I've spent the morning editing and commenting on cover letters and portfolio drafts. Here's three pieces of advice I used repeatedly:
1. "Use specific examples to develop your discussions and claims."
2. "Contextualize the examples you provide by discussing in the text of your letter/portfolio why your example is significant."
3. "Focus your discussion on what you have learned and not on the effort you put in to learn."
Let me develop the last of the three a tad more. Effort has some impact on your grade in every aspect of life, but in college, professors are much more concerned with what you have learned, your expertise, and the demonstration of your skills than they are in how hard you've worked. If all goes well, work in college (and in life) is demanding, challenging, difficult, and engaging. The same is true of that you'll find in most careers worth the work you put in to keep them. You do the work which is necessary to succeed. It's expected, and it usually receives very little praise. Usually, you get kodus for being productive, not for how hard you've worked to be productive.
Ben Franklin once said, if you want to get praised for how hard you work, you must be seen to work. This is why he made sure he was seen delivering his own papers, that is, so folks would notice, and his ethos (his reputation) would be raised as a hard worker. His delievering the papers, however, would have been meaningless if he didn't have the papers to deliever.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Reminder: Due Dates for Portfolio.
A *draft* of the portfolio is what is due Sunday. This draft should consist of draft versions of your cover letter, inventory, and evidence sections.
The final portfolio is due Wednesday, the last day of class. I want folks to take the time between Sunday and Monday to revise, polish, and ask any last minute questions.
Since one of the lessons I hope you will learn is the value to be gained in taking the time to collaborate, go through multiple revisions, and to proofread carefully, please do take the time between Sunday and Wednesday to make sure what you turn in is your best work.
Also remember, if asked, I'll be happy to look at drafts and offer revision suggestions. If you take advantage of this route, please preface your draft with the specific questions you want answered. Don't ask vague questions, like, "Is this all right?" Or questions like, "What kind of grade would this draft get if I turned it in now?" Focus your questions on specific concerns about the writing, rhetoric, structure, format, etc. of your draft. This will allow you to practice your budding metadiscourse and for me to give specific, useful pieces of advice which will help you improve your portfolios.
Write with questions.
Steve
The final portfolio is due Wednesday, the last day of class. I want folks to take the time between Sunday and Monday to revise, polish, and ask any last minute questions.
Since one of the lessons I hope you will learn is the value to be gained in taking the time to collaborate, go through multiple revisions, and to proofread carefully, please do take the time between Sunday and Wednesday to make sure what you turn in is your best work.
Also remember, if asked, I'll be happy to look at drafts and offer revision suggestions. If you take advantage of this route, please preface your draft with the specific questions you want answered. Don't ask vague questions, like, "Is this all right?" Or questions like, "What kind of grade would this draft get if I turned it in now?" Focus your questions on specific concerns about the writing, rhetoric, structure, format, etc. of your draft. This will allow you to practice your budding metadiscourse and for me to give specific, useful pieces of advice which will help you improve your portfolios.
Write with questions.
Steve
Friday, December 14, 2007
My expectations of you at this point in your writing career.
I wanted to pull the last point I made in the "Portfolio, FAQ" post out and develop it more. I also wanted you to take special notice of what I say here. It has to do with my expectations of you as a writer at this point in your life as a writer. Here's a more developed statement, and I hope it eases some of your worry about what I expect of you and, more importantly, what you should expect of yourselves:
"You need to remember: you are at the end of a first semester, freshman level writing class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly or be able to produce fluent, fully effective prose with ease. If you could produce such with ease, you wouldn't need to be in freshman writing.
At this point in your development as a writer, I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome or to write stunning prose. You should still be struggling, pushing your personal envelop, experimenting, and working on writing good, solid sentences and paragraphs. You should be experimenting with learning how to research and write different kinds of documents and figuring out a repertoire of moves which will serve you well in later writing. One of the joys of early learning is the freedom you have to experiment, screw up, and learn from experimentation, all with less costly consequence than the same mistake will have in later life.
Few people do well the first time they try something, and most are struggling the twentieth. They should be. Few things which are worthwhile can be conquered in a semester or a year. You know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change and mature. I'm still working on writing better sentences, paragraphs, and documents. This continued struggle is part of the fun of being a writer.
I do expect evidence of:
1) substantial work toward producing better, more successful writing,
2) that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support,
3) that you understand and have begun to use process writing, and,
4) that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric.
Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer."
"You need to remember: you are at the end of a first semester, freshman level writing class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly or be able to produce fluent, fully effective prose with ease. If you could produce such with ease, you wouldn't need to be in freshman writing.
At this point in your development as a writer, I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome or to write stunning prose. You should still be struggling, pushing your personal envelop, experimenting, and working on writing good, solid sentences and paragraphs. You should be experimenting with learning how to research and write different kinds of documents and figuring out a repertoire of moves which will serve you well in later writing. One of the joys of early learning is the freedom you have to experiment, screw up, and learn from experimentation, all with less costly consequence than the same mistake will have in later life.
Few people do well the first time they try something, and most are struggling the twentieth. They should be. Few things which are worthwhile can be conquered in a semester or a year. You know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change and mature. I'm still working on writing better sentences, paragraphs, and documents. This continued struggle is part of the fun of being a writer.
I do expect evidence of:
1) substantial work toward producing better, more successful writing,
2) that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support,
3) that you understand and have begun to use process writing, and,
4) that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric.
Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer."
Researching a Genre: The Portfolio.
Anytime you encounter a genre new to you, like the portfolio, research it online. There are numerous sites which deal with the Freshman English portfolio, and a few minutes spent doing some research on these sites can provide some valuable ideas for your own. You'll also be learning to research genres, not an inconsiderable skill. You also might want to look at the "reflective cover letter" or "reflective learning."
It's funny how many folks will research the right stereo or computer to buy, but it never occurs to them that they can research how to write better and things like genre or how to conquer sentence fragments.
Write with questions.
Steve
It's funny how many folks will research the right stereo or computer to buy, but it never occurs to them that they can research how to write better and things like genre or how to conquer sentence fragments.
Write with questions.
Steve
Portfolio, FAQ:
1. How do you want me to submit the portfolio?
Create one long document in which the major sections are separated by page breaks, and then add me as a collaborator to it. Since everyone now knows how to use Google Docs, use this program. As always, feel free to get collaborative help on the document. One of the things you're learning is to use others in your writing process.
Following this plan, you'll get to see your grade earlier, as I can leave it in the comments. Make sure you *want* everyone on your viewer/collaborative list to see your grade; so, edit your share list accordingly. If it's all right to leave your grade at the beginning of the document, leave me a note at the beginning of the document telling me it's all right to post your grade in the document. At the least, having one long document separated by page breaks will allow me to have every thing you want to say and use in one place, and I can search the document with some ease. This shared format meets the rule of making things as easy as possible for both reader and author to fulfill their goals/needs. Within the portfolio feel free to connect via links to other documents or work you want me to see and think about.
If this format doesn't work for you, we can negotiate other options; so, feel free to ask. I can think of web pages which would work here.
2. What's the overall format for the documents I include?
a. Cover Letter
b. Inventory
c. Evidence supporting the claims made in the cover letter and inventory
3. What should I put in the cover letter?
Your cover letter is the place where you make a claim as to the grade you have earned and convince me to believe your claim. You can use this space to address what you anticipate to be my concerns about your performance, tell me the lessons you've found most valuable from the class, make claims about the effort you've put into the class, show me in action what you have learned, explain why you didn't do an assignment or turned it in late, etc. In specific, I will be looking to see if you've picked up what the major lessons of the class are and if you're: 1) able to speak about them in the context of your learning; and, 2) if you put these lessons into practice in your letter. Frankly, I'm also hoping to learn how to make the class more effective for students like you in the future.
4. How will you grade the cover letter?
I will be looking at the quality of your claims and the quality of the support you put together to help me believe your various claims. In terms of claims, I will judge them by how they are made and on their plausibility. In terms of support, I will look for sufficient support and a good deal of evidence, epically examples and clarification. The evidence should be plausible, detailed and--in most cases--specific. I will look at your ability to speak knowledgeably about the work you include in the evidence section and about your own writing. I will look at your tone, voice, and style and judge its appropriateness to the writing situation. Since this is a letter written to an English professor about your learning in his class, I will look at issues of usage and grammar. Finally, I will look for evidence that you've used process writing to construct the document.
5. How will you grade the inventory?
Again, I will look for specific claims about what you know/learned about the outcomes and how you use the skills and knowledge they describe in your writing and/or other aspects of your communication. I'm looking to see if you've come to be able to speak knowledgeably about yourself as a writer and speaker. If you remember my post about metadiscourse, I'm looking for evidence to see if you've gained and/or started a useful metadiscourse about your writing and yourself as a writer. I'll look at how you use examples from the evidence section to support your claims.
6. What can I include in the evidence section?
Any writing or other work you've done as a communicator.
7. What should I include in the evidence section?
Since we both share the work you've done as an author in this class, this work should become the basis of your portfolio. You shouldn't try to include it all. When I say work, I mean pre-writing, notes, emails, comments on papers on which you've helped, proofreading exercises, posts, etc. All this is fair game.
You may also include or point to work you've done else where, in your daily life, for a job, or in school. This includes creative writing, games, photos, etc.
You can also include excerpts from longer pieces or let a single piece of evidence do multiple duty.
If you haven't done all the work for the class, support the arguments you make in the cover letter and the inventory with work from outside the class, and address the fact you didn't do all the work in the cover letter, explaining why. Since I'm training you to make a good argument and to use rhetoric, here's a high stakes place to implement your skills. I'm looking for evidence you've learned, not that you've toed the line; and, I don't really care when you learn, that is, as long as you do and can use the knowledge.
