My Goals

I am currently not doing as well in this class as I possibly could be doing or should be doing. This is entirely my fault. Once I leave class all I want to do is sleep, not because class is boring but because I am so sleep deprived. My days are packed with classes, meetings, practices, lifts, study hall, etc. I am exhausted. No excuse though. To combat this I have decided to challenge myself to write everyday in my blog or at least comment on someone else’s blog which I have read. Whenever fresh ideas hit me I will write them down and repost them later. As far as the other projects I have taken the initiative to get a head start on them keeping tabs as I go. As of yet I am only truly slacking on the blogging part, so that is my main focus. Identify the problem early and handle it.

Discursive

Writing is a form of communication. Scholarly works, essays, e-mails, text messages, 3rd grade notes in class...they are all forms of communication. While reading ch.7 in Keith Hjortshoj's "The Transition to College Writing" within the first few pages millions of ideas flooded my mind. A couple of weeks ago in class we discussed why teachers assign essays and other such writings. My own response was that since it had always been done, naturally the cycle would continue, but also because when language first began and all things were new people did not have technology so they used what they had. This led my argument to communication as well. People wrote notes and letters and essays and books because they could not call their peers or friends on the phone and relay the information. I also said how it allowed information to be dispersed between generations. How writing in the past enables today's world to read the ideas of Freud or Nietzsche or Shakespeare or anyone else. On pg 139 of his book Hjortshoj writes how, "The great power of writing includes the freedom to converse with readers in the future and, as a reader yourself, with other writers in the past, including those who are no longer alive. Instantly, I felt like such a genius! When I first stated my point in class I felt as if people heard my and understood what I was saying but thought I was going too far with the question. In reality what I said made total sense. Writing does allow us to transcend time and space in a way. Things I post on this blog obviously cannot be read in the past but future generations maybe 200 years from now may find this post. And even when I write a paper describing Richard II's histrionics in Shakespeare's Richard II Shakespeare himself will never read it, but I am in a sense discussing his play with him. Writing is a very personal activity but once it is shared it becomes a means through which communication is created.

Interview

Last Monday I interviewed my former history professor, Professor Galgano, for my digital story. It was a hectic day for me and I did not have time for a prolonged session, but I learned an enormous amount of information not only about his writing style and techniques but about myself as well. Prior to the interview I sent him an e-mail with the questions I wanted him to consider so he had an idea of what I would ask. My first question was about his personal writing process. For him it depended on the piece. Scholarly works were more planned, researched, and organized; whereas personal works like creative writing, poems, or even short stories were less formulaic. Following his process I asked follow-up questions like: What time of day was most conducive to his success? Did he prefer pen and paper or technology (smart phone, laptop, other handheld devices, recorder, etc.)? And other questions related to his writing habits. I received a good amount of information for my project, but the most salient point Professor Galgano made was when he referred to his writing overall like a relationship. Like most relationships he said some days he hated writing while other days he loved it. It required work, his writing was not naturally perfect; but that was also the enamoring part about it. After all the research, and editing, and rewriting he had a polished piece of art that he had created. The key to having a successful relationship he said is to, “write everyday” and “aggressively edit.” Whether it is a journal or you revise a piece of writing for another class or anything else, writing daily is the key. On the editing portion of his advice, he told me, “don’t be so enamored with a phrase that you can’t get rid of it.” For me that was the best advice he could have said. I often find myself stuck on a paper because I feel as though one word, line, phrase, etc is so brilliant that is simply must stay and if other parts of my paper do not agree then they must be altered or deleted. FALSE. The way he said to combat this problem is to create a word bank where you keep thoughts and ideas because they may work for other pieces or in different types of writing. Truthfully, that one quote will always stay with me and will hopefully improve my writing if I follow it.

Btw: Anytime when he is not running after his children or preparing dinner or has a moment to himself in his study is when he is most successful, and Professor Galgano prefers pen and paper but will jot down and idea using his computer or phone if that is all he has available.

Youth Cutlture & Digital Media

Currently as a class we are learning how to create digital stories for our own projects that will be created based on interviews with a professor we have chosen. At first I viewed this as a creative way to present my subject's thoughts and views on the writing process and present it in a different medium other than essay format. It seemed easy enough at first: write a page and half with the most salient points, keep the story concise and cogent, make sure it has a message. Easier said than done. As an example we had to watch a sample digital story, and in my opinion it was 2/5 stars. The timing seemed a little off and while that seems a little picky, lining up the words, music, and pictures properly can have a drastic effect on how the entire piece is perceived. More importantly I never truly saw the point of the story. From the title I gathered it was an international student's journey to UR but story itself did not seem to capture all that the author wanted the audience to know. And personally the narrator's voice irked me for some reason (picky, I know).

