Category: Writing

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Academic Holding Pattern

When it comes to writing the generic “start of the term” post, I have a couple of problems. While our trip to Europe earlier this month was a lot of fun, it wasn’t exactly relaxing. It was more of one of those great “trips” that require a bit of a “vacation” for recovery. So in a sense, I have kind of been making that vacation now, even though I’ve been sitting in on the training sessions for graduate assistants that Linda AK is leading before she hits sabbatical and hands me the keys to the first year writing program store– more on that in a bit.

And then there’s the whole faculty union stuff. But that’s the subject of a different (tomorrow’s?) post.

In any event, even the threat of a strike casts quite a shadow on the beginnings of the term, especially when it comes to the advising and quasi-administrative work that is going to make up the bulk of my work this year– again, more on that in a bit. I found myself last night going through a backlog of email and telling students, potential students, and other advisees that I will be available next week– unless we’re on strike. That’s kind of annoying, and while I suppose the union negotiators can be blamed for some of this, I mostly blame the administration and I really REALLY blame the lawyer that the university hires to break negotiate with the union. I am certain that if this guy was not at the table, the folks from the faculty and the folks from the administration would have worked out a deal months ago. But the lawyers get paid by the hour, and they get paid to bring us to the brink, right?

Oh wait– I said that was going to be a different post….

Besides this academic holding pattern created by a combination of my body/soul forcing a post-trip “break” and the relative uncertainty of the start of the term, I feel like my non-academic life is in a bit of a holding pattern, too. Our son doesn’t start school until after Labor Day, and oh my, we are all soooo ready for him to go back to school. The Washtenaw County Rec Center, which is where I go to work out (when I go to work out) is closed until September 1, which has thwarted my plans to start getting in shape right after our trip.

Anyway, I know this hold will end eventually. And when it does, when the term really does start, I will begin what will be I hope a very interesting year as a sort of faculty/administrator. I have been the “writing program coordinator” in our department since January. My charges in that job are to more or less run the undergraduate majors in professional and technical writing and our graduate programs in professional writing and teaching of writing. In addition to that, I’m going to be the “interim director of first year writing,” which is what Linda usually does and which is more akin to what most people think of as a WPA. I’m the go-to person for the 120 or so sections of first year writing we have each term, I’m the one who has to do all sorts of miscellaneous paperwork and meeting associated with all of that, and I’m going to take over the teaching of the course our grad students take to get ready to teach first year writing. Linda is teaching the part that meets for two weeks before the term begins right now.

So thing number 1 on my agenda for next year: Don’t screw up the Interim WPA thing too badly. Given the great incoming students we have and the support I’ll be getting from some other folks here (along with Linda from a short distance away), I think this is a goal I will be able to meet.

Agenda item #2: read (and not write) some scholarship. There’s two basic reasons for this. First, with my various quasi-administrative roles, I just don’t know how much time I’m going to have to work a lot on new articles or whatever, God forbid a book. Second, as I elluded to in my earlier posts about my academic mid-life crisis, I kind of feel like that if I don’t have a “burning project” I just have to do, then it would perhaps be a better idea to not do anything for a while. So I’m looking forward to just reading stuff for a year or so.

Well, other than at least one conference presentation.

Finally, there is agenda item #3: Get in better shape. This is an annual agenda item for me, of course. But given item #2, I might actually have a little more time to do this one this year….

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Catching up on blog reading

I did have relatively good Internet access while I was in Europe. It came at a price of between 2-4 Euros an hour, which isn’t too cheap, but it was everywhere. I didn’t take a computer with me, something I will reconsider on my next trip overseas– it would have been nice to do some writing and to watch some DVDs, though there was no WiFi access as far as I could tell. So I went to Internet cafes and I got online about four or five times, mostly to check my email for anything super important, to post to my unofficial blog about our travels, and to check the news.

It’s funny to think about; the last (and only other) time I was in Europe was on my/our honeymoon in 1994, quite a while before Internet cafes and news web sites and such. It was tough back then to even get newspapers and magazines in English, at least where we were. As a result, we found out about OJ and his infamous white Bronco ride a week after it happened while looking at a magazine on the way back home in the plane. This time, we had the ‘net, we had CNN Europe, we had access to USA Today. And as a result, I can tell you I think this John Karr guy is probably just a nut; I’d be very surprised if he did indeed kill JonBenet.

Anyway, even with this connectivity, I didn’t get a chance to read much in the way of blogs while I was away. So, in no real particular order, here are a few things I came across this morning via my RSS reader that might be helpfu to me later on and/or that I just thought were kinda interesting:

Okay, I know I missed a lot, but there you have it.

