The School Thread

That sucks, man. I'm sorry she's not being of much help.

I'm long removed from writing within academic confines, what college I did take was ten years ago now, but it seems to me she's simply wanting easily sourced/bibliographic quotes to serve as a launchpad for you to interpret from (you know this, sorry for stating the obvious). In all of the writing I've read from you here, you definitely don't have a problem with that, because hey, you're great at it, you can analyze stuff and write in a way that is both informative and drawing and that's hard to do. What it looks like you're having a hard time with, and I'm not trying to assume or compare you unfavorably here, so please don't get mad, is the confines you're being given - confines that Aeon seems to loooooooooove loooooooooooooooooooooove looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove writing within. I can't count the number of times he's either taken issue or become enamored with a post or a paper and used the quote wall system to go "off the rails" in what, if toned down, would otherwise be a pretty academic paper. (Edit: McCullough does this a fair bit, too, but for my money almost no one on this board puts in the leg-work towards dissecting a subject and addressing it with proper sourcing, including deconstructing arguments for and against (which is the key difference between his writing and the EQUALLY EXCELLENT writing of yours, LK's, McCullough's, Bill's, Kildorn's, etc), like Aeon. I don't always agree with the guy, but he's an information machine and he writes like he's trying to defend his thesis.)

And I've seen you do the same thing when the topic particularly interests you, though you don't often approach writing about the subject with the same grinning mania as Aeon - I say that with love for both of you guys. You partly did it during the Presidential debates. Sure, it isn't the same type of writing, one's academic and the other's beer in hand, armchair analysis, but it scratches the same itch.

I'm sure she's a bad professor. A lot of low level journalism courses (not what you're taking, if I recall correctly, but the writing looks the same) require you to write papers in this fashion and it is dreadfully boring because it is rigid and frustrating, but it does serve a purpose. If you can quotewall someone far smarter and with more influence into supporting your position/arguments, your new, original ideas, and, if need be, at the same time use it to steamroll over someone equally well respected's position/arguments, then you've won.

I, uh, doubt that helped, at all. Sorry.

It's OK; I'm mostly here to vent at this point. I'm not accustomed to being frustrated when it comes to writing. It's, uhh, frustrating!

I think what's ultimately frustrating me the most is that while I can manage the requisite quote sandwich format that the professor wants, it just feels really really weak; every time I start generating one of these paragraphs I'm left with a really bad taste in my mouth.

At least your professors actually put a modicum of effort into their emails. My thesis supervisor is awesome because he likes me but most of the time with other profs I'm lucky to get an email where the word count of the body exceeds the word count of their email signature. The amount of emails that are just "No" is much higher than it should be.

Yeah, sorry, you guys are a lot smarter than I am, so there's no need for me to offer advice - I guess I just wanted to offer a bit of a pep talk and failed. :)

I'm sure their office hours must be FANTASTIC.

Heh you didn't fail at all. Mostly this is just a situation where I'm going to have to force myself to write something shitty. It's just an ungraded rough draft, hopefully my instructor will be able to provide good feedback that will set me on a better path.

That's impressive (if slightly scary) dedication if it's ungraded. I sometimes stress that much about the quality of an essay if it's worth 30%. Sometimes.

This is how I would approach that kind of assignment.

First, develop your thesis: cats are superior to dogs in every single way.

Second, figure out your best arguments in favor of your thesis: cats smell better than dogs, cats are inherently dignified, dogs are way too much work.

Third, find authorities or quotes in support of your points. Every point you want to make should have some authority to back it up. You are making an original argument, but you are building it out of quotes and sources. It might look something like this:

Fourth, identify the best arguments against your thesis, find quotes for those arguments, then explain why those quotes and arguments are wrong and why your thesis is right:

Once you've done this you will have the substance of your paper and you just have to fill in the connective tissue.

This is how I approach legal argument which I think is kind of the same thing.

More essay griping! After the painful experience of writing an essay for accounting theory (a class I am really enjoying), I was dreading having to start my paper for film studies. In a little over an hour and a half, I had about 1,200 out of 2,000 words down and I'm not even halfway finished with what I want to say.

Coupled with the knowledge that if I put in an absolute minimum amount of effort, I can pull off 78% on this paper. It's not a great grade and may pull my gpa down a few points (our gap is an average percentage rather than score out of 4). But whatever, a couple hours of work for a decent grade is a more than acceptable ROI for me.

I know this feeling. I had a take-home test with two essays, each with a 1300 word count. The questions to be answered were, to very crudely paraphrase, 'what do you think about reparations for historic injustices' and 'do you think global poverty is largely the fault of the global economic system'. Sure, I can totally sort out those issues in 1300 words!

