NOTES: PLEASE READ THIS ASSIGNMENT FROM START TO FINISH BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING. In general, you should read each assignment all the way through before you begin working. Feel free to share it with a parent or guardian. Families should review, below: - How to format the files you will attach to e-mails in this course
- Technology Skills Students Need (& Parents Need to Ensure Students Have)
The word "essay" comes from the French word essai, which literally means "to try" or "to attempt." In essays, we try out ideas to discover what we think about them. In a personal essay, you share something about yourself with your readers; this sharing is both entertaining and informative. A personal essay is written less formally than many other types of essays; you might like to think of it as a kind of conversation between reader and writer. A personal essay is about your relationship with a particular subject. The range of subjects that can be addressed in a personal essay is almost unlimited—so long as you remember to keep the focus on yourself and your thoughts, feelings, and actions related to the subject.
It is very important to understand the distinction between a personal essay and the kind of essay or report you write for school. The typical school essay is generally a five-paragraph analysis. The first paragraph sets out your thesis, the next three paragraphs explain your sub-theses, and the final paragraph states your conclusion. It is useful to learn how to write that kind of essay (more about that later in the course) but that's not what I'm asking you to do here. Professionals rarely write five-paragraph essays. The first step in writing a personal essay is, of course, deciding on a subject. Here are a few questions to get you started, together with the answers provided by an imaginary writer. Any one of these topics could form the basis for an entertaining and informative personal essay.
What makes you mad? [Rude people]
What makes you happy? [Roller Coasters!]
What makes you afraid? [Spiders]
What past events were turning points in your life? [Moving overseas]
What is your favorite thing to do? [Cartooning]
Who is your favorite person? [My grandmother]
As you can see, the range of subjects that can be addressed in a personal essay is very broad indeed. Generally, it helps to feel strongly about something (either positively or negatively) to write about it. And remember, you are focusing on your own particular take on the subject. For this course, you wouldn't write a "report" on spiders. Instead, you'd probably begin a personal essay with your most scary spider story, and then write about how your fear of spiders developed, what you find so disturbing about spiders, and how you deal with your fear. You would weave together your thoughts and feelings about spiders with anecdotes (stories) about your experiences with spiders. Inside this essay, you might include facts about spiders, but only as they serve the personal essay, not just to import a bunch of facts. In this way you would both inform and entertain your readers. Step 2 - Use Clustering to Find a Subject
If my questions above haven't helped you decide on a subject for your personal essay, try a cluster or web exercise. Draw an oval with your name in the center and then draw lines out from that oval to other ovals in which you've scribbled the people, places, and things that surround you. Each oval should lead to at least a couple of other ovals. In this way, you construct a visual representation of your life and the people, places, and things that are important to you. One of those things may strike you as a suitable subject for your personal essay. Check out the sample web below and then draw your own.
Once you've got a subject in mind, write a few paragraphs about it. Don't worry too much about spelling or punctuation at this point; just get some thoughts down on the page. Remember, the point is to write to find out what you think about the subject. You'll probably need a couple of writing sessions, spaced a day or two apart, to produce a couple of pages on the subject.
When you've written all that you can think of on the subject, read your draft out loud to someone. Read slowly and enunciate clearly. When you finish reading the whole draft, ask your listener what part he/she remembers best. Then ask your listener what part he/she likes best. Probably, both parts will be in the same place; it is very unlikely that they will be in the first paragraph, and here's why.
Writing an essay requires you to find your way to what you really want to say. This process of discovery usually takes at least a few paragraphs. The first couple of paragraphs (those that will probably come before your listener's "best") are what we call warm-up writing. You wrote them so that you could get to the place where the essay really starts. I want you to "throw away" those paragraphs -- not literally, but cut and paste them into a blank document (save that document in a folder where you can find it later and maybe use those paragraphs in another essay). I know how hard it is to cut out anything you've written, but remember that all writers warm up and that all writers throw away their warm ups. Like an athlete, you warm up to stretch your (writing) muscles and prepare for the actual performance.
(If, however, you have a paragraph or two that you feel is just too good to throw away, keep it. And, either change the font color to something not black or write "TOO GOOD" at the start and end of the paragraph, so I'll know you think it is special. I'll take a careful look at it.) After you've cut and pasted the "throw away" paragraphs into another document, take a look at what's left. Look at the shape of the piece. Find spots that need more detail, description, or explanation. Write more detail, description, or explanation. I'd like your essay to be at least two pages long (double-spaced lines, 12 inch font, 1 inch margins all around).
After you've written all that you can about the subject, make a rough (informal) outline or list of what you've covered in each paragraph. Each item in the list should identify the main idea of the paragraph. If you find that you have more than one main idea per paragraph, that's a sign that you need to break it up into two paragraphs.
