Student Writing
Last spring, I taught a pretty ordinary section of freshman composition: some very good students, some whom I'd charitably describe as "unmotivated." One of the very good students expressed an interest in majoring in English, and I invited her to take my upper-level course this fall. She hadn't had all of the prerequisites, but her essays had shown thoughtfulness and care.
And she just turned in a paper that was so good it made me want to weep, right there in Starbucks where I was sitting with my holiday-red cup of peppermint mocha, facing a stack of 14 essays and little time. Here are a couple of sentences:
In her criticism of [F's novel], H. asserts that F. portrays a world in which men and women live their lives through the exchange of dissimilar currencies. These currencies include money for men and the fulfillment of stereotypical gender roles of domesticity for women.
The death of [the protagonist's husband] thrusts [her] out of her natural state where domesticity reigns and into the apparently harsh world of the marketplace and finances. . . . Now, with a temporary adoption of the male sphere of life, [she] is one of the few who possesses both varieties of currency. She not only understands her value to her children as a mother and homemaker, but also as a financial asset in the male dominated sphere. Because she has acquired wealth in each sphere of the world, [she] is able to then choose which one she wants to dominate the remainder of her life (para. 32). Ultimately, a changed [woman] is shown at the end of the novel when F. describes her as “standing as it were on the threshold of a new epoch in her changing existence” (271). [She] returns with her children to her natural state of the domestic sphere, away from the harsh marketplace world. Having stepped out of her sphere for survival, like Mr. S., [she] ultimately knows that her comforts lie within her domestic abilities in the sphere of the home.
I wish I had been able to work with literary criticism as skillfully and gracefully as this sophomore, in her first upper-level class, when I was in college!
And she just turned in a paper that was so good it made me want to weep, right there in Starbucks where I was sitting with my holiday-red cup of peppermint mocha, facing a stack of 14 essays and little time. Here are a couple of sentences:
In her criticism of [F's novel], H. asserts that F. portrays a world in which men and women live their lives through the exchange of dissimilar currencies. These currencies include money for men and the fulfillment of stereotypical gender roles of domesticity for women.
The death of [the protagonist's husband] thrusts [her] out of her natural state where domesticity reigns and into the apparently harsh world of the marketplace and finances. . . . Now, with a temporary adoption of the male sphere of life, [she] is one of the few who possesses both varieties of currency. She not only understands her value to her children as a mother and homemaker, but also as a financial asset in the male dominated sphere. Because she has acquired wealth in each sphere of the world, [she] is able to then choose which one she wants to dominate the remainder of her life (para. 32). Ultimately, a changed [woman] is shown at the end of the novel when F. describes her as “standing as it were on the threshold of a new epoch in her changing existence” (271). [She] returns with her children to her natural state of the domestic sphere, away from the harsh marketplace world. Having stepped out of her sphere for survival, like Mr. S., [she] ultimately knows that her comforts lie within her domestic abilities in the sphere of the home.
I wish I had been able to work with literary criticism as skillfully and gracefully as this sophomore, in her first upper-level class, when I was in college!
posted by Tara | 5:36 PM
1 Comments:
Good for you for encouraging her to take the upper-level class. It drove me nuts in college, this occasional assumption that freshmen didn't know how to write. Or you had to take this particular professor's class before you'd know jack about composition.
I don't think writing is an entirely 'taught' skill.
And I'm glad you get these occasional student gems. They must make it all worthwhile!
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