For the first class meeting of the session, discussion gave a basic introduction to the course before reviewing the course syllabus and relevant policies. Class then turned to an aggregate activity: designing a rubric to apply to speeches. Reminders about upcoming work followed.
Class met as scheduled, beginning at 1800 in a co-sat session focused on Room 105 of the San Antonio campus. The course roster listed 34 students; eight attended on-site or live online. Student participation was reasonably good.
An online office hour was held at 1800 on Monday, 4 March 2019. No students attended. The next is scheduled for 1800 on Monday, 11 March 2019.
Students are reminded about the following upcoming assignments, due through Canvas before the end of day, US Central Time, on 10 March 2019:
Discussion Threads: Course Introductions and Preparing for the Session
Communication Anxiety Report and Analysis (submit as an APA-formatted Word document)
There was a time in my life that I did a fair bit of traveling. I used to go back and forth across states, both for social and for professional reasons, visiting friends and giving conference papers at various scholarly gatherings. After moving back to Texas, however, I grew much more sedentary, staying at home more and going other places–both in town and out of town–less. This has been partly because my family has needed me to be home, but part has also been that I do not need to go places as much. I do not conference as I used to do, and the friends I used to go galavanting across states to see are too far away for me to visit often or at all.
A grey day while I was away. Photo is mine.
The recent trip to Raleigh reminded me of the change. My flights went well enough on the way up, though I was vaguely ill at ease with the now-unfamiliar motion of commercial aircraft, and my ears did not appreciate the descents from the heavens. I was able to sleep on one flight, though not the other, and it might’ve been nice to do so. I did do better at settling into my room than used to be the case for me, too, laying out what needed it before resting a little bit (and even then remaining active; writing soothes me).
Perhaps it is the years and the changes in my life that have made me better at this than I used to be. It’s certainly not recent practice; I’ve not traveled since last May (though I’ll be going again this May, too). But it is good to be reminded that I can do such things at need, and it might be better to know that I can actually enjoy myself a bit along the way.
As this post emerges into that part of the internet where it is easily seen, I will be on my way to attend the wedding of my second-best friend from graduate school. (I attended the wedding of my best friend from graduate school several years ago now–sensibly, since it was also my wedding.) It’s been a while since I’ve been to a wedding, to be sure, and I find myself thinking about what such the institution marked by such ceremonies continue to mean. It seems a fitting thing to write about now.
Fairly typical image, this. Image from Pinterest.
I don’t know how my friend’s marriage will go, although I expect it will go reasonably well or better. But I do know how mine has gone so far (“so far” because I am not done with it yet–and do not mean to be anytime soon), which is to say pretty well. My wife and I argue, certainly, and sometimes over stupid things. And there are times we get onto one another’s nerves, to be sure. I’ll not elucidate details; it suffices to note that there are such circumstances.
But though the annoyances and vexations are, they matter little against the many benefits I derive from being married. One of the chief among them is that, like our daughter, my wife inspires me to be a better person. I love her, so I want her to be happy and supported, and learning how to help her be happy and ensure she is supported has helped me to be less of the selfish git I have been too much conditioned to be. And I have taken specific, concrete steps to be a better source of happiness and support for her; if it is the case that my changes have not been speedy in all cases (though there have been a few that have been pretty quick), I can at least point to progress in them as I continue to try to make more of it. She deserves to have me at my best, after all, so it behooves me to be that best as much as I can.
I know that not all marriages are such. I see enough of them fragmenting or standing not stably but stultifyingly; my line of work being what it is shows me many such. I know that not all spouses support one another, that not all spouses look to one another partly as muses from whom to draw inspiration, as friends, as lovers, as confidants; I know that many look to marriage as exploitation. And there are ways in which it is and remains so, given the social structures from which the institution as typically expressed in the United States through the past several decades emerges and into which it feeds. Even mine, in which I work to give more to it than I take from it, has such overtones; I do not know how or if they can be fully escaped.
I know, though, that marriage can be a fulfilling thing, if it is made to be. I hope that my friend will find his own marriage such in the days, months, and years to come. And I look forward to the continued work of making my own marriage such a thing.
For the final class meeting of the session, there would have a brief reminder of an administrative note from last week before a short question-and-answer period. The remainder of class time would have been given to student work on the week’s written assignment, a reflective and planning postscript.
The class met as scheduled, at 1800 in Room 114 of the San Antonio campus. The course roster showed three students enrolled, unchanged from last week. None attended.
The office hour that would normally be held on 28 February 2019 is cancelled.
Students are reminded that the postscript is due before the end of day Saturday, 2 March 2019. The session closes at that time, so no work can be accepted afterwards.
Reflective comments on the session are forthcoming.
