Thanks again for a great semester. (I feel like I'm just now catching my breath.)
I've been wanting to teach a course like that for years, and you guys helped make it a reality. I hope it's a benefit to you in the long run, and it was a pleasure to get to know all of you.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Deadline Extension!
Some of you already made extension arrangements; those still stand.
Breathe Easy: Someone asked me if we have a final exam next week. Um, no. Thankfully.
Link: One guy playing various parts from Season Five of The Wire. Seems weird at first, but it works. Acting! Links here and here.
Announcement: Grades have been finalized and sent for the 9:00 section. Thanks for your patience. Should be about another 24 hours for the 10:30 grades.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Late Night Thoughts
On moving from first to final draft of a research paper...
1) If any sensible person would agree with the point you're making, what is the purpose of you arguing it?
2) Are you using the source because it presents an argument you want to consider in detail, intellectually engage with, agree, disagree, twist, reframe, etc? (A friend, enemy, frenemy, etc.) Or are you using the source as a plug-in for a certain fact or view you're already convinced to argue? Not to be a prude, but nothing but one-night-stands does not make a great dating life.
3) Notice how those previous two points go together. If you take one of those "off the rack" book report topics like, to cite a general template, "Social Problem X Exists and Is Bad", then you are disagreeing with basically nobody. So then when you go to the party, you're not really looking to meet anyone you'll want to see after tomorrow morning. You just look for those plug-in sources.
And yet somehow I still manage to keep this job. So far.
Another, less innuendo-laden metaphor would be Carver not actually knowing any of the kids in the neighborhood he is policing with his "rip and run" style. As discussed in this article.
On a related note, please include either page numbers for MLA style or year dates for APA style within your parenthetical citations!
1) If any sensible person would agree with the point you're making, what is the purpose of you arguing it?
2) Are you using the source because it presents an argument you want to consider in detail, intellectually engage with, agree, disagree, twist, reframe, etc? (A friend, enemy, frenemy, etc.) Or are you using the source as a plug-in for a certain fact or view you're already convinced to argue? Not to be a prude, but nothing but one-night-stands does not make a great dating life.
3) Notice how those previous two points go together. If you take one of those "off the rack" book report topics like, to cite a general template, "Social Problem X Exists and Is Bad", then you are disagreeing with basically nobody. So then when you go to the party, you're not really looking to meet anyone you'll want to see after tomorrow morning. You just look for those plug-in sources.
And yet somehow I still manage to keep this job. So far.
Another, less innuendo-laden metaphor would be Carver not actually knowing any of the kids in the neighborhood he is policing with his "rip and run" style. As discussed in this article.
On a related note, please include either page numbers for MLA style or year dates for APA style within your parenthetical citations!
Updated Grade Spreadsheet: Here. But only updated to 7:00pm on Thursday night.
Research Lab #8 post-game and reminders for next week
Thanks for sharing your thoughts today, thanks for a great semester, and best luck in your future pursuits! I will be in the same office until at least December, and my email will last as long as Google does, so keep in touch.
Reminder: I will be responding to the essay drafts in "first in first out" order. Make sure you include your three questions, as this will guide my response. The turnaround time should be about 24 hours. Please email me again if you think I missed you somehow. Remember that these comments are not meant to be comprehensive! You guys are doing well but a lot of you have kind of a glued-together annotated bibliography so far, so there is a lot more to do past the first draft.
Reminder: Final drafts due by Google Docs or email by Sunday night, unless you schedule with me otherwise ASAP.
Clarification(s): A document containing the updated grade spreadsheet will be here later tonight. For those experiencing peer review holdups (giver or receiver), just email me tonight and I'll do my best to fix it.
Clarification: Sorry this got rushed in class, so I'm writing a note here to put my thoughts in order. About conventions for titles for academic papers, there is usually a one-part format or a two-part format. In the two-part format you have more flexibility with the first part to be a bit more creative/informal/general, and then the second part is the more hardcore research part. Usually you want that part of the title to be somehow expressive of the precise topic, or better yet the method or thesis.
