Guidelines for the Informal Writing

The informal writings will be of two kinds:

1. Freewriting or brainstorming, either in reponse to a particular question or prompt or on an issue of your own choosing relevant to the broad topic of happiness. The purpose of such writing is to give you an opportunity to work through the issues and ideas of the class at your own pace and in your own way. In such entries, grammar, style, and structure are not important; the only thing that matters is whether or not you got somewhere in your thinking, “somewhere” being defined loosely. Don’t bother with introductions, corrections of grammar or spelling, or conclusions; don’t worry too much about abrupt shifts in topic if that’s the way your thinking leads you. Do try go as far as you can with your observations and ideas. Wind up your brain and see what it wants to spill out.
2. Exercises of various kinds in response to particular prompts. These will not call for freewriting but completion of some other more specific task (e.g. a thesis statement for a paper, a summary of the argument in a text we have read in class, etc.). Usually, the point of these is to give you practice in a skill called for in an upcoming paper or generally useful in life.

Because informal writings are tied closely to what we're doing in class and our schedule is likely to change, due dates for informal writings will be announced in class. If you are absent, be sure to ask whether I assigned some work, preferably by email well before the next class.

Format. Except when I ask you to write in class, informal writings should be turned in electronically via Moodle, preferably in .doc or .docx format. If you don't use Microsoft Word, please make arrangements with me after class. Date your writings and single space them.

How the informal writings will be graded. To give you as much freedom to explore as possible, and to minimize the risk of making errors while you learn, informal writings will be graded according to the following system:

• Informal writings will not be graded individually except on a purely informational minus/check/plus system that I will explain in class.
• To get a B or higher on your informal writings as a whole, you must successfully complete all informal writing assignments and turn them in on time. (What "successfully complete" means depends on the assignment--usually it will simply mean doing what the assignment calls for and taking it seriously.)
• To get an A, you must fulfill the minimum requirements listed above and your informal writings, taken as a whole, must maintain a high standard of thoughtfulness, originality, intellectual ambition, diligence, sophistication, willingness to engage with ideas, keenness of perception, comprehension of key concepts and so on--in short, the overall quality of your work must be high. Borderline grades (B+, A-) are possible.

If you do not meet the minimum requirements listed above, I will make deductions from your grade. Deductions will be determined on a case by case basis, but in general you should expect me to abide by the following guidelines:

• I will deduct 10 points from the final informal writing grade for every missing informal writing. I might take smaller deductions for writings which are only minimally substantive or marginally successful. I reserve the right to count especially labor intensive exercises double, i.e. to deduct 20% from the informal writing grade if you miss such an exercise rather than 10%. Double exercises will be identified as such in advance.
• You may turn in one informal writing late without penalty. After that freebie, if you turn in an informal writing late, I will deduct 1 point from the final informal writing grade for each calendar day it is late, up to a maximum of 5 points per late assignment. (There will probably be a total of 8-10 informal writings, so a pattern of turning in work late could cost you as much as 50% of your final informal writing grade.)
• If you miss an informal on account of an absence--for example, if we freewrite in class on a day you are absent--you may turn in that work late without penalty if you get in touch with me by email before the next class period. I will let you know your new due date for that work by return email (usually it will be the next class). I am generally not sympathetic to the excuse that you tried to email but the email didn't get through, so if that appears to be happening to you, leave a message on my voicemail at 3090 before the next class to establish the time that you tried to get hold of me.

Informal Writing 1

Freewrite for at least 15 minutes in such a way as to get you from what you did in class to the drafting stage on paper 1. What this means will depend on you, but here are some of the obvious choices:

• Try to figure out what claim about happiness you could derive from the personal experience you wrote about.
• If you don't think the experience you chose was the right one, write about a different one.
• Try to get down as much detail about the experience as possible--what people looked like, where you were, what was going on, and so on.
• If it's not totally clear to you what the assignment is asking for, describe what you thinkit's asking for, and try to say why you think it.

You are not confined to those choices, however--write what you think would be useful to you. Turn this in via Moodle no later than Friday, 8/26.

Informal Writing 2

Part 1: write a thesis statement for paper 1. Bring two copies to class on Friday, 8/26. One is for you and can be in any form you like; the other should be on a half sheet of paper and should NOT have your name on it.

Part 2: Discuss what you did with your thesis statement in writing paper 1. If you kept it the same, explain why the thesis was good; if you changed it, explain what you thought wasn't going to work and how you tried to solve the problem(s).

Turn in both parts via Moodle no later than Monday, 8/29. Moodle can make it hard to turn in multiple documents, so put everything in one Word document. (If you don't use Word, talk to me and we'll come up with an alternate format.)

Informal Writing 3

As soon as possible after you see The Pursuit of Happyness, freewrite for 15 minutes or so on the following questions: What claim or claims does The Pursuit of Happyness seem to be making about happiness (or happyness, if you think they're different)? According to the movie, what does happiness consist of, and how does one obtain it? In your personal opinion, are the movie's claims about happiness right?

Informal Writing 4

Freewrite on the process by which you read the excerpt from Herodotus' Histories. Some of the following replicates work we have done in class; feel free to use that material word for word where it answers the questions below. Do be sure to address all three areas below.

1) Describe your process of reading the essay before class. How many times did you read it? What marks did you make on it (highlighting, underlining, notes in the margins, other marks)? What were you trying to accomplish with these marks? Did you doing anything else which would help you understand the text, such as discussing it with a friend?

2) Discuss whether or not what you have done is typical of how you work. You were assigned to read this essay, but no other additional work was called for. Would you normally read an assigned essay less actively, more actively, or about the same? What factors would determine how actively you read a text assigned for a class?

3) Assess the effectiveness of your practice. By now, you know what we did with the reading in class; how well did your reading prepare you for it? When I asked you to identify the main claims of the letter under time pressure, how well could you do it? Based upon your current understanding of the essay (now that we have discussed it in class), how well do you think you understood the essay when you read it on your own? Were you prepared to contribute to your group's presentation of the main claims?

Resist the temptation to pad your description of your reading practices. This exercise is only useful if you're honest with yourself, and I will grade this journal entry not according to how well you read the text but rather according to how thoughtful you are in reflecting on your processes of reading.

Informal Writing 5

In an email, describe what topic or idea you want to write about in paper 4. This is due no later than midnight on Monday 10/22, but I recommend that if possible you get it to me by midnight on Saturday 10/22. That way I can send your topics over to the librarian working with us in our library session on 3/22, and she may able to tailor her presentation to meet the specific needs of the class. A short to middling paragraph is all you need to send me. What you write in the email does not commit you irrevocably to a topic; you can change you mind later if the topic doesn't seem to be working out or if you find something that interests you more.