Back In Town and The Personal Essay

Sorry for the absence of new posts. Those of you that know me understand my family obligations; however, we have good news for a change and I can redevote my time to further discussion.

What interests me now if looking at the overall scope of the Intro to Composition course and how the elements figure together. Specifically, I am thinking about the end of the semester. We are not necessarily talking about a "capstone" assignment, but I am interested in what we leave the students with come finals. This issue is of particular interest to me with respect to the personal essay. An upcoming paper from Dr. Janice Chernekoff on the personal essay disputes the idea that such an assignment should come first-thing in a Composition course. Having heard some of her ideas and corresponding ideas from other professors on the matter, I am intrigued to start a dialogue on the issue.

From my experience in informally listening to instructors' philosophies on the matter I get a sense of two basic arguments. One argument goes like this: "A student cannot be expected to write about anything but him or herself at the beginning of his or her college career. The student does not yet really know enough about anything else to write well on the matter. Moreover, this allows the student a certain level of comfort by making his or her first assignment about something he or she should already have an advanced understanding of." The second argument challenges this last statement: "Does the student really know about his or herself to write something meaningful."

This second argument seems to realize the great potential of writing about self and coming to far-reaching conclusions. In this line of reasoning, the student looks at his or herself last with a refined sense of making meaning. In a casual interview with Dr. Dan Featherston on the benefits of the rhetorical analysis of print advertisement assignment, Dr. F. told me that his believes it is important for his students to start with such an assignment so that they can learn to look outward first and assess the rhetorical meanings in culture and society. The student can then take these understandings and apply them to his or herself for the personal essay, making for a much more meaningful exploration of the self within the context of cultural, social, and economic rhetorics.

I have had the opportunity to have just such an experience in Dr. Chernekoff's ENU course, "Teaching Writing." To close the semester we worked on writing an auto autoethnography, a piece of writing that examines your own history of literacy. It is by no means the easy reflection piece on personal history that some might envision the personal narrative to be. It is hard work, especially when you have been given the basis to make meaningful and socially-connected observations because of the work down throughout the semester to that point and an instructor who will not accept the mediocre. I hated working on that paper; however, by the time I was done, I realized that it may very well be the most valuable thing I have ever written. Especially because I am a part of the world of Composition and Literacy, I learned valuable lessons about myself and how i fit into such a complex world of multiple contexts. But this isn't about me.

The question I have now, is how does this experience translate to the Intro to Composition course. Having spoke with Dr. Chernekoff on the matter, and thinking over my own struggles, I realize that such an assignment is a little beyond the expectations of Freshman's Comp. In fact, it may be a surefire way to make students hate writing, a consequence that must be considered when structuring a class How do you challenge them without alienating them because writing is undeniably personal and therefore makes the critiqued writer very vulnerable.

The questions has to do with the scope of the assignment. What parameters do we assign to the essay to guide our student writers? The parameters can come from the previous classwork, as Dr. Featherston suggests by looking at the rhetorical analysis of a print ad as being training to look outward before looking inward. One assignment I found to be of value and which falls in line with some of the New London Group's explorations, is an assignment I ran into in the Writing Center that came Dr. Heather Thomas. The assignment is to write a "media autobiography." The assignment asks the student to write about the importance of either specific music or television/film media in his or her life. The writer must look at his identity as an individual and as a part of a group (generally in the context of highschool and/or college society) with respect to his or her media consumption. Typical subjects look at subculture groups as defined through music and media. I find the basic idea of this assigment to be quite sound, and the question I pose to end this post, is what assignments others feel fulfill this role, or what modifications can be made to the media autobiography to increase or refocus its effectiveness.

Also, to return to my original considerations, what should these Comp. courses work towards as a final result. I like the idea of focusing in on self in relation to cultural and social contexts, but what are the other options? The portfolio, for example can accomplish something similar, but it is more focused on the overall idea of a writing process and a review of one's own process or processes. Perhaps the portfolio, a gathering of multiple drafts of the same assignment and journal entries, in conjuntion with a short reflection on the act of writing and an assesment of the developement of those multiple drafts, something similar to what I have seen with Prof. Amy Lynch-Binek, is an option worthy of consideration. In any case, I turn it over to your thoughts, reader.