A matter of style?*

Editing another person’s work and having your own work edited by someone else is an interesting project. Two different people’s writing styles and habits come into contact with each other in the editing process, and the question then becomes, “whose style wins out?”

I suppose a precursor question to that one is “what constitutes style?”

Everyone has their own way of doing things. This of course extends to writing as well. But there are different levels of expertise in writing too. Some people are better at it than others. So how do you tell the difference between an editor’s suggestion coming from the fact that they are better at what they do than you, and when it is just a stylistic preference?

In my MA thesis, my the members of my committee were provided with copies of the thesis before my defense, and of course after the defense, they each had suggestions for things that needed to be done before they would accept the thesis as complete. Most of the suggestions were about content, but one of my committee members had covered the pages of the thesis in commas. She was suggesting throughout the thesis that my commas were not properly placed.

I started editing the thesis, inserting all those commas in, but stopped halfway through because I realized that this was just a stylistic difference. Her writing used more commas than mine, but it wasn’t any more “right” than my style of writing. (Of course commas are the most flexible form of punctuation to use and styles range from almost nothing to insertion between every phrase.) In that case, the suggested comma inserts were a stylistic difference and by not inserting them, I don’t think I produced a poorer quality thesis.

But now I’m faced with a similar editing comment. I’ve been told my style in employing citations is faulty. It wasn’t that the MLA citation style was wrong; the comment was that I don’t do enough to set up quotations before inserting them into my writing. The suggestion for changing it felt artificial to me, like how you set up quotations when you’re first learning how to do so, but the advice was coming from a good place, so I took a look at my citations.

Now at first I accepted this advice and revised the way I embedded citations in my writing. But what’s making me wonder if this is simply a stylistic difference is that I’ve been reading other people’s writing, and realized that there is a wide variation in writing. In particular I’m reading Walter Benjamin, who was really big on citation. He seems to employ citation in a way similar to how I do, but contrary to how my editor indicated it should be done.

The quoting changes have already been made, and I’m happy to leave then as such in the essay, but now I’m left puzzling over whether I need to work on this, or whether it is just a stylistic difference for the next time I sit down to write something. I really don’t know.

*blog post originally written Aug 24th.

*breathing a (small) sigh of relief*

We are moved. Or as my husband says, "now all our crap is in our giant, expensive crap-holder."

The tao of moving

Posting will be sparse to non-existent for the next week. We're packing up this weekend and won't have internet access till the middle of next week in the new place.

Having a conversation with my father about moving the other day got me thinking about the way we think of moving. There's of course the saying that good friends are the ones who show up to help you move, and I've certainly had plenty of friends help me move in the past, so that's been borne out as far as I'm concerned.

But this move we'll be going solo. Just the four of us. Two adults and two teens are a pretty reasonable moving team - especially since we're hiring movers for the two specialty items - the pool table and the piano. I've even got my fingers crossed that the landlord calls tomorrow to say that they or the new tenants will take our washer and dryer off our hands. The new place comes with them (and they're better quality than the cheapie ones we bought while on a student budget) and if someone wants to take them off our hands, it's one less thing to move.

My dad and mom actually offered to drive 6 hours to come help us move, which of course would also likely involve sleeping on the floor and another 6 hour drive back, all probably within a couple of days. I love my mom and dad too much to take them up on such an offer. It was nice, but I wouldn't feel like a very good daughter if I agreed to something like that. I'm sure the four of us will do just fine.

But moving got me thinking about how moving and friends mix (or don't). We aren't having any friends help us this time. Mostly because I haven't asked. I already know that many of my friends are busy/on vacation this time of year. And some are just not the kind of friends who will help you move - they'll do all kinds of wonderful other things for you - but they don't even move themselves, let alone help friends move.

And sometimes I think I've got a moving-karma deficit. I feel like I've done more asking of friends to help move than I've done for friends. Not that I've ever said no to a friend who's asked for help, but I just don't think I've been asked as often as I've been the one asking. The last person I said I'd help moved changed the loading date to a day that I was out of town, so I couldn't even fulfill that promise, which I really regret. Perhaps I can be there for their next move...

