Group work for college administrator admissions essays

1.     As a group, come to an agreement on which two essays among the six that we read for today seem most like argument essays, which seem most strongly to make a debatable point. For those two essays, agree on a sentence that you think is the best candidate for a thesis statement.

2.     Imagine that your group is the admissions committee for an elite graduate program for college administrators seeking an advanced certificate in Social and Emotional Learning. Excellent writing skills are one of the criteria for admission. Other qualities the committee is looking for are strong leadership abilities, good critical thinking skills, and emotional intelligence. 

You have a group of six finalists, all of whom have been deemed equal in every respect (graduate school transcripts, publications, service to their universities, etc.) and now you must choose which two candidates to admit based on the writing samples you have before you.

Revision advice

Here's a link to the text of the PowerPoint presentation on revision I've beenI sharing with you in class, in case you want to revisit any of the strategies or ideas we covered.

You're encouraged but not required to revise essay #1. Remember that revisions are due a week after you receive your feedback from me (or on Friday, September 21, if you received your feedback before Friday, September 14). But you are also welcome to ask for an extension on your revision for essay #1. Don't forget your cover letter detailing the significant changes you've made in your revision. (Below, you will find a few examples of revision cover letters.)

Example #1:

Example #2

Example #3

The power of the open letter

If you're interested in a discussion of the open letter as a form of political protest, "The Intimate, Political Power of the Open Letter" by Emily Nordi explores how the form has been used as a vehicle for literary activism by writers of color.

Open letters can also address more personal concerns, or can even be used to humorously raise issues with a colleagues, public servants, institutions, or nursery rhyme characters, as is sometimes the case in the various "Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond" at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

In the last few minutes of class, begin thinking about who or what you would write an open letter to if you could (or had to). Make a short list of what you might want to say in your open letter, and if you have time, begin drafting the first two or three paragraphs.

Launching Points and Monday's reading assignment

We'll talk about launching points in class today, so her are a few resources for you to consult if you feel your essay needs a launching point and you're working on creating one:

A basic overview of the launching point

A simple example of a revision that introduces a launching point

A second example essay in need of a launching point

The second essay with a more nuanced launching point introduced through revision.

And here is your reading assignment for Monday, James Baldwin's "A Letter to My Nephew" (this is a link to online publication; here's a PDF version if you prefer to print the essay). Written in 1962, "A Letter to My Nephew" is an open letter (a genre we'll talk about in class on Monday), and thus it serves the dual purpose of a correspondence and also an essay (or, in many cases, some other public statement).

Tuesday, September 18 in class

A few modes of opinion essay, as reflected by purpose-announcing titles

·     “In defense of…” (as in Judith Drake’s 1696 long essay, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex)

·     “An Apology for…” (as in R.L. Stevenson’s 1877 essay “An Apology for Idlers”)

·     “In Praise of…” (as in Bertrand Russell’s 1935 essay, “In Praise of Idleness”)

·     “In Celebration of…” or “A Celebration of…” (as in “A Celebration of Life”by Rene Dubos)

·     “Against…” (as in Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay “Against Interpretation”)

·     “A Critique of…” (as in Emmanuel Kant’s 1781 workCritique of Pure Reason)

Claim: A single, debatable assertion, expressing a particular “take” on or an informed opinion on a topic or issue. A claim is an essential element of every point you make, and of the argument as a whole. You can’t make a point without making a claim.

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Choose a claim from Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating” or Stevenson’s “An Apology for Idlers” and write three paragraphs agreeing and expanding on it (and/or updating it for the twenty-first century) OR disagreeing with and disproving it (and/or suggesting why it isn’t relevant in the twenty-first century)

Hazlitt group work

William Hazlitt, “On the Pleasure of Hating”

Discuss these questions with your small group, taking turns recording answers in this document as you arrive at conclusions:

1.    Take the long paragraph beginning at the top of page 190 and ending at the top of page 192 and break it into several shorter paragraphs. Where would it make sense to break this very long paragraph up? What effect does breaking it up have?

2.    Does Hazlitt actually see Hating as a “pleasure,” or is it something else? What else might this essay be called? (“On the ______ of hating?” “A ______ for/of hating”? Or…?) Does this seem like a defenseor an apology, or is it something else entirely (and if so, what would you call it?)

3.    Does this defense of hating seem in any way true to you? (Does it seem to show us something important about its age and/or culture, or about human nature itself?) Or is more a product of its author’s personality? Why? Find one or two pieces of evidence for one perspective, or the other, or both.

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4.    Is hating an important part of contemporary mainstream American culture? If so, how so? (And if not, what makes you say so?) Answer in a well-developed paragraph that encompasses the complexity of your group's discussion on this question.