Fall 2022 Post 14: Blogging as a Tool for Learning

I have written for as long as I can recall.

Of course, for the first forty years I wrote on paper: scraps, lined yellow pads, journals, blank typing paper. For the past 20 years, I have written mostly on computers. For the last 12 years, I've written on my blogs—first, a personal blog about my family, and then a professional blog. I'll talk mostly about the professional blog since my personal blog is closed to public access. My professional blog is called Learning Complexity, and I invite you to read the last post I wrote. Yes, I know it's an overly long post, but I'm working out my ideas there, and that can take some extra time and space.

Learning Complexity is where I learn. I explore all my new ideas on this blog first, and then later, I identify and rework the good ideas, the ones that stick, into scholarly articles and presentations. But I don't write anything professionally that isn't written first in my blog. See, I believe and practice what I preach to my students: I write first to learn what I think about some issue, and then I rewrite my best ideas into academic essays that I'm comfortable sharing professionally. By the time I actually write something for publication, I have already written and rewritten it several times in my blog.

Now, lots of the stuff that I write in my blog is never published or presented professionally. It isn't good enough. I make lots of mistakes in my blog, but that's okay. My blog is where I'm working out my ideas. It's where I'm writing through lots of ideas to learn what I really think about some issue. I'm fortunate to have a group of scholars who read my blog and who often leave comments about my formative ideas. Likewise, I read their blogs to keep up with their new thoughts. Thus, our blogs are extended conversations we have to help each other with new ideas. I find value in their thoughts, and they seem to find value in mine — at least, enough value to keep reading and commenting. By the way, I've never actually met most of my readers, but they have become my good friends over the years. Think of our blogs as online coffee shops where we gather from time to time to discuss interesting ideas.

For the past year, I've been writing about complexity and narrative, what I call rhizo narratology. It's a tough line of thought for me that was prompted by my inability to understand why so many of my family and friends admire Donald Trump, who I saw as a disaster for America and the Republican Party. Trump was a polarizing figure in America, so most of you know passionate people on both sides of the arguments about his presidency. I've written a few silly posts that I no longer accept. Still, I had to work through those silly ideas to get to the better ones. I'm pleased to say that I have a much better understanding of how seemingly bright people can look at the same facts and see entirely opposite realities. My new understanding about the stories people tell about Donald Trump (both for and against) has not changed my assessment of his presidency, but it has given me a more sympathetic view of the people who saw him as the savior of America. I think I can understand why they felt that way, but given my initial bias, I had to think really hard and do lots of research to understand their point of view. In other words, I had to write a hell of a lot to finally learn something. That writing has made me a better person. Likewise, writing will make you a better person.

But first you have to write, even the silly stuff. Here's something you can learn from someone who has been writing for nearly 60 years: it's a lot easier to fix a silly or poor idea that you've written down than to fix an idea that you haven't written down. Write your ideas down, even if they are silly. You can fix them later. I do, and it's worth doing. Writing is how I learn.

Fall 2022 Post 12: No bad sentences

This post continues the previous post about shouting, because nothing shouts louder than poor, hard to understand sentences. Poor sentences shout, "Hey! I don't know how to write, and I don't care enough about my reader to fix my poor sentences." Poor sentences shout a profound lack of respect for the topic, the language, and, mostly, the reader. It's like showing up for a first date dressed in a tee-shirt, cut-off sweatpants, and flip-flops. You are signaling to your date that you really don't care enough about them to dress up. You probably won't get a second date.

In his post "No bad sentences," Josh Bernoff notes that even the best of writers write poor sentences from time to time, but no one gets to read them because great writers edit, edit, edit before they publish. You, too, should edit before you publish your essay to your teacher. If you have a good friend who can write well, then share your essays with them. Better yet, take your essay to the Writing Center or the Student Success Center. These centers will help you both in person and online. Use them.

There is no shame in writing poor sentences, but there is great shame in not fixing them, especially since you don't have to fix them by yourself.

