And my students are too. Here is an e-mail I just received. 
I have many students feeling the exact same way.
I have many students feeling the exact same way.
Now for some reason this research assignment thing has been killing me, i don't have that much creativity and cant seem to even figure out what kind of topic i should have for it, i know it has to be based on something we've read, but from what we've read nothing "Interests" me, which is what i think you would want us to do. and when the idea is so generic i have a hard time sorting through it and finding something that i can at least sort of relate to. how can i go about fixing this?i mean, i just don't know anymore, i haven't had as much trouble in English as i seem to be having in this class, and I'm not happy about it, i want to do better but i feel like i cant figure it out at all.what can i do to get better? i have always been someone who can more or less figure it out if it's put right in front of me, big, bold, black, underlined letters. but when it comes to me trying to do something, it either doesn't come out at all or its a big disaster. i dont know maybe im not asking the right questions, but then again i dont know which ones to ask...? and i dont have much time for anything really. life is just really hectic right now. sorry for just goin on, but really, what do i need to ask to get this assignment the way it should be? can you help?
What am I doing wrong? I am really beginning to feel like I am the crazy, not so smart one. Why don't these people just get what I want them to do! I feel like quitting. I want to work somewhere where my boss just tells me what to do, in very short and simple tasks at a time, in big, bold, black letters, just like this student. First, the assignment is to choose a social issue to write about. They must examine how that social issue is portrayed in the poem, short story or play that they choose (any poem, short story or play from our reading list). Then, they must research and report on how accurately the author/poet/playwright portrayed it-----what were things like at that time and place? Then, they need to tell me how much things have changed since the thing was written. Research the social issue right now and compare the situation to the time when the poem/short story or play was written. I won't give them a topic, but we have discussed topics in class. For example, one student is looking at racial identity, and how our society gives people an identity based upon their race. She is really interested that a poem called "On Being Told I Don't Speak Like a Black Person" was written in the 90s, and she feels like things have changed so much since then. She has found some really interesting material, and her research essay seems so far like it will be great. Other students are using the fiction we have done, like "Hills Like White Elephants," and examining abortion then and now. Or "The Red Convertible" and looking at the way returning vets are treated and how they manage when they come back from war. And I told them I don't mind their choosing these same topics for themselves----two people CAN use the same topic. So what the FUCK is so hard about this? How the FUCK can I make it clearer? Because the FUCKING MAJORITY of my students are ready to mutiny that I could be so mean and so confusing and so generic and so unhelpful as to not tell them HERE IS THE TOPIC, HERE ARE THE BOOKS AND ARTICLES YOU CAN USE, and HERE IS SOME TOILET PAPER, LET ME WIPE YOUR ASS.
Tell you what: why don't you ask this fool if this is how this fool is going to act, when this fool has a job? A boss in the real world is not going to like lack of imagination, not to mention sloppiness in writing. A boss certainly is not going to want to supervise this fool closely, while paying a high salary: bosses like employees who can work independently and systematically.
ReplyDeleteA potential problem is the fool may then ask: What does "systematically" mean?
Jeez Louise. I feel sorry for you, I really do. At least one can reason with a terrorist. You can't make it clearer, but this fool doesn't want it clearer: this fool wants an A for no work.
Remember Beaker Ben's advice not to care about your students' education more than your students do. A potential problem is that it's not easy to care about your students' education less than none at all.
DeleteSeriously too: Why don't you just flat-out ask this student to show some professionalism, and some maturity? If there's anything college students hate, it's being called immature, especially when it's true.
DeleteThanks for the support, Frod! I am actually feeling better and did tell the whole class they had to grow up and show some maturity. I also talked about jobs, and how they would be expected to think on their own if they wanted anything other than very low level menial work.
DeleteVery sad. If this is the majority of your class, it's clear they didn't get any writing/research education in elementary and high school. But when they've spent years learning how to pass NCLB tests, it's hard to blame them.
ReplyDeleteI actually brought this up with them, Abbi, and I think it made a connection (and kept me from being the only bad guy, which is nice in a way). I told them they should have been doing research projects in high school and even middle school and asked how many of them had. One. One had. Then I explained that they could not let that hold them back, and they simply had to work harder now to learn this and come up to the college level. I don't know. At least it made me feel better to say it!
