Weekly writing assignments

Default due date:

Word count: 100 words ea.

One of your assignments for the semester is to write your answer to an open, debatable question for each week. Each week’s writing is due the day before class. There are dropboxes on Canvas for each week’s response.

Weekly reflections are not judged on whether they are right or wrong, or how well written or sophisticated they sound. It is OK to be unsure of your ideas and to write about things where you haven’t made up your mind or you are not sure what you think. In fact, writing about things you’re still thinking about is how you think about them better. Each week’s question will be one that you can answer many possible ways, and everyone in class will probably come up with different answers. That’s why they are a great warm-up for class; they get us ready to debate our answers.

For that reason, weekly writings are not graded. You receive a point for each sincere, thoughtful effort you submit on time before class each week. Over the semester, you will submit 10 out of 12. Your grade on your assignment is out of 10 points. (That means that it’s actually pretty easy to get 10/10, or 100%. You could even get 12/10. That would still be 100% but you’d also get special recognition for me for your extra effort.)

If you have a formal extension (special consideration) because you are not able to work on the class for a week or more, then you can submit the reflections late for credit. Otherwise, you can submit your reflections late, and I will read them, but they will not count toward your grade on this assignment.

Feedback on weekly writings

I try to read everyone’s weekly writings each week before class. I will not always leave comments on each week’s submissions. If you receive no comments, but get a +1, then you have done a great job and you should keep up the good work. If you’d like to discuss your ideas from a particular week, just send me an email to talk about them.

I do often fall behind on reading and scoring all of the assignments each week. If your week’s submission is not scored, that does not mean anything is wrong or that you have lost points. It just means I still have to catch up on them.

The best way to think about these assignments is to see them as a warm-up exercise for class, in two senses.

First, the heavy lifting and intellectual struggle will mainly happen in chewing over big ideas together in our seminar meetings. To get ready, we use these weekly writings as a way to loosen up and get the (intellectual) blood flowing. Given this, the best kind of feedback you can get on this assignment is your own. Read your writing again a few days after. How has your thinking changed? What would you say if you had to revise and rewrite your past writings? Was writing on a specific topic hard or easy? What was hard or easy about it?

Second, the assignment encourages you to make a weekly habit of taking stock of ideas and turning them over in your mind before class. Here too, the best feedback is your own, and can help you reinforce the habit of weekly writing. Instead of giving yourself feedback on the content, though, reflect on what you observe about your process. When did you write the week’s entry? How did you feel doing it? Did you spend a solid hour on it, or 5 minutes? How does it compare to the process of writing for other weeks (like, say, writing for Week 3 compared to writing for Week 9)? What kind of a reader are you? What kind of a writer are you? If you wrote 900 words in three paragraphs for Week 2, but two sentences for Week 5, why is that? Could you write 1500 words for next week?

Maybe in the future you will discover that you enjoy writing your thoughts down every day or every week in your own personal log, and your scholarly writing starts with just copying and pasting an embryo of an idea that you captured in an entry from days, weeks, or years earlier.

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