Well, it's "finished". Clocked in at around 3k words and around 11 pages. I could've done a lot more, but the instructions indicated a max of 2500 words. The instructor indicated it was okay to go over that limit so that's okay. The other reason for not writing a lot more is my earlier comment re: ROI. It's just not worth the effort for a marginally better grade in a course that I don't really care about. I also don't really give a shit about GPA anymore now that I also have a decently cushy full time job.

The key to really open-ended topics like this is to list a few of the issues that make up "the problem" and then select one to address as your specific thesis. For instance, your former example might have a half dozen brief causes listed in your intro: historical imperialism, evolving moral codes, cost of reparations, moral hazard, etc.; then you select one and say something like "Despite many issues to be addressed, this paper will focus specifically on why today's economies would [not] be able to bear the true cost of reparations and why this would [not] be viewed, in future history, as a half-hearted attempt to buy off those who are most vocal". Then you do 1000 words on that narrowly defined section. In the conclusion, you remind the reader that while there are many aspects to reparations, your paper has argued such-and-such about this one important facet.

That's how I did it anyway. (shrug) Professors are down for that because narrow focus and depth of analysis is their meat-and-potatoes.

Well I'm finally generating some actual writing. I just have to keep telling myself this is an ungraded rough draft. My instinct is always to do a really good job right away; I need to get out of that habit and accept that I'll be doing lots of revision.

Christ here is the bullshit I'm having to deal with w/ this professor:

An email I just sent to her:

Her reply (one sentence):

wtf!?!?!?

I'm almost at the point where I feel like this class is hopelessly broken. At that point what the hell do I do? Go to the administration and point out how fucked this situation is?

edit: the rest of our exchange:

At this point I have no idea what the fuck to do. I'm trying to discuss a topic that is a bit technical, and requires at least some amount of contextual information for the reader to get what the hell I'm talking about. But my instructor has imposed a literally sentence-by-sentence structure on us that makes t impossible to provide such context. WTF?!?

She's not wrong, though. Point-first writing is usually more effective and persuasive. The reader should know immediately why you are giving them the background information. So start your paragraph like this:

The idea is that you don't want to leave the reading confused as to why the background of the mortgage deduction matters. Make that clear in the first sentence, then explain the background in light of your claim, with citations and quotes. This is a very common style of writing in many types of essays and papers.

Your professor is an idiot.

To provide a counter-point to Alexb's point, point-first writing is not the only acceptable method and she is wrong in asserting that it is. It might be her preferred method and she might grade down if she sees that you do things differently, but introducing the author of the quote and providing a nugget of background information is the other accepted way of doing this business in journalism. Which, I suspect, is one of the very few fields that actually utilizes this format of writing on a day-to-day, for-business basis.

And to clarify, again, I know you aren't in a journalism class, but I find this professor's skill and knowledge suspect all the same if she is dismissing widely accepted practices out of hand.

From what I can tell, she won't allow that. Sentence two must be used to introduce my first quote. I'm not shitting you when I say she's imposed a sentence-by-sentence structure on us.

I am pretty much giving up on receiving help from my instructor, she's just repeating the same thing over and over again. I sent an email to the program coordinator asking for a meeting, hopefully she can address my concerns.

That's fine though, just do it like this:

Basically the first sentence of every paragraph explains exactly what your paragraph is about. It's a kind of mini-thesis statement. The quotes provide the authority that backs up your thesis statement.

Actually here's another example that's right on topic

It can be hard to get used to writing in this way, but it really is more effective, at least in many contexts. It certainly makes for easier reading.

I get that. Seriously I do. :) The problem I have is your format won't work for what she wants. The expectation is that every paragraph will have exactly two quotes that will be linked together. So e.g., the paragraph in question has a quote describing the intent of the policy, and a second quote describing the effect of the policy. There's no room for me to provide a description of what the policy is, viz, allowing interest payments on primary and secondary owner-occupied homes to be claimed as an income tax deduction. Alternatively I can just assume the reader has that knowledge, but that's not going to work either.

For our draft proposal I gave her a paragraph discussing the federal reserve (upthread). Technically it meets her requirements, sentence for sentence. She basically crapped al over it in my feedback because she had no idea what I was talking about. I asked her repeatedly where in the paragraph format she outlined I can provide context, and she basically just said "you need to discuss your ideas." At this point I don't think she's trying to engage with my specific concerns and address them, she's just throwing out rote responses.

More specifically, here is the format she's dictated. She has made it very clear that deviating by a single word will be punishable.