8. What should I not do in the evidence section?
Don't just do a core dump. Pick and choose your evidence. Part of what I'm looking at is your ability to pick evidence which supports your arguments well. Portfolios are meant to showcase your work in such a way that they support the purpose for which you put them together. In this case, you're trying to get a handle on your self as a writer, your work in this course, and what you've learned in the course. (Oh, and I assume you hope to garner a high grade for the course.) I'm trying to do the same and to use the material to make a fair judgment of the grade your work in the course had earned.
Don't hand me the kitchen sink. Think of your audience here. Just like students, professors are *very* busy folks at the end of term. We've got lots of reading and thinking about students and their work to do. We're meeting and working with worried students, and we're taking care of the business of the university knowing that folks will not be very available over the holidays to help. The upshot is we appreciate students who help us do the best job we can.
Don't make the mistake of not having some sort of organization for your evidence section. Don't go overboard here, but I need to be able to find the work you speak about in your cover letter and in your inventory. Assume your reader is tired, has been reading and grading for a day, has had too much caffeine, and needs to take a break. Imagine how pleased this reader is when he is able to find the information he needs to make an informed, fair decision with relative ease.
9. What are your expectations as an audience concerning the work I've done?
You need to remember: you are in a first semester, freshman level class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly. I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome. Heck, you know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change. I do expect evidence of substantial work, that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support, that you know and have begun to use process writing, and that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric. Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer.
Create one long document in which the major sections are separated by page breaks, and then add me as a collaborator to it. Since everyone now knows how to use Google Docs, use this program. As always, feel free to get collaborative help on the document. One of the things you're learning is to use others in your writing process.
Following this plan, you'll get to see your grade earlier, as I can leave it in the comments. Make sure you *want* everyone on your viewer/collaborative list to see your grade; so, edit your share list accordingly. If it's all right to leave your grade at the beginning of the document, leave me a note at the beginning of the document telling me it's all right to post your grade in the document. At the least, having one long document separated by page breaks will allow me to have every thing you want to say and use in one place, and I can search the document with some ease. This shared format meets the rule of making things as easy as possible for both reader and author to fulfill their goals/needs. Within the portfolio feel free to connect via links to other documents or work you want me to see and think about.
If this format doesn't work for you, we can negotiate other options; so, feel free to ask. I can think of web pages which would work here.
2. What's the overall format for the documents I include?
a. Cover Letter
b. Inventory
c. Evidence supporting the claims made in the cover letter and inventory
3. What should I put in the cover letter?
Your cover letter is the place where you make a claim as to the grade you have earned and convince me to believe your claim. You can use this space to address what you anticipate to be my concerns about your performance, tell me the lessons you've found most valuable from the class, make claims about the effort you've put into the class, show me in action what you have learned, explain why you didn't do an assignment or turned it in late, etc. In specific, I will be looking to see if you've picked up what the major lessons of the class are and if you're: 1) able to speak about them in the context of your learning; and, 2) if you put these lessons into practice in your letter. Frankly, I'm also hoping to learn how to make the class more effective for students like you in the future.
4. How will you grade the cover letter?
I will be looking at the quality of your claims and the quality of the support you put together to help me believe your various claims. In terms of claims, I will judge them by how they are made and on their plausibility. In terms of support, I will look for sufficient support and a good deal of evidence, epically examples and clarification. The evidence should be plausible, detailed and--in most cases--specific. I will look at your ability to speak knowledgeably about the work you include in the evidence section and about your own writing. I will look at your tone, voice, and style and judge its appropriateness to the writing situation. Since this is a letter written to an English professor about your learning in his class, I will look at issues of usage and grammar. Finally, I will look for evidence that you've used process writing to construct the document.
5. How will you grade the inventory?
Again, I will look for specific claims about what you know/learned about the outcomes and how you use the skills and knowledge they describe in your writing and/or other aspects of your communication. I'm looking to see if you've come to be able to speak knowledgeably about yourself as a writer and speaker. If you remember my post about metadiscourse, I'm looking for evidence to see if you've gained and/or started a useful metadiscourse about your writing and yourself as a writer. I'll look at how you use examples from the evidence section to support your claims.
6. What can I include in the evidence section?
Any writing or other work you've done as a communicator.
7. What should I include in the evidence section?
Since we both share the work you've done as an author in this class, this work should become the basis of your portfolio. You shouldn't try to include it all. When I say work, I mean pre-writing, notes, emails, comments on papers on which you've helped, proofreading exercises, posts, etc. All this is fair game.
You may also include or point to work you've done else where, in your daily life, for a job, or in school. This includes creative writing, games, photos, etc.
You can also include excerpts from longer pieces or let a single piece of evidence do multiple duty.
If you haven't done all the work for the class, support the arguments you make in the cover letter and the inventory with work from outside the class, and address the fact you didn't do all the work in the cover letter, explaining why. Since I'm training you to make a good argument and to use rhetoric, here's a high stakes place to implement your skills. I'm looking for evidence you've learned, not that you've toed the line; and, I don't really care when you learn, that is, as long as you do and can use the knowledge.
8. What should I not do in the evidence section?
Don't just do a core dump. Pick and choose your evidence. Part of what I'm looking at is your ability to pick evidence which supports your arguments well. Portfolios are meant to showcase your work in such a way that they support the purpose for which you put them together. In this case, you're trying to get a handle on your self as a writer, your work in this course, and what you've learned in the course. (Oh, and I assume you hope to garner a high grade for the course.) I'm trying to do the same and to use the material to make a fair judgment of the grade your work in the course had earned.
Don't hand me the kitchen sink. Think of your audience here. Just like students, professors are *very* busy folks at the end of term. We've got lots of reading and thinking about students and their work to do. We're meeting and working with worried students, and we're taking care of the business of the university knowing that folks will not be very available over the holidays to help. The upshot is we appreciate students who help us do the best job we can.
Don't make the mistake of not having some sort of organization for your evidence section. Don't go overboard here, but I need to be able to find the work you speak about in your cover letter and in your inventory. Assume your reader is tired, has been reading and grading for a day, has had too much caffeine, and needs to take a break. Imagine how pleased this reader is when he is able to find the information he needs to make an informed, fair decision with relative ease.
9. What are your expectations as an audience concerning the work I've done?
You need to remember: you are in a first semester, freshman level class. I don't expect you to do everything perfectly. I don't expect you to fully understand or to be able to implement and use every outcome. Heck, you know I believe in a crafts' approach to writing, one where you are always in the process of acquiring new skills as your needs and desires change. I do expect evidence of substantial work, that you've learned the basic linkage between opinion and support, that you know and have begun to use process writing, and that you have a budding knowledge of rhetoric. Most importantly, I expect you to have learned some useful techniques and a process through which you can make yourself a better writer.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Is there a difference between structure and format?
A student wrote with the question above. Find my response below:
Structure refers to methods of the organization of ideas or content, as in comparison and contrast, chronological, least important to most, etc. Format deals more with how a document is laid out in terms of appearance. There is some overlap between the two, and no doubt this overlap and how loosely I've used the terms is the source of some of your confusion.
Let me know if you need any further clarification.
Structure refers to methods of the organization of ideas or content, as in comparison and contrast, chronological, least important to most, etc. Format deals more with how a document is laid out in terms of appearance. There is some overlap between the two, and no doubt this overlap and how loosely I've used the terms is the source of some of your confusion.
Let me know if you need any further clarification.
The Relationship Between Writing and Literature.
In reading back through your papers and my blog, I realized that part of the big picture I hadn't offered you is the relationship I see between the study of literature and the study of becoming a better writer. Also, I haven't let you see me writing for audiences other than the class.
The following response will help correct both oversights. It's written to colleagues--that is, college professors-- who teach freshman writing, and it's part of an ongoing conversation about the place of literature in the 101/102 sequence of courses you're currently taking. In fact, it might have some impact on how 101/102 gets taught at UAT, so feel free to wade in via the comments if you want to offer a student perspective. One of the lessons I've taught you is that what you say is driven by the audience for whom you write, so you'll find this post heavily laden with jargon and ideas specific to the discipline and profession of English. Don't worry about getting a handle on each and every idea. Do spend some time thinking about the moves I make in framing my argument.
I expect my audience to be unreceptive to the idea of not using literature as the basis of teaching freshman writing, so I work to limit and distance myself from the very arguments I introduce and want them to believe. By distancing myself and introducing each idea as tentative but well thought out, I'm hoping readers who are opposed to my stance will have faith in how I think and, hence, give my ideas more thought and closer attention.
I'm also working to frame my argument as a tentative position in an ongoing discussion. I make this move because I don't want my audience to feel they *have* to take a position in response to my argument and defend it. My purpose here is to get them thinking and, as a by product, get them questioning some of the assumptions on which their current position is based.
In part, this is an ethos move. I'm a long term member of this discourse community, and I don't want to create clear areas of intellectual turf which *have* to be defended. Mostly, it's positioning myself as a member of the community who is willing to be reasonable and change my mind, that is, if I'm given enough good reasons to so do.
In assuming this stance as an author, I encourage readers who oppose my argument to take a *higher* moral stance in which they are even more willing than I to change their minds. I encourage readers who share my position to feel good about the ethos of "our crowd," and I show readers who are undecided that my side and, in particular, I know how to participate in public, civil debate. In other words, regardless of how my opponents respond, I come out looking reasonable, possibly more reasonable than do they, and well positioned to concede any ground I need to concede.
Finally, the post may well give you some useful insights into why I designed the course as I did and where the knowledge I presented fits into the larger picture of your English curriculum.
As always, write with questions.
My post follows:
"Miles' passionate argument for the value to be derived from literary study has had me thinking a lot about my own take on how literature can be used to teach critical thinking and reading and in trying to figure out my uneasiness with using literature in my own freshman writing classes. As usual in such situations, I've fallen back on writing to try to articulate my own current thinking on the subject. Forgive a rather long post, and I share it with some trepidation, but the relationship between literary study and writing is at the heart of much of our current discussion as a writing faculty, and I wanted to spend the time it took to figure out where I stood, give Mile's argument the thought and reflection it deserves, and--most important--try to get a handle on the implications for students."
