1. God, awkward sentence constructions and freakish vocabulary use slay me. How about this: "the strong relationship between dress and love on the butch/femme pedestal". Uh huh. The good ol' butch/femme pedestal...
2. I am teaching this short spring course on a topic that prompts quite a bit of impassioned, personal reflection from students (and people in general). So I got an original, four-stanza poem to open one of these in-class essays.
3. On a more serious note, I've never assigned an in-class essay before. These students had one and a half hours to write (by hand) this approximately 6-page essay. I gave them a choice of two questions in advance...at our last class meeting, which was five days before the writing of the essay, due to a long weekend. I told them they could bring in their readings and an outline. And what do you know? This batch of essays is better than any I've seen before. WTF? What is particularly weird is that where it's better is not in content, really, but mechanics. They are writing, for the most part, coherent paragraphs. Spelling properly. Not writing run-on sentences. In short, this is clearer writing than I've seen all year. This is weird and sort of scary. What does it tell us about the work they normally do? What does it tell us about their working on computers?
2 comments:
Your story suggests that they don't normally take even 1 1/2 hours to write take home essays, that they write them drunk, or both. Eek. BTW I like your taste in music!
Indeed, I read a lengthy essay or two this year that I swore were written in a drug-fueled, early-morning half hour.
Sfragett, thanks for stopping by...glad to hear we share some musical interests!
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