Comments on Good Drafts of the College Essay

I just finished grading a set of College Essays written by first semester juniors.  What kinds of things did I write on the "A" papers?  The "B papers"?  The C or lower papers?

A
I like the first three paragraphs a lot.  They're original and funny.  They have a sense of personality.  They paint a picture of a quirky and distinct person.

I like how you begin with small concrete things -- lunch, grape leaves -- and work up to things like "peace" and "speech."

This is a good value to focus on for the college essay (patience).  And it seems like a small, true, important story to relate.

Impressive organization.  I like how the ending circles back to the first line in a very natural way.

Good narrative sense.  Clear transitions between ideas.  Strong mixture of narrative and reflection.


B
The ending feels a bit too "set" and less of all the good things I noted above. It spoils the picture you've created and makes it seem like you're a little hard to work with.

Maybe you should begin the "best of both cultures" idea sooner?

The essay feels "unbalanced."  The "lesson" that you learn in the last paragraph seems to be sprung upon the reader and not really connected the the rest of the essay.

Do you try to say too much?

Prose is simple and easy to follow.

The beginning is too soft.  Get the reader to the action quicker.    I'd get rid of the first paragraph completely.

This seems to be two essays in one -- about "learning to appreciate violin" and about what the experience of "Les Mis" did to/for you.  I'd choose the second.

Because there are so many segments, I'm left with a really general and diffuse sense of why swimming is so important to you.  I'm not sure what impression that I'm supposed to take from this overall.

This essay makes you seem like you're a "stiver," trying to please the college admissions officer.  Do I ""know you better" after reading it?  I don't know.  I know you're trying to sound like a fully-developed businessman!

I like the idea of connecting the beginning and the ending, but I feel the "straight lines" in the first and last sentences seems "tacked on" and gimmicky.

The prose and organization are way better than the central idea.  I don't think "being more sociable" is a strong enough idea (as you've described it) to hang the whole essay on.

Clear enough narrative frame.  But it's not clear why THIS setting is necessary for THIS realization, which makes this topic choice weird.

I really liked the line about "not taking short cuts even if it means getting the same outcome."  Developed well, that can be the core of an excellent essay.

The third paragraph feels not as strong (as concrete, as focused, as honest) as the rest.

Openings that end up being "dreams" that you wake up from often feel like a let down to the reader.

C
You don't answer the prompt very well.  Where is the "transition to adulthood"?

The prose gets in the way of your ideas.

The mechanical errors are distracting.

I don't get a very detailed impression of YOU.

You come across as a bit glum and downcast.  That might not be the best picture to present to the college of your choice.

Some of your descriptions and word choices (the old lady, your dad's car, the cliche about dog walk away with tail between legs) seem cliche or irrelevant to the story you're trying to tell.

This topic seems to fit the "overdone" topic choice of "the big game."  This feels a lot like the "Rocky" story (and so a little "constructed").   I wonder if you can focus on a smaller topic.

You say 3 times that you've gained "experience" and have become "more open minded" but you don't show these things.  What's the experience worth?  What are some concrete details about how you've become open-minded?

What's the organizational plan behind the 3 paragraphs?  Each seems to cover similar ground?  Make the central idea of each paragraph stand out.

College Essay Assignment: Kurt Vonnegut

Cut and pasted from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/11/kurt_vonnegut_term_paper_assignment_from_the_iowa_writers_workshop.html

Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.

This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.

FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”

I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”

Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.

Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.

Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.

Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not bubble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

Practice Writing Effective Openings

Great examples from NY Times Learning Network Blog:  http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/skills-practice-writing-effective-openings/?_r=2

10 Assessments you Can Perform in 90 Seconds

This is a copy and paste from: TeachThought.com

http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/10-assessments-you-can-perform-in-90-seconds/

Good assessment is frequent assessment.

Any assessment is designed to provide a snapshot of student understand—the more snapshots, the more complete the full picture of knowledge.

On its best day, an assessment will be 100% effective, telling you exactly what a student understands. More commonly, the return will be significantly lower as the wording of questions, the student’s sense of self-efficacy, or other factors diminish their assessment performance. It sounds obvious, but a student is a human being with an entire universe of personal problems, distraction, and related challenges in recalling the information in the form the assessment demands.

This makes a strong argument for frequent assessment, as it can be too easy to over-react and “remediate” students who may be banging against the limits of the assessment’s design rather than their own understanding. Rather than re-teaching, sometimes all that is necessary is re-measuring.

It is a huge burden (for both teachers and students) to design, write, complete, grade, and absorb the data into an instructional design sequence on a consistent basis. So why not frequent, simple assessments?

Simple Assessments

The word “simple” here is misleading. Rather than describing the cognitive load on the student, it instead describes the complexity of the assessment form itself. The simpler the assessment—in terms of process and logistics—the more “purely” it can function as a tool to get at what a student actually understands, and help you identify how to help them.

Then, due to their brevity, they’re simple to grade–in fact, you can grade them as exit slips–which makes taking the data and informing instruction (the whole point of assessment) a much simpler process as well.

