I finally did it! There was a prolonged moment of indecision and trepidation, like jumping off the high dive for the first time. But then I just let go and raised my hands in the air. I was cruising down a hill along the Mississippi River. Throughout my life, I've seen people do it like it was nothing. This summer in DC I saw lots of young kids looking cool as salmon as they swerved and speeded on their bikes through patchy Capital Hill streets, arms flopping at their sides. I figured riding with no hands was a skill that you either had and felt totally comfortable doing, or one you didn't and you would mess yourself up if you tried it. Like riding a bike itself. I hadn't taken the plunge when I was younger, so my adult self had grown catious and inhibitted. But this new bike with its fat mountain tires gave me new courage. It's much smoother than my old Gary Fischer Aquila, which was stolen from the UMN campus last year, and incomparible better than the beat up bmx bike I was riding this summer.
It felt like a new world I was perched upon while I coasting down that hill without hands. A world that just let me glide through it, taking care to prop me up so I didn't be concerned about myself. Then I tried pedaling -- back to the world of holding on.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Friday, August 25, 2006
When You Got A Subject And A Predicate
These past two mornings I’ve been attending a workshop on grading and commenting on student writing. Somehow it didn’t occur to me until after starting this session that most of the commenting I’ll be doing for my intro to public speaking course will be responding to speeches rather than writing per se. Still, the session was worthwhile. I ended up going to both session rather than skipping out as I intended to do if it just seemed like go-thru-the-motions bullshit. But it helped me realize how difficult it is to comment on student writing in a way that’s time efficient and helpful to the student.
On the first sample essays that I practiced commenting on, I leaned heavily towards copy editing in a journalistic way. Truncating sentences, shedding otiose adjectives, trying to suggest a more confident voice. This is the kind of feedback that I have particularly appreciated as of late (especially comments from Bill Lindeke from excitablemedia). Personally, I would love the chance to work with a good editor who would rip my language apart, just so I could start to see other possibilities for word choice and flow and identify my unconscious habits and self-imposed restrictions. The workshop, however, helped me realize this is not likely the kind comment that most undergrads need most. Perhaps the greatest single lesson of the workshop was the suggestion to think about how students will react to a first glance of the paper handed back to them. What will they think of something splotched with red on almost every line? A simple thought experiment in empathy that now seems obvious. The facilitator of the workshop suggested that comments need to be selected strategically based on where intervention is needed most – not only as a time saving strategy on the part of the instructor but also so as not to overwhelm the students.
It’s easy to think of writing instruction as a boring, mundane part of the job of an academic. It doesn’t help that the culture and publications that I’ve seen from the world of composition seem about as bland as it gets - perhaps this derives from an attempt by all parties to insulate writing instruction (in practice if not lipservice at least) from theory, politics . . . all the exciting stuff going on in universities. However, writing instruction is full of all sorts of deeply political and artistic questions. Writing practice (at whatever level) is certainly a technology of self. Helping students develop “their voice” in writing is a hotspot of institutional intervention on subjectivities and communicative habits.
On the first sample essays that I practiced commenting on, I leaned heavily towards copy editing in a journalistic way. Truncating sentences, shedding otiose adjectives, trying to suggest a more confident voice. This is the kind of feedback that I have particularly appreciated as of late (especially comments from Bill Lindeke from excitablemedia). Personally, I would love the chance to work with a good editor who would rip my language apart, just so I could start to see other possibilities for word choice and flow and identify my unconscious habits and self-imposed restrictions. The workshop, however, helped me realize this is not likely the kind comment that most undergrads need most. Perhaps the greatest single lesson of the workshop was the suggestion to think about how students will react to a first glance of the paper handed back to them. What will they think of something splotched with red on almost every line? A simple thought experiment in empathy that now seems obvious. The facilitator of the workshop suggested that comments need to be selected strategically based on where intervention is needed most – not only as a time saving strategy on the part of the instructor but also so as not to overwhelm the students.
It’s easy to think of writing instruction as a boring, mundane part of the job of an academic. It doesn’t help that the culture and publications that I’ve seen from the world of composition seem about as bland as it gets - perhaps this derives from an attempt by all parties to insulate writing instruction (in practice if not lipservice at least) from theory, politics . . . all the exciting stuff going on in universities. However, writing instruction is full of all sorts of deeply political and artistic questions. Writing practice (at whatever level) is certainly a technology of self. Helping students develop “their voice” in writing is a hotspot of institutional intervention on subjectivities and communicative habits.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
The New Gazelle
Over the past few months, this little nook of the www has gotten as dusty as the peace studies section of the White House library, but now it's time for a little late summer cleaning. I just added "New" to the blog title, as a little R&D has led to a new and improved product. The number one finding: lower expectations. No more grasping at profundity in each post, despite all the gushing comments that suggested the old format was so popular.
No, now my goal is to find some sort of regular blogging rhythm that will work for me. I'll try to make it interesting and keep up with friends through this blog, but admittedly this is one of my mental exercises to routinize new forms of thought. Another one of these exercises is what I call "metaphor-a-day." Every day I'm trying to write down one metaphor I come across in reading or conversation that strikes me. The original plan was also to write my own metaphor each day, in hopes these twin exercises would grease up the associative flow of metaphoric thinking for me. Can't say I've been diligent enough at it yet to say whether it will work.
Here’s today’s metaphor from an article on Edmund Wilson by Louis Menand (found it while sifting through some old magazines):
"He was not obliged, as professors are, to pick out a single furrow and plow it for life. His whole career was devoted to the opposite principle: that an educated, intelligent person can take on any subject that seems interesting and important and, by doing some homework and taking care with exposition, make it interesting and important to other people."
No, now my goal is to find some sort of regular blogging rhythm that will work for me. I'll try to make it interesting and keep up with friends through this blog, but admittedly this is one of my mental exercises to routinize new forms of thought. Another one of these exercises is what I call "metaphor-a-day." Every day I'm trying to write down one metaphor I come across in reading or conversation that strikes me. The original plan was also to write my own metaphor each day, in hopes these twin exercises would grease up the associative flow of metaphoric thinking for me. Can't say I've been diligent enough at it yet to say whether it will work.
Here’s today’s metaphor from an article on Edmund Wilson by Louis Menand (found it while sifting through some old magazines):
"He was not obliged, as professors are, to pick out a single furrow and plow it for life. His whole career was devoted to the opposite principle: that an educated, intelligent person can take on any subject that seems interesting and important and, by doing some homework and taking care with exposition, make it interesting and important to other people."
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