Fall 2022 Post 11: Shouting

We are nearing the end of the term where I find it appropriate to talk about cleaning up your academic essays to make them more readable, more acceptable to an academic audience. As is often the case in this blog, I'm prompted by a post from Josh Bernoff entitled "Cheer down: How to create drama in your prose without shouting," in which Bernoff discusses the bad writing habit of shouting, or shouting, DAMN IT!!!!

I just shouted by using italics, bold, underlining, colored font, background highlighting, all caps, profanity, and exclamation points in a post that should be more academically toned. As Bernoff notes in his post, this kind of shouting is really poor form, especially in academic writing, and is a sure sign of a novice writer. This kind of shouting undermines your credibility as a writer, which is the worst thing that can happen to an academic writer. If your readers lose faith in you — especially your teachers — then your relationship with your readers and your grades will suffer. Bad news.

Shouting in writing is not always a sign of poor form. Advertisers shout all the time to get your attention quickly and focus it on some product or service that someone wants you to buy. As it happens, sex and money are the top two attention getters, so a company such as Burger King will use sex to focus your attention on their burgers. The exact relationship between eating Burger King hamburgers and hot sex is never quite explained, but apparently gullible men will buy their burgers anyway and hope.

But this is not the kind of writing that we do in college, and most of you will never write ads for a company. Unfortunately, almost all of you text, and people who text are very fond of shouting — mostly through unusual grammar, punctuation, and spelling — LOL!!!

All of you know what LOL means because you've seen it in your own texts or the texts you read. You use it daily. That's fine in your text messages to your besties and beasties, but it is just awful in ur academic writing. See? And did I mean your or you're. I'm not quite sure, and neither are you. Bad form.

In his post, Bernoff is not writing to an academic audience, so he does not mention the number one form of shouting in academic essays: non-standard grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Most students regularly turn in essays with grammar, punctuation, and spelling that shouts to the teacher: "Hey! I'm a novice writer who can't do any better." When you submit an essay with unusual grammar, punctuation, and spelling, then you are telling your teacher one of two things:

1. You're incompetent. You can't spell, and you don't even know that you can't spel. See?
2. You don't care. You know that you can't spel, but you don't care enough to run spell check to correct the errors.

This is similar to when I used to schedule in-person conferences to discuss my students' work with them. If a student showed up to my office poorly or barely dressed and smelling like last night's party, then I assumed that either they didn't know any better or they didn't care. Neither message builds trust between that student and me, nor does it encourage me to work with them and spend any more time with them than is absolutely necessary. This almost never works in the student's favor.

So what's wrong with shouting? Just as with someone shouting at you on the sidewalk, shouting in your essays draws the reader's attention away from what you are saying to how you are saying it. This almost never works for you in an academic essay. So don't do it. Rather, keep your reader's attention focused on what you are trying to say rather than on how you are saying it.

Fall 2022 Post 10: The Local Maximum Paradox in Writing

Mountains Beyond Mountains

I've just learned another lesson from my favorite blogger Josh Bernoff. In a recent post entitled "The local maximum paradox: why you often must go backwards to find fulfillment," Bernoff claims that the popular advice to always be pushing forward is not always so productive. In this post, he's giving a life lesson rather than a writing lesson, and he uses the mathematical concept of the local maximum, which is a maximum point of measurement (could be height, weight, or anything else) "within some neighborhood that need not be (but may be) a global maximum" (Wolfram MathWorld). Early in life, Bernoff was a mathematical prodigy, so he likes mathematical examples, even in writing. So what's his point, and how does it apply to writing?

Bernoff says that in our life pursuits we often aim for some high goal such as becoming a nurse, a computer programmer, or a business owner. We often make this choice when we are at some low point professionally: such as a recent high school graduate. We push and push to become a nurse, for instance, and when we attain that high status, we have a new viewpoint from which to view life, and we see that there are other, higher ambitions that we couldn't see before, but that we now want to achieve. The problem is that to get to those higher peaks, we often have to travel downward from the peak we've worked so hard to achieve. This can feel like going backwards, but it's the only way to start climbing the other peaks.

