policies ENGL489 Advanced Portfolio Workshop
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA, PHD Dean, Undergraduate Studies Associate Professor of English 200 Clement C. Maxwell Library 508.531.1790 “Let’s save pessimism for better times” --Eduardo Galeano (Who is Eduardo Galeano? ) |
Teaching Website: www.leetorda.com
[email protected] [email protected] www.leetorda.com Open Hours for students (office hours): By Appointment. Email me at [email protected] with times/days you'd like to meet, and I will respond within 24 hours. |
An overly long and detailed course description that is not in the catalog
I am the originator of Advanced Portfolio Workshop–I designed the course in 2001 or their abouts, and I have taught it ever since (though others in the department have taught it from time to time.
Here is the origin story of this class:
My first job out of college was as an academic advisor at a fine arts school (if you want to know how that came about you can ask me one day in class). The faculty at that school were all working artists and they were helping other young artists to transition from student to professional in fields where anything like a career path felt vague and risky. So they designed this course for students in their senior year, while they were doing their BFA thesis projects, to help them figure things out and get ready for what comes next.
When I came to BSU and started to work with Writing Studies students, I saw a similar need for a culminating experience that helped students transition from student writer to writer-in-the-world. Over the years, the make up of the students in this class has changed (for sure this is the most diverse collection of students I’ve ever worked with–looking at you Geography majors). And the course has adjusted based on who was taking it. But none of that could prepare this class for 2024, the year AI made it into our lives.
But now: AI?
Last fall, I taught it for the first time in over 5 years. And I realized that there is no way to teach this course in 2026 without thinking about the profound effect AI has had and will continue to have on the way the written word enters the world.
To be clear, much of what we will do in this class will not change: This course is meant to help move you from the student writer that you have been to the professional writer you are about to become—whatever that profession may be. Thus, the work of the class is designed to make you ready for the next phase of your writing life. The class will ask you to develop the discipline of a working writer, to mature as a writer in terms of craft, and, finally, to create a body of work—a portfolio—that is representative of your talents and ready to be read by potential agents, graduate schools, or employers.
And the way we work will remain, largely, the same: The basic mode of the course is the workshop. Because we are such a small class, we have the luxury to workshop pretty much as a class for the entire semester, responding as readers rather than experts when you are not as familiar with the genre as you could be. In order to workshop, of course, you need something to be workshopped. Thus, you will have a heavy writing commitment over the course of the semester. Your own writing work will be complimented by a heavy reading diet of genres, both new and familiar, that expose you to writing and writers other than yourself—no good writer would say they aren’t also good readers. Finally, you will do a modest number of exercises meant to acquaint you with the business of writing for a living.
But I think it is important to make visible through our work together the way writing is–is so much: a way of thinking big and small things, of expressing, of connecting, of elucidating, of instructing. And, at this moment, how AI is impacting those behaviors–but also how it is not. Thus I am going to steep us in writing and conversation about writing. We will practice. We will try to measure the impact of our words and the words of others in the world.
I imagine that the faculty at my old school are having remarkably similar thoughts and conversations with young visual artists. I think to not have these conversations would be a disservice to them–as I think it would be a disservice to you.
COURSE GOALS
By the end of this class you should:
2026 Pushcart Prize XLIX Best of the Small Press (edited by Bill Henderson)
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell.
More Weight: A Salem Story. Writing & Art by Ben Wickey
And podcasts, articles, etc made available as links in the syllabus.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance & Participation. While I am loath to require attendance to a 400 level course—a course a student should be taking because they are far enough along in their academic career that they see the value of coming to class—experience tells me that I need to put in writing some manner of policy. Additionally, this class only meets once a week, which means that missing one class is missing one full week of class. Successive absences will jeopardize your grade. Attendance is expected to every class.
A WORD ABOUT THE READING LOAD: If there is one thing I'm worried about--in general and in relationship to AI--is the reading. I really value the reading I assign in our class. I expect and plan for robust discussion. I try to value the work it takes to complete reading and to structure the syllabus in a way that makes it possible to actively do the work. You all know it is nearly impossible to prove that someone used AI as a shortcut with readings, but it is also nearly impossible not to tell when someone is using AI as a shortcut with readings. All I can say is, please do your best
Finally, excessive late arrivals will accumulate to equal at least one absence.
