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DREA & SAMHonestly, we're just two girls a long way from home trying to get by with a little help from our friends and this blog apparently. Sam, SPARKY, is in Bloomingtom, Indiana for 10 months of the year and Drea, IGOTNOTHING, is in Boston, Mass. for those 10 months but every so often, they find themselves "comfortably" at home in Los Angeles, Ca. We're pretty cool, no lie. |
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
language arts. they say you learn something new everyday; but what about learning something old everyday? today, what i have learned is this: that an essay has a thesis and that an essay is not just one paragraph (unless you're william faulkner...which you are not) and a topic sentence goes at the beginning of a paragraph on the writing process: step one, come up with and idea step two, come up with an outline; "rehearse" the idea step three, write several drafts and revisions before proofreading a final edit one hour and fifteen minutes was spent on this, today this semester more than one lecture has been spent on how to write an essay, what a thesis is, what a paragraph is, and how to spell (along with a basic exhaustive run through of grammatical structures and punctuation) in the past two years in higher education, i have spent several more hours and lectures and discussions and seminars on the how-to's of writing, thesis formation, and evidential support (not jurisprudence) my major? not english. not literature. not comparative lit. not creative writing. none of the above (although i was formally declared such once upon a time, my duration as the dime-a-dozen english ba seeker was not, mind you, spent learning about commas and topic sentences) so why all this revision and repetition on how to write papers? obviously i am not in anyway taking courses that have to do with writing tutorialship but, then again, why is it that i find myself time and time again doing that? correct me if i am wrong, but didn't we all learn what a topic sentence was in grade school? with our language arts journals? or did i make that all up? here i am, twenty years old and aging, and i am doing the same routine my nine year old self did so early on. and that was not advanced then, nor is it now. shocking right? as a sophomore in 300-level courses and specifically designated "honors" college courses, i am doing the same things i did in middle school. and the clincher? i'm paying 36K/yr to do so. to be honest, i do not know how to process all this. on one hand i'm pissed, because my money and my time is being wasted on doing infantile exercises that we all should already know, and not just know, but things that should be second nature. instead of rehashing lessons on what a fragment is and where an apostrophe goes, should i not be attending to the stuff of "higher" learning? what does it mean that i am spending more time on how to write a paper than the paper's subject matter itself? then again, perhaps there is a reason for the revisiting of, in my eye's at least, the basic principles of having a working knowledge of the english language (or any language for that matter) if professors feel the need to lecture and discuss this material, then there must be something us students are doing to prompt such action. is it really that common for a set of college kids to not know what a topic sentence is? much less how to write a paper with a fleshed out and supported thesis? this seems to be the case, as this is the only thing i can conclude from having spent at least 5 separate lectures this semester discussing these issues. this is truly something sad. or am i just off the mark, since i spent most of my primary school years doing the same thing? which i don't think i am. i am a child of the nation's second largest school district, which just so conveniently has a 40% high school graduation rate. i used to think, after settling in here far off the west coast, that my education lacked something in comparison. we never had foreign exchange student programs (with one exception if i remember correctly). we never had trips to the capital or abroad. we could barely afford new books and enough chairs. and the arts and music programs were under constant threat of being cut ("under budgeted" as they say) new teachers were fired before they had a chance to inspire; tenured teachers stayed on to harass and harangue fresh crops of students year after year. we had "race" riots, bomb threats, and asbestos leaking through the ceilings and floor tiles. and yet, perhaps i was wrong. perhaps i did get an education. because, if i remember right, the majority of us know what a topic sentence is. and most of us know how to write papers. and a lot of us have a working knowledge of the english language. the irony right? a district that graduates less than half of its students, where administrators have fancier bathrooms than those on school grounds and students have textbooks leftover from circa 1960-something, the remnants of cold war american education reform, teaches its students the basics of writing. a city where english is not the only language you will hear walking down the streets, and depending on location, sometimes the last tongue present. yet compare it to here, where the majority of students come from in-state and it can be safely said that they all speak english around their dinner tables...yet, there is an issue of many people not knowing what a topic sentence is. am i just making a mountain out of a mole hill? is this issue really not a problem? well, i think it is. especially since this is the equivalent of multiplication tables for language. and since in some classes where i am the youngest and just about everyone else is graduating in two weeks. and since i am paying extraordinary amounts to be re-learning and re-learning and re-learning this. and since the areas where most of this re-education is occurring is in the specifically designated "special" honors college. college professors, you blame such things like instant chat, facebook, twitter, and just the general ubiquity of the internet for the destruction of the english language. why not spend your overwrought words and bated breath critiquing our education system? instead of looking first to the youth and leaping to blame us for our ignorance (and lumping us all in a category together), why not instead look to our schools in-state and out? at least you are attempting to correct mistakes. but really, do you think it is in the best interest of our time and yours to be going over such easy things? maybe i'm beating a dead horse. or maybe i'm just beating air. but, at such a high cost, i cannot really afford to so easily accept this. is not the point of higher education to be learning new and advanced things? it's all supposed to be different (and by different, better) from grades k-12. maybe i expect too much. but would you not expect the same for the same cost? or is this the price of today's basic education package? do i need to pay more to get more? is that how it works? i guess i can leave this year with one hope: that upon my return, we will all have hopefully learned our lessons, and i need not ever hear a lecture on topic sentences again. 4:00 PM
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