The first week of blogging for UWP 101 has come to an end and I have to admit that the experience so far has been very unique and entertaining. When I first read about how the class would be structured, I was just ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to churn out ten page papers on topics I’m not the least bit interested in. Being a sociology major, it seems as if all we ever do is read some incomprehensible book and write an essay or term paper about it. Just last quarter I had to write two 10-page papers for two different sociology classes. When I first signed up for this class in May, I was thinking to myself, “I know it’s a requirement, but do I have to keep writing bs papers that nobody really cares about?” After looking at Chris’s blog and attending the first day of class, I was very intrigued. This was an extremely uncommon method of allowing students a larger sense of freedom in composition. It was also a very welcome change from writing ridiculous term papers. Judging from the amount of people on the wait list it seems as if others had the same train of thought. Either that or people wanted to finish UWP early enough in the day to enjoy the scorching hot Davis weather.
The class discussions are very casual and rather spontaneous. One such example was the decision to use a random number generator to determine what word or words we would discuss in class. Never before in an English class had a TI-83 graphing calculator been the deciding tool for our discussion. Dialogue is very easily created as well. Everyone in the class has their own opinion and interpretations and the discussions are very friendly and non-combative. It is very helpful for people like me, who do not like speaking up in class.
Although it has only been one week into the class, I am looking forward to blogging more and reading more of my classmates’ blogs. It has been very enjoyable seeing the use of movie quotes or reading about waiting in line for shoes. Hopefully the interest in this blog and this class will not wane as we venture further into the summer session.
2 comments:
You bring up some great ideas about how the class is structured. Being an english major, this is a structure that I am not use to but I agree with you in that writing multitudes of papers, in and of itself, can become monotonous. It also took me by surprise to have someone bust out with a TI-83 calculator in a composition class. I think with Chris's method of teaching it becomes more and more clear that this really is a composition class instead of a classic literature or english class. Here's to five more weeks of discussion in scorching heat!!!
If this class works, I will give a seminar next year entitled "How to Teach English with a TI-83."
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