Titleist

Many people have trouble with titles. They come in with the assignment (Paragraph 2, Essay 3) on the top of their page, or they use the title of an assigned article/essay/story as the title of their analysis/reaction/response (The Red Convertible, sans quotation marks), or they use a general word or phrase (Mother, My Vacation, Believe in Yourself) that is much too large for their specific insights on the subject.

Here's the thing: I love titles. I'm a huge fan. I see titles everywhere. I love how a writer can capture the essence of a piece in a single word, a small group of words, an intentionally long string of words, or a title: subtitle combination.

I pay attention to titles, and I particularly enjoy the titles This American Life assigns to both their full-hour shows and the acts they divide those shows up into. They do something that I don't think most know they can do: play on existing phrases to create titles.

Here's a taste from the last few This American Life shows:

D-U-Why?
Return to the Scene of the Scene
Our Man of Perpetual Sorrow
This I Used to Believe
Scrambled Nest Egg
Team Spirit in the Sky
Pants Pants Revelation
You're as Cold as Ice
You're Willing to Sacrifice Our Love

They are all taken from existing pieces of language. DUI. Return to the scene of the crime. Our lady of perpetual sorrow. This I Believe (another radio show). Scrambled eggs + nest egg. Team spirit + "Spirit in the Sky." Dance Dance Revolution. Two lines from Foreigner's "Cold as Ice." Most students don't know they can do such things.

I'm going revisit this idea periodically.

Brand Recognition

Last week, I went on vacation to San Diego. One day we were leaving our hotel and we stopped by the main building to mail postcards. I waited in the car with Elly while Janice went inside. While I waited, a man came out the front doors wearing a Billabong t-shirt. I see people wearing Billabong and Hurley and Volcom and Famous Stars and Straps t-shirts and hats, and I doubt many of those people know exactly what those companies make or do, aside from producing t-shirts with their names on them.

I thought this could be a good opportunity to get students to research the names they are paying to wear. They could choose a shirt or other piece of clothing that they own. It could be from one of those brands or from Hollister or American Eagle or Abercrombie & Fitch or any other company that puts their name on the front of a t-shirt to act as a mobile billboard. Then, they research that company. Who are they? What else to do they make? Is clothing their main business? Who makes their clothing? Why do people wear the clothes they make? How many people who wear those clothes actually know much about the company?

I would be interested in seeing what happens to student perspectives after they learn more about where those clothes come from. This could lead to writing about fair labor, materialism, fitting in, trends, authenticity, and a host of other issues.
________

Also on the research front:

Today, a few guys were in the Writing Center. One of them had a recent haircut. From the front, I thought it was mohawk-fade hybrid. I saw the back and discovered it was just a fade. I told him I thought it was a mohawk and he laughed. Mohawks are everywhere, I pointed out, so I thought he had one, too. I told them all that I saw a guy in Target with a mohawk--not the brightly-dyed, spiny dinosaur, punk kind of mohawk, but still a few inches high from forehead to neck. It was a near-punk rebel style haircut--and he was wearing a striped polo shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. Hardcore.

We laughed about how the mohawk is everywhere, and then I mused that looking into where the mohawk came from and how it got to be everywhere would be an interesting research project. I asked the guys if they would be willing to write about that if their teacher asked them to. It wasn't an overwhelming response, but they were up for it. One of them was excited, even.

I think a paper about the origins and spread of the mohawk would be fascinating. It would require historical research from multiple times (book research, database research, Internet research) and allow for the students to conduct interviews and look into current media to find mohawks and the reasons for them. I would love to read that.

This and That

1. Last week, a student researching her Writing 102 essay was highlighting. A lot. Way too much. I looked down at her printed page of research about JFK (she was investigating the context of his inaugural speech) and saw mostly orange. The lines she left white were few.

I asked her why she was highlighting all of that. She told me that she was going to possibly use it later. I then explained that she would simply be reading through lines of orange-and-black, not the white-and-black original, to find what she wanted to use. The work she would be doing later would be the same as the work she was doing right then (perhaps more because she probably doesn't read from orange pages that often).

I told her to simply highlight keywords and dates and leave the rest white. Then I drew this on the white board
__________ _______________ _____ ___
________ _________________ ________________ ____
________ _________________ _________ ___
________ _____________

to illustrate my point. The first part is highlighting as she was doing it. The second part is the highlighted keywords, which are much easier to spot and distinguish from other highlighted keywords.

She said, "Nobody ever told me that before. Highlighting keywords." I told her that one of the advantages I have in the Writing Lab is that I see people working. I see the formation, not the formed, so I get used to helping that formation happen more efficiently. I really do think this is making me a better teacher.