Workshop Participation. Workshops only work when everyone holds up their end of the bargain. Thus, on workshop days, whether they are for small writing groups or for the entire class, you must come to class having read your colleague’s material and be prepared to discuss that material. If there is a required written component, you should have this material prepared as well. If you are being workshopped, you should make sure that your material is available to be read by your colleagues the week before. Failure to attend and be prepared for class on a workshop day will count as two absences.
Additionally, feedback should help your colleagues become better writers. Feedback should not be needlessly hurtful or harsh. It should also not be full of empty praise but fully useless. We will conduct civil workshops in this class. At midterm and at the end of the semester, you will receive written feedback on your workshop performance as part of your formal evaluation and letter grade.
Conferencing. Real writers meet with editors regularly, and that is how meetings with me will work this semester. I will serve as editor and reader to whatever material you are working on. You are required to meet with me twice over the course of the semester. You will come to the meeting prepared with writing. We will read and discuss what you bring for about a half hour. Further, if you fail to meet with me, the non-meeting will count as an absence. Failure to come to the conference prepared might also count as an absence depending on how bad it goes, and it will certainly engender my considerable ire aimed—like a furious laser—at you.
Reading Notes. Lots of writers say some version of the following, but Stephen King, a very successful writer by any measure, says it very well: “If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.” All writer’s read. One thing we will do in this class is read a lot of different genres and read a lot about these different genres. Reading as a writer is different than just reading. You are, essentially, writing to learn how to do your job—whatever your job is going to be. So for all of the genres that we read, you will be asked to write about it for class. You should expect that some or all of your colleagues in our class will read your reading notes.
Writer’s Notebook. You will be required to keep a writer’s notebook for this class. Informal writing leads to formal writing and writing everyday leads to the habits of a working writer. The Writer's Notebook requires you to commit to writing frequently—ideally daily—in an effort to help you develop the discipline of writing. The WN will look different ways for different writers at different times in the semester.
The Writer's Notebook should be a useful space for you to begin to develop and draft what will become more formal pieces of writing. So, for instance, while you are working on your Rethink/Revise, your Writer’s Notebook might be filled with work for that. While you work on your Final Project, your Writer’s Notebook might be filled with work for that. And, of course, it might also just be filled with stuff it struck you to write about that week--though, by this last point, I do not mean a diary. I mean writing for others to see. A snippet of an idea. A start of something.
How to keep your Writer's Notebook: If you like to hand write, you can keep an actual notebook. If you prefer to type (I do), you can type. That part I don't care about. Keep in mind we meet once a week, so if you are keeping a physical notebook, you'll need to--one to turn in to me and one to have during the week.
Formal Writing. You will have two formal writing experiences this semester. Further detailed information is available on our course website for these and all other assignments.
Rethink/Revise. During the first half of the semester, you will take stock of where your skills are. You will spend time re-thinking and then revising a piece of writing from earlier in your college career. You should select a text that you believe in, but it does not have to be entirely successful in its current iteration. You should expect to spend some time thinking about what worked and what didn’t, considering how well-crafted the piece is, how professional a version it is (rather than a student version). We will spend some time in class looking at ways to advance the text. You will workshop the piece more than once. And the final, revised piece will make up the bulk of your midterm portfolio.
Final Project. As the catchy title of this assignment would imply, this project will ask you to bring all of your skills, talents, and hard work to bear on a final piece of writing. This is a capstone project of your own design. You will decide around midterm what that project will be, and you will spend the rest of the semester working on it. You will workshop the piece in the class at least once.
Some students find, as we near the midterm, that they just don't know what to do for a final capstone project. If you find yourself in that place, it is a good idea to meet with me to figure that out.
Supporting Assignments. It is not my intention to load you down with busy work this semester when you should be writing a lot and working on your own material. There are two projects that I ask you to work on alongside your own writing and reading to augment that experience and to help introduce you to the world of professional writing. Complete details for this and all other assignments are available on our class website.
