Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. HittyG (and her friend Happy)

I’m in Illinois, checking blogs and being glad that I’m no longer driving through the rain to get here, despite the fact that it’s still raining here.

I posted the foods for the Party on the 3rd on Bb. Be sure to check there and to sign up for something if you haven’t already (e-mail me to do that and I’ll add it to Bb for you).

I’m cooking a pot roast and being thankful for warmth of being indoors, for being done with driving for another few days, and for Kim’s breakthrough. At the same time, I’m hopeing that the rest of you are also having those pivotal mental moments with analysis. Happy

When you finish up a paper that I’ve had excessive input into, it’s as if I was hanging over your shoulder and helping you move the keys on the computer. When you finish, it’s almost a collaborative work. And there would be nothing wrong with that if you felt confident that you could leave the class and do it all again entirely on your own. But I began to think that perhaps I was not doing you a favor by helping too much, that what I was doing was preventing you from taking flight on your own. Instead of helping, I made you dependent on me. Instead of forcing you to think things through, to make choices about your own writing, I was the anxious mother, wanting you to do well and practically doing your work for you. I told her, a former teacher of similar classes herself, that I would back off in future semesters.

It’s virtually too late this semester. What’s done is done. However, I will not review your next drafts other than to reply to your mail. That’s not to say I won’t read them, but I will not write on the draft itself. I will give you advice but not the details that go with the advice. That is up to you. If you can’t do it, then it is likely that I am right about the reason why too much help is a bad thing.

Well – not quite. The subject of the sentence is not the word “colon” but the word “sentence.” Here is the breakdown with changes and reasoning in parentheses:

Finally (introductory word which needs a comma), [I learned that] (technically not a second introductory phrase, though it may seem so, but the beginning of the actual sentence, which I’ve bracketed to show you. Because it’s followed by an interrupting, or non-restrictive clause, it requires a comma here), when using a colon (add a second comma here to follow the non-restrictive clause), [the sentence preceding it has to be a complete one.]

So, the actutal sentence reads, “I learned that the sentence preceding it has to be a complete one.” If you hadn’t included the non-restrictive clause, you would probably want to change “it” to be less vague by substituting the words “a colon” for the word “it”: “I learned that the sentence preceding a colon has to be a complete one.”

But the good news is that her information about when/how to use a colon is essentially correct!!!

Now that I’ve said all this, remind me to tell you another way you can use a colon. I try not to confuse everyone by piling things on too heavily at any given moment – I give you information on a need-to-know basis because, as adult learners, we do not absorb too many new things at one time, so I parcel them out to you and let you mull them over, then add to the knowledge base you develop. Hopefully we will make it through everything I know (ha ha) by the end of the semester. My goal is always for people to learn. I understand that grades are important to students, but if you learn what you need to know about advanced writing in this class, your future grades in any class here at the University will be far better for having spent your time learning in mine. FYI, this is such an important bit that I decided to post it myself rather than as a response to the student who prompted it.

A good topic sentence usually has a point to make, and it often makes a statement that could be considered an argumentative claim. Since your papers are supposed to be about persuading someone to see your way of thinking (reasoning), even if they don’t agree, a strong topic sentence at the start of the paragraphs will help keep that subtle argument at the forefront of their minds when they read. Readers won’t get lost and you won’t get sidetracked if you remember to include them.

If you were creating an outline, you could use the points you want to make and discuss as points in an outline. At UR, we recommend “Point Sentence Outlines” since each point of the outline is written in sentence form, and so the sentences can be used as topic sentences once they have been arranged in the order of use in the paper. It’s an organizing tool when done backwards – pull the topic sentences that indicate what the paragraphs are about, write them (or copy and past them) onto another page, and arrange them in an appropriate order. Then, by looking over the outline and comparing what you have there to what you think you need to have in the paper, you can used this new outline to see if the paper needs to be organized differently or if something might be missing. It also helps you to decide if your topic sentences really make points and claims or if they do NOTHING for your paper. If the latter is true, you can then change the topic sentence to something that better suits the paper.

Good luck with those revisions.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” -Thomas Edison

As a writer, your mission is to figure out what works for you and to do it.

By Saturday evening, I was annoyed but finished with the papers, thanks to my trusty but slow laptop and the wireless router the darling boy had also installed for me a few years back. Working on your papers was tedius using the ark of a laptop as well as having my fingers forced into using the smaller keyboard, but I did finish about the time Saturday afternoon that I’d hoped to finish in spite of the frustrations and slow-downs. So Saturday evening we ran over to Best Buy with about a half hour to actually buy a new computer. We did actually accomplish that task, but of course the model I wanted was not available at that store. It was Sunday afternoon before I had a computer, and it’s still not 100% functional yet. No parallel port for my nifty laser jet printer, so I must wait for a converter to arrive (no they didn’t have any of those) before I can print again. I have most of my data transferred over from the old computer, but not my mail. I was using Outlook Express and XP, and now I’m coping with Outlook and Vista. DH has not yet thought out how best to get my old mail configured into the new system.

So, that’s a long sad story, right? But much like revising papers, setting up a new computer takes time and effort to make it all work as it should. Sometimes, revisions are really messy things with parts seemingly scattered through the paper and the mind, like the pieces of my old computer all over the dining room table where I was typing on my laptop. Remind me to tell you about my first college English class after being out of school for 30 years. It was frustrating, sometimes, but I learned from the experience, and I would not be as good a writer as I am today had I not gone through what I did.

Revision

Re-vision

Re-see

Re-envision

Perspective – yours and others

I read several blogs, some about Hitty, some about life, some about weird stuff. One of my weird stuff blogs is written by a woman who is what I would term quite creative, fanciful to the extreme in a good way, and filled to overflowing with fun and life. Usually. In a blog today, she wrote about an old wooden sign that belonged to her husband and which she adored. He had, after much cajoling, gifted it to her for her office. It hung for a while, but they have been remodeling, and many things, the sign among them, ended up being stored temporarily in a shed where, for 30 years, anything placed in it has been safe.

Meanwhile, a man was hired to do some work for them. They live in a remote location, and absolutely never have visitors to their country home. But the worker was there and one day spotted the sign, which advertises appliance repair.

Her husband talked with the man about the sign, which he’d owned for 20 years before giving it to Vanessa. This worker was, to their knowledge, the only other person who ever saw the sign besides the two of them. Last night, with the new office completed, they went to the shed to retrieve various items, only to discover that the sign was now mysteriously missing. They literally searched the property all night, but to no avail. The sign is gone.

In another twist, it turns out that recently the man was back at the house on a particular day, a rare occasion when Vanessa was gone, leaving the property alone and unguarded. He later actually tells them that he was there, and that he saw their dog on a main road. Their dog does not wander, but sticks close. Neither believes the dog would go as far as a main road. The man says, “if anyone wonders why I was at your place, that was why…,” but of course nobody buys that one for a minute.

Vanessa and I have occasionally e-mailed one another, and she and her husband are both delightful, caring people, just living their lives, bothering nobody, and often bringing a great deal of pleasure to others. He is a musician, as is she, and she is also a professional artist. They didn’t deserve to have someone steal the sign, their sense of security, and their trust. It’s hard to find a sense of wonder in the world when you are always wondering, is that person going to do to us what that other person did?

So if you happen to see a wooden sign advertising “Harv’s Appliance Service,” be sure to let me know. It’s hard to regain trust in humanity once it betrays you.