For the final sample of the session, I’ll be drafting the kind of postscript that students in the class are asked to compose. They are prompted to look back at their self-assessed strengths and weaknesses in reading and writing, then to articulate in one paragraph how they plan to overcome those challenges that presented themselves during the session before, in another paragraph, noting how they mean to continue to improve upon their performances as they move forward through classes. Students are asked to submit those reflections in an APA-formatted document. Consequently, I’ll be doing much the same.
It seems apt. Image from Pinterest.
To begin my own work on the exercise, I once again set up an APA-formatted document in double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman type, with one-inch margins on letter-sized paper. I constructed my title page and stubbed out my main text as appropriate, inserting running head and pagination as needed. And I then pulled up my own self-assessment from the first week of the session, which I reproduce here from the online discussion:
To offer an example:
What do I do well as a reader?
Through dint of practice, I read swiftly and deeply. That is, I can make my way through texts quickly, and I both retain much of what I read and assess it against / integrate it into what I already know relatively easily.
What do I do well as a writer?
I write regularly and often, working to address multiple audiences through multiple venues–and I think I do well at it.
What could I improve upon as a reader?
I could read more than I do. The past few years have not seen me with as many books in hand as I ought to have–and certainly not so many as I used to have.
What could I improve upon as a writer?
I could also write more than I do, sending what I write to publication venues that might reject me and would offer more honest critique than I often get.
I look forward to your responses.
With that list before me, I considered how I had worked to address the challenges I’d identified, drafting a narrative report of that work as my first paragraph of response and making sure to include explicit reference to my earlier words to help my readers understand my topic of discussion.
The second paragraph required a bit of adjustment; I’m not enrolled in any future classes, and I am not likely to become so. (I toy with the idea of going after an MBA, but that’s a later concern–if it ever becomes one.) But the fact that I am not in any formal education at this point does not mean that I cannot look for ways to improve my performance further, and reflecting on that allowed me to draft materials for the second requested paragraph.
The materials composed, I worked to make the writing more accessible to my expected primary audience, again acknowledging a consistent issue in my work. Once it was at a place I felt comfortable giving it to that audience, I reviewed my work for alignment with the orthographical standards at work in the course. Finding no deviations, I rendered the document into an accessible format once again, which I present here as what I hope will be of useful service to my students and others: G. Elliott Wk 8 Sample Assignment Response.
I have been offered a class for the March 2019 Session, a section of SPCH 275: Public Speaking, and I’ve accepted the assignment. It’s a class I’ve taught before, though it seems to have changed a bit for the upcoming term–in part because of an institutional push towards larger student-counts in each section that has me balancing on-site and online lecture. So it will be something of a challenge to teach it this time around.
I hope it goes better than this. Image from Giphy.com.
I’ve not looked at the course in detail yet, but I expect that I will not need to develop specific examples of student work for it as I have done in my recent writing classes. For one, students are likely to be more familiar with speeches and oral communication than with formal writing. For another, I tend to lecture, perhaps more than I ought to, and those lectures are themselves iterations of public speaking. The examples are already provided by the nature of the course itself. (I will reserve the right to change that, though, since I might well find more targeted work to be of advantage.)
The on-site portion of the class is set to meet Thursdays at 6pm in the VCC at the San Antonio campus, beginning 3 March 2019 and running through 27 April; office hours will be online on Mondays at 6pm, US Central Time. I do have some travel and other concerns that will need to be accommodated, but I have every expectation that things will work out well as I have another appreciated chance to do what I have been trained to do.
After making an administrative note–student evaluations are open–discussion addressed questions from last week and earlier classes, as well as about previous work. It then moved to concerns of student writing and workshopping student papers before noting upcoming assignments, as below.
The class met as scheduled, at 1800 in Room 114 of the San Antonio campus. The course roster showed three students enrolled, unchanged from last week. Two attended; student participation was reasonably good.
An online office hour will be held online on Thursday, 21 February 2019, at 1800.
Students are reminded that the following assignments are due before the end of day (Mountain Standard Time) on 17 February 2019:
Discussion Threads: Active Reading and Polishing Your Essay (3 posts/thread, rubric online)
Last week, noted here, I posted a sample of a response essay, another piece working to emulate the work my students are asked to do. I felt obliged, for several reasons, to address a slightly different prompt than that offered to them, but I still feel that the model offered was useful. But there is more to do, both for the students and on the piece I offered, for which reason I proceed now to narrate my process for arriving at a model for the revised essay expected of students and to provide the model arrived at. I do so in the continuing hopes that my students and others will benefit from my efforts.
Sometimes, you succeed beyond expectation. Image from Giphy.com.