- Sentence one: claim
- Sentence two: set up quote 1.
- Quote 1 (w/ MLA cite)
- Sentnce three: Discuss quote 1
- Sentence 4: Setup quote 2
- Quote 2 (w/ MLA cite)
- Sentence 5: Discuss quote 2
- Sentence 6: link quotes 1 and 2 to support claim.

It seems that sticking a sentence in anywhere will result in points being marked off.

Could you try adding a paragraph in that form explaining the necessary background? Your claim could be a one-sentence explanation of the mortgage tax deduction in simple terms, and you could use the quotes as authority for your explanation.

Oh for sure, Point-first it's not the only way of writing. But it's a good thing to learn how to do, and I can understand an assignment requiring you to write in that form.

Backing up slightly, I do get the value in point-first writing and I agree that it's reasonable to have an assignment that requires me to write in that form. My problem is with the rigid sentence-by-sentence structure, combined with (and this is the important part) what seems like no effort on her part to address my specific concerns. Go look at the email exchange I posted, she's just offering up rote generic answers to specific questions; I don't sense any effort on her part to even understand the problem I'm having, much less to help me resolve it. Undoubtedly this problem stems from the fact that I was supposed to have spent the first two months of this class learning to write in this format and probably would have gotten lots of practice in addressing this very concern. In light of the circumstances surrounding the first 2/3 of this class (totally useless instructor), I think my instructor's vague replies are unacceptable and, given that she fully intend to give me a grade that affects my GPA, almost unethical.

Did you know going into the assignment that it was going to be this rigid (edit: BEYOND quote sandwich, I'm talking, did she out-line the sentence-by-sentence structure beforehand?) or have these been additional structural requirements that she has been dropping on you during your communications? Because on the one hand, if you knew about them going into it, then, yeah, okay, she does "owe" it to you to at least try to understand the material and the issues you are having fitting it into the structure and to assist you with those issues (although, caveat emptor, we all know what it can be like getting a professor to understand something they don't want to), but you might also have picked too complex a topic for your first big go at it; on the other hand, if she dropped the ball so severely during the rest of the course, and, especially, didn't inform you of the structural requirements of this assignment until you were proverbially balls deep in and then asking her what her favorite position is, then she's being more than a bit unfair by suddenly telling you to put on the gimp mask.

I think you can do it, Jeff; even if she isn't a great professor and the assignment sucks and the subject is complex, overcoming the challenge will be awesome. I know you are extremely frustrated and need to vent, though. Alex is offering some great advice, and I hope your meeting goes well.

Yes and no. The problem is that this instructor is new; our previous instructor was fired because she was useless. I am not exaggerating when I say that, at this point, we've received a grand total of about one hour of instruction over the duration of this class's 20 in-class hours (that one came in the first period under the new instructor; the subsequent two classes were spent doing peer review). Anyway, at the point the new instructor took over the paper had been assigned and the first draft of the proposal was in-progress, that's when the new instructor laid down the new requirement. So it's a big "sorta" by way of the answer. I get the feeling that the format was supposed to have been implemented early in the class and we should have spent the first ten weeks using it, learning it, etc. Instead it was dropped in with no warning and very little explanation beyond what I outlined above.

Complicating things is that I sense she's being unduly restrictive in how she approaches this. I went to the writing center last week to get some help, and the tutor there indicated that the quote sandwich format is meant to be a guideline, not a rigid requirement. So it sounds like this is one of those who fucking knows things, which is why I'm going to talk to the program coordinator to figure out just what the hell is up.

Really I've got two issues here that are feeding off of one another: I'm really having trouble adapting to the extremely restrictive nature of the quote sandwich format while also adhering to the stated goal of the assignment (to discuss my ideas and support them with quotes from other sources). The second problem is that my instructor doesn't seem inclined to try and help me out with this problem. Perhaps that's something that will come with feedback on my drafts (the current one is, of course, ungraded), but my experience during the feedback process for my proposal draft and my subsequent interactions with her both in-person and via email don't leave me feeling very optimistic.

Possible third problem: the theme of the course (money and economics) is one that I'm - for various reasons - rather familiar with and thus equipped to write at a much higher level than your standard student. As a result my paper is almost necessarily going to skew toward specific technical stuff that your average student probably wouldn't touch. I have no idea how to address that; asking me not to is sort of like asking someone not to think of a pink elephant.

That flat-out sucks, man. :(

I thought you said she was a poetry professor? Why is she teaching a class with an economics theme? What.

The class is College Writing and Research. It's intended for transfer students, under the assumption that while we may have had some writing classes in our previous school experience, Rutgers has much higher expectations for student writing and we need to be prepared for them. OK so fair enough. Each section has a random "theme" ranging from ours (money and economics) to stuff like nature and conservation to whatever else. The classes are all taught by adjuncts, and the adjuncts don't have any specific subject expertise or experience.

