Final batch of essays

It’s amazing the things you learn about your students through their writing. This also reminds me that I have not done nearly enough writing with them. But now it’s too late. I worried about that when we were designing our new curriculum. Since we were combining literature with composition, which one would lose out? Well, it has definitely been composition this year. Maybe next year I’ll go heavy on the writing instead of the literature. I did expect to take a couple years to get a balance.

However, I had students select from several topics for their final essays.

One prompt focused on writing about a time someone forced (or talked) a student into doing something against their will or something they wouldn’t normally do. They were encouraged to explore the consequences and narrate how things turned out.

The second prompt called for them to describe a time when they either had to break some bad news to someone or describe a time when they had to talk about a difficult subject with someone. They were encouraged to analyze the strategies they used to deal with the bad news or difficult subject and to narrate how things turned out.

The third prompt asked for them to write about the most difficult or unpleasant thing they ever had to do. Then they were asked to explain how it changed them and what they learned from it.

The next prompt was devoted to exploring how a relationship they were involved in came to an end and explaining the reasons for its demise.

The fifth topic asked them to write about a difficult choice they had to make or will have to make. What are/will be the effects?

The final prompt asked them to write about a time they made a seemingly innocent choice only to find out that it had major consequences that they didn’t expect.

I assigned this hoping to get them to generate some narratives and ideas that they could use to relate to the couple in the final Hemingway story we would be reading, “Hills Like White Elephants.”

The essays that came in are great cross section of the vast range of talents students have and circumstances from which they arrive every day.

The first essay was written by one of my former football players – who happens to be a good kid who is bright but needs more guidance and prodding. He wrote about an important decision he is facing. His dream has always been to attend college for sports (which got me fired up right away). Of course, I was trying to let him down gently – not wanting to squash his dreams but also wanting to encourage him to work hard at the academics he will need to get into college.

What is compounding matters for this student is that he just received a letter from some MN all-star type hockey team that wants him to try out for them. This, unfortunately, has given him delusions of grandeur.

Now he believes that he can play division one hockey (never mind we can count on both hands – if we’re lucky – how many athletes have played D1 hockey from our school). Again, I was trying gently to remind him of this – while not wanting to wreck his dream but also wanting him to see the big picture, which means gaining academic skills that will serve him not only in college but also the work force, which hockey most certainly will not.

Now the student is considering trying to play football in the fall while devoting his weekend to traveling with this all star hockey team (if he makes the hockey team). Where does that leave time for his personal life? Or, for that matter, school? But never mind that he wants to play hockey in college – again – as opposed to earning a degree and finding a job that will sustain him in the future.

So I am asked to prepare this kid for a world that he can’t even comprehend yet and all he is focused on is playing D I hockey.

Now that is a daunting task.

The very next essay I read was quite the contrast.

A student wrote about the most unpleasant thing she ever had to: testify in court against her parents. Can you imagine? She described sitting on the stand and listening to the judge and the county attorney and the social workers ask her questions about her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s physical abuse.

That essay put the previous paper in perspective.

The paper I read after that was about a difficult decision a student’s father was forced to deal make. When the student lived in Paris, his father came home with the news that one of the planes that his company owned had crashed and he had to call all the families of the deceased. Wow!

Another student wrote about how her father is an alcoholic and would put his drinking before her lunch money (that is how she put it).

She recounted how last year, her father was home drinking and decided to drive somewhere.

Of course, this scared the hell of out the student. She argued with her father, who rebuffed her and stormed out toward his truck with the keys in one hand and his drink in the other. Then he tore off into the night.

Not knowing what else to do, the student called her father’s girlfriend. (and as I’m reading this I’m thinking that no sophomore should even be in this situation).

Her father’s girlfriend suggested that she follow him.

And so she did, following his tracks in the snow. In the essay there is a powerful scene where she spots his tracks swerving from one lane to the other. But the snow is coming down – and try as she might – she still can’t see the tail lights (and in my mind I’m waiting for her to find him in the ditch, or worse, come across his vehicle crumpled with another vehicle). While she sees the tracks almost veer into the ditch, she finally sees them turn into a driveway.

Relieved that he made it, yet horrified at being in the situation, she runs up to the door and wrenches it open. She screams at him and begins hitting him, only to hear her father yell, “Don’t spill my drink!”

After reading those four essays, I was wiped out.

Had I not dreamed up that assignment, I would have missed out on so much!

That is the power of writing. That is why it should be used in every class.


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Am I blessed or what?

The day after reading the essays I just wrote about, I read my way through some stories my Sci Fi class came up with.

