It’s funny timing to ask about the ideal outcome of this class right around conferences. In my meetings with students they’ve given me a better picture of how 101 fits into their lives, but this window undermines any perfect world scenarios I could dream up. I don’t think that this class is really blowing open anyone’s intellectual habits, or prompting existential crises, or anything like that.

Each conference I’ve asked my students if this class and its weird assortment of projects has changed or informed their understanding of what “writing” or “good writing” means. It’s been useful to reference whatever version of “I’m an okay writer” they told me in their letter. One student told me that she thinks we’re more interested in what they’re saying as opposed to how they’re saying it. Several students contrasted this class with past experiences where they exclusively wrote persuasive essays about motifs and themes pulled from gigantic novels. Another student referenced the opportunity to do “their own thing”, but when I tried to dig out some sort of value statements I got some pretty ambivalent feelings on that fact. One student said in a freewrite that he didn’t see the point of this class, while a couple others told me they like the opportunity to be social and get to know their peers.

I worry a little that I’m leading them towards a particular answer set with my questioning, so I’d like to drop a few, big, kosher grains of salt onto these evaluations of the class. But, even with my goading language that references our “diverse curriculum” and “changing projects” my students aren’t willing to adopt my projected ideals.

The other reality that conferences has revealed is that they’re more worried about getting kicked off the cross country team, about failing their math midterm, or about quitting their shitty job at GNC than they care about the curriculum of 101. They are groping and grasping with new opportunities for autonomy and independence. A holistic look at their lives and their development would paint 101 as a small fragment in the corner of the image, a waving Where’s Waldo figure that occasionally steals their attention.

I think that I am pretty okay with it if this class is subsumed by their individual concerns, or to use more idealist language, their hunt for/discovery of individuality. I would be pretty pumped if somehow it informed or fostered their personal autonomy, and used their personal experience as a resource for their own growth. I guess I was also pretty pumped when my student told me I was more interested in what they had to say rather than how they were saying it. That felt like an apt assessment, but we’ll see. I would like to keep throwing grains of salt on all of these assessments and evaluations and assumptions, so that by the end of the quarter, I can have a nice savory understanding of the curriculum I’ll use in the winter.