"The truth is, I don't remember ever having to come to love the "L" word. As far back as I can remember, I've been an English geek, and I've always loved literature. The desire to keep literature alive in society, more than anything else, was what brought me into the profession; and, in many instances, the insights I see students gain into their own lives through learning to interpret literature well are what have kept me going."
"My own passion for having useful stories stay in circulation is one of the reasons I love teaching American and Native literature. Listening to Native storytellers and writers, I've learned that literature isn't a nice add on for communities and individuals. It's an essential tool though which communities define their selves, survive in the face of challenge and change, and find a basis for a shared understanding of the world which unites. For me, literature isn't just one more aspect of culture; it is an essential aspect of healthy individuals, communities, and societies. Mary Lou Atawaka in _Selu_ and Leslie Silko in _Ceremony_ both write about how a shared wealth of story is "the stomach of people" and of how stories assist us in remembering who we are and in finding our place in the world."
"To help her students understand a Cherokee take on the place of literature in their lives, Atawaka shares a corn seed with each of her students . In the discussion which follows, Atawaka tells the story of Selu, the Corn Mother, and the lessons Selu has for the people. One of these lessons is:
"Eat the individual corn seed, and it will help sustain you. Plant the same seed with those of your classmates, cultivate them together, and the seeds which will sustain one of you for a short time will sustain the whole class and others; indeed, the crop you can grow will provide not only food but seeds for the community which, in its turn, will grow and prosper. But corn needs a special kind of cultivation. If a seed is planted and cultivated alone, a corn plant will grow, and it will flower, but it won't be able to produce more corn. In the kernel of corn lays the stomach of the people. To be productive, each kernel needs to be cultivated among other corn plants, and each will help pollinate the other. Literature is corn, and story lays at the literature's kernel. Both are sacred. From them we can derive harmony, the food of the individual and community, and the sharing which is the basis of each."
"Each time I teach literature, I spend a day with the students talking about story, community, and society; and, I've used Atawaka's story of the Corn Mother and distributed my share of NDN corn. I tell you this, because I want you to understand the place of literature in my own life and world and to provide a basis for a discussion of why I don't teach Western literary analysis in my writing classes."
"In other posts, I've discussed how our very love of literature can undermine the task of teaching writing. To equate literary writing with good writing or to equate literary analysis with good reading is a dangerous equation for students of writing and critical reading to adopt. Why?"
"1) Our understanding of literature and how to form our understanding of it is very much connected to our Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modern roots. The essential lessons of each philosophy are so bound up with how literature is taught and understood in the academy and society at large that it is difficult, if not impossible to tease out the dangerous ideas from the useful. I don't want to get sidetracked too much here, but a brief overview of what I mean might be useful."
"1a) One legacy of Romanticism is the view it propagated of the author as genius. While great writing *may* be the product of genius and talent, anyone with the drive, discipline, the right rubrics and schema, and the chance to practice can produce good, solid, craftsman like writing. By good writing, I mean writing so crafted as to allow the author to accomplish his or her purposes with a text."
"Tied up in the Romantic view of the author as genius is the belief that the ability to write well is governed by talent. It isn't. Also, tied up in Romanticism is the dangerous notion that one is either right brain or left, good in math or in the humanities, and if one is good in the sciences or technology, one isn't good in English. We've all dealt with the legacies of this last, but the single most dangerous legacy of the Romantic view of author is the arrogance which accompanies the Romantic author's view of his or her self. Whenever we provide a basis for the individual to cultivate the belief they are of higher sensibility (however you want to define that last), we are on dangerous ground. Think of Hitler and Superman here if you want. I usually think of Elias Boudinot and how his view of himself as a Romantic author contributed to the death of most of two generations of Cherokees along the Trail of Tears."
"1b) If anything, the legacy of Modernism is worse. If literature is to have any use in the world outside of producing pretty words and insightful prose, not that these last aren't useful, it has to be part of how society works, not a separate category of thought requiring an elite, hyper-trained intelligence or an absurd amount of leisure. The Romantics began the focus on the individual at the cost of community engagement, but the Modernists brought the notion to full flower. With the Modernist, there's a nostalgia for the social role literature and the author once played in society, but too often it's a despairing nostalgia. I'm a firm believer that it was the Modernists view of literature which combined with a research orientated professorial chaste to make the study and appreciation of literature much more difficult than it needs to be. Add in author/critic Romantic arrogance, American Anti-Intellectualism, and the high vs low literature split, and you have a recipe for the study of literature being seen as irrelevant to how the majority of society lives. If you're looking for someone to blame for the increasingly marginalized place of literature in society, you could do much worse than to look at the Victorian 'Art for Art's Sake' crowd and the disciples of Eliot. We live with the legacy of making literature an intellectuals' sport rather than a lived part of the citizen creating a good life and a working community."
"1c) Post-Modernism is too easy a target. It is the natural by-product of the Romantics and Modernists. We communicate every day, and we manage to do things useful work with writing; but, Post-Modernism celebrates the breakdown of communication and an Existential and Linguistic explanations of why communication doesn't and can't work. These explanations, in turn, are derived from the false dichotomy of idealism and realism. Add in the emphasis our culture places on novelty, as opposed to the value of creation within a set of assumed limitations of genre, and you have folks assuming the paradoxical stance of creating works which celebrate the "new" insight that they can't be understood. Such Play is dangerous, that is, if it's taken to the extreme suggested by the logic of Relativism."
"1d) My point here is that students bring all these existing rhetorics to our English/writing classes which explain why literature isn't important and shouldn't be, and they can fall back on any of them to rationalize a lack of success and, worse, unwillingness to do the work required to become a good writer. Regardless of the truth behind these rhetorics, they allow students to view literary analysis is an elitist activity with little (if any) connection to their lived world and where many professionals are willing to admit 'right'--as opposed to 'better'--interpretations are impossible. From the right perspective, these beliefs are partly true and very useful. This is the main reason I find it easier to approach teaching writing as a separate field of study only tangentially related to the study of literature, and I actively work against the identification of English classes and the profession as a whole with literary study."
"2) My next point is an obvious insight, but it's one, as trained professionals of literary interpretation, we too often forget, namely, just as the use of genre or the assumptions about the roles of audiences and authors are specific to discourse communities, so to are interpretative rubrics. The theories of hermeneutics which govern how we construct interpretations in literary study are part and parcel of our discourse community and the ideas of the professional reader and critic which have governed it."
"While many of our practices, like close reading, can translate well into other disciplines and ways of looking at the world, they are far from the only useful ways of looking at the world, that is, the only critical thinking and reading rubrics which need to be learned. On a related note, our students often bring extensive training in the interpretative rubrics of literary analysis. Talk to many of them, and they'll describe high school English as a series of courses which consisted of little writing and much reading of literary texts, classroom discussion of these texts, and attempts to learn rubrics and the use of rhetorical device such as irony, tone, and symbolism."
"The fact that this focus on literary device and writing which is aware of itself as high literature is a product of Modernism and New Criticism--that is, the product of hermeneutic and professional legacies specific to literary study as a discipline in the 20th Century--is lost on most, if not all freshman. A nuanced view of how we as a discourse community interpret literature as just one among many competing theories of how to construct interpretations isn't a view easily fit into a writing course, that is, without spending a *lot* of time on the history of literary study, information which most students will never need to know."
"As a side note, one reason I get so excited about the Reynold's Learning Communities and Writing Across Communities is that I can borrow a focus on other critical thinking and interpretative rubrics or, more precisely, I can let other teachers focus on these rubrics, and I can spend my time teaching writing and its interpretative rubrics instead of how to construct a good literary interpretation."
"3) All this brings me to what I consider the most essential point, namely, there are enough reading rubrics specific to rhetoric and writing to take up any one year of the curriculum; and, for most students, freshman writing will be one of the few moments in a crowded curriculum where they will get exposure to writing specific interpretative rubrics and get a chance to practice them with an informed teacher grounding their study. I find it enough to do to get students to understand the author/audience/text triad and how it forms successful communication. Add in the ethos, logos, pathos triad; how to figure out an author's purpose and its effects on how a text is constructed; researching genres; the notion of discourse community; audience analysis; process writing, and you quickly come up with a rich set of critical thinking rubrics which are writing and rhetoric specific."
"At most, we've got a limited number of assignments which will fit into any 112 or 111. Here's a set of my current set of favorites:
*Research a discourse community and write a description of the kind of writing which is done in the community. Here, I try to get students to focus on a discourse community of which they are a member or which they want to join as a professional.
*For each piece of formal writing and some of the informal, write an analysis of who your audience is and what you want to accomplish with your text. I find personal metadiscourse blogs useful for this kind of writing about writing.
*Research a genre and how to write effectively in the genre. As part of this assignment, develop a format the class will follow in producing successful examples of this genre of writing. I usually ground this assignment in a researched, online review and individual, group, and class writing and discussion.
*Research an area of the writing process or your most common surface level writing problem and write a "how to" process paper in which you describe to an audience of your peers how to recognize, fix or improve your "problem."
*Write a process paper in which you describe a process you currently use. I follow up on this assignment with a discussion of process writing and Kaizen, by getting students to identify one aspect of the process they describe which they could improve via a small, high impact change, and, increasingly, with a self description of the process they have used to create a specific genre of writing and of a specific, small change to the process which could make to become more effective or efficient writers.
*Research and write about the ideas of ethos, logos, pathos, and telos. Using these terms, analyze a common communication situation such as dating, the job interview, or the teacher/student relationship.