The reason my professor is teaching this course is, as far as I can tell, because she was roped into it following the termination of our first instructor.

Incidentally, I didn't know the theme of this class when I took it; I ended up in this section because it fit my schedule. It's just a coincidence (happy or otherwise) that it happens to be a subject I'm reasonably well-versed in.

Blah this fucking mess has me worked up t the point where I can't sleep. My alarm goes off in five hours and I'm tossing and turning trying to grapple with it. :(

Your instructor is apparently insane.

Boo. :(

That sucks. Ely. What is the class?

First of all, you don't know that all paragraphs have to be 6 sentences long, because nothing has been graded so far. You just fear being downgraded. This is an important point. Sometimes you have to take a risk, especially in an ungraded rough draft. What if, instead of sentences, those were the six "sections" of the paragraph (where each section was two or three sentences long)? Would you be able to write the paragraph then? It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Especially if you show you are a good writer.

Could you possibly provide some context in a parenthetical or an embedded sentence? No, I'm not joking. "The mortgage deduction, which allows taxpayers who own their homes to reduce their taxable income by the amount of interest paid on the loan which is secured by their principal residence (or, sometimes, a second home), stinks (Wikipedia, "Home mortgage interest deduction"). It's impossible to read that sentence well, but a few edits could make it effective, depending on the claim you wish to make.



Finally, the most illuminating bit is the part that makes the least sense at first look:

She refuses to speak specifically about your actual topic, which is frustrating. It would be very simple to do so effectively, even if she isn't an expert in economics. But she makes a solid point. Is your thesis about the Mortgage deduction? Well, then, a definition/history of it sourced by experts should be very illuminating. Is your thesis only a little bit about the Mortgage deduction? Well, then you can probably assume that readers will know a thing or two about what the mortgage deduction is. Only educate them as far as you need to prove your point.

Regarding your first point: she's made it pretty clear that it's not a matter of sections, it's a matter of sentences, and we deviate from that template at our peril. Upthread LK pointed out that this provides a really easy way for an instructor to grade a ridiculous number of papers in a short amount of time (does it fit some superficial paragraph structure), which might be the reason for the rigid structure imposition.

Regarding #2: ultimately I've managed to worm explanations of the MID into my paper via a series of hyphens, parentheses, and multiple-clause sentences. It's sort of an unsatisfying way of doing things (and I say that as a huge fan of parentheticals and multiple-clause sentences), but it works and fuckit it's an ungraded rough draft. At this point I'll see how the feedback goes and go on from there (I'm going to her office hours on Wednesday before class, in the hopes of getting some solid one on one instruction as opposed to the bullshit vague nonsense I've gotten thus far).

You could also just phone it in. Unless you're looking to make a name for yourself (hint: there's better ways) I don't see the point.

Restraint can be illuminating. Pretend you're writing a sonnet. Except with no meter or rhyme scheme, and instead of love, it's about Economics. Other than that, though, it's a perfect analogy.

The thing about that 4.0 GPA is that it can only go down. :( And yes, in so many words, I'm trying to make a name for myself. I don't want to pay for grad school!

By "phone it in" I mean "turn off your self-respect and minmax your way to the perfect grade." She wants a stupid paper, give her a stupid paper. You could also give her SO MUCH of what she wants that she suspects you're fucking with her, so watch out for that.

Heh, that is pretty much my intention. I actually pulled the SO MUCH thing for our draft proposal, I gave her paragraphs that were, by the standards she laid out, technically perfect. They were also largely incomprehensible to a layperson. :D

I'm starting to get really fucking nervous about this final project since it's basically coming down to I'll get a B if it's good or not pass if it's not. I've bought four god damn books on iOS programming for it, since that was okay as we had a guest lecturer record an extra video talking about how iPhones are cool, but me doing an adventure game in actionscript was not cause I guess I knew what I was doing there and why would they want that?

So I'm focusing on getting a website up with a database back end that I can then use some javascript plugin to make the site nice and mobile as a fail safe in case I can't figure out how to get an iPhone app to talk to a database somewhere. We have to give a progress report tomorrow, which sucks, cause I only just got my project approved on Sunday. Even though I submitted my idea two weeks ago.

I will be so glad when this class is over. On the plus side, I kind of like Objective-C. If only because in Xcode I can actually see what the hell the lines of code are interacting with. I've learned more reading one book on iOS than I did all 12 weeks of this fucking class.

Sympathy like for being forced to give a status update without anything to report on. I have to do a presentation on my thesis project progress and I have done such little work on it that I am really struggling to find content to fill ten minutes.