- Check for logical flow: is each idea in the outline/list in the best sequence?
- Check for coherence: is each idea relevant to the essay's subject?
- Check for proportion: do too many of your sentences focus on a minor aspect of your subject rather than on what's important?
- Remember that you are writing an essay, not a book, so you need to decide what's important enough to include, and what's so irrelevant that it needs to be cut out. Use the cut and paste function to rearrange, delete, or add paragraphs as needed.
When you are satisfied with your draft essay, write me a short letter describing your experience with this assignment. Was it hard for you to come up with a topic for the essay?
Did you find it easy to write about the subject once you had chosen it?
Where did you run into difficulties?
How much text did you have to delete before you came to your "listener's best" paragraphs?
Who was your listener? (this tells me your immediate audience)
ALWAYS make two backups of your primary file. One backup will be electronic. One will be paper.
Electronic -- on a floppy disk or CD Paper -- printed and saved in a folder labeled especially for this class
WHY?
Computers sometimes die. Hard drives sometimes die. Floppy disks and CDs break or get lost. Paper sometimes gets thrown out or burned or spilled upon.
In 99% of situations, one backup or the other will survive. In 100% of situations, when there's no backup, nothing survives. ____Draft of essay
____Throw-away paragraphs
____Outline
____Letter
Check your schedule for the due date. See below for file formatting information. Note: You do not have to understand everything below in the next 15 minutes. You have two weeks during the academic year and 4 days during the intensive summer program, to figure this stuff out. A lot of it, you learned in elementary school computer class.
Whether you compose on paper or keyboard, you need to send all of your exercises as one file. At the beginning of the file, please key in your name, the assignment number, and the date. Example: Ben Reynolds
Assignment #1
February 4, 2004
After each part of the assignment, please insert a page break. In Word, click Insert, then Break, then Page break. In WordPerfect, click Insert, then Page Break. Now key in a title from the assignment's Due or Check list. Example from Assignment 1 Checklist (pretend you've inserted a page break): Throw-away paragraphs
Save the file as yourfirstnameyourlastnameassignmentnumber.doc Example: benreynoldsassignment1.doc Your file must have a three-letter extension (.doc) in order for your instructor to read it. Most files will be automatically saved as .doc. Do not rename the file extension by right clicking and typing a new three-letter extension (e.g., from .wps to .doc). Renaming does not save it in the appropriate format. Use Save As... to change the file type. If you cannot save your file as a .doc, save it as Rich Text Format (the document extension is .rtf). You will see a drop down box that allows you to choose the appropriate format.
Warning: Revision assignments require you to copy the document several times within the same file. Do not let multiple copies confuse you. Be very careful to stay in the correct section and on the correct page, or you'll find yourself revising an earlier copy.
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More than ten years' experience with e-mail has shown us that students need to have the following skills. Students cannot rely on other family members to perform the following actions (because others – Dad, Mom, Big Brother/Sister, etc. – cannot guarantee availability on all assignment due dates). - E-MAIL PRIMARY FUNCTIONS:
- SEND,
- RECEIVE, and
- DOWNLOAD to the local computer's hard drive.
Students MUST be able to save messages from their instructor and from instructor supervisors, JHU administrators, etc., on their hard drive (and on their back up floppy/CD) to prevent ISP e-mail services such as AOL, MSN, Hotmail, yahoo, etc, from deleting their messages before the course ends. - ATTACH DOCUMENTS TO AN E-MAIL MESSAGE.
instructors receive student essays in this form, and students may receive instructor comments in this form. - COPY AND PASTE
- FROM ONE PAGE TO ANOTHER
- FROM ONE DOCUMENT TO ANOTHER.
Students are required to put all the parts of their assignment into one file, but they may choose to compose those parts in separate files, on different machines, etc. See animated copy and paste tutorial. - FROM ONE PROGRAM TO ANOTHER. (especially from a word processor document to the body of an e-mail message.
Some instructors and students must use this method to send/receive essays/instructor critiques when attachments don't work.
- DOWNLOAD AND SAVE ATTACHMENTS FROM A instructor'S E-MAIL MESSAGE TO A HARD DRIVE (AND BACK UP FLOPPY/CD)
To save instructor comments, etc. Most email programs do this automatically and save to the same directory/folder each time. - SAVE AS...
- RENAMED FILE.
Some assignments require students to revise a file from a previous assignment. Students should always preserve original files from a previous assignment. Using Save as... students can create a new file with a different name. Example: rename "benreynoldsassignment1.doc" by changing the file name to "benreynoldsassignment3.doc." - DIFFERENT FILE TYPE/FORMAT.
If instructor or student cannot read each other's word processor documents, use Save As... to change the file type to Rich Text Format (*.rtf). RTF can be read by all machines and all word processor programs.
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