Stories used to be strictly pen and paper and as the world and technology has progressed so have the ways in which stories are created and shared. Personally I thought I had seen them all...until I learned about digital stories. My discovery of digital stories is the same experience represented by Glynda A. Hull in her article "At Last: Youth Culture and Digital Media: New Literacies for New Times." She explores digital stories as a new way in youth connect to one another. I had no idea that digital stories were so popular. They are a viable way for students to learn about technology and integrate it into the learning process. Nowadays students not only have to learn basic reading, writing, etc (all things standard regarding academics) but they also need to be tech savvy. It is common practice to be able to type and expertly know one's way around the internet and ubiquitous programs like the windows triple threat (word, excel, and powerpoint). Technology is taking over the world and it is continuously pouring into academics at the earlier levels such as kindergarten, intermediate and middle school. It is only a matter of time before digital stories proliferate and become household words.

Writing Center Relationships

If writing centers are, in a sense, a service to students and are supposed to create better writers, should there be an exclusive relationship between student and consultant or should professors be involved as well? I feel as though this may be specific only to English courses or those with strong concentrations in writing or some form of text (creative writing, journalism, etc). When you write a paper for science or history I feel as though professors care about the persuasiveness and conciseness of the paper but courses such as those are more factually inclined. Does your physics professor really care about your progress as a writer or if you were able to accurately relate Newton's Law to another aspect of physics? Are they genuinely concerned or do professors want grade A work? I guess what I mean is I feel the relationship between the student and the consultant should be free from outside influence. Students should be able to actively engage with their consultant so that ideas can flow freely without after thoughts of what their teachers may think. Today in class I heard stories of how students had been afraid to say certain things because they did not know how their professor would react. Any trepidation on the student's behalf only diminishes the experience because they cannot fully commit themselves.

On the flip side if a teacher refers a student or would like to receive follow up reports to make sure students are really progressing, then that is acceptable. However, this leads me to my lingering question:

How then do consultants accurately perform their job while (for lack of a better word) catering to both parties?

In some sense the teachers need to be involved (make sure students are not just goofing off and are truly progressing).

But students should also be able to fully engage their consultants freely without fear that they may be reprimanded by their professors for speaking truthfully.

(I hope none of this was contradictory:P)

Writing Process

Buildings= blueprints, Cooking= recipes, Cartoons= sketches, before most things are constructed there is a preset model that must be followed in order to ensure the desired results. Writing is nothing like that. In the words of William Zinsser, “Writing is no respecter of blueprints- it’s too subjective a process, too full of surprises.” Whether the thesis is written first or the writer brainstorms with thought bubbles and flowcharts or free writes whatever ideas pour into their heads, every writer has a different process that works for them. It is amazing to know that one writer may brainstorm for hour upon hour writing, rewriting, revising and editing only to produce a paragraph worthy of reading. On the other hand someone else may only need half an hour to produce an entire first draft. There are many different techniques to the writing process but a good foundation always begins with prewriting and ends with revising.

What is your recipe for writing success?

Good Writing

What is good writing? This question was posed last class. We were required to look over a sample student’s paper discussing the legalization of drugs and assess it. I did not want to go into the assignment nit-picking at every misspelled word and trivial mistakes. However after reading through the entire paper, despite the syntax and spelling errors, the last paragraph (in my opinion) could have constituted as “good writing.”

Consider a paper with good syntax, without grammatical errors, etc. Now compare it to a paper with misspelled words subject verb disagreement, but this paper is concise, cogent, and answers the prompt with supporting evidence. Which of the two should be considered good writing? Are both of them good examples or just one paper superior?

In essence I cannot really say which paper is “good writing.” To me (as far as grading) the teacher determines if something is good writing, after all they administer the grade. Although in terms of the academe peers, superiors, audiences, and critics alike have different opinions.

So in my opinion, despite the cosmetics (spelling and other things), if writing that can convey the author’s message/ opinion/ point to the reader is good writing. Rarely, is the author of the writing present to be asked questions. If the reader can clearly understand the writing then it can constitute as “good writing.”