1. New Clothes

Take a given topic—thesis statements, push-pull factors, the scientific process, etc.—and describe how it can be used in some way other than how you’ve been taught.

Example of Student Response: We’ve learned the scientific process by looking at how actual scientists study new things, but the scientific process would also make an excellent tool for detectives to use while pursuing criminals. It would allow them to observe data, form theories, test theories while collecting more data, and draw conclusions that can then be judged in a court of law.

2. Dos & Don’ts

List 3 Dos and 3 Don’ts when using, applying, relating to the content (e.g., 3 Dos and Don’ts for solving an equation).

Example of Student Response: When adding fractions, DO find a common denominator, DO add the numerators once you’ve found a common denominators, DON’T simply add the denominators

3. Three Most Common Misunderstandings

List what you think might be the three most common misunderstandings of a given topic based on an audience of your peers.

Example of Student Response: In analyzing tone, most people probably confuse mood and tone, forget to look beyond the diction to the subtext as well, and to strongly consider the intended audience.

4. Yes/No Chart

List what you do and don’t understand about a given topic—what you do on the left, what you don’t on the right, but you overly-vague responses don’t count. Specificity matters!

Example of Student Response: In learning about paragraph structure (Do Understand): what a topic sentence is, how many sentences a paragraph should have, that a paragraph should be about one idea; (Don’t Understand) how a paragraph can have a conclusion, how to know when I’ve given enough supporting details in the paragraph, how to revise a paragraph

5. Three Questions

Ask three questions about the topic, then rank them in terms of their importance/value.

Example of Student Response: Low Importance: Does the prefix “tri” mean 3? Medium Importance: Is the triangle the only 3-sided geometrical figure? High Importance: Why don’t triangles show up very often in nature (as so many other shapes do)?

6. Explain What Matters

Explain the most critical part of a given topic to a self-selected audience (must clarify) in two or fewer sentences. (Audience can be anyone!)

Example of Student Response: The most important part of a thesis statement is clarity and conviction, so I’ll explain that one to Jay-Z: A thesis statement is kind of like the hook or title of one of your songs–it delivers the message that the song goes on to explain. Feel me?

7. Big Picture

Diagram the context–where does it fit in and how does it function in its natural “bigger picture.” This is good for abstract or right-brain thinkers.

Example of Student Response: It is impossible to understand the rules we live by and how they’re formed without understanding the 3 branches of government.

8. Venn Diagram

Compare/Contrast a given topic to a tangent topic (e.g., the water cycle to distillation, symbolism to allusion, etc.)

Example of Student Response: A Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting symbolism and allusion, or tone and mood.

9. Draw It

Draw what you do understand.

Example of Student Response: A drawing of what an adjective thinks about a noun, or a how much smaller in size the thousandth’s place is compared to the ten’s place.

10. Self-Directed Response

Prove to me you understand in diagram, written, or related form in a way that a stranger would understand.

Example of Student Response: I wrote this chorus of a song I’ve been thinking of that would explain this character’s motivation….

Great Model Paragraph from Jennifer Egan

From “A Visit from the Goon Squad” (2010) by Jennifer Egan

Consider.

Sasha usually looked at the window, which faced the street, and tonight, as she continued her story, was rippled with rain.  She’d glimpsed the wallet, tender and overripe as a peach.  She’d plucked it from the woman’s bag and slipped it into her own small handbag, which she’d zipped shut before the sound of peeing had stopped.  She’d flicked open the bathroom door and floated back through the lobby to the bar.  She and the wallet’s owner had never seen each other.

Discuss.

1.       Describe word choices, figurative language, and repetitions you find in the sentences.

2.       Describe this paragraph as a whole.  How is it constructed?  What do you note about the series of sentences?

3.       What is the author trying to emphasize about this scene? HOW does Egan want you to see it?

Apply.

Write a short narrative using stylistic elements that Egan uses above.  Use 3-4 sentences.  Create a general impression of the narration -- a way of seeing the narrative -- that is implied through stylistic choices.

Great Model Sentence from Jennifer Egan

From “A Visit from the Goon Squad” (2010) by Jennifer Egan

Consider:

She lay with her body tensed, claiming the couch, her spot in this room, her view of the window and walls, the faint hum that was always there when she listened, and these minutes of Coz’s time: another, then another, then one more.

Discuss.

1.       Describe this sentence.  How is it constructed?  What do you note about the sentence?

2.       This sentence makes syntactic and semantic sense if it ends at the first comma.  What do the additional clauses add to the meaning and effectiveness of the sentence?

Apply.

Rewrite Egan’s sentence, matching it phrase for phrase, punctuation mark by punctuation mark.

Creative Nonfiction: an Introduction

Today in class we read an article about creative nonfiction (and the focus on private lives) entitled "Delving into Private Lives" by Gay Talese.  Talese says, "I believed then -- and I believe now even more -- that the role of the nonfiction writer should be with private people whose lives represent a larger significance."