So we'll be going solo. But we've booked the truck for an extended period because we knew this would be the case, so we don't have to knock ourselves out with a time limit. We're trying to be fairly zen about it, which makes it more than manageable I think. At least with a local move, you can always make a second trip if you feel the need to do so. Cross-continental moves are soooooo much harder!

One of the advantages of moving only a year after the last move is that you haven't accumulated a lot of junk. Don't get me wrong. We accumulated a lot of stuff - seems like we spent all last September and October buying crap for the house - but it hasn't hung around long enough to become junk yet, so the enormous garage sale or trip the the charity hasn't been a feature of this move.

I just find it interesting that moving brings up all kinds of thoughts and feelings that really don't surface at any other time. Maybe it's just the change that does so, or maybe there's a sense of identity associated with places that gets disrupted when you move. I'm not sure what exactly it is - I just know that moving is a really strange experience when you come right down to it.

Slow-moving hockey animals

I actually don't read the comics section of the paper that often, but yesterday's Get Fuzzy set me and my family laughing longer than usual.
(If you're having problems making out the image, follow the link instead)



Just the day before, we'd found an excellent sale price on a Flames jersey, so now I finally own one. But I'd better watch out for the sloth section when I go!

Moving Week

So this is the week we begin moving. I say begin because we'll be stretching it out till the end of the month - which is a real luxury, especially after all our cross country moves - but it begins Friday.

Obviously posting may be even more sparse than usual... or maybe more than usual as I distract myself from boxes...

On second thought, if I'm not packing, I should be revising the paper that's due at the end of the month. So I guess if you're seeing a blog post over the next week, I'm either sailing through the revisions, or I'm logjammed against an immovable and nasty syntactical behemoth.

But while I'm off packing boxes and furiously typing, I leave you with Tenured Radical's Ten Commandments of Moving. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Gone but not forgotten

Last week I had been feeling forgotten, like I was falling prey to "out of sight, out of mind" because of the vast distance between me and the academic people I hang out with.

But last night, my writing group and I met online, and it was fabulous! It took us a good week just to find a day that worked for everyone, but we did it and it was almost like being together. Almost. But it was so good to chat with the members and talk about our writing. As usual, they gave me some excellent ideas, and I'm really excited about implementing them. And I'm absolutely riveted to their narratives - I can't wait to read the next installments!

So this long distance thing does work when everyone's committed to it. It's just getting the committment that's the problem!

I don't remember asking for the "challenge" package

Life has felt like an extra challenge the last few days. I can't even just chalk it up to moving-related stuff. It seems that every aspect of my life seems extra challenging lately.

It is 4pm already and all I can really say I've accomplished is to have taught my one hour of class today. Or at least that's all that feels like it was productive.

If I'd been sipping Mai Tai's on a beach or something the rest of the time, I wouldn't be quite so bothered, but today has been eaten up by a lot of minutiae, which is always annoying. Some of those minutiae exploded in size and the amount of time they ate up, which is doubly annoying. It's one of those days when you start looking at the clock because you can't wait for it to finally be over!

I must admit that I spent some of my time just sitting in my car. I think it was time that I needed to spend there though. This morning as I was driving between errands, I approached a green light. Since it was green, I went through. Twenty-odd years of driving has borne out the assumption that "green means go". Halfway through the intersection, I had to slam on the brakes to keep from being wiped out by a guy in a truck who blew right through a solid red light.

Guess what he was holding up to his ear?

I was shaking so badly from the shock that I had to pull over and sit in my car for a bit. Even then, I almost dropped stuff at the bank because my hands were still shaking.

My car has a really good safety rating - I just don't want to personally test how good it is.

The good and the bad

Given my last post, I realize another personal post like this might be too much. But I still want to say it, so here goes.

Last month a good friend called me up and asked me if I'd be interested in teaching some writing courses at a local technical school. I'd been out of the classroom long enough that I said "sure!" and a little while later, she forwarded sample syllabi for the courses.

The teaching has been fabulous so far! The students are really engaged. For the most part, they're there because they want to be. Of course I do have a few students in each of the two classes I teach who think it is unimportant to come to the English class - they see little value in the class and they've told me so. I'm not making it easy on students like that because we do a lot of in class work, so they're bleeding marks rapidly.