*Using the description of the learning outcomes described in the syllabus, do an inventory of where you are as a writer and how your knowledge and skill set compares to that expected of freshman writers. Update your response to each outcome as we discuss and complete the formal writing projects in the class. As you draft and revise this inventory, make sure to make clear claims about your learning and the outcome and to support this claim with discussion, illustrations, and examples from your own writing.
*Write a cover letter for a class portfolio in which you reflect on what you have learned in the course and what you have found to be most valuable. As part of this letter, make a claim concerning the grade you believe you have earned, and provide me with sufficient reasons and examples from your work this semester to believe your claim.
*Pre-writing, proofreading, and revision exercises as part of each of the assignments."
"That's a lot to fit a year of any curriculum. Add in a growing, articulated, nuanced definition of what constitutes good writing, and there's enough to teach and do without ever once talking about high literature."
Steve
PS As a kind of footnote, I should add that I don't believe in a clear division between rhetoric, writing, and the study of literature, that is, if we see and teach literature as including a broad range of texts and literary analysis as making sense of the author's intentions and the historical and social situations in which a text did its major work. In fact, I've come to distrust easy categorizations in general in favor of the value I find in forums like this where inquiry is dialogic and insights derive from debate, messy, muddled explanations, and each insight flows out of continual discussion and reflection. My current take on the relationship between literature and writing is that both are best seen as aspects of rhetoric whose hermeneutic and composition practices interpenetrate one another. This take has me focusing on rhetoric as the more fundamental and useful methodology through which to teach writing at the freshman level, but it is just my take, and it is just my take at this moment.
The following response will help correct both oversights. It's written to colleagues--that is, college professors-- who teach freshman writing, and it's part of an ongoing conversation about the place of literature in the 101/102 sequence of courses you're currently taking. In fact, it might have some impact on how 101/102 gets taught at UAT, so feel free to wade in via the comments if you want to offer a student perspective. One of the lessons I've taught you is that what you say is driven by the audience for whom you write, so you'll find this post heavily laden with jargon and ideas specific to the discipline and profession of English. Don't worry about getting a handle on each and every idea. Do spend some time thinking about the moves I make in framing my argument.
I expect my audience to be unreceptive to the idea of not using literature as the basis of teaching freshman writing, so I work to limit and distance myself from the very arguments I introduce and want them to believe. By distancing myself and introducing each idea as tentative but well thought out, I'm hoping readers who are opposed to my stance will have faith in how I think and, hence, give my ideas more thought and closer attention.
I'm also working to frame my argument as a tentative position in an ongoing discussion. I make this move because I don't want my audience to feel they *have* to take a position in response to my argument and defend it. My purpose here is to get them thinking and, as a by product, get them questioning some of the assumptions on which their current position is based.
In part, this is an ethos move. I'm a long term member of this discourse community, and I don't want to create clear areas of intellectual turf which *have* to be defended. Mostly, it's positioning myself as a member of the community who is willing to be reasonable and change my mind, that is, if I'm given enough good reasons to so do.
In assuming this stance as an author, I encourage readers who oppose my argument to take a *higher* moral stance in which they are even more willing than I to change their minds. I encourage readers who share my position to feel good about the ethos of "our crowd," and I show readers who are undecided that my side and, in particular, I know how to participate in public, civil debate. In other words, regardless of how my opponents respond, I come out looking reasonable, possibly more reasonable than do they, and well positioned to concede any ground I need to concede.
Finally, the post may well give you some useful insights into why I designed the course as I did and where the knowledge I presented fits into the larger picture of your English curriculum.
As always, write with questions.
My post follows:
"Miles' passionate argument for the value to be derived from literary study has had me thinking a lot about my own take on how literature can be used to teach critical thinking and reading and in trying to figure out my uneasiness with using literature in my own freshman writing classes. As usual in such situations, I've fallen back on writing to try to articulate my own current thinking on the subject. Forgive a rather long post, and I share it with some trepidation, but the relationship between literary study and writing is at the heart of much of our current discussion as a writing faculty, and I wanted to spend the time it took to figure out where I stood, give Mile's argument the thought and reflection it deserves, and--most important--try to get a handle on the implications for students."
"The truth is, I don't remember ever having to come to love the "L" word. As far back as I can remember, I've been an English geek, and I've always loved literature. The desire to keep literature alive in society, more than anything else, was what brought me into the profession; and, in many instances, the insights I see students gain into their own lives through learning to interpret literature well are what have kept me going."
"My own passion for having useful stories stay in circulation is one of the reasons I love teaching American and Native literature. Listening to Native storytellers and writers, I've learned that literature isn't a nice add on for communities and individuals. It's an essential tool though which communities define their selves, survive in the face of challenge and change, and find a basis for a shared understanding of the world which unites. For me, literature isn't just one more aspect of culture; it is an essential aspect of healthy individuals, communities, and societies. Mary Lou Atawaka in _Selu_ and Leslie Silko in _Ceremony_ both write about how a shared wealth of story is "the stomach of people" and of how stories assist us in remembering who we are and in finding our place in the world."
"To help her students understand a Cherokee take on the place of literature in their lives, Atawaka shares a corn seed with each of her students . In the discussion which follows, Atawaka tells the story of Selu, the Corn Mother, and the lessons Selu has for the people. One of these lessons is:
"Eat the individual corn seed, and it will help sustain you. Plant the same seed with those of your classmates, cultivate them together, and the seeds which will sustain one of you for a short time will sustain the whole class and others; indeed, the crop you can grow will provide not only food but seeds for the community which, in its turn, will grow and prosper. But corn needs a special kind of cultivation. If a seed is planted and cultivated alone, a corn plant will grow, and it will flower, but it won't be able to produce more corn. In the kernel of corn lays the stomach of the people. To be productive, each kernel needs to be cultivated among other corn plants, and each will help pollinate the other. Literature is corn, and story lays at the literature's kernel. Both are sacred. From them we can derive harmony, the food of the individual and community, and the sharing which is the basis of each."
"Each time I teach literature, I spend a day with the students talking about story, community, and society; and, I've used Atawaka's story of the Corn Mother and distributed my share of NDN corn. I tell you this, because I want you to understand the place of literature in my own life and world and to provide a basis for a discussion of why I don't teach Western literary analysis in my writing classes."
"In other posts, I've discussed how our very love of literature can undermine the task of teaching writing. To equate literary writing with good writing or to equate literary analysis with good reading is a dangerous equation for students of writing and critical reading to adopt. Why?"
"1) Our understanding of literature and how to form our understanding of it is very much connected to our Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modern roots. The essential lessons of each philosophy are so bound up with how literature is taught and understood in the academy and society at large that it is difficult, if not impossible to tease out the dangerous ideas from the useful. I don't want to get sidetracked too much here, but a brief overview of what I mean might be useful."
"1a) One legacy of Romanticism is the view it propagated of the author as genius. While great writing *may* be the product of genius and talent, anyone with the drive, discipline, the right rubrics and schema, and the chance to practice can produce good, solid, craftsman like writing. By good writing, I mean writing so crafted as to allow the author to accomplish his or her purposes with a text."
"Tied up in the Romantic view of the author as genius is the belief that the ability to write well is governed by talent. It isn't. Also, tied up in Romanticism is the dangerous notion that one is either right brain or left, good in math or in the humanities, and if one is good in the sciences or technology, one isn't good in English. We've all dealt with the legacies of this last, but the single most dangerous legacy of the Romantic view of author is the arrogance which accompanies the Romantic author's view of his or her self. Whenever we provide a basis for the individual to cultivate the belief they are of higher sensibility (however you want to define that last), we are on dangerous ground. Think of Hitler and Superman here if you want. I usually think of Elias Boudinot and how his view of himself as a Romantic author contributed to the death of most of two generations of Cherokees along the Trail of Tears."
"1b) If anything, the legacy of Modernism is worse. If literature is to have any use in the world outside of producing pretty words and insightful prose, not that these last aren't useful, it has to be part of how society works, not a separate category of thought requiring an elite, hyper-trained intelligence or an absurd amount of leisure. The Romantics began the focus on the individual at the cost of community engagement, but the Modernists brought the notion to full flower. With the Modernist, there's a nostalgia for the social role literature and the author once played in society, but too often it's a despairing nostalgia. I'm a firm believer that it was the Modernists view of literature which combined with a research orientated professorial chaste to make the study and appreciation of literature much more difficult than it needs to be. Add in author/critic Romantic arrogance, American Anti-Intellectualism, and the high vs low literature split, and you have a recipe for the study of literature being seen as irrelevant to how the majority of society lives. If you're looking for someone to blame for the increasingly marginalized place of literature in society, you could do much worse than to look at the Victorian 'Art for Art's Sake' crowd and the disciples of Eliot. We live with the legacy of making literature an intellectuals' sport rather than a lived part of the citizen creating a good life and a working community."
"1c) Post-Modernism is too easy a target. It is the natural by-product of the Romantics and Modernists. We communicate every day, and we manage to do things useful work with writing; but, Post-Modernism celebrates the breakdown of communication and an Existential and Linguistic explanations of why communication doesn't and can't work. These explanations, in turn, are derived from the false dichotomy of idealism and realism. Add in the emphasis our culture places on novelty, as opposed to the value of creation within a set of assumed limitations of genre, and you have folks assuming the paradoxical stance of creating works which celebrate the "new" insight that they can't be understood. Such Play is dangerous, that is, if it's taken to the extreme suggested by the logic of Relativism."
"1d) My point here is that students bring all these existing rhetorics to our English/writing classes which explain why literature isn't important and shouldn't be, and they can fall back on any of them to rationalize a lack of success and, worse, unwillingness to do the work required to become a good writer. Regardless of the truth behind these rhetorics, they allow students to view literary analysis is an elitist activity with little (if any) connection to their lived world and where many professionals are willing to admit 'right'--as opposed to 'better'--interpretations are impossible. From the right perspective, these beliefs are partly true and very useful. This is the main reason I find it easier to approach teaching writing as a separate field of study only tangentially related to the study of literature, and I actively work against the identification of English classes and the profession as a whole with literary study."