Interview with an "Author". By the end of the semester, you are responsible for interviewing an author of your choosing on the writing life. You will need to do a short write up, a summary of sorts, that hits the highlights of what you learned about making a living as a writer. A NOTE: Students often complain about this assignment, but, in the end, they also find it one of the most valuable assignments they do in the class. Students learn a lot about a career they think they want. A SECOND NOTE: The hardest part is finding the right person to interview—and the range is wide—and then actually getting the interview out of them. It is due at the end of the semester to give you the time you need to do this right. Don’t wait until the last minute. Students often forget about this or put it off and then they end up not doing the assignment, hurting their grade needlessly. For my part, I will make the effort to remind folks more frequently to keep up with the assignment.
Finally, Bruce and Mulrooney are always gracious about giving interviews, but I've told them they can only serve as an interview for one student. I'm not doing this to be mean to you; I'm doing it because these guys have enough work without giving out five interviews for this one class.
Professionalization Presentations. In small groups, you will present on various ways you can make a living as a writer. You'll be asked to collect information about what kinds of jobs you would do, the money you might make, the training you might need. You'll be able to sign up for the topics you are most interested in researching and presenting on early in the semester. Presentations will start around the midterm. The first groups to go will get the most slack because they are, of course going first. They'll have the least amount of time to prepare and no real model for how to do the presentation itself. Complete information about this and the Interview with an Author assignment (and all assignments) are available on this website).
Letters to the Universe. So one of the ways I want to explore words in the world is by putting words out there. This will take the form in two ways. One is by selecting, each week or so, a candidate submitted to the website "The World Needs More Love Letters" that we will write to. I'll take care of postage. All you'll have to do is write. The second half requires you to leave messages in unlikely places on campus and off (two a week) and to see, in both instances, the impact on you and on the world. More information is available on our class website.
(It's not actually the)Moth Story hour. One night this semester we are going to host our own fake Moth Story hour. Don't know what that is? Check it out at this website. More information is available on our class website.
EVALUATION AND GRADING
Labor Based Assessment: So much of writing is about seat in chair, do the work. There is no room for preciousness about it. And a lot of writing that you get done isn't even any good. But it's what you've got to do to get to good. The assessment and evaluation policies for this course are designed to encourage and value your labor without making judgements about the quality of the work you produce. Excellent work is rewarded, but so is showing up, doing what you need to do, and, most of all, buckling down and writing. Each assignment will detail how you earn the "B" grade--which will be totally reliant on completing related tasks. The A grade is more subjective, but, still, will be outlined for each assignment. Finally, the "C" grade is earned by doing fewer tasks than what is required of the "B" grade. There is no D grade. If you can't earn a C, you have not done enough work to pass any given assignment.
Portfolios. Twice this semester you will turn in a portfolio—once at midterm and once at the end of the semester. The midterm portfolio contains both revised and unrevised material as well as a cover letter that asks you to explore various theories of composing. It is a student portfolio. Your second portfolio consists exclusively of revised text, primarily your finished capstone Final Project described above, and whatever else you choose to include. It should be your best and finest work. This is a portfolio ready for your life after college. Additionally, the portfolios will give me the opportunity to formally assess your work this semester and assign a letter grade to it (see below for details how grading will work in our class) More information is available about this and all other assignments on our class website. It is my goal for these portfolios to be online--so professional websites. This takes some time and there is a learning curve, but it is worth it.
Your work in this class will be evaluated through a combination of spec and contract grading and portfolio. You will not receive letter grades for individual assignments in this class. You will receive extensive written feedback on all formal writing assignments in the form of a letter. I will make samples of these letters available to you before our first workshop so you have a sense of what this feedback looks like and how it is connected to your final letter grade. Spec grading means that, for each assignment, you will know ahead of time all of the things you need to do to earn an A, B, or C grade. Then you will determine how much energy and effort you want to put into the assignment. Spec grading is a way to build transparency into the evaluation process, something I think is vitally important in all classes and especially a senior level writing workshop.