2. A panicky student who often drinks enough caffeine to make her leg shake* came in last week and calmly ran through her plan of attack for her research paper. She knew each section she wanted to cover, and her sections grew more specific as she proceeded through her paper. I was impressed. This student had cried earlier this semester. Writing overwhelmed her. It was too much and she had to leave for awhile. And here she was, calmly speaking from the notes and visual organization she put down on sheets from a legal pad.

All I could do was say, "That's great" and watch her go. She had no questions. She just needed time to work.

3. I love watching people think. At breakfast with a friend this Friday, he asked me if I would be busy that day. I said yes and no, that there would be people in working on research papers and they would be working working working, only asking questions when necessary**. I love when students sit down with their piles of research or plop down and type away at their drafts. I feel like they are understanding what it means to write. They aren't worried so much as focused. There will be time for revision after a conference with a teacher or a peer review. This is the time to forge ahead, and I love being in the room when that happens.

*Not a hyperbole. I've seen it. Although I suppose the stress of writing a paper contributes, she does drink a lot of caffeine.

**Like swimmers breathing only when necessary and concentrating on their stroke, their goal.

Good Day So Far

What I've helped with so far:

The project on mental illness + creativity: going from the student saying, "Yes, there is a connection" to figuring out what connection she sees. Specifics!

Research on Dr. Seuss + historical/social context: looking for direction and questions, narrowing the focus, learning that Cat in the Hat was written to combat illiteracy.

Rhetoric: explaining logos, pathos, and ethos to those about to persuade; getting four students knee-deep into their potential arguments.

To Call It an Article or To Not Call It an Article

Good question today: Are the Question & Answer features in magazines called articles?

A couple of students working on responses to articles in The Aztec Press wondered if the Q&As were "articles." I looked up explained what people usually mean when they use the word "article" to describe writing in a newspaper or magazine, and I looked up "article" on dictionary.com to show them the true definition of the word. We talked about all the small lists or graphs or blurbs that magazines publish and how they are different than the articles those same magazines publish.

I liked the question, and the follow-up was even better: If not "articles," what are they called? I'm not sure. I suppose Q&A would apply, but not all of those little bits in the fronts of magazines are answers to questions. Do those have a name? I'm not in the magazine publishing business, but I suppose they do. I'll see if I can do some digging.

Links of Note

1. Stupidity in Research: an article by a microbiologist (and they don't just let anybody do that) about the necessity of that I Don't Know feeling. If I were to make a pie graph of my job, which I have considered doing, I imagine a fairly large chunk of that circle would be labeled, "Telling People It Is Okay To Not Know." I ask students this question: What do you think? They reply: I don't know. I counter: I know you don't know, but I didn't ask what you know; I asked what you think.

2. John McPhee: an NPR piece and a Princeton Weekly Bulletin article on my newest authorial discovery. I think this guy is cool. The foundation of his livelihood is his curiosity. He is not a specialist in anything other than nonfiction. I just finished his first book, A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton, which follows now Senator Bill Bradley during his college basketball career and paints him as a sort of savant on the court, hyper-aware and capable of physical feats others don't know are possible.

Part of what I love about this book is that it came naturally to McPhee. He has lived most of his life in Princeton, and Bradley's presence slotted right in. The book grew organically from their intersection at the school. Another part of what I love is that McPhee is not a sportswriter. He is a writer who covers anything and everything (read the articles; you'll see), and this book happened to be about a basketball player.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

I'm currently reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I have completed the introduction and the first chapter on the apostrophe. I'm ankle-deep in the second chapter, covering the comma. Here are my two favorite observations:

1. Various grammar books have various rules. Some say "Keats's poem" is correct. Others say "Keats' poem" is correct. I love that. The rulemakers can't even agree on the rules. How then can we expect non-rulemaking college students to follow them?

Everybody always comes in asking about grammar. One student came in today with a sheet of feedback from his teacher. Nowhere in that feedback did she mention anything about his grammar. She asked for focus, for clarification, for specifics, but said nothing of commas or sentence structure. I read the feedback and read over his essay. His teacher was 100% correct, and as I began to discuss her feedback with him, he waved his hand over his paper and asked if I could just look at it and tell him about his grammar.

I don't him he doesn't care about grammar at this point and explained that ideas come first. Most people think in this manner: writing=grammar. That is not true. Grammar is an aspect, not everything. I think that is driven home by Keats's poem/Keats' poem; does it really--really--matter? Not particularly. We still know who wrote the lines.

2. Truss quotes Sir Ernest Gowers: "The use of commas cannot be learned by rule." True. I can't remember a single writing student who learned where to put a comma based on an explanation of a rule. Rule + example is the minimum. The rule is theory, but the example is practice.

I can always tell readers when they come in. Their sentences bounce and flow with rhythm. They can't necessarily explain the placement of a comma, but they usually don't need to because their commas are properly placed. They have seen the tool in use enough to understand how it functions in live action.

This is same way I learned to use a semicolon. I saw enough of them in print and it sunk in that they pair sentences.