DeleteA few years ago I got fed up and gave them a topic: we read Antigone. I made them research funeral rites in Ancient Greece at the time it was written and answer the question: why was it so damn important that Antigone throw some dirt on her brother's body? Then, they had to research funeral rites here in the modern US. What kinds of things are important to us today? How far are people willing to go to get them? What different kinds of funeral rites do we have here in the modern US?
ReplyDeleteThey HATED it and me. It was a whole different set of complaints. But maybe I will do that again. I will give them that topic today, and tell them if they have not chosen a topic yet, they can read Antigone (we have not read that yet....it is coming up) and do this topic. The fucking play is also on reserve at the library so they can fucking bloody well watch it for two fucking bloody fucking hours. Fuck them I hate them. I am not in a good place.
I have a similar issue every year with my research/argument class; I have the students choose topics based on issues in popular culture. Invariably, I get one or two who have no idea what pop culture is (despite reading a chapter explaining it and how to "read" it in order to argue about it) and try to pick topics that are cultural/political/social but not *pop* cultural. Every so often I get one who can't *believe* that I'm having them write about something so gauche as pop culture. There's also always one or two who change their topics without telling me and end up getting poor grades on their papers because their topic no longer meets the requirements of the assignment. SO frustrating.
ReplyDeleteActual conversation:
ReplyDeleteMe: Where do you want to go to eat?
SO: I don't know. You pick.
Me: How about chinese?
SO: No.
Me: How about mexican?
SO: No.
Me: How about thai?
SO: No.
Me: Maybe you should pick where we eat.
SO: No, I don't want to pick the restaurant. I want you to keep picking them and when you say one I want I'll say okay.
Holy crap, Bella, you're singing my song so loudly I can hear you over the political ads bellowing at me from every radio and TV within a 20 mile radius.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I taught comp using The Aims of Argument. Researched argument at end of semester, that we'd spent 10+ weeks working towards. So. Many. Papers. on legalizing pot/gun control/abortion that I started a list of verboten topics, with those at the top.
The list kept growing.
Then I shifted the focus of the class to considering the future: the impact of technology on [our] society. One year, the main focus of the portion on argument was climate change. They hated that. Since fall 2009, the focus has been on food. They hate that less, but they hate me for having them read Michael Pollan and watch Food, Inc and forcing them to think critically about where our food comes from.
The researched argument paper topic I give them has a lot of leeway; it just has to have something to do with technology and society. Some of them are interested in the food thing, and pursue it. Others come up to me on our library day and whine that they "have no idea" what to do, and can't they just write about legalizing pot/gun control/abortion because that's what they're "interested" in (and probably what they have already written on for HS).
And when they do that, I smile and point them to our style manual, page 93, on choosing a research question: "Although speculative questions--such as those that address philosophical, ethical, or religious issues--are worth asking and may receive some attention in a research paper, they are inappropriate central questions. The central question of a research paper should be grounded in facts; it should not be based entirely on beliefs."
And if they ignore me, as some of Snarky Writer's students do, and do what they want, I have no compunction about putting a big fat F on it.
I guess the short version is that I no longer care if they're "interested"--they can do the fucking work, or not, and deal with the consequences, which is a novel experience for some of them, it turns out.
Yes, they just have to fail. I know that, I just have trouble with it. IT seems like there should be something I can do to reach more of them.
DeleteI hear you on that. But when I've gone out of my way to try to find a topic that everyone can relate to (food) and they complain that "This isn't a health class," I find myself able to care less about whether or not they're "interested".
DeleteHang in there. You're doing good work, and the students who care are getting it--I'm sure they are. Mine are.
"i haven't had as much troupbe in English as I seem to be having in this class..."
ReplyDeleteWell, no wonder! If that student could get away with writing a paragraph that consists almost entirely of comma splices, what does that say about the student's prior English classes?
Even more to the point, what does that say about what "education" has come to under NCLB? Commenter Abbi has the answer to that one.
She lost me at the quotes around "interests." I was able to overlook "research assignment thing" but only so much.
ReplyDeleteHoly Jeebus, what a whiner!
ReplyDeleteStudents hate choosing their own topics because it requires reflection. And they have no patience for the messy process of organizing one's argument because it takes time. If they're not cranking up the word count, they're not getting tangibly closer to finishing the assignment, so they see organization and research as a waste of time.