Comments on the Writer’s Notebook and Reader's Notes shouldn’t be treated like evaluation but rather like an ongoing conversation between you and me: think of it as a talk between us, only in written form. If I’m not commenting it means I’m bored. If I don't think you are taking one or the other of these assignments seriously. I will tell you that. If I'm not saying that, you can safely assume you are earning an A for that assignment.
At midterm and at the end of the semester you will receive a “grade-so-far” and a “final grade” letter respectively. They will be attached to your midterm and final portfolio returns. In these letters you will receive a letter grade and an overview of your performance in the class up to that point, including attention to workshop performance. I have never encountered a student who didn’t have a clear sense of how they were doing in my class based on this system of evaluation, but if you should feel that you don’t know how you are doing, come see me.
Different requirements require different kinds and amounts of effort; therefore, different assignments have different weight in terms of evaluation. Here is a rough breakdown of how things are weighted this semester:
Reader's Notes 20%
Writer’s Notebook 15%
Letter's to the Universe 10%
Rethink/Revise & Midterm Portfolio 15%
Final Project & Final Portfolio 20%
Professionalization Presentation 10%
Interview with an Author 10%
Ultimately, your success in this class depends on the following:
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. I sort of address this above when I talk about doing the reading. Because so much of the work in this class is either a revision of work you've already done or pretty idiosyncratic work that you will make up your portfolio--in addition to the drafting and conferencing and in-class work that comes with that--I'm not super worried about plagiarism and, in particular, the use of AI. When I ask you to do original work, that means without the support of AI. There are occasions when we will use AI, and I will let you know when it is okay to use it and how. Some of you might work in fields or on projects that require AI. And we should talk about how and where you'll use it if that is the case before you start the project. As I say above, my only real worry about plagiarism/inappropriate AI use is when we discuss readings. I really want people to do the reading and not fake it. In all honesty, not sure I can do much more besides tell you how important this is to me and to our class.
Students who have accommodations. Students who need accommodations due to a documented need should should make sure I have the official letter sent through Student Accessibility Services. Once I have the letter, we should talk about any concerns you have about the class.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at. They are a marvelous resource for this class. You can talk to them at any stage of your writing—from brainstorming, to drafting, to editing. If you are interested in getting useful and thorough feedback, the Writing Studio is a good place to go. The work they do will reinforce everything we are doing in this class. And I think a lot of folks who work there would relish the chance to talk about your writing with you.
Other Resources on Campus. There are a wide variety of services available on our campus that you might want to know about but also might just be too inundated with information to remember you have access to, so I'm including links to a variety of places on campus that I think you might want to know about. First and foremost is probably the counseling and wellness center. Other places you can go if you want to connect with folks: LGCIE, the Pride Center, the campus food bank, and Off Campus and Commuter Services.
Title IX and Sexual Violence. The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Title IX Coordinator work to ensure that all members of the campus community flourish in a supportive and fair climate. See https://my.bridgew.edu/departments/affirmativeaction/SitePages/Home.aspx to learn more.
While this class will present you with many challenges, I believe it has its share of pleasures and rewards. What matters most to me is that you try to be the best student you are capable of being—that you try to improve as a writer and thinker. No good teacher wants to give a student a bad grade. Good standing in this class is always yours to lose.
ONE LAST NOTE
Sometimes this class is amazing--for me and the students. The version I taught in Spring of 2013 remains one of my top three teaching experiences of all time. Seriously. But this course can also feel like a long and miserable march through hell. I've had those experiences too. Why does it work when it works? Because the students in the class are game, that's why. Students support each other and commit to the work. They don't play at it. They embrace this one opportunity to be treated like a writer. I'm telling you this because I want this to be one of those golden classes and not one of the ones that suck so bad I want to quit. I will work as hard at this as I am asking you to work. I say without an ounce of sarcasm: let's make this a great and excellent class for all of us.
I am the originator of Advanced Portfolio Workshop–I designed the course in 2001 or their abouts, and I have taught it ever since (though others in the department have taught it from time to time.