Now as to conclusions. I said that the first part of a conclusion is usually reiterative of the thesis, and the second part usually answers the questions "what's next." In they say I say terms, this means explaining how future researchers may extend/rework/rethink/reapply/critique your ideas toward investigating the same topic or a related topic. Or how the research could somehow be applied in the real world. So you're basically setting up your next "they" to follow after you. To put things in more wacky terms, think of the essay as a sort of journey that you've guided a reader through from start to finish. You've circled back around to where you started, but like Odysseus, McNulty, or Bella (?) you're not the same as when you started and you now have a capacity to think about things in a new way, ask further questions, propose a new speculative argument, research direction, or application, etc. I often picture it like this; NASA uses the orbital gravity of the sun or Jupiter to slingshot satellites into deep space using less fuel. So circle around and then launch further outward; conclusions allow you to be more speculative after being disciplined throughout the paper.
Just In Case: Of the several things I forgot to say today, this might be the most important. Because I enjoyed working with you guys, and because I realize that many of your classes are quite big and you don't often have true personal interactions with the professors, feel free to ask me for any recommendation letters you may need in the future. You're always better off to ask a more established professor or boss within the actual field/discipline/workplace etc. that you're applying for, but oftentimes I wind up being the wild card type recommender, and I'm happy to do so.
Link: I think Bill Simmons peaked as a writer in 2004 and I find him increasingly tedious, and would also like to go all Sophie Jones on his a**, but given that many of you are sports fans and Wire fans, you might enjoy this.
More Things I Forgot Will Inevitable Go Here Later...
Method Man lies. He actually auditioned for Writing 302H professor first, and I was going to play Cheese, but David Simon changed his mind at the last minute.
Reminder: I will be responding to the essay drafts in "first in first out" order. Make sure you include your three questions, as this will guide my response. The turnaround time should be about 24 hours. Please email me again if you think I missed you somehow. Remember that these comments are not meant to be comprehensive! You guys are doing well but a lot of you have kind of a glued-together annotated bibliography so far, so there is a lot more to do past the first draft.
Reminder: Final drafts due by Google Docs or email by Sunday night, unless you schedule with me otherwise ASAP.
Clarification(s): A document containing the updated grade spreadsheet will be here later tonight. For those experiencing peer review holdups (giver or receiver), just email me tonight and I'll do my best to fix it.
Clarification: Sorry this got rushed in class, so I'm writing a note here to put my thoughts in order. About conventions for titles for academic papers, there is usually a one-part format or a two-part format. In the two-part format you have more flexibility with the first part to be a bit more creative/informal/general, and then the second part is the more hardcore research part. Usually you want that part of the title to be somehow expressive of the precise topic, or better yet the method or thesis.
Bad: "Needle In a Haystack"
Bad: "So That's Where Bin Laden Was. Huh."
Better: "New Investigative Tactics in Terrorist Counterinsurgency"
Best: "Satellite Forensics as a New Investigative Tool for Terrorist Counterinsurgency"
Best: "A Quantitative Analysis of the Counterinsurgency Applications of Satellite Forensics"
Best: "A Dance Suite Exploring the Counterinsurgency Applications of Satellite Forensics"
Best: "Satellite Forensics as a Complement to Interrogation in Terrorist Counterinsurgency Operations"
Other Best: "Needle In a Haystack - Satellite Forensics as a New Investigative Tool for Terrorist Counterinsurgency"
Other Best: "Needle In a Haystack - A Quantitative Analysis of the Counterinsurgency Applications of Satellite Forensics"
Other Best: "Needle In a Haystack - A Dance Suite Exploring the Counterinsurgency Applications of Satellite Forensics"
Other Best: "Needle In a Haystack - Satellite Forensics as a Complement to Interrogation in Terrorist Counterinsurgency Operations"
Now as to conclusions. I said that the first part of a conclusion is usually reiterative of the thesis, and the second part usually answers the questions "what's next." In they say I say terms, this means explaining how future researchers may extend/rework/rethink/reapply/critique your ideas toward investigating the same topic or a related topic. Or how the research could somehow be applied in the real world. So you're basically setting up your next "they" to follow after you. To put things in more wacky terms, think of the essay as a sort of journey that you've guided a reader through from start to finish. You've circled back around to where you started, but like Odysseus, McNulty, or Bella (?) you're not the same as when you started and you now have a capacity to think about things in a new way, ask further questions, propose a new speculative argument, research direction, or application, etc. I often picture it like this; NASA uses the orbital gravity of the sun or Jupiter to slingshot satellites into deep space using less fuel. So circle around and then launch further outward; conclusions allow you to be more speculative after being disciplined throughout the paper.