Some of you in this class are facing this same paradox. You have climbed a peak in your current profession attaining some status and position through hard work and effort, but now you see a higher peak, or at least a more attractive peak, that you want to achieve. To get there, you have to return to college, starting at the bottom in a freshman English class, and start climbing again. This can be a most daunting task, but it is about the only way to climb the other peak: walk down from your current peak.

Writers often face this local maximum paradox, as I did about six months ago with a children's novel that I wanted to write for my five-year-old grandaughter. I'm writing a 40 thousand word fantasy novel for pre-teens (she'll be about that old before I can finish it and find a publisher, if at all). It's about a girl, of course, who is on an adventure with two companions: a boy sasquatch and an older male rabbit. They start in Georgia, bound for northern Ontario, Canada, and I got them as far as a mountain in North Carolina. I have written the beginning and the ending of the novel, but I'm stuck midway in North Carolina. I can't figure out how to get from that mountaintop to the Blue Mountains near the Georgian Bay. So I've stopped writing for six months, and now I'm beginning to think that there ain't no good path from here to there. I may have to go backwards and start over again.

As you can imagine, I don't want to do that. I've written some pretty good stuff to get to North Carolina, and I don't want to delete thousands of words, but I'm beginning to accept that I can't go forward from here. I'll have to turn around, backtrack, and forge a new path, losing all those fine words I wrote. Of course, it breaks my heart and discourages me, but if I want to continue writing this story, then I'll have to do it.

My students often find themselves in the same paradox with their academic writing. As they near completion of a writing assignment, they realize that they've made a mistake. Perhaps they misunderstood the assignment, and now they see that they are about to turn in the wrong essay. Or perhaps they read an authoritative essay that changes how they interpret their topic, and what they thought was one way is now another way. For whatever reason, they realize they are about to crest the wrong peak with the wrong essay, and they can see a better peak in the distance, but the only way to get there is to climb down the peak they are currently on.

The problem is: they are almost finished. They have 900 words of a 1000 word essay. They really don't want to abandon all that writing. They know that what they have is not their best writing, but at least it's almost done. So what do they do?

You may be surprised that I say this, but in some cases students should settle for poorer writing and probably a poorer grade. If students are facing this dilemma the night before the paper is due, then they have little option but to turn in something, even if it isn't their best. Turning in something is almost always better than turning in nothing.

However, if they are writing a few days prior, then they can notify their professor, explain their situation, and ask for an extra day or two so that they can submit a better essay. I will certainly give them more time, as will many professors. Remember, all professors prefer to read better essays than poorer essays. Promise us better, and we'll probably give you the time. However, don't promise us the day after the essay was due. We are already suspicious of you by then and in little mood to be gracious. Communicate up front.

Fall 2022 Post 09: Tone in Academic Writing

Sometimes Josh Bernoff writes a string of posts that all speak to me. His September 30, 2022, post entitled "Tone matters. Yours should be authoritative, but not boring" addresses an important issue for my writing classes: tone. Tone is a problem for many of my students who have mastered the casual familiarity of texting but not the authoritative tone of academic writing. Bernoff has some enlightening points to make about tone in nonfiction writing, and I explore his comments in this post, applying them specifically to academic writing.

Tone Is Always Important

First, Bernoff defines tone in terms of the reader/writer relationship, which is very important to the way I teach academic writing. He says, "Tone is the way in which an author’s prose choices communicate the author’s relationship with the reader." This relationship is tricky for many students because academic documents are written mostly for people we don't know very well, if at all, and thus, we are often unsure about the relationship we should have with them.

Compare this to texting where we usually are writing to people with whom we have a clear relationship: friend, sibling, parent, boss, lover, colleague, or whatever. We already understand the relationship, and most of us are adept at using a tone that fits that relationship. Moreover, when we use a tone that doesn't fit the relationship — like telling our friends to clean-up their rooms — then our friends are usually quick to let us know that they don't like our tone and that we'd best change it.

But much academic writing is written for people we don't know well and may never know, so our relationships with them can be obscure. Moreover, most academic writing is supposed to be written from a position of relative authority. By relative authority, I mean that the writer is supposed to know more about the topic than the reader. Readers usually read nonfiction to gain expanded or new knowledge about something that interests them, and they will quit reading if they come to suspect that the writer doesn't have any new, useful information to share. But college reverses this usual reader/writer relationship forcing students to write to a teacher who usually knows more about the topic than the student does (there are exceptions, often with humorous results — at least, humorous for the students if not the teacher). When we are forced to write for someone who knows more than we do about the given topic, then we know that we are not writing for the purpose of helping someone learn more about some topic in which we have valuable expertise or experience; rather, we are writing for the purpose of being judged by a teacher who knows more about the topic than we do. No one likes being judged, so most students don't like writing for their teachers. That's one reason why I always give my students a different audience: so that they can write from a position of relative authority. You don't have to know everything about a given topic — your academic major, for instance — but you do have to know more than your audience.

So what is an appropriate tone with an academic audience? Bernoff says that we must be authoritative but not boring. The correct tone in an academic essay says, "These are the things that I know. I discovered them through research, experience, and expertise [which I document for you]. I am sharing them because I want you to benefit." This authoritative tone implies that the writer is worth reading because the writer is knowledgeable and wants to enrich the reader's life with some useful information.

Note that the first and most important job of the authoritative tone is to convince the reader that you, the writer, know what you are writing about. Losing the confidence of your reader is a disaster for an academic writer: academic readers will stop reading you and teachers will give you poor grades. So the first principle of solid academic writing is to learn something relevant and useful to your reader and to back it up with documentation. Basically, you say something like: I believe X and so does Albert Einstein, as he says here: "blah blah blah" (204).

The second job of the authoritative tone is to focus on the content, not the writer. If you use personal experience to make your point, keep the focus on the point and not on yourself. Remember: your reader is trying to learn about which major they should choose and how. They are not so interested in learning about your anguish and angst in choosing your major, so don't dwell on it. Mention your personal experiences if necessary, and then move on to how your experience is useful to the reader.

And how should you not be boring? Bernoff has some fine suggestions based on his years of writing nonfiction, so look them over.

I'll close by again comparing and contrasting the texting that you do daily with the academic writing that I'm asking you to do. Texting means that you are already a writer; however, you are not likely texting to academic readers and academic issues; thus, your tone in texting is not appropriate for your academic essays. This means that most of you will have to write and then rewrite several times your essays to find the correct tone that captures an authoritative yet engaging relationship with your academic readers, including your teachers.

Leave a comment about your own approach to tone in your academic essays and how it contrasts with your texting tone.

Fall 2022 Post 08: Concluding an Essay

I regularly read Josh Bernoff's wonderful blog about professional writing called Without Bullshit, and he has a wonderful post about writing conclusions which inspires me to say something about how to conclude an academic essay or even conclude a blog post such as this one. Let's see how I do.

But first, click the link above and read Bernoff's post. He's quite an accomplished writer, and you can learn something from reading him. After all, you have to write a conclusion for two essays and many blog posts this term. You should start practicing your conclusions.

From my experience as a writer and writing teacher, conclusions present a couple of problems for academic writers. First, too many academic writers are trapped in the 5 paragraph essay formula, as Bernoff notes in his post. I can see why. Most of us were taught that formula in high school, and it's fairly easy to do. You can bang out an essay in one sitting the night before it's due and get it off your to-do list with a minimum of involvement. If you really don't care about the topic, then getting it done quickly is the prime consideration. The form goes like this:

1. One intro paragraph to say what you're going to say (the thesis).
2. Three paragraphs to say it.
3. One conclusion paragraph to say what you said (basically, restate the thesis).

You turn it in even though you know it's a vapid little essay that says damned near nothing and that you yourself wouldn't read (I'm convinced that many of my students don't actually read their own essays), but you know the teacher has to read it, and you're hoping that they, too, are busy and just want to be done with grading, so maybe they'll give you a good grade, or at least a passing grade. It's dull writing and why many English teachers drink to excess (not I, of course). You might need to repeat your thesis if you are writing a book or exceedingly long essay, but we are writing short works in this class (blog posts and two 1,000 word essays), so you can safely assume that your reader will remember the thesis that they just read less than five minutes ago — assuming that you wrote a memorable thesis.