"2) My next point is an obvious insight, but it's one, as trained professionals of literary interpretation, we too often forget, namely, just as the use of genre or the assumptions about the roles of audiences and authors are specific to discourse communities, so to are interpretative rubrics. The theories of hermeneutics which govern how we construct interpretations in literary study are part and parcel of our discourse community and the ideas of the professional reader and critic which have governed it."
"While many of our practices, like close reading, can translate well into other disciplines and ways of looking at the world, they are far from the only useful ways of looking at the world, that is, the only critical thinking and reading rubrics which need to be learned. On a related note, our students often bring extensive training in the interpretative rubrics of literary analysis. Talk to many of them, and they'll describe high school English as a series of courses which consisted of little writing and much reading of literary texts, classroom discussion of these texts, and attempts to learn rubrics and the use of rhetorical device such as irony, tone, and symbolism."
"The fact that this focus on literary device and writing which is aware of itself as high literature is a product of Modernism and New Criticism--that is, the product of hermeneutic and professional legacies specific to literary study as a discipline in the 20th Century--is lost on most, if not all freshman. A nuanced view of how we as a discourse community interpret literature as just one among many competing theories of how to construct interpretations isn't a view easily fit into a writing course, that is, without spending a *lot* of time on the history of literary study, information which most students will never need to know."
"As a side note, one reason I get so excited about the Reynold's Learning Communities and Writing Across Communities is that I can borrow a focus on other critical thinking and interpretative rubrics or, more precisely, I can let other teachers focus on these rubrics, and I can spend my time teaching writing and its interpretative rubrics instead of how to construct a good literary interpretation."
"3) All this brings me to what I consider the most essential point, namely, there are enough reading rubrics specific to rhetoric and writing to take up any one year of the curriculum; and, for most students, freshman writing will be one of the few moments in a crowded curriculum where they will get exposure to writing specific interpretative rubrics and get a chance to practice them with an informed teacher grounding their study. I find it enough to do to get students to understand the author/audience/text triad and how it forms successful communication. Add in the ethos, logos, pathos triad; how to figure out an author's purpose and its effects on how a text is constructed; researching genres; the notion of discourse community; audience analysis; process writing, and you quickly come up with a rich set of critical thinking rubrics which are writing and rhetoric specific."
"At most, we've got a limited number of assignments which will fit into any 112 or 111. Here's a set of my current set of favorites:
*Research a discourse community and write a description of the kind of writing which is done in the community. Here, I try to get students to focus on a discourse community of which they are a member or which they want to join as a professional.
*For each piece of formal writing and some of the informal, write an analysis of who your audience is and what you want to accomplish with your text. I find personal metadiscourse blogs useful for this kind of writing about writing.
*Research a genre and how to write effectively in the genre. As part of this assignment, develop a format the class will follow in producing successful examples of this genre of writing. I usually ground this assignment in a researched, online review and individual, group, and class writing and discussion.
*Research an area of the writing process or your most common surface level writing problem and write a "how to" process paper in which you describe to an audience of your peers how to recognize, fix or improve your "problem."
*Write a process paper in which you describe a process you currently use. I follow up on this assignment with a discussion of process writing and Kaizen, by getting students to identify one aspect of the process they describe which they could improve via a small, high impact change, and, increasingly, with a self description of the process they have used to create a specific genre of writing and of a specific, small change to the process which could make to become more effective or efficient writers.
*Research and write about the ideas of ethos, logos, pathos, and telos. Using these terms, analyze a common communication situation such as dating, the job interview, or the teacher/student relationship.
*Using the description of the learning outcomes described in the syllabus, do an inventory of where you are as a writer and how your knowledge and skill set compares to that expected of freshman writers. Update your response to each outcome as we discuss and complete the formal writing projects in the class. As you draft and revise this inventory, make sure to make clear claims about your learning and the outcome and to support this claim with discussion, illustrations, and examples from your own writing.
*Write a cover letter for a class portfolio in which you reflect on what you have learned in the course and what you have found to be most valuable. As part of this letter, make a claim concerning the grade you believe you have earned, and provide me with sufficient reasons and examples from your work this semester to believe your claim.
*Pre-writing, proofreading, and revision exercises as part of each of the assignments."
"That's a lot to fit a year of any curriculum. Add in a growing, articulated, nuanced definition of what constitutes good writing, and there's enough to teach and do without ever once talking about high literature."
Steve
PS As a kind of footnote, I should add that I don't believe in a clear division between rhetoric, writing, and the study of literature, that is, if we see and teach literature as including a broad range of texts and literary analysis as making sense of the author's intentions and the historical and social situations in which a text did its major work. In fact, I've come to distrust easy categorizations in general in favor of the value I find in forums like this where inquiry is dialogic and insights derive from debate, messy, muddled explanations, and each insight flows out of continual discussion and reflection. My current take on the relationship between literature and writing is that both are best seen as aspects of rhetoric whose hermeneutic and composition practices interpenetrate one another. This take has me focusing on rhetoric as the more fundamental and useful methodology through which to teach writing at the freshman level, but it is just my take, and it is just my take at this moment.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Where I Am in Responding to Papers
I'm about two-thirds of the way through the backlog of drafts I received over the weekend and yesterday. I'm plugging ahead and am getting a lot of joy in seeing your writing and the progress being made in it.
I'll return tomorrow morning to commenting. Do feel free to write with any questions about the comments I've already left.
Steve
I'll return tomorrow morning to commenting. Do feel free to write with any questions about the comments I've already left.
Steve
Your Comments As Collaborators and Their Payoff
I can't tell you how pleased I am with everyone's performance over the past couple of weeks. As I've read the papers on which I've been added as a collaborator, I've been very impressed with the thought each of you have given to each others writing. I've been even more impressed on how the drafts have been improved as a result.
It's time I let you in on the learning which is taking place in the background. I've borrowed from my response to a particular student in this explanation:
As you help others create more successful documents, you're having to create either a conscious or unconscious dialogue with yourself about what constitutes good or better writing. You're having to compare this concept to that which is in front of you, and you're having to make specific recommendations and judgements, so your ideas can't just be abstract. In the profession, we call such an internal dialogue about writing "a metadiscourse."
Achieving a working metadiscourse means your cognitive understanding of your own literacy has taken a major step forward. You've practiced this metadiscourse and over the next few years, you'll probably--if your cognitive trajectory as a writer follows most others--make the metadiscourse more conscious and detailed. Getting this kind of metadiscourse started is one of the things which I build into my freshmen course designs, so it just happens as a necessary incidental.
Moreover, you've now got access to a host of terms and rubrics for making your metadiscourse richer and more nuanced; and, as you've written on them for your outcomes inventory, you've had to learn them at least well enough to write on them and to see examples in your own writing.
My point is this, much of the learning from this course will mature and flower over the next few years, and you might not even notice it happening. The truth is, there's only so much which can be done to help students become better writers in five weeks. In fact, five week sections of freshman writing violate understood best practice in the field. I took these limitations as challenges and focused on planting the seeds which can, if you cultivate them, make you a better writer over time.
It's time I let you in on the learning which is taking place in the background. I've borrowed from my response to a particular student in this explanation:
As you help others create more successful documents, you're having to create either a conscious or unconscious dialogue with yourself about what constitutes good or better writing. You're having to compare this concept to that which is in front of you, and you're having to make specific recommendations and judgements, so your ideas can't just be abstract. In the profession, we call such an internal dialogue about writing "a metadiscourse."
Achieving a working metadiscourse means your cognitive understanding of your own literacy has taken a major step forward. You've practiced this metadiscourse and over the next few years, you'll probably--if your cognitive trajectory as a writer follows most others--make the metadiscourse more conscious and detailed. Getting this kind of metadiscourse started is one of the things which I build into my freshmen course designs, so it just happens as a necessary incidental.
Moreover, you've now got access to a host of terms and rubrics for making your metadiscourse richer and more nuanced; and, as you've written on them for your outcomes inventory, you've had to learn them at least well enough to write on them and to see examples in your own writing.
My point is this, much of the learning from this course will mature and flower over the next few years, and you might not even notice it happening. The truth is, there's only so much which can be done to help students become better writers in five weeks. In fact, five week sections of freshman writing violate understood best practice in the field. I took these limitations as challenges and focused on planting the seeds which can, if you cultivate them, make you a better writer over time.
Kaizen and Your Process Papers
Years ago, a friend who helps politicians manage campaigns told me about the rule of three. The rule of three was his notion that if a candidate is asked or answers the same question more than three times, she should develop a public answer and broadcast the answer. In responding to Jason's process paper draft, I realized I was saying something to many of you in my responses to your process paper. More importantly, I realized it was one of the major lessons I hope you'll take from this course. Find my response below:
You've seen me make this point in comments on other papers, but I'll repeat it again. To become a fluent, efficient, effective writer, you have to know your writing process as well as you do the processes you've described in this paper. The insight you gained into your creative process should be the first of a continuous process of improvement you can achieve via Kaizen. As you improve your processes and your understanding of them, both conscious and unconscious, your products will show a corresponding improvement .
You can do the same with your writing process. Articulate where you are and what processes you use now to write, find a high impact place to make an improvement in the processes you use to create documents, research what others have done to improve their process, implement the change, and review. Over the course of time, you can obtain any level of accomplishment as a writer you desire. It's just a matter of putting in the work and giving writing your full attention while you write.
You've seen me make this point in comments on other papers, but I'll repeat it again. To become a fluent, efficient, effective writer, you have to know your writing process as well as you do the processes you've described in this paper. The insight you gained into your creative process should be the first of a continuous process of improvement you can achieve via Kaizen. As you improve your processes and your understanding of them, both conscious and unconscious, your products will show a corresponding improvement .