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9/11 Comic Book

I read in the Ann Arbor newspaper yesterday about a comic version of the 9/11 commission report and I found this morning the amazon.com link, which is where I might be ordering this book from. Or I might be waiting until I get back from my upcoming summer break.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing I need to get for both my teaching in English 328 and in 516, especially the undergraduate class, Writing, Style, and Technology. For a whole bunch of reasons I won’t go into now (but which boil down to the process EMU as an institution is now going through to accredit secondary school teachers), visual elements have become a lot more important in this course in the last year or so. Because Scott McCloud was on campus at EMU in winter 2006, I incorporated some readings and activities from Understanding Comics in my version of the class last year, and I am totally sold on the value of getting students to think about “the visual” as it relates to “the textual.”

At least at this level and for this class; I’m not as sold on this for fy comp. But that’s another story.

In any event, this new 911 comic looks promising. Besides as a potential teaching tool, I am interested in reading it myself.

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Umpteenth article on student writing (but this one says its good!)

Here’s a piece in Inside Higher Ed that might come in handy for English 596 for the Fall: “Worse Than Ever?” by Laurence Musgrove. It’s a refreshing piece because it actually makes the argument that I think is clearly the case: students are not actually becoming worse writers. And it’s a frustrating piece because there are a whole bunch of comments that basically say “I don’t care what various forms of evidence say– I still think that the kids are going to hell in a handbasket!”

At times like these, I always like to remind folks of one of my favorite quotes from the canon of ancient Greek rhetoricians; it comes from Isocrates’ Antidosis

Yes, and you have brought it about that the most promising of our young men are wasting their youth in drinking-bouts, in parties, in soft living and childish folly, to the neglect of all efforts to improve themselves; while those of grosser nature are engaged from morning until night in extremes of dissipation which in former days an honest slave would have despised. You see some of them chilling their wine at the “Nine-fountains”; others, drinking in taverns; others, tossing dice in gambling dens; and many, hanging about the training-schools of the flute-girls.And as for those who encourage them in these things, no one of those who profess to be concerned for our youth has ever haled them before you for trial, but instead they persecute me, who, whatever else I may deserve, do at any rate deserve thanks for this, that I discourage such habits in my pupils.

In other words, about 2400 years ago, the teacher/writer/rhetorician Isocrates was noting the bad habits of Greek young men– basically, back then, they too had too much in the way of drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. The fact that adults/elders have problems with young people strikes me as more a factor of adults/elders facing their own mortality and distance from their own wasted youth than anything else.

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"Someone to Watch Over Me" article

I wasn’t planning on writing anything here this morning because I gave myself the treat of buying the Sunday New York Times and was planning on just reading and hanging out. But I came across an article that I think might be good for teaching, especially in 516, “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s sort of an exaggerated story of the virtual social life of the writer, though it might not be that much of an exaggeration.

I guess that just goes to show you that when academic-types aren’t working, they’re still working….

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QuickMuse (I am not)

From the “about” page, QuickMuse describes itself like this:

QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject.

Well, okay, I guess. Still, it seems like a strange kind of party trick to get famous poets to write quickly. I mean, why not the rest of us? Why not ask me? (Steve asks as he falls further and further behind in his projects because he writes too slowly….)

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"Pre-Writing" techniques gone mad!

Actually, that’s just a kind of catchy headline. But I stumbled this morning across this list of “Creativity Techniques,” which is at a wiki site for a group called “mycoted,” which is “dedicated to improving Creativity and Innovation for solving problems woldwide.” Pretty interesting; I haven’t looked at it too closely yet, but essentially, this list looks like variations on that old chesnut of the rhetorical canon, “invention.”

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Writing Cops?

Laurence Musgrove has an interesting piece in Inside Higher Ed called “The Real Reason Students Can’t Write.” I think it’s interesting because I agree with just about half of it.

Musgrove, who is an English professor-type who teaches first year writing and who has been involved in some writing programs at different schools, suggests the following causes of “bad student writing:”

I believe most faculty think that when they find an error in grammar or logic or format, it is because their students don’t know “how� to write. When I find significant errors in student writing, I chalk it up to one of three reasons: they don’t care, they don’t know, or they didn’t see it. And I believe that the first and last are the most frequent causes of error. In other words, when push comes to shove, I’ve found that most students really do know how to write — that is, if we can help them learn to value and care about what they are writing and then help them manage the time they need to compose effectively.

I think that this is all very very true. Musgrove also suggests that a lot of “bad” student writing continues to happen across the curriculum for two reasons. First, it’s a lot easier for most professors to complain about their student writing than to actually do anything about it– like, you know, teach (as opposed to merely assign) writing. Second, students rarely face serious consequences for bad writing; bad writing might receive a less than excellent grade, but rarely do students fail as a result of their bad writing.

But then Musgrove kind of loses me when he proposes this:

All faculty members are hereby authorized to challenge their students’ writing proficiency. Students who fail to demonstrate the generally accepted minimum standards of proficiency in writing may be issued a “writing ticket� by their instructors. Writing tickets become part of students’ institutional “writing records.� Students may have tickets removed from their writing records by completing requirements identified by their instructors. These requirements may include substantially revising the paper, attending a writing workshop, taking a writing proficiency examination, or registering for a developmental writing course. Students who fail to have tickets removed from their records will receive additional penalties, such as a failing grade for the course, academic probation, or the inability to register for classes.

