Kayla's Log
After filling out the daily index cards, to start off class, Mat began with playing a recording of the poem Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich because he said he was sick of hearing his own voice.
Then, Madison read the log from last class to review since it had been over a week since the last class.
Mat went over the syllabus changes and how the mini-presentations, lead discussions, and logs would work since all the dates are different. He then proceeded to answer some of the questions people wrote on the index cards from last class about Wix, the formats of blog posts, what we study in class, such as composition, genre, commenting on other people’s blogs, you can revise your essay as many times as you need to until you get the grade you want (oh, wow. A blessing.), and what topics you should blog about and as long as they are connected to the class, students are welcome to do a “free-for-all” and explore other topics and not stay within any bounds (“Fuck bounds, right?”). Presentations should be focused around nontraditional text.
We have a lot of stuff to do.
“I Once Was Miss America” by Roxane Gay
Neako volunteered to read his blog post which was about using literature’s ability to empower its readers and how people can use it as an escape from reality, like he would sometimes do with the Batman movies. Lauren then read her blog post which discussed how she related Sweet Valley to her hometown of St. Pete and its similarities in perfection. Jake also volunteered to read his second blog post and wrote about how nostalgia related to his relationship to Captain America and how it inspired him to be courageous.
Mat proceeded to talk about how when we write our blog posts, we should, be doing a little research to gain context and especially, using our own experiences to relate back to the pieces we read.
Before going over project 1, Mat went around and tried to learn everyone’s names again.
**These are some of the things we learned: you shouldn’t jump on round trampolines. Fishing is boring. He finally found out who Ethan was. He made some hurricane sound effects.
We went on to discuss project 1. The text, “I Was Once Miss America,” is an example for Project 1: Personal Narrative that revolves around a text. Sweet Valley Confidential was Gay’s text in this case. Mat provided a genre analysis of how Gay broke down her piece and the community in which she came from where she was a second-generation Haitian and expanded it to her high school in Omaha.
For project 1, you are writing about a community that you already know about. Some of the communities you can use can be your experiences in high school or at another school, clubs, or your involvement at the university. There is a pictochart on the Wix site that is a great reference for when you are working on the project. Note: personal narratives almost always uses the personal pronoun “I” so it is okay to use it in your writing. Focus on one thing.
The class did three different free writing exercises that may be helpful in writing project 1 and Mat brought it to the class’ attention that the “shitty first draft” of Project 1 is due on January 24.
Next class is the Peeling the Onion workshop, so everyone should come prepared to explain what community they are going to write about and what text they will relate it to for projects 1 and 2 (write it down). For project 2, it is a community that you want to get involved in and are gravitating towards. Determine what you need help with and ask questions.
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