First of all, spit your gum out, please. I know it helps you cope with your ADHD, but a rule is a rule! Not under the chair! In the trash can, please!
Okay, let’s get down to business: This is a writing class, and I expect everyone to give me their best effort; after all, I will be holding your grade hostage, and if you want to graduate and go on to high school you must accommodate my every writing whim. Here are my top ten rules:
Rule #1: All assignments must be written in MLA format. I know it seems a bit OCD to be so picky about particular spaces, indentations, and headings, but c’est ce que c’est! And if you don’t know what that means, you can sign up for French I next year.
Rule #2: If I assign a personal essay you can I, I, I, I all over the place; but in every other formal essay, I don’t want to see personal pronouns. I also don’t want to see contractions, text speak, or slang. Be professional.
Rule #3: Open with a strong introduction: a startling statistic, an anecdote, a quotation, or an applicable example. Do not begin with a question unless you are famous. And if you are famous, you can do what you want as long as you keep me on your Christmas list. The last sentence of your introduction should state your thesis and preview your main supporting points.
Rule #4: Don’t preach to me at the end, don’t give me a happy-sappy-ever-after ending, and don’t dribble away to nothing. Re-state your thesis, but not in the exact same way; review your main points; and don’t introduce new material. End with a strong declarative sentence with a general application that your reader can take away. Don’t end stating your desire to work for world peace. That’s been done and failed.
Rule #5: Don’t use clichés or overused phrases. If it sounds like a lyric to a song, it probably is. Think of a fresh way to say what you want to say because some phrases are as old as the hills and leave me cold as ice!
Rule #6: You are not Hemingway, so you don’t need to cut adjectives and adverbs to the bone, but think about every modifier you include. Read your sentence with it and without it and see what incredibly illustrious form is best for your undying, world-changing purpose. Get the idea? The bulk of your text should be short words that you can dredge up from your childhood and not the fifty cent variety that you learned from skimming “Word Power” in your grandfather’s bathroom copy of Reader’s Digest.
Rule #7: After you’re done writing your essay, stand in front of the mirror and read it out loud. If you can’t stand it, I probably won’t like it either, so revise before your initial submission.
Rule #8: If you are having trouble starting, cluster, brainstorm, or freewrite to get the ideas flowing. If you are still stuck, write down all the things you thought you’d never tell anyone. Write about who really broke your mom’s favorite lamp and about the time you set fire to your neighbor’s poodle. Once you get a groove going, destroy the incriminating part or rewrite it and blame it on your brother.
Rule #9: Use proper grammar and punctuation. “Let’s eat, Grandma” is addressing Grandma; whereas, “Let’s eat Grandma” will put you in the Hall of Fame with the Donner Party. So punctuate properly so the reader understands what in the world you mean. And please, no run on stream-of-consciousness sentences. This is not the 60s and drugs are illegal.
Rule #10: Last, if I get an email at 11:00 p.m. the night before the assignment is due, asking what the assignment is, you get zero on principle alone. Plan and execute your assignments plenty of time in advance because computers hate you and your dog is really waiting for that chance to eat your homework. It tastes just like chicken.
I’m looking forward to a great year, and remember I can be bribed with coffee and chocolate!
That was definitely the most entertaining blog I have read so far. I enjoyed the humor that you used in your writing. I know if I was a student and had a teacher with rules like that, I would definitely be enjoying that class or at least the teacher's humor. You hit everything that happens to a person when writing an essay or anything for that matter. I like the fact that you were straight to the point with everything you said. You followed your own advice the entire time. I love the fact that I can imagine you at the front of the class saying all of this to your students, who are staring mindlessly, wide eyed, and scared to death. I definitely enjoyed your example on punctuation can change the entire meaning of a sentence.
ReplyDeleteI really hope you are attending school to become a teacher of some sort because I truly feel that you would make an excellent teacher. If by chance you become an English teacher, I suggest you use this list as part as your part of course description for the part as for what you expect a paper to be like and the steps a student should take in preparing to write an essay that will satisfy you.