Wha????

Look, average people/students already think that English and writing professors are members of some sort of grammar Nazi patrol; this guy wants to give us the power to write actual tickets? No thanks.

I have been thinking lately though how it’s a problem that comp/rhet folks have reduced the role grammar, correctness, and proofreading in contemporary pedagogy too much. To me, I think this is especially a problem in writing classes beyond first year writing. But that’s another post for another time.

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The confusing meanings of "tagging" Air Force One

Over the weekend, I stumbled across the “Still Free” web site, which is a publicity stunt/public advocacy page by the hip-hop/youth fashion company Ecko. The “Still Free” site features a shaky video of Air Force One outside of an airport hanger and hooded people climbing over a barbed-wire fence to get to it. Ultimately, one of these “vandals” spray paints the phrase “Still Free” on the side of the engine of the plane.

Also on the “Still Free” site ia a video of Marc Ecko himself titled “Why I Tagged Air Force One.” It’s kind of a convoluted explaination. He says he did this because the president needs to remember that when he goes places, he needs to represent freedom, and Ecko thought that spray painting the plane would be a great way to open a dialog. Then he goes on about graffiti as an art form and some of the kind of stupid laws that prevent kids under 18 from buying broad-tipped permanent markers in New York City and such. But then he says that vandalism is never right and he’s not suggesting that people go out and do that. Ecko just wants people to chill and talk about freedom.

Ah, okay. A bold (and crazy and illegal) move for freedom, I guess.

But it turns out (and actually, I knew this all along because this is how I found out about the “Still Free” web site in the first place) that this was all an elaborate hoax. As this AP wire story reports, the video appeared real enough that an Air Force spokesman for the unit responsible for Air Force One was “looking into it.” But of course it wasn’t real.

Why did he do it?

“I wanted to do something culturally significant, wanted to create a real pop-culture moment,” said Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises. “It’s this completely irreverent, over-the-top thing that could really never happen: this five-dollar can of paint putting a pimple on this Goliath.”

Okay… so, tell us Marc; how did you pull it off?

Ecko acknowledged Friday that his company had rented a 747 cargo jet at San Bernardino’s airport and covertly painted one side to look like Air Force One. Employees signed secrecy agreements and worked inside a giant hangar until the night the video was made. Ecko declined to say how much the stunt cost.

“It’s not cheap,” he said. “You have to be rich.”

So ultimately, this statement about free speech– which appears to come in a form (vandalism) which Ecko says is of course illegal and wrong– is actually a fabrication, a fiction, and something that could never happen. Which, in a very real way, is not an example of free speech at all. And for me it is all the more problematic because it portrays itself as a “real” event in the name of “free speech.” It’s sort of like these faith healers you see getting people to get out of wheelchairs: at first, it demonstrates the powers of the healer; but it then it soon demonstrates the powers of the con man.

Or I guess it’s a lot like the whole Million Little Pieces thing.

That last sentence from Ecko in the wire story, “You have to be rich,” is of course key. It suggests two very important things of this speech act. First, it isn’t “free;” in fact, it’s really REALLY expensive. Second, it isn’t a protest at all, but rather a commercial. In the end, this is simply an advertisement for Marc Ecko Enterprises, which I suppose is a form of free speech, but its purpose is not really to raise awareness so much as it is to sell sweatshrits.

Anyway, I’m perhaps giving this more attention than it deserves, but go check out the video and see what I mean.

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Yet another handwriting story

This one, which I stumbled across from a google news search, comes from the ABC News channel in Chicago: “Should students be concerned with proper handwriting?” The answer, according to these folks, is yes.

A couple of interesting quotes here:

Some educators link the demise of penmanship to the rejection of repetitive drills as a teaching tool. Also, teachers are spending less time on handwriting and more time covering subjects like reading and math, which are measured by standardized tests.

Huh? So, we should have a return to reptitive drills? And by the way, my third grade son seems to still be doing some version of reptitive drills with handwriting.

They talk about the problems of the handwritten portion of the SAT and the fact that many finals still need to be done by hand, etc. I wonder how long that’s going to be the case, though– I’d be surprised if my son will have to do a writing test for the SAT by hand, for example.

And then there’s this:

While teachers who grade the SAT are told not to mark off for sloppy penmanship, research shows that handwriting can send a message.

“It’s hard when you look at some types of handwriting, to not read certain things into it,” says Dana Huff, an English teacher at the Weber School – who also grades essays for the SAT. “You know the big, bubbly handwriting, for instance, can sometimes lead a teacher to think, ‘Oh, Airhead.'”

“If your handwriting is barely legible, it makes them think that you are not really an organized person,” says 17-year-old Adam Levinson, “that you are writing too fast, and you are not thinking about it.”

Which, again, is why I type everything but a grocery list.