A second problem with five-paragraph conclusions is that people tend to start writing one thing, and along the way, their essay morphs into something a little — or a lot — different. So now you have a quandary: do you conclude with the thesis you started with, the point you ended with, or just move on to something altogether different? Who knows?

Obviously, conclusions require a different way of thinking. Fortunately, Bernoff gives us some useful advice about how conclusions should work, and he provides five different ways to conclude your essay. First, he says you might tell your readers what to do with the information you've just given them. For instance, I could conclude this post by telling you to use one of his five conclusion strategies when you rewrite one of your essays for me. Now you know what to do with the information I'm giving you. That's concrete action, and now that you've read both Bernoff and me, you know how and why to conclude that way.

Second, Bernoff says you can conclude by telling your reader what will happen next, or in one year, or in five years based on what you've written. Where does your information take the reader or the nation or the world? For instance, I could conclude this post by telling you that using these conclusion strategies will convince your readers — including your teachers — that you are a bright person who knows how to write and who deserves a good grade. This kind of conclusion helps you understand the consequences of my post for your own writing.

Third, Bernoff says to conclude with the broader significance of what you've written. I could conclude this post by saying that if all my students would write better conclusions, then the quality of academic discourse at Middle Georgia State would go way up, we would all sound smarter, and students would make better grades. This conclusion helps you see the larger implications of my post.

Fourth, Bernoff says to conclude by noting analogous, or similar, things happening elsewhere. For instance, I could conclude this post by noting that being able to write conclusions that ease the reader elegantly back into the real world with some useful knowledge is similar to a satisfying conclusion to an engaging movie. A good ending to a movie tells the viewers that the movie is over and resolves the main issues of the movie or prompts the viewers to come back for the sequel. Your conclusions can do something like that — and I may write more about this later (sequel).

Finally, Bernoff says you can conclude with a brief discussion about when your information is true or applies. This helps your reader understand the context in which your discussion makes the most sense. For instance, I could conclude this post by saying that being able to end a written document elegantly helps your academic readers, including your teachers, to understand the significance of your essay, and it convinces them that you are worth reading. That's an especially important result to get from your teacher who must assign you a grade and later from your boss who has to decide whether to keep employing you or not.

Any one of these five types of conclusion works so much better for this post than merely repeating my thesis, saying something like: So I've told you five different ways to conclude an academic essay. That is so boring, and it insults your intelligence by assuming that you can't remember what you just read. I suppose this tactic was fine for your Tenth Grade English class, but it really doesn't work in college.

So which of these five conclusions works best for this blog post and why? (Oh, yeah, you can also conclude a post with a question that invites more discussion, as I just did.) Now that you have six ways to end an academic essay or blog post, tell me which approach makes the most sense for this particular post. And notice how, by adding a sixth strategy, I just messed up any chance of simply repeating my original thesis which mentions only five strategies, but I am free to do this because I'm not concluding by simply retelling you what I just told you. You, too, should stop concluding your writing by simply restating the thesis. Leave me a comment about which of these strategies best fits your second essay for this class and why.

Fall 2022 Post 04: My Grading Process

Many students find my grading process confusing, so I'll explain both how and why I grade academic essays as I do (this is my thesis, which identifies in one sentence my reader, my topic, and my purpose for writing. That's highly efficient and works really well for blog posts, which are usually short.). Moreover, if I explain myself, then more of you will make better grades (this sentence identifies the response I want from my reader). That makes me look good. Win-win.

And by the way, despite the cute image at the top of this post, I don't grade papers with a red pen. I don't grade papers, at all. I grade electronic documents. I gave up printed papers a decade ago.

First, I'll explain how I grade.