Here is the origin story of this class:
My first job out of college was as an academic advisor at a fine arts school (if you want to know how that came about you can ask me one day in class). The faculty at that school were all working artists and they were helping other young artists to transition from student to professional in fields where anything like a career path felt vague and risky. So they designed this course for students in their senior year, while they were doing their BFA thesis projects, to help them figure things out and get ready for what comes next.
When I came to BSU and started to work with Writing Studies students, I saw a similar need for a culminating experience that helped students transition from student writer to writer-in-the-world. Over the years, the make up of the students in this class has changed (for sure this is the most diverse collection of students I’ve ever worked with–looking at you Geography majors). And the course has adjusted based on who was taking it. But none of that could prepare this class for 2024, the year AI made it into our lives.
But now: AI?
Last fall, I taught it for the first time in over 5 years. And I realized that there is no way to teach this course in 2026 without thinking about the profound effect AI has had and will continue to have on the way the written word enters the world.
To be clear, much of what we will do in this class will not change: This course is meant to help move you from the student writer that you have been to the professional writer you are about to become—whatever that profession may be. Thus, the work of the class is designed to make you ready for the next phase of your writing life. The class will ask you to develop the discipline of a working writer, to mature as a writer in terms of craft, and, finally, to create a body of work—a portfolio—that is representative of your talents and ready to be read by potential agents, graduate schools, or employers.
And the way we work will remain, largely, the same: The basic mode of the course is the workshop. Because we are such a small class, we have the luxury to workshop pretty much as a class for the entire semester, responding as readers rather than experts when you are not as familiar with the genre as you could be. In order to workshop, of course, you need something to be workshopped. Thus, you will have a heavy writing commitment over the course of the semester. Your own writing work will be complimented by a heavy reading diet of genres, both new and familiar, that expose you to writing and writers other than yourself—no good writer would say they aren’t also good readers. Finally, you will do a modest number of exercises meant to acquaint you with the business of writing for a living.
But I think it is important to make visible through our work together the way writing is–is so much: a way of thinking big and small things, of expressing, of connecting, of elucidating, of instructing. And, at this moment, how AI is impacting those behaviors–but also how it is not. Thus I am going to steep us in writing and conversation about writing. We will practice. We will try to measure the impact of our words and the words of others in the world.
I imagine that the faculty at my old school are having remarkably similar thoughts and conversations with young visual artists. I think to not have these conversations would be a disservice to them–as I think it would be a disservice to you.
COURSE GOALS
By the end of this class you should:
- Develop the habits of a working writer and what that looks like for you specifically;
- Improve your understanding of craft as it relates to your own writing;
- Acquaint yourself with a wide range of genres that can lend themselves to a career in writing;
- Know about the processes, conventions, and requirements of becoming a working writer (rather than a student writer);
- Create a portfolio of polished work that can be used in various professional settings (agents, employers, graduate schools, publishers, teaching materials).
2026 Pushcart Prize XLIX Best of the Small Press (edited by Bill Henderson)
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell.
More Weight: A Salem Story. Writing & Art by Ben Wickey
And podcasts, articles, etc made available as links in the syllabus.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance & Participation. While I am loath to require attendance to a 400 level course—a course a student should be taking because they are far enough along in their academic career that they see the value of coming to class—experience tells me that I need to put in writing some manner of policy. Additionally, this class only meets once a week, which means that missing one class is missing one full week of class. Successive absences will jeopardize your grade. Attendance is expected to every class.
- If you miss more than three classes, you can potentially fail the course.
- If you miss a workshop—whether you are being workshopped or are workshopping the materials of other writers, it counts as two absences.
- If life circumstances require you to miss a workshop or enough class that it will affect your grade, see me.
- Work is due the day it is due as listed on the syllabus. Absence is not an excuse for late work. If you know you will not be able to be in class on a certain day that work is due, turn the work in before, not after, the deadline.
A WORD ABOUT THE READING LOAD: If there is one thing I'm worried about--in general and in relationship to AI--is the reading. I really value the reading I assign in our class. I expect and plan for robust discussion. I try to value the work it takes to complete reading and to structure the syllabus in a way that makes it possible to actively do the work. You all know it is nearly impossible to prove that someone used AI as a shortcut with readings, but it is also nearly impossible not to tell when someone is using AI as a shortcut with readings. All I can say is, please do your best
Finally, excessive late arrivals will accumulate to equal at least one absence.