Oh, and I love the "nothing interests me" crap. Congrats: you are the most self-absorbed, boring person on the planet; now shut up and pick a topic whether you find it "relevant" to your narrow, miserable worldview or not.
Bella, sister, she's lazy, militantly stupid, and full of shit. Don't get her crap on your shoes.
Thanks Surly, and to everyone who commented here! I love having this forum to share when I get really frustrated!
DeleteSounds like a nice, imaginative prompt to me -- one which students who do actually like to think will do something interesting with, and for which there are unlikely to be already-written responses lurking about (two criteria for an effective assignment, at least in my book). But yes, this is exactly the sort of prompt that lazier and/or more credential/grade oriented (and/or, to be fair, especially insecure/intimidated/frightened) students hate, and if you get a critical mass of them in one class, pushing back against the resistance can become a sisyphean task. Don't give up; keep pushing; fight the good fight -- or, alternatively, yes, give them the Antigone assignment, at least as one alternative; that's a good one, too, and more specific. However, as you say, it will create its own round of complaints, since presumably what they really want is either an "English paper" or a "research paper" of the types they've encountered before (and can borrow/recycle if they choose), not something which makes them think about a text and multiple cultural contexts all at the same time. How dare you make them do something they never did before!?! It's not fair!
ReplyDeleteCassandra, thanks for your feedback. Your students are so lucky to have you!
DeleteThanks. I'm not sure the students to whom I currently owe graded work (and emails, though I'm mostly keeping up with the emails) would agree. I'm not sure why, but it seems to be a particularly hard semester.
DeleteI had some helpful shit to say about how I have this problem too when I give my students guidelines instead of topics, but then I got to the part in your post where you describe the assignment. I spend MASSIVE amounts of time trying to get students to write about the actual literature, and not "How this story by Alice Walker illustrates race issues just like my grandma", or "How the girl is sad in the Hemmingway story because she doesn't want an abortion, I can tell because abortion is wrong" and I am overwhelmed by raeg.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhatladder, I know exactly what you are saying and what you are tying to do with your students. In this situation, I am teaching a Comp 2 class with a focus on literature. But the composition part is very important, and one of the most important outcomes for this class is that they learn to write a documented research essay. We are literally training them here for all their other research essay writing. I do two shorter essays with them where I struggle to get them to do classic literary analysis, but for the research essay, I struggle with other things. I am not sure you'd do things the same way I do, and I am sorry if what I am doing fills you with more rage, as I am so filled with rage myself that I hate the thought of adding to anyone else's rage quota.
ReplyDeleteWhile I get WhatLadder's reaction, and share it to some extent (not quite rage, perhaps, but frustration that literary analysis as a discipline isn't taken more seriously), I think the problem is more a function of the way English and writing requirements are structured (and combined) in many U.S. curricula than of your assignment. Ideally, I, too, would like to see the two more clearly separated. Realistically, it sounds like you're at least separating the different activities (literary analysis, research into societal contexts) into separate sections of the essay, which may be the best that can be done under the circumstances.
DeleteMy rage was as much at the crap essays I have been having to read. My students invariably say stuff like "this is what my high school teacher told me" as if having completed high school they don't need to learn new concepts at university. The "high school" nature of the assignment (blending social contexts and opinion of the literature) kind of pushed my button.
ReplyDeleteHaving read your explanation of what you are trying to teach, I kind of get it. I teach a variety of comp classes, but none of them has a lit component, so to me, there's this bright shiny line, and students are constantly crossing it with their bullshit.
To be fair, I had one this week who in response to an assignment asking for an analysis of an advertisement, wrote a rant about male oppression and how feminists are promoting gender-based hatred and misandry. It's not like students need encouragement to write awful awful crap.
Bella, your assignment is very clear. While I'm a scientist, I think the topic you chose is valuable because it will lead your more thoughtful students to consider how a good writer can start with reality and end up with art.
ReplyDeleteWhatladder may disagree, of course, but I wonder whether analysis of literature for its own sake might be better suited for the graduate level? I ask this fully aware of my lack of qualifications and experience in teaching literature.
But I think the real value of Bella's post is in the photo and her final lines: HERE IS THE TOPIC, HERE ARE THE BOOKS AND ARTICLES YOU CAN USE, and HERE IS SOME TOILET PAPER, LET ME WIPE YOUR ASS.
POW.