Tuesday, April 28, 2009

An Open Letter to my Students

*ahem. tap, tap. * Is this on?


Dear Students,

MAYBE IF YOU WOULD LAY OFF THE GANJA YOU WOULD BE MAKING ARGUMENTS WITH LOGICAL CONNECTIONS, AND NOT JUST THE EQUIVALENT OF "DUDE ... MY HAND! WHOAH! THAT'S SO DEEP!"

Thank you. That is all.


__________________________
MMAP Update April 28: 9 to 10:30 am at work on the penultimate paragraph of the essay. Things are pulling together. Not that this means I only have one more paragraph to rewrite, just that I'm working hard on making the ending feel like an ending. Something my students will never get if they restrict their writing process to tokin it up and pounding out a few pages of drivel that then never gets revised.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL!

medieval woman said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Oh god, this made me laugh....

Ganja....

Anonymous said...

Something my students will never get if they restrict their writing process to tokin it up and pounding out a few pages of drivel that then never gets revised. I gained the most out of revising the writing of others and have good readers revise and explain their revisions to me.

Therefor setting up a peer-review task as a class assignment does not necessarily help them increase their writing skills, as not everyone is a good lector. However, their attitude regarding their assignment might shift because they write for another audience.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I wish my students would smoke a little weed -- then they might discover the wonders of their own imaginations, begin to question some of their righteously held beliefs, and stop saying things like "this could never happen in real life" in response to every story we read (and considering it legitimate literary criticism).

A taste of the ganja might awaken them to some OTHER realities.

Not that I'm advocating drug abuse, ahem, cough cough ...

Phul Devi said...

What's a little bad writing when they're gaining entrance to the Deeper Mysteries?

Sisyphus said...

What's a little bad writing when they're gaining entrance to the Deeper Mysteries?It's a problem 'cause they're then trying to tell me about their vissshions in their papers while still totally high. And you have to be a _damn_ good writer already to communicate those wordless experiences in prose, and I'm pretty sure even the beats and Hunter S. et al. weren't actually stoned _while_ doing their writing.

begin to question some of their righteously held beliefs, and stop saying things like "this could never happen in real life"Nah. The pothead students are just as righteously self-absorbed, just mellow. And all our conversations about anything strange or interesting in literature go like this:

Me: (points to some magical or strange happening or interesting facet of portraying psychology)
Student: Whoah. That guy there must be, like, totally high.
Other Student: Yeah. Cool.
Student 3: Deep.
(silence)
Me: (pounds head on table)

Anonymous said...

Oh my. For us it is entertaining to read about it, but it must be so frustrating to teach them.

Bardiac said...

It's like drinking. If you're the only one who's not, then everyone who's high or drinking is really irritating.

I suggest you go to class stoned too, so that you can properly enjoy the awesomeness of staring at a dog's wagging tail.

Arbitrista said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA