Student A,

You have written an interesting engagement with some of Mike Rose’s ideas here. You have a certain flair hiding out in your writing that I really enjoyed too. In particular, in the first paragraph, you write, “from an early age, putting a pencil to a paper seemed like to be the most impossible thing ever, so I always tried to avoid it.” You have voice in this section, a rhythm and flow all your own. I also really enjoyed the image of you “stalled out behind your laptop.” It made me think of you behind the wheel, car stuck on the side of the road, waiting for a tow-truck. I really liked when these authentic you moments peeked through.

It seems like what you got from Mike Rose was more rules to follow. I’m not sure I read him the same way. I felt like he was trying to get at how rules can sometimes just get in the way. Especially rigid ones like “the beginning is everything.” This need for the first line to be great can stall you out, just like you talked about. But I read him as saying that we might be better off allowing those rules to be more flexible. For instance, in this essay, you might just start out with whatever you can to get going. Oftentimes, I know that the first line that I write will not be the first line of my finished product. So, if I were you, I might go back to this piece and start with “From an early age…” cutting out all that came before. Do you see how that line pulls you right in? The point here is not that the first thing you write must be shining gold. It’s that sometimes we need to clear out the rusty old cliches to get at the good stuff hiding underneath. So you might let yourself start with something boring and then later come back and edit it out. In this way, the rule becomes a guideline, or a goal, rather than an inflexible hurdle that you may or may not ever get over.

I wonder if you might want to go back and read Mike Rose again and see if he is really saying to know more rules and follow more rules. Would it be freeing to let the rules go a little? What would happen if you didn’t care about the right steps? Would you get a worse grade? Would you be a worse writer? Would you write more easily?

And what is a good writer anyways? Is it using big words, like you say? Is it saying what you mean? Is it being entertaining? Informative? Clever? I don’t know that there is a right answer to any of these questions, but I think they’re worth thinking about.

 

Ok. This was kind of a tough one to respond to. I suspect that this student didn’t really read the Mike Rose essay. I didn’t want to say that, but at best, they skimmed. At worst, they read thoroughly and we’ve come to completely different conclusions about what Mike Rose was saying. I didn’t want to tell them they were wrong and I was right, so I gently tried to point them back to the text. Not knowing the student, I’m not sure exactly which direction I’d want to go in from here. Their next essay, I felt was much stronger. I think they have a good grasp of language and writing. I love the word “apprehenzled.” Just that word shows that this student has a sense of style, of sound, of the texture of writing. Also, I didn’t get into the “impugned” situation here either because I see them reaching and I like it, even if it comes up a little short.  If I were going line by line, I’d ask him to look that one up.

I think that loosening some of the rigid rules would really help this student, which is why its odd and a little disappointing that all they seem to have gotten from Rose was more rigid rules.

I would still give them a complete on the assignment, I think. They followed the rules of the  prompt… I don’t agree with the conclusions and do wonder if we did the same reading, but I think it’s a passing project as it’s been assigned. Maybe this is something we could talk more about in class…