You can do the same with your writing process. Articulate where you are and what processes you use now to write, find a high impact place to make an improvement in the processes you use to create documents, research what others have done to improve their process, implement the change, and review. Over the course of time, you can obtain any level of accomplishment as a writer you desire. It's just a matter of putting in the work and giving writing your full attention while you write.
When the final portfolio is due.
Speaking with Paul yesterday, I realized there is some confusion about due dates. I want you to have the *draft* of your portfolio done by Sunday. This means, you should have completed revisions of your cover letter, the outcomes inventory, any papers you want to revise, and picked what writing you'll include in the evidence section of your portfolio. The evidence section can include writing you've done in class or elsewhere, drafts, pre-writing, notes, etc. The evidence section contains the work you'll point to as evidence and example in your cover letter and in your inventory.
Your final portfolio will be due on the last day of class, that is, 19 December. If you have a largely done draft ready by Sunday, this schedule will give you three days for final polish, proofreading your cover letter and inventory, re-thinking and re-reading.
Please DON'T try to put the portfolio or the draft of it together in one day. This is a recipe for an unsuccessful portfolio. Give yourself time to think, write, revise, reflect, and polish. Learning the value of slowing down the writing process and giving yourself the time needed to do your best work is one of the major lessons of the class. Take it to heart. I'll be looking for evidence you've done so when I look at and grade your portfolios.
Your final portfolio will be due on the last day of class, that is, 19 December. If you have a largely done draft ready by Sunday, this schedule will give you three days for final polish, proofreading your cover letter and inventory, re-thinking and re-reading.
Please DON'T try to put the portfolio or the draft of it together in one day. This is a recipe for an unsuccessful portfolio. Give yourself time to think, write, revise, reflect, and polish. Learning the value of slowing down the writing process and giving yourself the time needed to do your best work is one of the major lessons of the class. Take it to heart. I'll be looking for evidence you've done so when I look at and grade your portfolios.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Research, Sources, and Documentation
A student wrote with questions about a couple of bullets dealing with research, the use of sources, and documentation. Here's my very quick response:
On the bullet: "Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources."
A primary source is the text being discussed. On a literature paper, the primary source would be the literature you're to analyze. A secondary source would be criticism about the literature. What this bullet is referring to is that:
1) Readers are interested in hearing your take on the primary source, not just a mishmash of what others have had to say.
2) The last statement implies that you're learning how to use secondary sources to support what you have to say and not substitute for your own opinion.
3) The bullet is also getting at how the views of others can help you see aspects of your primary text you otherwise wouldn't have considered or not considered in the same light.
4) Finally, the bullet gets at how you go about bringing together in your own thought and writing the set of your own opinions about a primary text and the secondary criticism from which you've learned. This is the synthesis angle.
5) The bullet's focus is on how research fits into the writing process. It's something one usually focuses on in the second semester of freshman writing, but you should know that research is almost always a part of writing.
No one can know everything, even in their areas of professional specialization; so, part of being an authority (an author) on a subject is educating yourself, that is, doing research, on the gaps in your knowledge. Usually such research is quick. You might check and verify a fact you include in your writing. Sometimes, research involves getting a handle on a complex problem, process. or technique. Here you have to figure out which sources are worth your attention and realize that in most subjects worth talking about there will be varying opinions on the subject; so, part of what you're researching, analyzing, and synthesizing is the *current* conversation and players discussing your subject.
On the bullet: "Practice appropriate means of documenting their work."
This bullet is simpler. Use the form of documentation expected by the audience/discourse community for whom you write. Realize that different disciplines have different forms of documentation. Using the forms of documentation expected by a discourse community is an ethos move. It proves you know how the discourse community handles the interrelated problems of the ownership of ideas and who an author relies on in developing their thinking.
Most audiences could care less about the sources for your thinking. This isn't true in the academy, where plagiarism is a major issue; and, more importantly, ideas have histories which move into and out of acceptance. What you, as a writer, need to remember is to do your research on what form of documentation is expected. In the academy, you do this by visiting the websites of the professional organizations governing a disciplines discourse. They'll usually have guidelines as to how to document. Visit MLA.org for an example. Most libraries have style sheets or citation guides, and short versions of both appear in many writing guides. Last but not least, sites like bibme can help, as can programs like Endnotes or the new version of Word.
On the bullet: "Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources."
A primary source is the text being discussed. On a literature paper, the primary source would be the literature you're to analyze. A secondary source would be criticism about the literature. What this bullet is referring to is that:
1) Readers are interested in hearing your take on the primary source, not just a mishmash of what others have had to say.
2) The last statement implies that you're learning how to use secondary sources to support what you have to say and not substitute for your own opinion.
3) The bullet is also getting at how the views of others can help you see aspects of your primary text you otherwise wouldn't have considered or not considered in the same light.
4) Finally, the bullet gets at how you go about bringing together in your own thought and writing the set of your own opinions about a primary text and the secondary criticism from which you've learned. This is the synthesis angle.
5) The bullet's focus is on how research fits into the writing process. It's something one usually focuses on in the second semester of freshman writing, but you should know that research is almost always a part of writing.
No one can know everything, even in their areas of professional specialization; so, part of being an authority (an author) on a subject is educating yourself, that is, doing research, on the gaps in your knowledge. Usually such research is quick. You might check and verify a fact you include in your writing. Sometimes, research involves getting a handle on a complex problem, process. or technique. Here you have to figure out which sources are worth your attention and realize that in most subjects worth talking about there will be varying opinions on the subject; so, part of what you're researching, analyzing, and synthesizing is the *current* conversation and players discussing your subject.
On the bullet: "Practice appropriate means of documenting their work."
This bullet is simpler. Use the form of documentation expected by the audience/discourse community for whom you write. Realize that different disciplines have different forms of documentation. Using the forms of documentation expected by a discourse community is an ethos move. It proves you know how the discourse community handles the interrelated problems of the ownership of ideas and who an author relies on in developing their thinking.
Most audiences could care less about the sources for your thinking. This isn't true in the academy, where plagiarism is a major issue; and, more importantly, ideas have histories which move into and out of acceptance. What you, as a writer, need to remember is to do your research on what form of documentation is expected. In the academy, you do this by visiting the websites of the professional organizations governing a disciplines discourse. They'll usually have guidelines as to how to document. Visit MLA.org for an example. Most libraries have style sheets or citation guides, and short versions of both appear in many writing guides. Last but not least, sites like bibme can help, as can programs like Endnotes or the new version of Word.
On Comments, Criticism, and How to Use Both.
I'm back online, and I'm making my way through the backlog of papers which came in over the weekend and on which I owe you comments. By the way, let me know if, for whatever reason, you haven't received comments on earlier papers. With these, just send me another invitation to join you again as collaborator and add comments. As my classes wrap up this week here in Richmond, I'll have more time to devote to going through your papers and offering comments.
A quick note on my comments: if you're expecting a paper on which I've bled red, you'll be disappointed. What you'll see in my comments is that I'll concentrate on how to improve your writing process and on what you've done well in terms of handling the rhetoric. I'm trying here to give you advice which will have the biggest impact on making you a better writer and communicator. Often, I will make a suggestion as to what I would do in the next revision, and less frequently, I'll point you to surface level issues on which you need to work.
Years ago, I learned if you give a student too much information, they'll pick and choose which pieces of advice to which to give their attention, or, worse, they won't do anything; so, I now leave fewer comments, and I try to make these comments as useful as possible.
In other words, I want you to think about everything I have to say. I'm trying to help you write, not judging you as a person. If I say you're doing something well, I'm not just being kind. Consider adding the skill in which I compliment you to your memory and continue to use it in future writing. If I point to the next largest issue to revise, remember my hierarchy for advice is: 1) thesis, 2) focus, 3) development, 4) organization, 5) how you incorporate the thinking of others; 6) tone, 7) paragraphing, 8) word choice and awkward phrasing; 9) surface level issues. If I've skipped over one of these areas, chances are you're doing OK with it, or the mistakes you may have made don't distract from your paper's effectiveness as much as the area on which I do concentrate.
Other things to remember about my comments:
1) You are the author, not me. I'm offering criticism and advice. I'm working as a good editor would. You decide if you agree with my input or not. Just remember, my advice is that of someone who's spent an adult life focusing on the issues I'm talking about. You'd be paying much bigger bucks if you were paying my consulting fees, and folks pay those fees to hear me drone on.
2) I make mistakes. Sorry, but it's true. I'm human, so are you. Read everything I or anyone else says with charity and a grain (or a cup) of salt; but, value the honest criticism of others more than gold. In our culture, we tend to avoid confrontation to a fault, even if someone would be better off hearing a less than flattering comment. The value I place on honest criticism is one reason I valued the discussion I read of my and the class's faults near the beginning. I'll use these comments to improve the next section I teach. I want you to learn to take criticism in the same vein. Too many good writers are so concerned with avoiding criticism, they'll never publish their work or they get writer's block. Writers write texts audiences read. Audiences can be tough. Get over it, or, better, accept it as a tool you can use.
3) If something I say doesn't make sense, write. I'm here to offer a better explanation, and you're paying me for the privilege of teaching. Make me earn my bucks.
4) If you have a question about an aspect of the paper on which I don't comment, write me with it.
5) Finally, remember I'm criticizing your writing, not you as a person. Chances are, even if I think your writing isn't the best, I'll read you with charity, and I'd still like you as a person. See two above.
6) Have patience. Treating you like a real writer and working as an editor would means it takes time for me to form my comments. If a comment is time critical, as always..l
Also, this morning I posted a rather long entry on the drafting phase of the writing process and the problem of procrastination. Make sure to read it and pull off any information which might help update your knowledge of the outcomes.
Finally, don't forget to do your bit in the discussion of the rhetoric of dating. I'm hoping you'll learn a little about dating, and I'm hoping the discussion will give you some major insight into rhetoric.