Just In Case: Of the several things I forgot to say today, this might be the most important. Because I enjoyed working with you guys, and because I realize that many of your classes are quite big and you don't often have true personal interactions with the professors, feel free to ask me for any recommendation letters you may need in the future. You're always better off to ask a more established professor or boss within the actual field/discipline/workplace etc. that you're applying for, but oftentimes I wind up being the wild card type recommender, and I'm happy to do so.
Link: I think Bill Simmons peaked as a writer in 2004 and I find him increasingly tedious, and would also like to go all Sophie Jones on his a**, but given that many of you are sports fans and Wire fans, you might enjoy this.
More Things I Forgot Will Inevitable Go Here Later...
Method Man lies. He actually auditioned for Writing 302H professor first, and I was going to play Cheese, but David Simon changed his mind at the last minute.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Research Lab #7 post-game and reminders for Wednesday
Peer Review Exercise: For full credit on the remaining portion of the class participation grade, you need to do this twice, meaning for two different classmates. See the white space below. Depending on our timing on Monday, that might mean finishing at home. To make sure your work gets properly counted, please co-share me on your Google Doc, or c.c. me on your email correspondence. If you are short a partner and did not have an opportunity to give/receive two reviews, please email me ASAP and I can get you a partner in the same situation from the other class section. Same thing if you missed class due to illness, celebration, or a secret mission to Pakistan.
Bookkeeping: As soon as all this draft and peer review stuff gets sorted out, like Wednesday afternoon, I will be reposting the grade spreadsheet so everyone knows where they stand going into the final research paper deadline.
More Bookkeeping: The English department is asking 302 students to take this survey.
Reminder: Once you are able to absorb the advice from your classmates and get a chance to incorporate some of it, you then have the opportunity to ask me up to three questions about your draft. I will answer these in the order received, so regardless of whether you sent me a draft document Sunday night / Monday morning, please share or send a new document by Wednesday night at 9pm with your three questions at the top (even if it's just the same one over again). Please make the questions as specific as possible. I am not likely to give substantive answers to questions like, "What do you think about this essay?" or "How is my organization," etc. It helps to give me forced distributions, like, "Which needs more of my attention, X or Y?" Or, "I am looking for a solution to this particular dilemma, do you think A, B, or C would be best?" It also helps you to be more specific like that because it allows you to reflect more.
An Important Clarification: Your research essay needs to have a bibliography, or works cited, or endnotes, or footnotes, or in more basic terms a list of the books/articles/sources that it refers to. My statement that you do not need to include an annotated bibliography has led to some confusion. I meant that for your final draft, you don't need to include the annotations, meaning the paragraph of notes after each bibliographic entry. You do need to include the bibliographic citations themselves. Moreover, it is standard practice (and required practice within both MLA and APA styles) to include parenthetical citations within the body of your text that guide your reader to figure out what part of your list of sources you're actually referring to at any given time. In other words, if Jones did a study of laser guns, and you talk about it on page two of your essay, it's not enough to just put this study in your list of sources at the end. You also want to refer to it on page two so that your reader knows that's where that specific information came from.