Workshop Participation. Workshops only work when everyone holds up their end of the bargain. Thus, on workshop days, whether they are for small writing groups or for the entire class, you must come to class having read your colleague’s material and be prepared to discuss that material. If there is a required written component, you should have this material prepared as well. If you are being workshopped, you should make sure that your material is available to be read by your colleagues the week before. Failure to attend and be prepared for class on a workshop day will count as two absences.
Additionally, feedback should help your colleagues become better writers. Feedback should not be needlessly hurtful or harsh. It should also not be full of empty praise but fully useless. We will conduct civil workshops in this class. At midterm and at the end of the semester, you will receive written feedback on your workshop performance as part of your formal evaluation and letter grade.
Conferencing. Real writers meet with editors regularly, and that is how meetings with me will work this semester. I will serve as editor and reader to whatever material you are working on. You are required to meet with me twice over the course of the semester. You will come to the meeting prepared with writing. We will read and discuss what you bring for about a half hour. Further, if you fail to meet with me, the non-meeting will count as an absence. Failure to come to the conference prepared might also count as an absence depending on how bad it goes, and it will certainly engender my considerable ire aimed—like a furious laser—at you.
Reading Notes. Lots of writers say some version of the following, but Stephen King, a very successful writer by any measure, says it very well: “If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.” All writer’s read. One thing we will do in this class is read a lot of different genres and read a lot about these different genres. Reading as a writer is different than just reading. You are, essentially, writing to learn how to do your job—whatever your job is going to be. So for all of the genres that we read, you will be asked to write about it for class. You should expect that some or all of your colleagues in our class will read your reading notes.
- Strong Reading Notes will demonstrate that you’ve read the material and thought about them.
- Very strong Reading Notes will show that you’ve replied with care to that day’s prompts.
- Bad Reading Notes will demonstrate that you haven't read or read with any care.
Writer’s Notebook. You will be required to keep a writer’s notebook for this class. Informal writing leads to formal writing and writing everyday leads to the habits of a working writer. The Writer's Notebook requires you to commit to writing frequently—ideally daily—in an effort to help you develop the discipline of writing. The WN will look different ways for different writers at different times in the semester.
The Writer's Notebook should be a useful space for you to begin to develop and draft what will become more formal pieces of writing. So, for instance, while you are working on your Rethink/Revise, your Writer’s Notebook might be filled with work for that. While you work on your Final Project, your Writer’s Notebook might be filled with work for that. And, of course, it might also just be filled with stuff it struck you to write about that week--though, by this last point, I do not mean a diary. I mean writing for others to see. A snippet of an idea. A start of something.
How to keep your Writer's Notebook: If you like to hand write, you can keep an actual notebook. If you prefer to type (I do), you can type. That part I don't care about. Keep in mind we meet once a week, so if you are keeping a physical notebook, you'll need to--one to turn in to me and one to have during the week.
Formal Writing. You will have two formal writing experiences this semester. Further detailed information is available on our course website for these and all other assignments.
Rethink/Revise. During the first half of the semester, you will take stock of where your skills are. You will spend time re-thinking and then revising a piece of writing from earlier in your college career. You should select a text that you believe in, but it does not have to be entirely successful in its current iteration. You should expect to spend some time thinking about what worked and what didn’t, considering how well-crafted the piece is, how professional a version it is (rather than a student version). We will spend some time in class looking at ways to advance the text. You will workshop the piece more than once. And the final, revised piece will make up the bulk of your midterm portfolio.
Final Project. As the catchy title of this assignment would imply, this project will ask you to bring all of your skills, talents, and hard work to bear on a final piece of writing. This is a capstone project of your own design. You will decide around midterm what that project will be, and you will spend the rest of the semester working on it. You will workshop the piece in the class at least once.
Some students find, as we near the midterm, that they just don't know what to do for a final capstone project. If you find yourself in that place, it is a good idea to meet with me to figure that out.