• I scan your academic essay online for the basics: correct handling of the assignment, proper MLA formatting, standard academic English, and a clear thesis that addresses the assignment.
• If I find issues with the basics, then I stop grading your document until you fix the basics. I make one comment about each issue that I see, and I return the document to you with a grade of 2 out of 100 on a grading rubric. 
• Note that I make only one comment per issue. I do NOT identify every instance of a comma problem, for instance, or a faulty subject/verb agreement. Rather, I point out that your essay has at least one instance of each kind of issue. It's up to you to find and fix the rest of the errors. I you can't do that by yourself, then you must seek help. However, I do not edit your document. I cannot both edit and grade your document, as I would be grading my own work.
• Often, I will suggest a rewrite to the text if I'm fairly clear about what your essay is trying to communicate. To accept the suggested rewrite (you usually should unless I've misunderstood what you were trying to say), then click the blue checkmark in the comment box in the right-hand margin.
• I will almost always leave an explanation of each issue in a comment box. You should read and understand the explanation before you resolve it. If you don't understand my comment, then ask me. Don't ignore it. Comments take time, and I don't make them frivolously.
• When I have finished making comments, I will share a grading rubric with you with a brief explanation in different categories about your document and with a grade. You can view this rubric, but you cannot edit it.
• At this point of dealing with basic issues, I will usually tell you to visit the Writing Center (WC) or the Student Support Center (SSC) online for help. You'll find the Writing Center here. You can schedule an appointment in the SSC here. This is NOT optional. If I advise you to visit the WC or SSC, then I will not regrade your document until I receive a notice that you have visited. I'm stubborn about this, and I reason this way: you've just demonstrated to me that you can't manage the basics of the essay by yourself; therefore, you need help with editing your essay. I cannot edit your essay and grade it, too. However, I will always answer your questions about specific issues in your essays. So ask.
• If I find few or no issues with MLA or academic language, or if you have visited the WC or SSC and resolved your basic issues, then I continue grading your document. I review your document according to several categories listed in my grading rubric:
  
  
  
• The Assignment: I check to see if your document meets the requirements of the assignment, including length, format, assigned topic, reader, and so forth. This is an initial show stopper. If your document does not address the assignment, then I stop grading until you fix it, usually with outside help such as the Writing Center or Student Support Center.
• The Reader: I check to see if your document clearly identifies or implies a reader, identifies the response expected of the reader, and provides resources and arguments that encourage the reader to respond appropriately.
• The Writer: I check if your document clearly identifies or implies your purpose for writing and uses an authoritative voice appropriate to the reader, your purpose, and the context.
• The Thesis: I check if your document has a clear thesis, usually in the first paragraph or two, that is appropriate to the assignment. This is also a show-stopper. If I don't find an appropriate thesis, I stop grading until you fix it, usually with outside help.
• The Information: I check if your document provides sufficient, relevant, authoritative information to support your thesis. I also note if you support your claims with solid sources.
• The Arrangement: I check if your information is arranged clearly so that a reasonable, intelligent, and diligent reader can follow your argument and arrive at your conclusion, even if they are not convinced by it.
• The Academic Language: I check if your document uses standard, academic English. This is a show stopper. If I find enough language issues that I have trouble understanding what you are trying to communicate, then I quit grading until you fix the issues, usually with outside help such as the Writing Center.
• MLA Formatting: I check if your document uses MLA formatting and style. This is a show stopper. If I find enough MLA issues, then I quit grading until you fix the issues, usually with outside help such as the Writing Center.
• Each time I grade your document, I share a grading rubric that lists the points earned in each category with each iteration. Sometimes I will add quick suggestions for improving or compliments for doing particularly well.
• You may continue to rewrite your document until the last day of classes or until you are either tired of rewriting it or happy with your grade. I will regrade your document each time you send me a Gmail asking me to regrade it. Do not assume that I will regrade your document just because you've made some changes. You must notify me through Gmail.
• Your grade will only go up, never down, and you get the new grade, not some average of all past scores. It is definitely to your advantage to rewrite as often as you can, as soon as you can.

So why do I grade like this? Because you learn more and better if I do. Nothing clarifies your learning objectives like a failing grade.