As always call or write.
A quick note on my comments: if you're expecting a paper on which I've bled red, you'll be disappointed. What you'll see in my comments is that I'll concentrate on how to improve your writing process and on what you've done well in terms of handling the rhetoric. I'm trying here to give you advice which will have the biggest impact on making you a better writer and communicator. Often, I will make a suggestion as to what I would do in the next revision, and less frequently, I'll point you to surface level issues on which you need to work.
Years ago, I learned if you give a student too much information, they'll pick and choose which pieces of advice to which to give their attention, or, worse, they won't do anything; so, I now leave fewer comments, and I try to make these comments as useful as possible.
In other words, I want you to think about everything I have to say. I'm trying to help you write, not judging you as a person. If I say you're doing something well, I'm not just being kind. Consider adding the skill in which I compliment you to your memory and continue to use it in future writing. If I point to the next largest issue to revise, remember my hierarchy for advice is: 1) thesis, 2) focus, 3) development, 4) organization, 5) how you incorporate the thinking of others; 6) tone, 7) paragraphing, 8) word choice and awkward phrasing; 9) surface level issues. If I've skipped over one of these areas, chances are you're doing OK with it, or the mistakes you may have made don't distract from your paper's effectiveness as much as the area on which I do concentrate.
Other things to remember about my comments:
1) You are the author, not me. I'm offering criticism and advice. I'm working as a good editor would. You decide if you agree with my input or not. Just remember, my advice is that of someone who's spent an adult life focusing on the issues I'm talking about. You'd be paying much bigger bucks if you were paying my consulting fees, and folks pay those fees to hear me drone on.
2) I make mistakes. Sorry, but it's true. I'm human, so are you. Read everything I or anyone else says with charity and a grain (or a cup) of salt; but, value the honest criticism of others more than gold. In our culture, we tend to avoid confrontation to a fault, even if someone would be better off hearing a less than flattering comment. The value I place on honest criticism is one reason I valued the discussion I read of my and the class's faults near the beginning. I'll use these comments to improve the next section I teach. I want you to learn to take criticism in the same vein. Too many good writers are so concerned with avoiding criticism, they'll never publish their work or they get writer's block. Writers write texts audiences read. Audiences can be tough. Get over it, or, better, accept it as a tool you can use.
3) If something I say doesn't make sense, write. I'm here to offer a better explanation, and you're paying me for the privilege of teaching. Make me earn my bucks.
4) If you have a question about an aspect of the paper on which I don't comment, write me with it.
5) Finally, remember I'm criticizing your writing, not you as a person. Chances are, even if I think your writing isn't the best, I'll read you with charity, and I'd still like you as a person. See two above.
6) Have patience. Treating you like a real writer and working as an editor would means it takes time for me to form my comments. If a comment is time critical, as always..l
Also, this morning I posted a rather long entry on the drafting phase of the writing process and the problem of procrastination. Make sure to read it and pull off any information which might help update your knowledge of the outcomes.
Finally, don't forget to do your bit in the discussion of the rhetoric of dating. I'm hoping you'll learn a little about dating, and I'm hoping the discussion will give you some major insight into rhetoric.
As always call or write.
Process: Procrastination and Drafting
When I talk to the class about drafting, I usually include a lecture on procrastination. Since this section meets online, I thought I'd include three links with good articles on procrastination along with my current top ten ways of dealing with procrastination. The last full week of class also seemed a good time to talk about procrastination, writer's block, and some tricks to use when you encounter loggerheads in the drafting phase.
Procrastination is a problem with which I've struggled for years, mostly out of fear. The task seems too large. I worry I'm not good enough. I worry I'll be judged lacking. The task isn't well enough defined. You get the idea. You've been there. Chances are, if you don't learn to deal with the habit of procrastination, you'll be there again.
Over the years, I've found a host of advice and a few tricks which have helped me. As you read through the ten rules which help me, read one, stop, think about it, read it again, and move on to the next.
1) Take control. One of the worst aspects of procrastination is that one feels out of control. You know you have a task to do. You know your life would be better for doing the task. It seems irrational you'd avoid doing it. You must recognize that not doing something is a choice. You choose to not. That's OK. It's your choice, but go into the decision with your eyes wide open. Allow yourself time to articulate all the consequences of your choice not to do. Examine your choice rationally. Don't avoid this examination. Then, if you still decide not to do, OK. You've made that choice. Live with it as your choice. Chances are, however, the articulation will add that extra bit of umph you'll need to find the motivation to do.
2) Find motivation. One productivity coach argues the only problem with procrastinators is they're under motivated. There are all kinds of ways to find motivation. Try visualizing in as much detail as possible a scene where you've done the dreaded task and succeeded with it. Envision the results. Envision success. Try to stay away from dwelling on the negative consequences of not doing. Concentrating on them will trap you into feeling more anxious and frustrated, two feelings which we avoid by procrastination; so, you'll might find yourself procrastinating on finding the motivation to succeed.
3) Deal with stress. There's more advice out there with dealing with stress than most any other subject. Truth is, up to a point, stress and anxiety are your friends. They're one aspect of your motivation. Learning to embrace the increased feeling of stress which comes from starting or anticipating starting a project is a major step in overcoming procrastination. Past a certain point, however, stress and anxiety become part of the pattern of procrastination. You avoid the stress and anxiety associated with a task by distracting yourself with more enjoyable behaviors. Indeed, one way of thinking about procrastination is as delaying a stress inducing task by substituting more pleasurable tasks which temporarily reduce stress. Note the word temporarily. To deal with stress, you've got to establish good habits. You must exercise. You must get enough sleep. The best method I've found, however, is to meditate. I meditate on the task at hand. I meditate on what it would feel like to succeed. I remember in detail past successes and project them into my visualization of my success doing the task at hand. I also have learned the habit of every day meditation. Now just looking inward, shifting my posture, and breathing correctly eases stress. To get to this point, however, you've got to meditate daily, so you can learn to associate on a deep level certain ways of breathing, thinking, and posture with calm. Another trick is to meditate walking, step-by-step to a place where you feel comfortable and mentally settling down there. My mental, stress reducing walk is one in the mountains where I grew up. It ends at at a waterfall. Each step takes me deeper into the woods. With every mental step, I can feel a little of life's weight dropping off. When I settle down at the waterfall, I am at peace.
4) Learn your triggers. There's something(S) causing your procrastination. It might be you learned to rebel by not doing; and, paradoxically, you're not doing gave you a sense of control. You might have certain fears which trigger avoidance. Learn to recognize the behaviors you use to avoid and procrastinate, and use these as an index to the things which cause you to procrastinate. Once you learn what triggers avoidance, you can think about your triggers from a more objective distance and plan how you'll react to them rather than reacting with knee-jerk avoidance.
5) Do a little bit. Identify one physical action which will bring your task closer to completion. Sit down at the computer. Open the word processor. You get the idea. The trick is to make sure you identify a single, physical act. You can't "write a paper." You can spend 15 minutes brainstorming or free-writing.
You must then give yourself permission to do your one task. Then identify the next task. Rinse. Repeat. Often just getting a little momentum will make the dreaded task less stressful, give you a small success on which to build, and help you motivate yourself.
Another trick is to use a timer program. You can download them from the web. Set your timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Give yourself permission to just work till your timer runs out. Often, just getting started with those few minutes is enough to overcome the worst of the initial, anticipatory fear--the stress inducing fear which you procrastinate to advoid. If the first few minutes weren't all that bad, set the timer again. Rinse. Repeat. If the first few minutes prove too much, then all you've lost is doing so many minutes of the work you know you need to do anyway.
Don't do too much. Most productivity coaches recommend moving your timer up to a routine of 48 minutes working with a 12 minute break following. There's good psychology behind the 48 minute mark. It's why many classes are divided into 50 minute sections.
6) Do the dreaded task first thing in the morning. I have an established morning routine. I get up with Nance. We get a bath. We go for a walk. We fix breakfast and eat it. We give each other seven lucky kisses, and she goes to work. I start my morning with the mediation I discussed above. I then do the dreaded task. Productivity coaches call this doing the worst chore first, eating one frog each day. Once you've eaten your personal, daily frog, everything else is easier. Seriously, before I do anything else, before I allow myself to get distracted, I set my timer for 48 minutes, and I work on the task I want to put off the most. I identify this task the evening before, and I've meditated on the task and it's success. Usually, I can then make progress.
7) Sprint. Not the telephone company, sprint though your dreaded task. Once you learn the 48 minute rule, you give yourself permission (just like your 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions) to do as much as you can in that 48 minutes, then quit. Often, however, you'll find that first 48 minute sprint gives you enough momentum you'll want to keep going.
8) Reward yourself, but be careful. If you've worked for the 48 minutes, give yourself a little reward. You'll have to figure out your system of rewards. Maybe it's a cup of tea or a brownie. I don't know. I do know you don't want to reward yourself with one of your avoidance behaviors. It's then too easy to quit and fall back on bad habits.
Don't forget to give yourself the big rewards. If you manage to complete the dreaded task on which you've tended to procrastinate, reward yourself. Take a day off. You then deserve the reward. Those rewards, both big and little, are part of the ammunition you can use when you visualize success, and they're part of the motivation you can use to get started and to keep going.
9) Don't try to be perfect. You aren't. Remember Kaizen? It's about picking the lowest fruit and then learning to pick the higher. It's about getting some reward with each effort. If you don't do because you want what's done to be perfect, you'll never do. Learn this lesson. Do a good enough job, and if you have time, polish it into a better one. You want the success of getting a job done which does well enough. You can then spend time working out a better production process so the next job will be better. If you keep up with the plan, sooner rather than later, you'll find yourself producing a pretty damn good product. It still won't be perfect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the world we share, but your products will do the work you want them to do. Usually.
