WRITERS, WRITING CLASSES, ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS

Best advice from writing classes?

 

College freshman might change their major. More than once.

But over and over? Relax, it happens. And it’s not pretty.

Finding yourself in college is expensive. Even if Major Changer milks it long enough they finish with a degree others call worthless, as in, “what were you thinking?”

That’s not news to parents with college kids, or baby boomers from their own college days.

One boomer freshman started in PE, then changed to History, English, Sociology, finally Art History.

No matter the major one thing remained constant: Writing Class, WR 121. Freshman writing class.

And what did this student do after freshman year? Continue writing classes, an internship, travel? If you guessed drop out, you’re correct.

If you asked them they’d say they did it because of writing classes. Dropping out removed all of those irrelevant obstacles/other classes that got in the way of writing classes.

Repeat after me: Liberal Arts. Not many art majors switch to chemistry from most accounts.

That major changing boomer freshman dropped out a few more times.

In between they started writing like it was a track meet.

He wrote long, short, flinging words, jumping formats, spinning stories, vaulting structure.

Writers beware, he thought, the secret is out: This is too easy.

Then he grew up, had kids who never changed majors in college, and learned nothing is as easy as it looks.

Best advice from writing classes

 

Listen to the instructor’s critique.

Don’t do this between Teacher and Student:

T: This is a college paper. You’re in college. You write like a third grader.

S: Third grade was big, man. The first time I learned about art. We made bone masks and…

T: This is a joke? Is this supposed to be funny? Who’s laughing?

S: Um, the assignment was write 500 words on a turning point in our lives. How’s the spelling?

T: All good. Spelling, grammar, structure, all good. The problem is content. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Have you thought of that? I mean, an essay on third grade? What is this supposed to be?

S: Call it a thoughtful reflection on an educational icon, a light shined on one of the little people who live large in their student’s memory. Mrs. Krause was like that for everyone. And one heck of a tennis player.

T: Listen, J.D. Salinger. Holden grew up. And he quit writing. Is that what you’re trying to do, quit writing? By the looks you should never start. This is 121, kid, just try and pass, okay, and give me a good review.

S: I’ll try harder next time. Or maybe I could re-write this assignment? I’ll make it more interesting for a burned out grad student whose writing interest was staying in school one step ahead of the draft. Now the draft ended and you’re stuck reading crap from nineteen year olds.

T: I’m not a draft dodger.

S: When you were my age that’s all that mattered. You knew guys going over; knew guys who didn’t come back. The one’s who came back were never the same. You were scared shitless at nineteen.

T: Man, I was frightened to death. We all were. Real death. Like death in a draft notice. Death in the mail.

S: It was a killing time.

T: And no one noticed. People left and that was it. We didn’t see bodies in the streets, just people missing.

S: You want to be nineteen again, and every essay, every piece of class writing you read tells you the same thing. Never. Going. To. Happen. Ever.

T: I loved third grade, too. It was perfect timing with the teacher, friends, and my town.

S: Maybe that’s the way you should look in your writing. Third grade is happening.

T: You’ve inspired me.

S: Don’t steal my stuff, Professor.

T: I’m sorry. What? Our meeting is over. Send in the next student. Oh, and would you ask the person at desk to make a copy of this?

S: That’s my paper.

T: So it is. Such a coincidence.