Re: if you only had 75 minutes

[Latisha LaRue <kfischer@keller.clarke.edu>]

Oh Nick,

I surely do hear you.  I still remember the student who wrote "an essay"
about losing her brother to the state pen.  The essay was a perfectly
formed Baconian draft, complete with three-part thesis in the opening
paragraph.  Not once did she use first person (not that she'd necessarily
have to), nor did she speak of "loss and leaving" (the topic assigned) in
any way other than distant.  Statements like "it would seem that the depth
of loss depends primarily upon who makes the decision as to who is leaving
or not."  When I met with her in the Writing Lab, her main requests for
help were to ask whether to use "who" or "whom" in the above sentence.  I
know well that many writers are not ready to really write about some
things, but when I asked her if she was ready to write about this
particular topic, she was most enthusiastic, but told me, "I thought I had
to have a thesis."  And this in a class where alternative academic writing
was being wholeheartedly supported.
	The next draft she brought in was incredible.  It did, indeed,
strike me as having been written by an entirely different writer, although
I never suspected the student of any plagiarism.  She was using the voice
that fit the topic this time, an authentic voice, and it made all the
difference.
	When we presented on alternative writing to the traditional essay
in P.C. last month, several particpants suggested it was a great notion
but that it'd never fly at their universities.  I don't know.  Some of the
most restrictive, directive faculty I've known, when faced with
well-written alternative academic writings, seem to be so pleased that
they make "allowances."

Katie

On Sun, 2 Nov 1997, Nick Carbone wrote:

> 
> I like Katie's reply to Will's post, and would say the same, 'cept she's
> said it so well.  Though I'd add that Will's point is one I've read twice
> recently in other contexts.  Janet Carey Eldred's "The Technology of
> Voice" mentions how "Until very recently, I resisted personal writing,
> always found it easier to write in academic style, always found it
> somewhat easy to teach students--from first-year writers to nontraditional
> graduate students--to write well for the academy" (__CCC_,48.3, p. 335).
> 
> And in the October 10 _Chronicle of Higher Ed._, Scott Russell Sanders
> wrote "From Anonymous, Evasive Prose to Writing With Passion," a piece
> about how he too had to learn to let himself, then his students, write
> with, well, passion, from a point of view they cared about and in a voice
> that could carry that point of view.
> 
> Ever get the chance to look at a student's journal entry on a topic and
> then her paper?  Sometimes it's like two different people.  Students see
> it too. You'll tell them that what's in the journal sounds so much better
> and ask why they didn't say it that way in the paper.  The most common
> anser I get is a variant of 'I didn't think I was allowed to or that I
> should.'  Pretty much the same reasons Sanders and Eldred gave for taking
> so long to write personal essays.  
> 
> 
> Nick Carbone, Writing Instructor
> Marlboro College
> Marlboro, VT 05344
> nickc@marlboro.edu, but coming to you via nickc@english.umass.edu
> 
> 
>