Oh my word! You sound exactly like my high school teacher! She's another very funny woman, like yourself, and she's a joy to work with. I love the punctuation lecture also! I first heard the "Let's eat Grandma" example from a tee shirt I saw someone wearing. I love your sarcasm in rule #10, you easily defeat all those middle school/high school excuses! The whole piece was very fun to read, and it caught my attention right from the start! I love your no-nonsense, yet still humorous tone that you take, and your snide little comments.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Under Construction, you really should go to school to become an English teacher. You would be one of those teachers that students would actually learn from, and remember all their lives. The flow you have going with it is great, I can see it being spoken, and it flows well being read, also.
My mom used to teach Latin, and had a similar list of rules. One of them was that you may not curse in her class, except in Latin. We worked up some very creative swears! Now, I sort want to be a teacher, just so that I can steal this list from you to terrorize my students with! Thank you so much for being such an interesting writer!
-Alley
Wow, I wish I would have had you as a teacher in middle school! I really love how you give off this presence of being the "cool" teacher while also showing that you're a "no bull" teacher. If I were a teacher I would have very similar rules to you. I especially love your rules 7 & 10. If I had followed number 7 during my middle school years I probably would have written way better papers. Too often I just wrote to get it over with, never looked over it and just turned it in. Looking back on it my poor teachers must have been so frustrated! I also really love and resinate with number 10. During high school I had a friend that procrastinated so much she’d call me late at night to ask me what the assignment was the night before it was due. Then she’d wonder why she got such a low grade on it! Aside from the paper potentially being horrible, it just stresses the student out more and they aren’t really learning anything from the assignment - they’re simply trying to get it done.
ReplyDeleteWell done list! I hope you become a teacher or something, I think some people could really learn substantial things from you!
I thoroughly enjoyed your blog post. You remind me of my friend Crystal. She is an English major who just transferred to Berkeley. Crystal is always going on about proper writing and how much she loves reading. Each rule made a lot of sense and was good advice. Most of the rules made me laugh and had “because it is true” humor. I think I am going to use your post for my transfer essays because I made a few mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI dislike it when people use clichés in their writing. There are so many ways to describe something. “A picture is worth a thousand words” has got to be the most used cliché of all time. I must admit that I used this cliché when I first took English 101 when I was sixteen. The professor took points off and ever since I have steered clear of clichés! Haha Number eight was awesome. I love the “blame it on your brother” part.
Number nine reminds me of this funny punctuation on the Internet called “commas save lives”. The example was similar to yours. The sentence was “Let’s eat Grandpa!” and “Let’s eat, Grandpa.” Funny how much a comma makes so much difference in certain situations.
Number ten is so important. I have come to the point where I will no longer respond. I am somewhat the same person who would help someone out of an academic situation. Now I realize that it is not my problem. If someone is close to a deadline when they had days to do the assignment, then I have to think hard about helping them.
Is it clichés to say: rules are written to be broken?
ReplyDeleteYou just made my day. I hate rules but yours put the biggest smile on my face. I think you would make a great teacher. Hope that’s what you are studding for, so our younger generation can learn from you. Are those rules you put in your own writing; I am just asking because your writing is great. I can picture you reading this out loud to student and being so polished and not letting your students see the humor in it. I wish you where my teacher in high school, maybe I would have care to show up and want to know what my homework assignments where. This blog is inspiriting to make me, it make me want to write about something I care about and not just another school assignment. Then again, I am in college now and can enjoy reading this blog. But in high school must likely I would not have seen the humor your rules, your rules would have just made me mad that you gave me more rules to follow. Thank you for this fun blog, it truly made my day. Shyla
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I got on a roll at midnight :-). I feel strongly about proper organization and a good technical product; otherwise, communication doesn't happen, which is the whole goal.
ReplyDeleteI tormented my children when they wrote their papers, but I knew I had truly succeeded when they started to challenge me on my critique. My second son is a deep thinker. When we brought he and his brothers home to home educate, his writing was one long ramble! It was like a 60s drug trip or some of the crazy poems that were inflicted on me in high school, which I never could figure out! It was painful to sit with him and bleed red ink all over his papers, but when I gave him the proper tools to really communicate what he was thinking and trying so hard to express, I was astounded at the deep thoughts in this child of mine. That child just finished his PhD in Philosophy a few weeks ago! It's not about innate intellect; it's about tools to express what's there. And if you can laugh a little, too, well, that's even better! Good luck to you.