It’s important to note that the way the student body perceives English 101 is largely what determines, I feel, the role of the 101 community within Western. As is probably the case for most institutions, the designation of English 101 as a mandatory preliminary class more often than not sets the notion that this is really just something you have to get through in order to move onto to the meat of your primary studies. Even for students I have with an interest in English, with full intentions of studying writing, see English 101 as merely a brief recap of what they’ve already studied for years in high school. What I appreciate most about the current curriculum we have is that it throws off this mindset, and offers instead a route to explore several methodologies of writing that haven’t really been touched on prior to students’ coming to Western. It’s easy enough to explain to them why learning about writing, and what it means to write as an individual in the world, is so important. What’s difficult is allowing the circumstances in which this mentality can become accepted, integrated, and utilized later on in life.

There was a distinct optimism from my students about project 3 recently, since it would be formatted as an email, a mode of communication they already use and have some idea about having to use in a professional setting after graduation. I wonder whether students, as a whole, would find an English 101 course centered around the technicalities of day-to-day communications more immediately relevant to them. Or if that hypothetical course, too, would be another mandatory preliminary.

In my own experience of understanding English 101 as an undergrad, I remember an emphasis from post-freshman professors on the importance of having gone through 101 as a sort of insurance to prove that you do in fact belong in more advanced courses. I never agreed with this, found it to be a mostly problematic way of thinking; and at the same time, isn’t the institution as we know it set to work in this exact way? Placement and advancement, all leading to the same endpoint. It’s difficult, then, to reconcile the more ambitious and equal-opportunity leanings I have with a system that fundamentally sees English 101 as a kind of shallow end of the pool that you need to successfully float in before swimming over to the deep end. I see the curriculum we have in our English 101 classes as actively working against this, and I’m grateful for that. Circling back to the importance of the student body and how it perceives English 101, I think that only with time can a new way of seeing 101 come through, and ultimately be passed down by students who have gone through it and who later tell incoming freshmen it’s more than just a recap of what you already know.