Demonstration Thereof:
Sorry, the laser gun thing is an inside joke from last semester. We were brainstorming topics and one kid said (possibly serious about it) that he wanted to write about laser guns, so I used that for the model.
This is my paper about laser guns. Laser guns are awesome and totally not made up and everyone should have one and shoot it, like, all the time. Because of the previous mentioned awesomeness. Of course some skeptics say that this would be dangerous, but I think if they had laser guns they would stop drinking that haterade.
The laser gun was invented by Martha Laser, as detailed in her autobiography (Laser 245-47). But it was not commercialized until several years later (Jones 111) and, as Chen notes, "it would take another decade before every man, woman, and child had one" (Chen 57). The awesomeness of the laser gun was immediately evident to everyone who bought one, because you could use it to shoot all kinds of different stuff and, like, totally vaporize it all to s***. There have even been some cases in which laser guns were used to vaporize other laser guns (Von Schmelberg and Neumann 437). Don't bend your mind into a pretzel trying to figure out how awesome that is, just accept it, OK?
On the other hand, the laser gun has always had its critics. Ironically, it was Laser herself who became the most outspoken of these. "I never thought when I invented the laser gun," she writes, "that people would use them to settle petty disputes like the tip on a restaurant bill, or being cut off in traffic, or a grievance against grades given in college writing courses" (Laser 398). Some of the most noteworthy critical voices of the 30s were mysteriously vaporized (Chen 63). Which could happen to anyone, really, when you think about it.
In conclusion, this has been the greatest essay ever. Ahem.
Bibliography:
Chen, Norbert. A Brief History of Laser Guns and Their Use in the Corn Wars. Polyface Press:
Swoope, 2072.
Jones, Janelle-Monae. "It Took Several Years to Commercialize The Laser Gun." Laser Gun Theory 25.3
(2071): 111-24.
Laser, Martha. My Bad, Y'all. New York: Random House, 2046.
Nehemiah Von Schmelberg and Vustagus Neumann. "Don't Think We Didn't Try It. It's Not Easy to Decide
Who Is the Lead Author for These Studies." Advanced Studies in Trucknuts and Related Post-Industrial Semiotics
8.1 (2071): 6-23.
Bookkeeping: As soon as all this draft and peer review stuff gets sorted out, like Wednesday afternoon, I will be reposting the grade spreadsheet so everyone knows where they stand going into the final research paper deadline.
More Bookkeeping: The English department is asking 302 students to take this survey.
Ideas
1. Mark the thesis statement, or whatever seems most like a thesis statement, in green highlight. Then write a logical reversal. (E.g. I say we should leave no child behind.. ---> I say we should leave all the children behind.)
2. Imagine for the moment that you are David Simon, and also that you just got a parking ticket. This has put you in a bad mood and reminded you how tired you are of people misinterpreting and misapplying your ideas, or just using you as their general purpose guru or strawman for arguments that don't even really relate to The Wire. Explain why you simply aren't interested to read the essay.
3. Mark the method statement, or whatever seems most like a method statement, in italicized green typeface. Now, remember when we used the "I don't mean X, but rather Y" template? You want to complete a template like that for the writer here, in the rough form of, "Although method X would be a good way to explore/prove this thesis, method Y is better/more practical." If I'm not being clear, method Y is the one they are actually already using and method X is one they have (implicitly) opted against.
4. Play devil's advocate and disagree with at least one of the sub-arguments introduced after the introduction. Explain why.
Argument
5. Mark the best paragraph transition in light blue. Write these words next to it: "You earnt dat bump like a mahfucka."
6. Mark the paragraph transition that needs the most work, probably the one that is currently the weakest but perhaps just the one that is the most important, in dark blue. Rewrite the sentence, or try to indicate what the appropriate logic might be.
7. What is one area of minor focus in the essay that could expand into an area of major focus?
8. What is one area of major focus in the essay that could contract into an area of minor focus?
Language
9. Mark the best written sentence in the essay in yellow. Write these words next to it: "Natural po-lice!"
10. Mark at least one sentence in orange (or gold) that isn't clear to you or doesn't express its meaning as well as it could.
