Hello friends-- Yesterday, I taught my first proper creative writing class on the sentence. It went well, I think. The students were engaged and present. I had wondered if they would be interested or willing to discuss the political dimension of the language we use and how it undergirds things like what is considered professional, acceptable for public discourse, or respectable. I had also wondered if I was qualified to broach such a topic. But to my surprise, they went there all on their own, and we dug down into the weird, invisible rules that govern how one emails a professor and how you know you’ve trespassed with friends when they suddenly start punctuating their sentences. Apparently, there are a lot of teachers who have
WEIRDLY EARNEST
WEIRDLY EARNEST
WEIRDLY EARNEST
Hello friends-- Yesterday, I taught my first proper creative writing class on the sentence. It went well, I think. The students were engaged and present. I had wondered if they would be interested or willing to discuss the political dimension of the language we use and how it undergirds things like what is considered professional, acceptable for public discourse, or respectable. I had also wondered if I was qualified to broach such a topic. But to my surprise, they went there all on their own, and we dug down into the weird, invisible rules that govern how one emails a professor and how you know you’ve trespassed with friends when they suddenly start punctuating their sentences. Apparently, there are a lot of teachers who have