Twice a Week Wonders

My writing class continues to be the best thing ever. All three women were there tonight with nearly final drafts of their papers. These were 4 pages, 5 pages and nearly 7. The seven page paper came from the student who had never written anything longer than two pages! Last week we had to go over plagiarism because of her writing (well, re-typing), and she actually came up after class and apologized for “letting me down.” I was flabbergasted and said, “no, no, no, this is exactly what this class is for – you didn’t let me down, you gave me a chance to teach.” Then she didn’t show up for the next class and I thought, “way to go idjit, you chased a good student out!”

But she emailed me yesterday and showed up today with her epic paper

As I looked over her paper and switched from the printed out to the page she had written on lined paper I became suspicious she had slid back on the plagiarism thing. I raised the issue gently.

She said, “oh no, I used the ‘close the book’ and write the ideas trick that we discussed last week.”

I reread her work and it just flowed, and in really nice structure and high-level vocabulary; a sneaking suspicion came over me. I told her it seemed she wrote better away from the computer and that I thought her handwriting was good enough that she could do that til the final version.

She said she had looked at her writing and noticed the same thing. With her left hand she described a line from her head, past her shoulder and down to her right hand. She said, “It flows when I write.”

So not only have we solved the plagiarism problem, but I think we’ve got the way she should write. I remember when I used to do that, legal pad, double-spaced, edit in the blank lines and then to the computer. I’d try that now, but my handwriting has deteriorated so badly that it would not be possible. Aaah.. deterioration.. the ongoing story of my life. ;-)

Anyway, all three students were beaming (and rightly so) by the end of the class and the ringleader said (pointing to another student), “Last week we talked after class, we would like to take this class again if you are teaching it again.” She paused.

I allowed as how it looked like it would be me.

She hunched over a little like she was pulling up a shawl, “Well, what we thought was, if there were no…..” Here she paused and made a gesture like she was shooing dogs or unruly children away, “strangers in the class, we could talk more.”

I laughed inside, because that was pretty Korean. The new students would be “strangers” and would only intrude. I said I had a plan for a split-level class, but that if there were a lot of new students they would have to be taught just as well. I puzzled over what “talking more” meant - it could be more high-level conversational practice (since the conversational classes tend to be very low level) or it could mean talking more about the topics before we write. Or it could mean something else I didn’t think of. I said, “Ok, that will be your last assignment next week, write me a description of what you would like to do if there were a second semester Academic Writing class.”

So if I get these ladies back, at least they will have done the class outline for me. ;-)

LSD baby… LSD!