11. Mark at least one sentence in red that seems to carry a tone inappropriate to the audience, perhaps overly formal or overly casual.
12. Mark at least one sentence in gray that does not grammatically incorporate a quotation as well as it could. If you can't find one suitable for this, find a sentence that doesn't grammatically incorporate a fact/statistic/idea from a research source as well as it could.
Research
13. Mark each sentence in violet that appears to need a resource citation, but does not currently have one.
14. Mark each sentence in purple that relies too heavily on a weaker source without providing adequate disclaimer/context.
15. Provide at least two database search strings that might help find a couple of "icing on the cake" sources. It would help if you could target this to an area you identified in question #7 or question #13.
16. Not specifically a research question, but I'm sticking it here at the end. Formulate one specific question you would ask Aaron about this essay if you were the writer. See Reminder below for guidelines.
Reminder: Once you are able to absorb the advice from your classmates and get a chance to incorporate some of it, you then have the opportunity to ask me up to three questions about your draft. I will answer these in the order received, so regardless of whether you sent me a draft document Sunday night / Monday morning, please share or send a new document by Wednesday night at 9pm with your three questions at the top (even if it's just the same one over again). Please make the questions as specific as possible. I am not likely to give substantive answers to questions like, "What do you think about this essay?" or "How is my organization," etc. It helps to give me forced distributions, like, "Which needs more of my attention, X or Y?" Or, "I am looking for a solution to this particular dilemma, do you think A, B, or C would be best?" It also helps you to be more specific like that because it allows you to reflect more.
An Important Clarification: Your research essay needs to have a bibliography, or works cited, or endnotes, or footnotes, or in more basic terms a list of the books/articles/sources that it refers to. My statement that you do not need to include an annotated bibliography has led to some confusion. I meant that for your final draft, you don't need to include the annotations, meaning the paragraph of notes after each bibliographic entry. You do need to include the bibliographic citations themselves. Moreover, it is standard practice (and required practice within both MLA and APA styles) to include parenthetical citations within the body of your text that guide your reader to figure out what part of your list of sources you're actually referring to at any given time. In other words, if Jones did a study of laser guns, and you talk about it on page two of your essay, it's not enough to just put this study in your list of sources at the end. You also want to refer to it on page two so that your reader knows that's where that specific information came from.
Demonstration Thereof:
Sorry, the laser gun thing is an inside joke from last semester. We were brainstorming topics and one kid said (possibly serious about it) that he wanted to write about laser guns, so I used that for the model.
This is my paper about laser guns. Laser guns are awesome and totally not made up and everyone should have one and shoot it, like, all the time. Because of the previous mentioned awesomeness. Of course some skeptics say that this would be dangerous, but I think if they had laser guns they would stop drinking that haterade.
The laser gun was invented by Martha Laser, as detailed in her autobiography (Laser 245-47). But it was not commercialized until several years later (Jones 111) and, as Chen notes, "it would take another decade before every man, woman, and child had one" (Chen 57). The awesomeness of the laser gun was immediately evident to everyone who bought one, because you could use it to shoot all kinds of different stuff and, like, totally vaporize it all to s***. There have even been some cases in which laser guns were used to vaporize other laser guns (Von Schmelberg and Neumann 437). Don't bend your mind into a pretzel trying to figure out how awesome that is, just accept it, OK?
On the other hand, the laser gun has always had its critics. Ironically, it was Laser herself who became the most outspoken of these. "I never thought when I invented the laser gun," she writes, "that people would use them to settle petty disputes like the tip on a restaurant bill, or being cut off in traffic, or a grievance against grades given in college writing courses" (Laser 398). Some of the most noteworthy critical voices of the 30s were mysteriously vaporized (Chen 63). Which could happen to anyone, really, when you think about it.
In conclusion, this has been the greatest essay ever. Ahem.