Supporting Assignments. It is not my intention to load you down with busy work this semester when you should be writing a lot and working on your own material. There are two projects that I ask you to work on alongside your own writing and reading to augment that experience and to help introduce you to the world of professional writing. Complete details for this and all other assignments are available on our class website.
Interview with an "Author". By the end of the semester, you are responsible for interviewing an author of your choosing on the writing life. You will need to do a short write up, a summary of sorts, that hits the highlights of what you learned about making a living as a writer. A NOTE: Students often complain about this assignment, but, in the end, they also find it one of the most valuable assignments they do in the class. Students learn a lot about a career they think they want. A SECOND NOTE: The hardest part is finding the right person to interview—and the range is wide—and then actually getting the interview out of them. It is due at the end of the semester to give you the time you need to do this right. Don’t wait until the last minute. Students often forget about this or put it off and then they end up not doing the assignment, hurting their grade needlessly. For my part, I will make the effort to remind folks more frequently to keep up with the assignment.
Finally, Bruce and Mulrooney are always gracious about giving interviews, but I've told them they can only serve as an interview for one student. I'm not doing this to be mean to you; I'm doing it because these guys have enough work without giving out five interviews for this one class.
Professionalization Presentations. In small groups, you will present on various ways you can make a living as a writer. You'll be asked to collect information about what kinds of jobs you would do, the money you might make, the training you might need. You'll be able to sign up for the topics you are most interested in researching and presenting on early in the semester. Presentations will start around the midterm. The first groups to go will get the most slack because they are, of course going first. They'll have the least amount of time to prepare and no real model for how to do the presentation itself. Complete information about this and the Interview with an Author assignment (and all assignments) are available on this website).
Letters to the Universe. So one of the ways I want to explore words in the world is by putting words out there. This will take the form in two ways. One is by selecting, each week or so, a candidate submitted to the website "The World Needs More Love Letters" that we will write to. I'll take care of postage. All you'll have to do is write. The second half requires you to leave messages in unlikely places on campus and off (two a week) and to see, in both instances, the impact on you and on the world. More information is available on our class website.
(It's not actually the)Moth Story hour. One night this semester we are going to host our own fake Moth Story hour. Don't know what that is? Check it out at this website. More information is available on our class website.
EVALUATION AND GRADING
Labor Based Assessment: So much of writing is about seat in chair, do the work. There is no room for preciousness about it. And a lot of writing that you get done isn't even any good. But it's what you've got to do to get to good. The assessment and evaluation policies for this course are designed to encourage and value your labor without making judgements about the quality of the work you produce. Excellent work is rewarded, but so is showing up, doing what you need to do, and, most of all, buckling down and writing. Each assignment will detail how you earn the "B" grade--which will be totally reliant on completing related tasks. The A grade is more subjective, but, still, will be outlined for each assignment. Finally, the "C" grade is earned by doing fewer tasks than what is required of the "B" grade. There is no D grade. If you can't earn a C, you have not done enough work to pass any given assignment.
Portfolios. Twice this semester you will turn in a portfolio—once at midterm and once at the end of the semester. The midterm portfolio contains both revised and unrevised material as well as a cover letter that asks you to explore various theories of composing. It is a student portfolio. Your second portfolio consists exclusively of revised text, primarily your finished capstone Final Project described above, and whatever else you choose to include. It should be your best and finest work. This is a portfolio ready for your life after college. Additionally, the portfolios will give me the opportunity to formally assess your work this semester and assign a letter grade to it (see below for details how grading will work in our class) More information is available about this and all other assignments on our class website. It is my goal for these portfolios to be online--so professional websites. This takes some time and there is a learning curve, but it is worth it.
Your work in this class will be evaluated through a combination of spec and contract grading and portfolio. You will not receive letter grades for individual assignments in this class. You will receive extensive written feedback on all formal writing assignments in the form of a letter. I will make samples of these letters available to you before our first workshop so you have a sense of what this feedback looks like and how it is connected to your final letter grade. Spec grading means that, for each assignment, you will know ahead of time all of the things you need to do to earn an A, B, or C grade. Then you will determine how much energy and effort you want to put into the assignment. Spec grading is a way to build transparency into the evaluation process, something I think is vitally important in all classes and especially a senior level writing workshop.
