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Growl
Why does writing papers always have to be so hard? Discuss.
And while you're busy with that, let me just say that Growl is about the supercoolio-est thing ever. No more must click to Mail.app every time I get the new mail chime—Growl tells me immediately what arrived so I can know it's mostly junk I don't need to worry about (except when it's a comment from you, dear reader, of course!). No more do I have to click to iTunes to remind myself of the name and artist of the currently playing song—Growl tells me that, too. It's slick, unobtrusive, and just works. If you use OS X, you really should try this. It's very very cool.
Someday I won't be procrastinating or writing papers. Really. I know it's going to happen. Soon.
Posted May 4, 2005 10:51 PM | mac geek
I love Growl! For some reason I haven't been able to get it to work with mail. I guess I should work on that.
Posted by: Curtis at May 5, 2005 12:11 AM
"Why does writing papers always have to be so hard?"
I am glad to hear that even English gurus find it difficult to write a paper at times.
Posted by: JR at May 5, 2005 12:29 AM
Writing can be hell. Even beyond more simple reasons like laziness, writing can be the container for all sorts of emotional issues. Like any kind of personal expression, what we create represents a part of who we are, we leave ourselves vulnerable in the writing we offer up.
Posted by: edmund at May 5, 2005 12:48 AM
Curtis: I had to enter a couple of commands in terminal to tell Mail to play nice with Growl, but the simple instructions are in the Growl documentation.
JR and Edmund: Yes, writing is hard, even for a former English teacher. For me the problem seems a lot like laziness, but that is really probably a symptom of not wanting to confront the issues I'm supposed to be addressing in this paper. However, rather than being emotionally challenging, it's just challenging because of the work involved in articulation -- connecting one idea to the next in a way that will be persuasive and interesting and actually say what I want to say. That's not so hard when you're tackling one or two discrete ideas in a blog post; it gets a lot more difficult when you're trying to mash together many different ideas about which your audience will be highly skeptical. Due tomorrow. Must write it!
Posted by: ambimb at May 5, 2005 08:16 AM
What I always found was that I enjoyed the research and thinking process, but the actual writing--as you said, the articulation--generally killed me. I have a lot of sympathy for my comp. students because of this, and I'm honest about my own struggles as a writer, because I think it's important that they understand everyone has his or her own troubles with the process, even those of us who do it for a living in some fashion.
(That sympathy doesn't extend to students who end up plagiarizing, even if they do so out of panic. Especially if they want to be lawyers someday. You can just ask the student I took down to the chair's office yesterday how sympathetic I am in this situation...)
Posted by: raquel at May 5, 2005 10:02 AM
Oh, Raquel, do tell! We want to hear all the juicy details about pre-law students plagiarizing! Is the kid going to fail, or do they do it like at UIUC where they make you bend over backward to find a way to give the kid a second, or third, or sixth chance? Was it blatant, no excuses, kid-had-to-know what he/she was doing type plagiarism, or is it plausible that he/she didn't realize where the line was?
Why is plagiarism so hard for college students to understand?
Posted by: ambimb at May 5, 2005 10:12 AM
George Bush sez riting is hard. So is saying nucular..
Anyway.. my big announcement is up (yes, I am an attention whore).
Posted by: musclehead at May 5, 2005 12:25 PM
When a student uses the term "normative prejudice" correctly in a freshman comp essay? That's usually a sign things are not all they appear. As typical, 'twas easy to spot and 'twas easy to find the journal articles cut and pasted to form an essay. There was no way this was accidental.
Fortunately the school has very specific procedures and policies for this sort of thing: first offense, F on assignment; second, F in course, goes straight to dean; third, suspended from school. And word is actually spread around--my chair said she was going to contact the head of the student's academic program to let her know, and that she had already talked to other faculty to see if anyone had a run-in with the student.
Plus she told me we were cracking down and showing no mercy. :) Kind of a nice change from UIUC, I'll admit, especially for a rapidly growing community college that's scrambling to find space and faculty. (15,000 students at our tiny downtown campus alone.) It would be easy to let this sort of thing slide in the interests of business. I will say, however, they probably run into more cases like this than we did at UIUC.
Lest this be unconnected to the topic--the student is studying law, and the essay was on, of all things, whether homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt.
Of course, the student will still pass my class, though barely. I'd prefer to flunk 'em on the first offense. Maybe that'll learn 'em. *puts on super hero cape*
Posted by: raquel at May 6, 2005 06:05 PM