While that may not make them see the use of being able to communicate clearly, it will force them into the classroom and participating - hopefully the incidental result is that they pick up a few things while they're there...

So far I've even enjoyed reading my students' writing. Some of it is predictable, but so much more of it than I thought I'd get is imaginative and plays with the goals of the assignments, and those ones definitely make up for the duller ones. These students aren't afraid to take risks in their writing, and while sometimes it bombs, it also pays off huge dividends for them.

The school is having some serious problems with my electronic access - I have none right now - which was mostly a minor inconvenience until Friday. On that day, I had three different administrative personnel come to ask me for the same thing, which I'm unable to deliver since I can't access any of the drives on the server. (I can access the online learning environment, which is great 'cause I can talk to my students, but I can't use any of the computers at the school to do so.)

It was a little frustrating for me to have three different people come to chew me out for not doing something that I'm unable to do. It was particularly frustrating because I'd made sure I told people about my lack of access, and they said that was fine, I could catch up on administrative paperwork later. Then all of a sudden on Friday it became urgent for me to do this, and I ended up feeling incompetent for not having solved the problem myself. Probably an overreaction, but it still felt like that.

At least this deadline put a fire under a few people's asses and it looks like they might finally get me some network access.... But I'm not holding my breath.

The biggest problem right now is that I've got two (new) class preps on top of my online work and all this moving stuff. So right now it feels like I'm constantly writing a new assignment, or otherwise prepping endlessly. I should be prepping right now instead of blogging...!

The prepping itself isn't hard - I've got lots of good material that I've developed over the years. But it does need to be adapted for the new environment, and because the pedagogical goals are different, some of it needs to be created from scratch.

One thing I'm spending lots of time writing is lab assignments. I've never taught a writing class before that had a lab component, so I have to create all those assignments from scratch.

But I'm also loving having the students sitting in front of computers for two hours a week. It gives us so many opportunities to write, and to write small assignments. It gives the students a sense of accomplishment. It allows me to play with ideas that I've had but never figured out how to work into an essay assignment. And it also gives me a chance to work with them as they write, to identify which students have which problems, so that I can tailor my writing suggestions to addressing their specific problems.

Whenever I'd have a choice about it, I would definitely choose running a writing class with a laboratory component. It's just provides so many more opportunities for the students to write.

Just thinking about writing this post made me think about how much of teaching (or any other job I suppose) consists of both the good and the bad, both inside and outside of the classroom itself.

Isolation

When we made the decision to return home last year, I knew that writing a dissertation long distance would mean I would be more isolated from feedback and the advice/support of colleagues and advisors. I accepted this because the benefits of moving outweighed the disadvantages of it.

But I also assumed that the problems of isolation could be overcome by me if I made the effort to stay in touch. I figured that the problems would mostly arise if I didn't keep the communication lines open and keep on track.

I never really considered the possibility that my advisor or colleagues would adopt an "out of sight, out of mind" stance toward me.

But that's what's happened. It was a bit of a shock when I realized it.

Of course one of the lessons you learn in life is that there's nothing you can do to change someone else's actions. All you can do it change your response to them. My first response was a feeling of being hurt and rejected. Which of course makes it hard to contemplate continuing a relationship. While I still feel hurt by being ignored, I know the only thing I can do is to continue to make the efforts I've been making, to hold up my end of the bargain so to speak. Which I will do.

But it doesn't make the sense of isolation any easier, knowing that my communications may continue to be ignored. This is the struggle of the long distance dissertation writer I suppose. The distance makes it more evident exactly what value others place on your relationship. Perhaps it's good to know where I stand instead of assuming a support system that doesn't really exist. That way I can work to create the support system that I need.

Small things amuse small minds

I just discovered and downloaded an excellent image capture software program and am absolutely tickled at how easy screen shots for our latest work project are now going to be.

Small thing... small mind.

This is a public/private service?

I try to regularly read a couple of elearning sites/ejournals every week. Recently I ran across a link to this blogpost, It's not plagiarism, it's an easy essay, which simply astounded me.