The two samples below are from a creative option I assigned for the story “Valhalla,” which is a time travel story in which a future society, totally dedicated to justice, sends a time traveler hundreds of years into the past to capture Adolph Hitler. The time traveler is really a clone of Hitler himself. He is going to convince Hitler that he has arrived from the future to bring him to Valhalla, a reward for his grand deeds in Nazi Germany. Of course, this plays right into Hitler’s ego and he steps into the portal and is zapped into the future (where he will be brought to justice and tortured, though the story remains vague concerning these details). When Hitler is gone, the protagonist shoots himself in the head (he has to leave his body, again which is a perfect clone of Hitler, in the bunker, for if the Allied troops were not to find Hitler’s body, it might offer the dwindling Nazis hope that their fuehrer survived somehow and that might drastically alter history, and thereby alter the future that is dedicated to supreme justice).

Students were asked to either write their own original resolutions to the story or to write about other historical figures they would travel back in time to either meet or bring to justice.
This example is from a student who chose to envision what Hitler faced when he arrived hundreds of years in the future . . . in the clutches of those who wish to make him pay for his war crimes –

. . . Hitler recognized these as being the millions of Jews he brutally murdered. Even though he committed these crimes with no remorse, he couldn’t help feel the hint of sadness. The screen before him finally went black after Hitler saw every thing.
“I’m sorry. No, please don’t!” he cried as one of the men came toward him.
The man rechecked the straps to make sure they were tight. Then, he leaned forward and put his hand on a switch. As he leaned forward, Hitler caught a strange but familiar golden glimmer hanging down from the man’s neck.
“No, don’t d—“
The man flipped the switch sending deadly volts of electricity throughout Hitler’s body, leaving him with a last image of The Star of David.

This example is from a student who choose to write his own short story, “Dark Renaissance,” in which a time traveler works for a corporation that sends him back in time to stomp out the Renaissance. They don’t want the Italian artisans to help bring about an end to the dark ages. The corporation is comprised of religious fanatics who want to keep people simple and obedient, as they were in the dark ages.

In this passage, the narrator locates a famous Italian artist and eliminates him – and his effect on the future . . .

My hands clutched his hair as I pulled his head back, shooting him under the chin with a silenced pistol. The top of his head resembled a whale’s blowhole, though it spat more than just water. I could feel his weight lean into me. It was a dead weight. A perfect weight. I tipped my torso over, and the lifeless body of the polymath fell onto the stone floor.

Next up for the narrator . . . Da Vinci!

While reading these, I had to remind myself that I actually get paid for this!

****

See, I wrote way too soon.

Now I am reminded why I am paid for this week. My poor College Comp students and their final research papers!

Some are really getting it handed to them on their final papers. For some, this experience was just too much for them. They get an excellent introduction to a research paper in 10th grade. But these students were nowhere near handling the type of analysis expected of them in their final paper (where they had to examine similar themes in two novels).

To be honest, quite a few just didn’t get their novels. That is quite clear.

Others didn’t put in the time necessary to do well. That is also quite clear.

It didn’t help that the spring choir concert hogged a bunch of my students’ time. It really showed on some papers.

Others just couldn’t handle the research process. Others couldn’t handle the MLA formatting. Others had not clue.

It didn’t help matters that I started off with a very good paper. It has been all downhill from there. Plenty of low Cs.

While they may not like their grades (remember most of these kids are honor students), but there’s zero grade inflation in here – only ego deflation (I think I’ll put that on next year’s syllabus), I’m doing them the favor of giving them college level preparation and feedback. They are fortunate they got this now.


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In The Matrix, the oracle tells Neo, “I hate giving good people bad news.”

I know exactly how she feels. I should make a copy of that phrase and put in either on my desk or above my door. For that is precisely how I feel when I see the looks on my College Comp students’ faces when they see their scores on their research papers.

I warned them. I offered to edit and proofread.

But many just weren’t prepared for this level of college writing.

It doesn’t matter that there are few students in here who are really college level writers in the first place. In fact, only a fraction of the class is taking the class for college credit. They end up taking it as a college prep class (well, they certainly should consider themselves prepped!).

And I have to remind myself that this is much harder than if they were to take it out at the local community college. Students write a research paper on one single topic. In my class they read two serious novels (something many of them aren’t prepared for in the first place) and then analyze them for themes or character traits. They have never done that level of analysis before. And it’s showing.

It also really hurt some of my students that they were in choir and the bulk of the work time coincided with the rehearsals for their spring concert. I bet the average grade for choir kids was a C-. No joke.

I know they put on a hell of a show, but that’s because they poured hours of practice into it. Had they put hours into their research paper, they wouldn’t have had those long faces when they saw their papers.

Actually, most knew it was coming. They didn’t think they had A’s and were shocked with C’s and D’s. I guess that’s a relief.

So how do I combat this next year?

I don’t know that I have to. This class, unlike any other one, just ran out of steam. I think they are one of the weaker classes I’ve had (of the four I’ve taught so far). There are a couple intellectuals and some gifted writers, but every single student began to fade or wilt under the workload. It only compounds things when spring quarter is hell for outside commitments too.

Again, I have to remind myself that they are prepped now for college. And I know in my heart that they would receive the same grades had they turned these papers in at BSU, NDSU, MSUS, or UND.

If anything, I was kind.