The week’s assignment asks students to take the draft provided the previous week and expand upon and revise it with comments from the instructor. While the previous week would have admitted of a partial draft (I did not offer one), the current exercise requires a completed draft, albeit one admittedly brief. Aside from the expectation of fuller development (“fuller” instead of “full” because every piece of writing can be refined further), requirements follow those of the previous week’s work.
To mimic the exercise, I began by opening the previous week’s assignment and saving it under an updated name; doing so allowed me to retain a base copy in case things went strangely during revision while still letting me make updates–and helping me to find them. Then, as with a previous revision exercise, I printed out a hard copy of the text on which to make my initial edits. (I might note, too, that when I review my own work in hard copy, I rarely use red ink, preferring blue ink or pencil. Both stand out from the black ink of the printed pages while avoiding the glaring sense of “problem” that arises from red ink. Pencil allows for more adjustment, though it tends to smear a bit, while blue ink tends not to do so.)
As I went through the earlier draft, I did so looking first for ways to make the content more accessible. I expect that relatively few of my students–my anticipated primary audience–are familiar with the content I discuss, so I have a particular burden to make that content clear and understandable. Additionally, as I reviewed my work, I found that I was not satisfied with how I had transitioned into a couple of paragraphs, so I adjusted those transitions, as well as making the aforementioned changes to content.
With my on-paper notes ready, I moved into adjusting the electronic text. As before, I worked from the end of the paper back to the front, so that my changes did not move others that would need making. And I made sure to save my work repeatedly; I’ve lost papers before, and even so brief a work as the present exercise would be an annoyance to redo. I also reviewed the text for readability; again, accessibility to the primary expected audience is a concern, and I know my tendencies well. But the document tested out as at an acceptable reading level while still reading how I would have it, so I accounted it good enough.
The essay revised, I gave it another quick review to ensure that its orthography was as it should be. Nothing showed up to that review, so I rendered the document into an accessible form that I present here in the hopes that it, too, will be helpful: G. Elliott Wk 7 Sample Essay.
In an earlier post, I make mention of focusing my tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) design efforts on a mechanical system that uses six-sided dice for ease of reference and access. It’s not the only such piece I’ve put together, though; for example, I drafted one on Rich Burlew’s work for another venue, and it is with Burlew’s comments in mind that I proceed. He makes the comment that mechanics and story should interact meaningfully; they should fit together, rather than one being a vehicle for the other or added onto it. Things should make sense together (despite the fact that the broader world does not, not by half). And since narrative requires milieu, and RPGs are narratives, the mechanics need to integrate into the milieu smoothly.
Shiny. Image from AnimatedImages.org.
That notion in mind, and knowing that I mean to use six-sided dice, I started looking for convenient “natural” sixes. Two emerged in short order: cardinal directions and numbers. The former might seem to be counter-intuitive; as typically represented, the cardinal directions are but four: north, south, east, and west. But up and down are also to be considered, making six principal directions and offering six points of reference: north, south, east, west, zenith, and nadir. It’s obvious upon being pointed out, really, but it’s not often pointed out that I’m aware of, so it seemed a useful beginning point.
The numbering takes a bit more explanation. But if I follow the tendency of RPGs to have human or humanoid player characters–“humans in funny suits,” to borrow one turn of phrase that Burlew is not alone in using–then a five-fingered hand suggests itself. I can count six numbers on one such hand: zero to five. If I add another hand, I can reach thirty-five without working through knuckles, as some finger-counting systems do. And that sketches out a base-six numbering system; zero to five on one hand, then back to zero with a finger raised on the other hand. The place-value even begins to situate itself.
Those two sixes, aligning neatly with six-sided dice, have their own implications. Some move in directions that will bear exploring elsewhere. Some, though, admit of more local treatment. For example, the idea of a body-based numbering system that invokes place-value, which I am told by those who study and teach math was quite a development, suggests that the narrative milieu is one that values arithmetic. It’s a strange thing to have emerge, particularly for the work of someone whose degrees are all in English, and not one that I had expected to emerge.
That’s part of the allure of stories, whether read or narrated along with others and the help of dice, that things emerge from them that had not been expected. There is often comfort in the familiar, certainly, and there is nothing wrong in itself in stories following predictable patterns. But there is something special about new and un-thought-of things popping up out of even basic background work that thrills as a writer. I can hope that, in time, such things will also prove to be to players’ delight.
After addressing questions from the previous week and before, discussion returned to concerns of summary; a review seemed warranted. Discussion moved on to treat concerns of organization and of paratext after.
The class met as scheduled, at 1800 in Room 114 of the San Antonio campus. The course roster showed three students enrolled, unchanged from last week. One attended; student participation was excellent.
An online office hour will be held online on Thursday, 14 February 2019, at 1800.
Students are reminded that the following assignments are due before the end of day (Mountain Standard Time) on 17 February 2019:
Elliott RWI 