't liked, that I though did a poor job. I've had a few professors that I wouldn't want to spend time with outside of class. But, in class, I think they did a good job and I think they were really trying. I think they were passionate about what they did, and that's the reason they were good professors. I'd say that about almost all my professors, and I think that's one reason why I would send my kids to Weber. I don't mind going there at all. I think it's a good school. MG: So obviously, do you think that gives credit towards your department in particular? I mean, I'm sure the bulk of your coursework was done through the English Department? You think that gives more credibility to the English department, just because you've had so little bad experiences there? TH: I think Weber has an excellent English department. I think the professors that I've had really know their stuff, really love it, and they teach it like they do. It doesn't come across dry, it doesn't come across that they're just there teaching that, because they have to teach that along with something they want to teach more. I haven't had a teacher who just seemed like they were just teaching that course because it was required by the department. But, they did it because they enjoyed it, because they want to teach it. 13 Outside of the English department I’ve had philosophy classes and all the general stuff too, and that same way I think that Weber has a good staff. MG: So you haven't gotten any of the feeling from your general education classes that they are just kind of teaching it because they have to, because everybody is taking it just to get done with generals? TH: Yes. No, I think it’s been—even Math which is one of my least favorite classes because its Math, she really seemed to enjoy it. She had been doing masters’ work in it and genuinely seemed to enjoy the field. That made the class more bearable because she didn't seem to just be there pushing what the department told her she had to push. MG: Would you have any advice to somebody listening to this interview twenty years down the road that is a Weber State student from now? Anything you want to tell them to high-tail it, or to look out for? TH: Hopefully, they still have the quantitative literacy credit being fulfilled by deductive logic, so you can just skip Math 1010, 1030, or 1050, and go right up to that. I did both 1010 and then when I realized you could do that, then I took deductive logic. So I was stumped at logic first. It’s not an easy class, as you know. I think it's more applicable to most people's lives, to understand the workings of logic than the workings of advanced algebra. I mean it’s important to be able to balance your budget, figure out your IRA, and figure out interest rates on credit cards. I don't need to figure out how to mix chemical solutions with ten percent acid and ten percent oatmeal and figure out what they make. So, yes, skip math. MG: Well thanks again. I think I got what I needed. TH: No problem. 14