First, grading is a process — just like writing. I don't believe in one and done, which is what many of you are most likely used to. The way I grade can be a long process, and most teachers don't want to go through it, but I believe it's the best way to learn how to write. Grading is a dance, sometimes a long dance, as you and I seek a happy meeting ground. I'm looking for a near perfect paper, and you are looking for a near perfect grade. This will likely mean that we will have several grading sessions for each document. This means that most of you are nowhere near done with Doc1.

Second, I have high expectations. I have to read your essays, so I want good essays. I'm old and I don't have enough time left to waste on poor writing. You must rise to my standards; I won't fall to yours.

Third, I don't want to overwhelm you with feedback. Too much feedback at one time can be demoralizing. So I deal first with the simple aspects of writing: the parameters of the assignment, MLA and standard academic English, and a clear thesis. The rules are fairly clear and consistent, so you either do them correctly or you don't. If you do them, we move forward. If you don't, we stop and fix them, right now.

I don't start with MLA and standard English because they are the most important parts of writing. They are not. Rather, they are the necessary grounds of good academic writing. Most of you like texting because it's so free and loose — or so you believe — but texting has its rules, too, and if you violate them, then you don't communicate well. Let's say that, because I'm free to text however I like, I send you the following text message:

browac4amd. wfm.

Of course, this text message likely makes no sense to you until I interpret: "Be right over with a check for a million dollars. Wait for me." My incomprehensible text message illustrates that even texting requires rules and organization if we are to communicate through it. Academic writing requires certain kinds of rules and organization appropriate to the academic context, just as texting does. Following those rules and structures gains you entrance to the conversation. Think of appropriate format and language as appropriate dress for a job interview. Probably, you don't normally wear a tie, but you might wear one to your job interview, not because the tie makes you smarter or a more capable employee, but because it gets you in the door. Appropriate language and MLA formatting are like dressing appropriately for the occasion. If you want to be a nurse, eventually you will have to learn to dress like a nurse and quit dressing like your high school buddies. Similarly, you'll have to learn to communicate like a nurse and quit communicating like your high school text buddies. The first hospital administrator that you text WTF? to will have you in front of the human resources disciplinary board before you leave work that day. If you want to converse with professional people, then you must learn to converse in professional language — not your high school textese. There is nothing wrong with text language, unless you are using it for an academic audience.

Finally, I use grades — mostly bad ones — to spur you to rewrite your document. For instance, if I just take a few points off for your MLA, or even drop you a letter grade, then many of you will just accept the lower grade, figuring a slightly higher grade is not worth the effort. So I give you a grade you can't accept, a 2. You really do have to fix it or fail the class. I demand that you show up and do the work. I won't accept less.

I could go on, but I suspect many of you have already stopped reading. If you have questions, ask below. If you have no questions, just tell me that you understand. If you have complaints, definitely leave those below. If I don't have a good answer, then I'll probably change my grading process.

Summer 2022 Post 7: Writing Takes Time

One of the most difficult tasks I have in my composition classes is helping my students accept that writing is a process that unfolds over an extended amount of time. Students don't like that "extended amount of time" part. I understand that. They all want to be one-draft wonders. Students are busy, they have much to do in a short amount of time, and they just want to get the document finished, off their computer screen, and onto the teacher's computer screen.

I wish it worked that way, but it usually doesn't.

I try to explain this "extended amount of time" by dividing writing into two parts: first, writing for yourself (learning) and then writing for others (communicating). Our Doc1 can help me illustrate these two phases and explain why writing takes so much time.

The Doc1 assignment asks you to write about an academic issue that you have experienced in college. Some of you chose procrastination as your issue, so I'll use that topic in this post. Unless you are already an expert in why college students procrastinate, then you had to do some research to learn something about procrastination among college students. This means that you used writing to search for data, take notes, and assemble that information into a document that started to make sense. If you didn't do all that writing, then you likely had nothing of value to bring to your readers, other college students who also struggle with procrastination. Writing is first and foremost one of the best tools we have for learning academic material. If you can write it, then you probably know it.