10) Make mistakes joyfully. Remember my earlier post. Learning to embrace the opportunity a failure offers is a major step toward dealing with the stress and anxiety which causes you to procrastinate. OK, so the product you produced didn't meet standards. It didn't reach your goals for it. What didn't you do that you should? The only way to test a product is by giving it a chance to be used and judged in the field. If it fails, learn why. Alter your process for the next time. The only sure way to fail is to give up and rest on your failures.
Here's a freebie: overcoming the habit of procrastination is a long term process. You picked up the habit of procrastination over a lifetime. Learning to overcome the habit won't happen in a day. It's a process. Work on one aspect of your problem at a time. Focus on the successes as they build up. Embrace your failures as another opportunity for success. Give yourself the time you need, and take the time. When you slip up, get back on the horse and give yourself credit for the ground you've covered.
Enough lecture. Here are three articles on procrastination and tricks for making yourself write. They can give you a other perspectives. Read them. If I can help, make an appointment and we'll talk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20060324-000001.html
http://webhome.idirect.com/~readon/procrast.html
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html
Procrastination is a problem with which I've struggled for years, mostly out of fear. The task seems too large. I worry I'm not good enough. I worry I'll be judged lacking. The task isn't well enough defined. You get the idea. You've been there. Chances are, if you don't learn to deal with the habit of procrastination, you'll be there again.
Over the years, I've found a host of advice and a few tricks which have helped me. As you read through the ten rules which help me, read one, stop, think about it, read it again, and move on to the next.
1) Take control. One of the worst aspects of procrastination is that one feels out of control. You know you have a task to do. You know your life would be better for doing the task. It seems irrational you'd avoid doing it. You must recognize that not doing something is a choice. You choose to not. That's OK. It's your choice, but go into the decision with your eyes wide open. Allow yourself time to articulate all the consequences of your choice not to do. Examine your choice rationally. Don't avoid this examination. Then, if you still decide not to do, OK. You've made that choice. Live with it as your choice. Chances are, however, the articulation will add that extra bit of umph you'll need to find the motivation to do.
2) Find motivation. One productivity coach argues the only problem with procrastinators is they're under motivated. There are all kinds of ways to find motivation. Try visualizing in as much detail as possible a scene where you've done the dreaded task and succeeded with it. Envision the results. Envision success. Try to stay away from dwelling on the negative consequences of not doing. Concentrating on them will trap you into feeling more anxious and frustrated, two feelings which we avoid by procrastination; so, you'll might find yourself procrastinating on finding the motivation to succeed.
3) Deal with stress. There's more advice out there with dealing with stress than most any other subject. Truth is, up to a point, stress and anxiety are your friends. They're one aspect of your motivation. Learning to embrace the increased feeling of stress which comes from starting or anticipating starting a project is a major step in overcoming procrastination. Past a certain point, however, stress and anxiety become part of the pattern of procrastination. You avoid the stress and anxiety associated with a task by distracting yourself with more enjoyable behaviors. Indeed, one way of thinking about procrastination is as delaying a stress inducing task by substituting more pleasurable tasks which temporarily reduce stress. Note the word temporarily. To deal with stress, you've got to establish good habits. You must exercise. You must get enough sleep. The best method I've found, however, is to meditate. I meditate on the task at hand. I meditate on what it would feel like to succeed. I remember in detail past successes and project them into my visualization of my success doing the task at hand. I also have learned the habit of every day meditation. Now just looking inward, shifting my posture, and breathing correctly eases stress. To get to this point, however, you've got to meditate daily, so you can learn to associate on a deep level certain ways of breathing, thinking, and posture with calm. Another trick is to meditate walking, step-by-step to a place where you feel comfortable and mentally settling down there. My mental, stress reducing walk is one in the mountains where I grew up. It ends at at a waterfall. Each step takes me deeper into the woods. With every mental step, I can feel a little of life's weight dropping off. When I settle down at the waterfall, I am at peace.
4) Learn your triggers. There's something(S) causing your procrastination. It might be you learned to rebel by not doing; and, paradoxically, you're not doing gave you a sense of control. You might have certain fears which trigger avoidance. Learn to recognize the behaviors you use to avoid and procrastinate, and use these as an index to the things which cause you to procrastinate. Once you learn what triggers avoidance, you can think about your triggers from a more objective distance and plan how you'll react to them rather than reacting with knee-jerk avoidance.
5) Do a little bit. Identify one physical action which will bring your task closer to completion. Sit down at the computer. Open the word processor. You get the idea. The trick is to make sure you identify a single, physical act. You can't "write a paper." You can spend 15 minutes brainstorming or free-writing.
You must then give yourself permission to do your one task. Then identify the next task. Rinse. Repeat. Often just getting a little momentum will make the dreaded task less stressful, give you a small success on which to build, and help you motivate yourself.
Another trick is to use a timer program. You can download them from the web. Set your timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. Give yourself permission to just work till your timer runs out. Often, just getting started with those few minutes is enough to overcome the worst of the initial, anticipatory fear--the stress inducing fear which you procrastinate to advoid. If the first few minutes weren't all that bad, set the timer again. Rinse. Repeat. If the first few minutes prove too much, then all you've lost is doing so many minutes of the work you know you need to do anyway.
Don't do too much. Most productivity coaches recommend moving your timer up to a routine of 48 minutes working with a 12 minute break following. There's good psychology behind the 48 minute mark. It's why many classes are divided into 50 minute sections.
6) Do the dreaded task first thing in the morning. I have an established morning routine. I get up with Nance. We get a bath. We go for a walk. We fix breakfast and eat it. We give each other seven lucky kisses, and she goes to work. I start my morning with the mediation I discussed above. I then do the dreaded task. Productivity coaches call this doing the worst chore first, eating one frog each day. Once you've eaten your personal, daily frog, everything else is easier. Seriously, before I do anything else, before I allow myself to get distracted, I set my timer for 48 minutes, and I work on the task I want to put off the most. I identify this task the evening before, and I've meditated on the task and it's success. Usually, I can then make progress.
7) Sprint. Not the telephone company, sprint though your dreaded task. Once you learn the 48 minute rule, you give yourself permission (just like your 5, 10, or 15 minute sessions) to do as much as you can in that 48 minutes, then quit. Often, however, you'll find that first 48 minute sprint gives you enough momentum you'll want to keep going.
8) Reward yourself, but be careful. If you've worked for the 48 minutes, give yourself a little reward. You'll have to figure out your system of rewards. Maybe it's a cup of tea or a brownie. I don't know. I do know you don't want to reward yourself with one of your avoidance behaviors. It's then too easy to quit and fall back on bad habits.
Don't forget to give yourself the big rewards. If you manage to complete the dreaded task on which you've tended to procrastinate, reward yourself. Take a day off. You then deserve the reward. Those rewards, both big and little, are part of the ammunition you can use when you visualize success, and they're part of the motivation you can use to get started and to keep going.
9) Don't try to be perfect. You aren't. Remember Kaizen? It's about picking the lowest fruit and then learning to pick the higher. It's about getting some reward with each effort. If you don't do because you want what's done to be perfect, you'll never do. Learn this lesson. Do a good enough job, and if you have time, polish it into a better one. You want the success of getting a job done which does well enough. You can then spend time working out a better production process so the next job will be better. If you keep up with the plan, sooner rather than later, you'll find yourself producing a pretty damn good product. It still won't be perfect. The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to the world we share, but your products will do the work you want them to do. Usually.
10) Make mistakes joyfully. Remember my earlier post. Learning to embrace the opportunity a failure offers is a major step toward dealing with the stress and anxiety which causes you to procrastinate. OK, so the product you produced didn't meet standards. It didn't reach your goals for it. What didn't you do that you should? The only way to test a product is by giving it a chance to be used and judged in the field. If it fails, learn why. Alter your process for the next time. The only sure way to fail is to give up and rest on your failures.
Here's a freebie: overcoming the habit of procrastination is a long term process. You picked up the habit of procrastination over a lifetime. Learning to overcome the habit won't happen in a day. It's a process. Work on one aspect of your problem at a time. Focus on the successes as they build up. Embrace your failures as another opportunity for success. Give yourself the time you need, and take the time. When you slip up, get back on the horse and give yourself credit for the ground you've covered.
Enough lecture. Here are three articles on procrastination and tricks for making yourself write. They can give you a other perspectives. Read them. If I can help, make an appointment and we'll talk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20060324-000001.html
http://webhome.idirect.com/~readon/procrast.html
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html
How to deal with the "other programs" bullets in your inventory.
A student wrote with a question about how to deal with the set of "other program" bullets in each section of the WPA outcomes. My response appears below. Since, it will save you time, you might want to read it.
"Yes, you should respond to these bullets, but you can respond to them as a group rather than individually. Remember, the idea behind the inventory assignment is for you and me to get an idea of what you know and what you still need to study in terms of writing.
"These "other program" bullets indicate that your other professors in different programs have a responsibility to pass along knowledge about writing which is specific to their discipline as a discourse community. If they don't, you have to be proactive and seek this knowledge out. The "all programs" bullets should, hence, serve as an indication of the kind of information you should seek out. My guess is you already have some of the knowledge, as many of you are fairly savvy readers in your particular fields. If you have some of the know and a lack other aspects, just say so."
"Write with questions."
"Yes, you should respond to these bullets, but you can respond to them as a group rather than individually. Remember, the idea behind the inventory assignment is for you and me to get an idea of what you know and what you still need to study in terms of writing.
"These "other program" bullets indicate that your other professors in different programs have a responsibility to pass along knowledge about writing which is specific to their discipline as a discourse community. If they don't, you have to be proactive and seek this knowledge out. The "all programs" bullets should, hence, serve as an indication of the kind of information you should seek out. My guess is you already have some of the knowledge, as many of you are fairly savvy readers in your particular fields. If you have some of the know and a lack other aspects, just say so."
"Write with questions."
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