Bibliography:
Chen, Norbert. A Brief History of Laser Guns and Their Use in the Corn Wars. Polyface Press:
Swoope, 2072.
Jones, Janelle-Monae. "It Took Several Years to Commercialize The Laser Gun." Laser Gun Theory 25.3
(2071): 111-24.
Laser, Martha. My Bad, Y'all. New York: Random House, 2046.
Nehemiah Von Schmelberg and Vustagus Neumann. "Don't Think We Didn't Try It. It's Not Easy to Decide
Who Is the Lead Author for These Studies." Advanced Studies in Trucknuts and Related Post-Industrial Semiotics
8.1 (2071): 6-23.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Research Lab #6 post-game and reminders for the weekend
Announcement: I don't have plans to be in my office after 2:00 this afternoon, so if you want to see me later in the afternoon please email to make an appointment and I'll stay for you.
Lab Exercise: Evaluate the two sample essays according to letter grades in the following categories... Ideas, Argument, Language, Research.
Sample 1
Sample 2
Lab Exercise: Concept map or paragraph outline of your research essay.
Reminder: Make sure your first draft is ready for peer review during Monday's class!
Clarification: Your first draft needs a bibliography. Whether it's annotated or not is your choice; eventually you will remove these.
Link: Another former Baltimore city cop makes an unusual argument to draw attention to the dysfunctionality of our current prison system... here is the Amazon link in case that article doesn't load... the book is called In Defense of Flogging
Lab Exercise: Evaluate the two sample essays according to letter grades in the following categories... Ideas, Argument, Language, Research.
Sample 1
Sample 2
Lab Exercise: Concept map or paragraph outline of your research essay.
Reminder: Make sure your first draft is ready for peer review during Monday's class!
Clarification: Your first draft needs a bibliography. Whether it's annotated or not is your choice; eventually you will remove these.
Link: Another former Baltimore city cop makes an unusual argument to draw attention to the dysfunctionality of our current prison system... here is the Amazon link in case that article doesn't load... the book is called In Defense of Flogging
Monday, April 25, 2011
Research Lab #5 post-game and reminders for Wednesday
Exercise #1: Personals ad. In keeping with the dating metaphor I used last week, imagine the perfect research source or "soulmate," the one with all of the wonderful qualities that your present sources lack. The one who completes you and brings fulfillment to your research life. Or at least fills in some of the gaps that the others are currently missing. Try to think about what this ideal source would be like, and write a few sentences of description. This ought to make it easier to do one last round of database searching. Post to the comments below.
Exercise #2: Most of you are having what Marlo called "one of them good problems," namely too many good ideas from your research sources. I recommend that you create a simple list with two columns, one of which is your Major sub-topics, and the other your Minor sub-topics. If you are successfully analyzing major topics in a research paper, the appropriate move to mark off a minor topic is something like: "This also leads us to consider XYZ. Unfortunately a full consideration of XYZ falls outside the scope of this study, but in general we can say ABC. Someone surely ought to study XYZ in more detail. Anyhow, getting back to my main topic..."
Reminders: Make sure you have all of your citations and annotations available for Wednesday's class. We will be creating outlines for the upcoming draft.
Link: Have you heard about the Three Cups of Tea guy? It's kind of like, what if Scott Templeton started a charity?
Exercise #2: Most of you are having what Marlo called "one of them good problems," namely too many good ideas from your research sources. I recommend that you create a simple list with two columns, one of which is your Major sub-topics, and the other your Minor sub-topics. If you are successfully analyzing major topics in a research paper, the appropriate move to mark off a minor topic is something like: "This also leads us to consider XYZ. Unfortunately a full consideration of XYZ falls outside the scope of this study, but in general we can say ABC. Someone surely ought to study XYZ in more detail. Anyhow, getting back to my main topic..."
Reminders: Make sure you have all of your citations and annotations available for Wednesday's class. We will be creating outlines for the upcoming draft.
Link: Have you heard about the Three Cups of Tea guy? It's kind of like, what if Scott Templeton started a charity?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)