Link to Email Notes & Essay Options for next Tuesday

If you want to revisit any of the tips or advice I covered regarding writing email, here's the text. There are a couple of resources mentioned at the end, but because I turned the document into a PDF, the links don't work, so here they are: Re: Your Recent Email to Your Professor  and Email Etiquette from Purdue’s OWL.

Here are the four essays we'll be choosing from for our reading next Tuesday:

"I Choose to Be Fat"

I might as well tell you now that this essay won’t end with a scene from that brighter, happier life: an image of a newly svelte me out hiking or auditioning a red dress for a hot date, reflecting that I’d never known the beauty of the world — and of myself — until I’d lost the weight. This is not that kind of essay. It’s an explanation and a celebration of a single decision: Even if I never lost a single pound, I’d be just fine. I’d be better than fine.


"I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me"

In my previous life... I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LGBT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity was, in reality, doing more harm than good.

Within the world created by the various apps I used, I got plenty of shares and retweets. But this masked how ineffective I had become outside, in the real world. The only causes I was actually contributing to were the causes of mobbing and public shaming. 


"In Praise of Incompetence"

Perhaps the one act of rebellion I’ve made in a life full of obeisance to my internal gods is to reject the genius mandate and opt instead for competence. This has freed me on the one hand, and made a drone of me on the other. I do not allow myself to expect brilliance; I attempt to squelch even the slightest longing for it. But I do allow myself to strive for paragraphs as well made — if I may say, as masterful — as any solid piece of furniture constructed by a skilled carpenter.


"What Sharp Teeth You Have"

I would rather be killed by a lion than by a man. When lions attack, it’s not personal. You’re either food or a perceived threat, and there’s nothing more to it—no basis in psychopathology or hatred or jealousy, no motivation to manipulate, no “mommy issues,” no rejection of moral standards, no intra-species betrayal. Lions are guileless. We accept that they are killers. 

[With men of my own species,] Distinguishing who presents a danger can be difficult, even among the familiar....