Feeling nerdy

I've just finished the lecture notes for my class tomorrow. I'm teaching The Response Essay. In my mind, it's important for my students to know what a response essay isn't for them to understand what it is. It isn't telling a personal story related to a text; it isn't just a straightforward summary, though it will use some summary; it isn't an opinion or argument paper; it isn't a dog on a bobsled.

So, for them to grasp what a response essay is, I came up with this description of what writing one is like: Writing a response essay is like taking a pair of pants apart, piecing them together again, and making a jacket or a skirt. In a way, the new garment is still partially old pants: the fabric feels the same, the color hasn't changed, etc. Yet, the old pants are now also entirely different: their style, purpose, and wearer have changed, thus putting new dance into the pants.

I just dunno if my students can read deeply enough to raise questions, take issue with a stance, discover problems, uncovers connections, etc. And, I dunno if they can combine personal knowledge with text to illuminate their elaborations.

I love the response essay more than most forms of academic writing. To me, response forces people to think outside themselves, to begin to consider how disparate ideas connect. Grad school and poetry writing (but mostly poetry writing) have taught me how to articulate exactly, the tonal relationship between Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle," and the Black Crowes version of it, and how to recognize the implications of this in a social context. Given time, I could also write about how the use of enjambment rises and falls depending on what length of skirt women were wearing in a given year between August-October. I could easily get at least five pages on either of these topics. Probably more with a few weeks research. And, preposterous though the theses may be, they are very very academic.

I like to think that while I am acculturating my students into university-style thinking and writing, that there are practical applications to these thinking/writing skill-sets. That's what I try to foreground.

Hence the pants simile.