Unfortunately, learning takes time, and we all learn unequally. That's a drag. Some students read quickly and absorb information quickly. Good for them. It's a gift from God, like being able to play the piano without training. We all know someone who can do it, and most of us know that we can't. Most of us learn slowly. I do. But the point is that you have to learn something that is of value for your reader, and that learning takes time — usually more time than you have. Too bad. You have to do it anyway, or your writing will never be very good, and you will be of no use to your reader. That may not matter much to you in college, but it will kill you when you are employed. If you bring no value to your customers and colleagues, then they will move on from you — usually sooner rather than later.

Bringing value as a writer means that you are bringing some knowledge, some information, that is current, relevant, authoritative, and purposeful (remember the CRAP test?). And remember: if your reader already knows it, then it ain't information. It's just chatter. Chatter is okay in social texting, but not for customers and colleagues. For them, you must always bring value. You should always write from a position of relative knowledge: you should know more about the topic than your reader does. If you don't know more than the reader, then be quiet, and let your reader talk. We all know how obnoxious it is to listen to someone go on and on about a topic that they know less about than we do. Don't be the writer who does that.

However, this writing from a position of relative knowledge is actually a big problem in the college classroom because usually you are writing to the teacher about something they know more about than you do — say, World War II or programming in C++. They've been studying World War II or C++ for years, and you for just a couple of weeks. It's awkward to write to readers who know more about a topic than you do, but most teachers ask you to do this because they want to check if you've learned anything about world history or computer programming, for instance. Teachers want you to demonstrate that you have learned something, and that learning also takes time. Get over it. It's why you're in college: to learn new stuff. If you already knew this stuff, then you wouldn't need to be here.

Depending on the assignment and your preparation, learning what you want to say can take the most time. Most of you managed this part of the Doc1 assignment fairly well: you learned something, and you laid out what you learned in your document. But too many of you overlooked the second phase of writing: communicating for a given reader. Knowing your stuff is great, but it's useless to the rest of us if you can't communicate it. We've all had teachers who really knew their stuff but couldn't communicate it in a way that students could understand. You didn't like that, did you? Then don't do that to your readers. 

I assign a reader for you (in the case of Doc1, college students who share your academic issue) in part so that you won't write to me. I'm a grader, not a reader, and those are very different roles. Don't confuse them — ever.

Most of you managed to identify your topic adequately in your introduction, but too many of you did not identify your reader or what value you were bringing to that reader. This is unfortunate, because all good writers can shift from thinking about what they know to thinking about what their readers need to know. Those are not the same things, though they can involve the same information. For instance, for Doc1, you should say something like:

College students often struggle with procrastination, but fortunately, experts have identified two (or 3 or 5) strategies for coping with this damaging habit.

You have to frame your essay right up front for your readers; otherwise, they won't know what you're writing about. You frame your essay by identifying the writer, the reader, the subject, and the text. This is exactly what emails do in their standard header: 

• From: You, a Fellow College Student
• To: College Students Who Struggle with Procrastination, and
• Subject: How to Manage Procrastination in College.

Of course, you don't want to be quite as plain as email in your academic essays. You should strive for a more elegant and engaging introduction, but you should still provide the same basic information: who is talking to whom about what and why. You must frame the conversation for your reader so that they can understand who you are and why you are talking to them. And that takes time.

As most of you have learned by now, one of the things I need as your grader is impeccable MLA formatting. I gave you a well formatted template, and too many of you didn't follow it; thus, you didn't get the response from me that you wanted. Yes, I know that extreme attention to MLA formatting rules takes time. It's tedious. Do it anyway. Your Little Seagull Handbook has a whole section devoted to MLA, and you'll find wonderful guides on Purdue OWL, the best online site for managing your academic documents. Mastering MLA (or APA) takes time, but you have to do it. By the way, a small handful of you get the MLA mostly right on your first draft. That means you've already spent the time in some other class to learn it, while the rest of you have to spend the time in this class.

Writing a good blog post takes time. I've written hundreds of blog posts, and I've gotten quicker at it, but it still takes me time. I accept that. If you accept that good writing takes time, then you will become a better writer.