The service offers to custom write essays for students. Now this is nothing new. "Betsy" at Harvard has been doing this for years. What surprised me was the justification for it. In an email interview, the Custom Writing representative has this response to a question about the organization's role in education:

No person can be equally good at everything – if he/she is, then this is the wrong path, a student talent is lost. There are people who are good at Math and IT – let them develop their skills in this field instead of torturing them with writing assignments. What is really the point of this, if students must waste hours developing skills they will never be professional in instead of concentrating on the field their future career will depend upon? I really see the role of custom writing services in education as a relief for those who have already chosen their career, who know their path, and have already somewhat succeeded in it – since services are somewhat costly and in order to buy a custom written paper, a student must have a job (the most part of our customers). Furthermore, academic writing services spare time for students to develop in the field they chose to, so, to some extent, this is a plus for their education too.

First, I really doubt students purchasing these papers are using the time they save to study. I admit it could be possible, but somehow, I doubt that time is used for learning.

Second, why is this only an argument used for writing? If as this genteman argues, one shouldn't spend time learning things that aren't directly relevant to one's line of work, then why did I suffer through all those math classes? Shouldn't I have been excused from them? Perhaps in that case there should be an organization that provides a proxy for me for math exams.

But wait a minute! you might say. You use math everyday. Whenever you go into the store and compare prices, or need to calculate the tax on something, you use math. Nobody carries around a calculator all the time, and even estimating when you'll arrive at your desination, knowing how long the trip is, takes some basic math.

And I would agree with you. I probably use math probably every day in some small way.

But I would also then argue that you use writing skills everyday as well.

Now, I admit, I know people who don't write very often, let alone every day. And yes, it's possible to get through life without learning to write coherent prose. Just as it's possible to get through life without algebra.

But there's something that the Custom Writing representative is missing here in the statement that students do now need to know how to write essays. It's the same thing I constantly harp on to my students, though I know I don't sell all of them on the idea.

"Writing" is not just about putting words on paper.

Thinking that writing an essay is about stringing together sentences and nothing more employs a very limited idea of what writing is about. Consider the OED's definition of writing: "The action of one who writes, in various senses; the penning or forming of letters or words; the using of written characters for purposes of record, transmission of ideas, etc."

The definition has three elements: the first identifies writing as an action, while the second describes the medium in which this action takes place. The third and openended element, is the one that writing teachers like myself are most interested in conveying to our students.

The transmission of ideas is the primary purpose of postsecondary writing assignments. It's also the most inclusive element in the definition, since the transmission of ideas can take many forms and can include any subject. When you think of writing as the transmission of ideas, then you hit right on the money what writing classes in postsecondary institutions are trying to teach - the ability to organize your thoughts on a particular topic into a clear transmission of those thoughts and ideas.

Being able to clearly communicate your ideas to other people is not something just required of the humanities set. Clear communication, which relies of course on critical thinking about that topic and the best method for communicating it, is required in most human endeavours that involve more than one person.

If you cannot clearly communicate your ideas to other team members, to other computer programmers or other mathematicians (to use the example from above), then you will be less successful at your job than someone who can.

This is what writing classes are designed to teach. Having students write essays is less about whether they know grammar and spelling (though problems in these areas can muddy up the meaning of what you're trying to convey), and more about whether they can think about a topic, and then arrange those thoughts in a way that makes it possible for a reader to understand what they are thinking.

This ability does not even need to be demonstrated through the putting of words on paper. This ability can be developed verbally or even visually, but the ability to arrange one's thoughts with an audience in mind in order to communicate with them is absolutely essential to most of the jobs that require any kind of postsecondary training simply because of the nature of human work and collaboration.

I can only assume it's sheer ignorance of the goals of writing programs that could lead someone to think of them as a complete waste of time and irrelevant to certain classes of students.

But then again, I'm a writing teacher, so I think these things are important. And I'll do my damnedest to show my students why it is important to them as well. Organizations like Custom Writing rob students of the opportunity to develop a skill they will need, even in the most technically oriented of jobs.

On not knowing what's in my own mind

The long weekend has finally given me the opportunity to play catch-up in my teaching prep and in my elearning work so that I have some time to dedicate to the dissertation.

I've been fairly faithful in my New Year's resolution to think/read/write about the dissertation for at least 15 minutes a day, which has been useful in keeping my mind in dissertation mode, but you can't write a dissertation without dedicating some serious and contiguous time to working on it. So now that I have more than 15 minutes to spare every day, I've been taking advantage of it.

