Weekly writing

Default due date: weekly

Word count: 1000

Each week, you will submit your answer and reflection on one open question related to the week’s topic. You submit a response on Canvas in the dropbox for the upcoming week’s module before Monday’s lecture of that week. These are not graded assignments. We will not be checking if you have the right answer, because in fact, these questions are open to debate, and everyone could answer them differently. Instead you will receive one point for submitting a good-faith effort on time (by Sunday at 11:59 p.m.) each week.

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. The special questions for some weeks can be answered the same way. They will either be questions for reflection or open questions for debate, and do not have right or wrong 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. Your grade on your assignment is out of 10 points (so it’s actually pretty easy to get 10/10, or 100%). There are dropboxes on Canvas for each week between Weeks 2 and 13, so you can if you want submit a response for every week, and that is a good habit to get into. 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

Anthro tutors, including myself, try to read everyone’s weekly writings each week before class. We will not always leave comments on each week’s submissions. If you receive no comments, but get a +1, then we think 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 your tutor an email to talk about them.

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