Comments on the Writer’s Notebook and Reader's Notes shouldn’t be treated like evaluation but rather like an ongoing conversation between you and me: think of it as a talk between us, only in written form. If I’m not commenting it means I’m bored. If I don't think you are taking one or the other of these assignments seriously. I will tell you that. If I'm not saying that, you can safely assume you are earning an A for that assignment.
At midterm and at the end of the semester you will receive a “grade-so-far” and a “final grade” letter respectively. They will be attached to your midterm and final portfolio returns. In these letters you will receive a letter grade and an overview of your performance in the class up to that point, including attention to workshop performance. I have never encountered a student who didn’t have a clear sense of how they were doing in my class based on this system of evaluation, but if you should feel that you don’t know how you are doing, come see me.
Different requirements require different kinds and amounts of effort; therefore, different assignments have different weight in terms of evaluation. Here is a rough breakdown of how things are weighted this semester:
Reader's Notes 20%
Writer’s Notebook 15%
Letter's to the Universe 10%
Rethink/Revise & Midterm Portfolio 15%
Final Project & Final Portfolio 20%
Professionalization Presentation 10%
Interview with an Author 10%
Ultimately, your success in this class depends on the following:
- Fulfilling all of the requirements listed above,
- The quality of your written and oral work,
- Your efforts to try new things and think in new ways.
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. I sort of address this above when I talk about doing the reading. Because so much of the work in this class is either a revision of work you've already done or pretty idiosyncratic work that you will make up your portfolio--in addition to the drafting and conferencing and in-class work that comes with that--I'm not super worried about plagiarism and, in particular, the use of AI. When I ask you to do original work, that means without the support of AI. There are occasions when we will use AI, and I will let you know when it is okay to use it and how. Some of you might work in fields or on projects that require AI. And we should talk about how and where you'll use it if that is the case before you start the project. As I say above, my only real worry about plagiarism/inappropriate AI use is when we discuss readings. I really want people to do the reading and not fake it. In all honesty, not sure I can do much more besides tell you how important this is to me and to our class.
Students who have accommodations. Students who need accommodations due to a documented need should should make sure I have the official letter sent through Student Accessibility Services. Once I have the letter, we should talk about any concerns you have about the class.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at. They are a marvelous resource for this class. You can talk to them at any stage of your writing—from brainstorming, to drafting, to editing. If you are interested in getting useful and thorough feedback, the Writing Studio is a good place to go. The work they do will reinforce everything we are doing in this class. And I think a lot of folks who work there would relish the chance to talk about your writing with you.
Other Resources on Campus. There are a wide variety of services available on our campus that you might want to know about but also might just be too inundated with information to remember you have access to, so I'm including links to a variety of places on campus that I think you might want to know about. First and foremost is probably the counseling and wellness center. Other places you can go if you want to connect with folks: LGCIE, the Pride Center, the campus food bank, and Off Campus and Commuter Services.
Title IX and Sexual Violence. The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Title IX Coordinator work to ensure that all members of the campus community flourish in a supportive and fair climate. See https://my.bridgew.edu/departments/affirmativeaction/SitePages/Home.aspx to learn more.
While this class will present you with many challenges, I believe it has its share of pleasures and rewards. What matters most to me is that you try to be the best student you are capable of being—that you try to improve as a writer and thinker. No good teacher wants to give a student a bad grade. Good standing in this class is always yours to lose.
ONE LAST NOTE
Sometimes this class is amazing--for me and the students. The version I taught in Spring of 2013 remains one of my top three teaching experiences of all time. Seriously. But this course can also feel like a long and miserable march through hell. I've had those experiences too. Why does it work when it works? Because the students in the class are game, that's why. Students support each other and commit to the work. They don't play at it. They embrace this one opportunity to be treated like a writer. I'm telling you this because I want this to be one of those golden classes and not one of the ones that suck so bad I want to quit. I will work as hard at this as I am asking you to work. I say without an ounce of sarcasm: let's make this a great and excellent class for all of us.