One of the tasks on my to do list was to map out in detail all the sections of the dissertation. Not just the chapters, which have been described in the prospectus, but the details within the chapters, section by section, or topic by topic. The plan, after mapping out this detail, is then to read what I need to write a single section, write it, then move on to the next one.

My hope is that in this way I will make the dissertation manageable, because it is big by anyone's standards, and could easily become even bigger. The idea is that unlike what I've been doing so far, which is reading a lot with less writing, I'll be reading exactly what I need, when I need to read it, and then writing the necessary section.

Funny thing is, that when I sat down to map all the sections, some of the chapters that I thought would be the easiest ones to map out, have proved the most difficult. And one chapter for which I had my doubts (and my committee expressed the same), turned out to have real justification for its existence once I sat down and filled in the details of what I wanted to talk about in that chapter.

Strange to think that what I thought was in my head, was not the same as what came out when I started to write it down.

I keep telling my writing students this - heck, I told them that just this week - and yet sometimes I forget it myself. Sometimes writing really is the only way to complete the thought process and to know what's actually in your own mind!

The limits of multi-tasking

Most people if you ask them will tell you they're good at multitasking. Most people will also tell you that they are better than average drivers, which of course is a statistical impossibility since at least some of those people who think they are good drivers aren't.

So, most people will tell you they think they're pretty good at multitasking.

I think for the most part I do okay at it. I have met people who cannot deal with more than one task at a time, or who become overwhelmed by multiple tasks at an earlier stage than I do. But I know I'm not superwoman.

Why does that word look funny? Shouldn't women be able to lay claim to super power as well? Perhaps Übermensch (without all that nihilism) would be a better word since it isn't gender specific, just referring to humans...

Anyway, I'm no Übermensch. But I think I've figured out one of the secrets of multitasking: you can get a lot done when it's something you've done before.

When you've done something before, you have two advantages over someone who has never done that task before: you know how long each step of it will (should) take, and your body remembers what it feels like to do that task.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike, or drive a car, or even tie your shoes. The first few times you did each of those things, it required a lot of concentration. When you learned to ride a bike, you were tempted to look at your feet on the pedals instead of where you were going because you were concentrating so hard. When you learned to drive a car, your parents probably made you turn to radio off so it wouldn't distract you. When you learned to tie your shoes, you concentrated on the task (and perhaps your tongue found its way out of the side of your mouth as you concentrated on learning how to tie your shoes... of maybe that was just me!)

When those tasks were unfamiliar, you spent a lot of mental and even physical energy learning them, but once they became familiar, you stopped thinking about them. When was the last time you thought about bunny ears, or over around and through?

But while you learn, it takes a lot of mental energy. If you're doing many activities at the same time that you've done before, you'll use much less mental energy than concentrating on trying to perform a new task.

The other advantage in multitasking things you've done before is that you know how much time everything takes. Think of the first time you tried to cook a dinner that had multiple dishes. You probably had some of the food ready far earlier than needed and were impatiently waiting for something else to cook. (Or again, maybe that was just me!) But after you've done it a few times, you know exactly when you need to start everything in order to have it on the table when you want to serve it.

(I will admit I consistently underestimate how long it will take me to cut fruit. Don't know why, but if you come over to my place for food and it's not ready, look for the fruit plate - that's what threw me off - everytime.)

I've been exhausted lately and trying to figure out why, because I've been getting enough sleep, exercise, food etc.

Then I realized - I've been doing quite a few "new" things lately, and simultaneously, and I think that's why my brain and body are rebelling. Too much overload. I'm teaching two courses at a new school, one of which is a course I've never taught before, and both require new preps to match the objectives at this particular school. We're also trying to buy a house - and we've had some hiccoughs. And we're beginning a new elearning project - one that's really far beyond any expertise that I have - I've been talking to lots of engineers and architects for the project, and they speak a language that's unfamiliar to me.

So I've reached the limits of my multi-tasking. My brain and body need a break from all these new experiences, or at the very least, it needs a lot fewer of them. I don't really see when that will happen, but until then, my ability to do multiple things at one time will be compromised.