Second Essays: Observation and Encouragement

Now that I’ve provided specific comments on your essays, I wanted to offer a few general observations. Despite the merely modest numerical improvement many of you experienced on your rubric, I thought that most of your essays represented marked improvement in terms of their prose styling. They were much more interestingly and compellingly written. You’re pulling yourselves out of the dungheap of typical (boring!) college essay writing. Bravo! 

There are other dungheaps to escape, however. The first and most important is that of skimpy, poor, or partial argument and evidence. In a thesis essay, you cannot merely assert controversial claims. You must provide appropriate evidence. In some cases, this might merely be a citation; but for many substantive claims, you will need to provide an argument that not only someone sympathetic to your view would accept but that someone who was undecided or even against your view could feel swayed by. This requires getting out of your own head a little and asking yourself as you read over your essay “How could my opponent respond here? Am I being fair? Am I being charitable to the opposing views?” This is difficult. It requires creativity and ingenuity. But it’s essential for your efforts to be worthwhile. What would be the point of trying to convince only those who already agreed with you?

The second dungheap is related as a means to the above ends. Many of your papers seemed, well, lazy. Here I paint with a broad critical brush (there are exceptions among you); but it’s clear that many of your papers came into being as a rough draft and never developed past that (proofreading doesn’t count as an additional draft). That they were as good as they were shows that you all have some native talent for writing. But it’s not being optimized. Language remains vague, ambiguous, and sloppy in many spots. Discussions that might well be interesting but don’t really serve to further your point are not being cut. Theses are not being refined and focused. Obvious sources are not being cited (this was particularly stark in the case of the essays on Creationism and ID). 

As I said before: I’m not trying to be “harsh” — indeed, I don’t think I’m even being harsh — I’m just being honest. I’d ask you to be honest with yourselves too. Are you putting in as much effort as you could on these essays? If the answer is no, then you probably have the tools to crack the A- and B-range on the essays in my class. If the answer is yes, then let’s talk and zero in on the problem. Either way, I encourage you to come chat with me next week about your rewrites and your final papers. Remember: I’m holding extended office hours next week as follows: 

Monday: 9-2

Tuesday: 11-noon

Wednesday: 9-noon

Thursday: 11-noon, 1-5PM

And in the evenings/weekend as you can catch me via Skype.

Second Essay Assingment

You may now find the assignment for your second essay — due November 8th — on Moodle here. Note that I am asking you to write a different sort of essay and will accordingly be evaluating it on the basis of a different rubric. However, you should still take heed of the qualities I singled out in the previous rubric. And I especially recommend taking note of my Writing Advice, which is geared towards essays of this broad type, and the two Sample Essays (1 and 2) I posted in Moodle.

As I say (is there an echo here?), the key to good — or even competent — writing is effort and revision. Give yourself enough time to let the ideas percolate, but make sure you go through several drafts. Feel free to come chat with me about ideas, arguments, or drafts.

First Essays

I'm nearly done grading your first essays. By tomorrow morning, I will send you each detailed comments via email. You should receive two attachments: a PDF of a completed rubric sheet and a Word document with comments and markup. (If you don't see anything on the latter, make sure that you're in the correct mode in Word: "Final showing markup".)

Technical details out of the way, let me tell you several things I know:

1. Many (even most) of you are going to freak out a little when you see your rubric. Not that it'll probably help, but pretty much everyone was in the same boat. In fact, I was actually pleasantly surprised that you did this well on the first assignment (previous classes have certainly done worse). 
2. It may occur to you that I am being harsh or unfair (or . . . !). But hopefully you'll realize, on reflection, that I'm neither. In fact, I'm attempting to help you gain a valuable skill set by (a) holding you to high standards, (b) being honest with you about whether you are meeting those standards, and (c) offering as much help on paper and in person as it takes in order to get you there. I'm your advocate here. Better to learn now among friends (with a safety net) than in the so-called "real world" where the job market is fierce!
3. You will put a lot more effort into your subsequent essays (or revisions) and by the end of the term produce work that is significantly better (gaining along the way a deep understanding of issues that you are only close to grasping now). You will look back on these first essays and be surprised that you wrote them only a few weeks before.

I know these things well enough by induction(!) over (suprisingly many) years of teaching students such as yourselves how to present and analyze complex and subtle ideas in writing. I structure my courses so that you will have ample opportunity to hone these capabilities without being punished for not being masters right out of the gates. Remember: of your two shorter essays, I will only count the best towards your final grade — and you may revise either of them.

So: try to avoid succumbing to Freakout (1) or Anger/Frustration (2) and instead focus on Improvement (3). Think about my comments, what you wrote, and how you can improve it. Look over my Writing Advice and linked resources again. Come chat with me about your understanding, your writing, your process, . . . whatever (you might also consider chatting with the folks at the Writing Center). Try revising your essay (even before you start the next one). Wash and repeat. This, unfortunately, is the only way to gain a skill like this. It's painful, messy, work-intensive, and often frustrating (I speak from experience on both sides of the table). But it is worth doing.

I have office hours tomorrow from 10AM–noon. As always, please feel welcome to stop by or arrange another time to come talk. 

First Essay Assignment Posted

As you'll recall, there will be three essays assigned throughout the course. They are designed to build on one another. This first assignment will focus developing your ability to clearly (but briskly) introduce a philosophical position to a general audience. The second will focus on analyzing and critiquing an argument. The final (research) essay assignment will aim to synthesize these skills as well as give you the opportunity to carve out your own position on a topic you find particularly interesting. 

Here is the first essay assignment. Papers are due via email by 11PM on the 29th of September. They will be assessed on this rubric (other assignments will modify this rubric according to their specific goals). Notice that in order to get an 'A' on this paper, you will need to do most things very well. This will probably be difficult at first. Don't worry: it often takes a few tries to develop these skills. That's why I have set up the course to allow you to rewrite and count only your best work toward your final grade.

As I mentioned on the assignment sheet, my website has some writing advice and resources. Most of what I say there focuses on essays with theses supported by arguments. Since this is not the skill we're focusing on at this stage, it won't necessarily all apply. This time out, I want you to focus on clarity and simplicity of exposition (since that is a crucial stepping-stone to good analysis and argument). On this front, I want to highlight two especially relevant resources: Jonathan Bennett and Samuel Gorovitz's paper “Improving Academic Writing” and Peter Smith's “Developing a Writing Style”. Both stress the importance of simple, plain writing and offer some pointers on how to achieve it. One humiliating but astoundingly useful technique both mention involves reading your paper aloud (or better: having it read to you) and then rewriting. Try it and be amazed and humiliated — and a better writer. Another piece of practical advice (that I always heed): write many drafts. My writing only gets good when I write a lot and then mercilessly rip it to shreds. Out of the ashes something decent sometimes emerges.

As always, please don't hesitate to pay me a visit in my office hours if I can help at any of the stages of your writing.