Aside from some really corrosive acid, is there any substance that seems more destructive in its effects than spilled coffee?
No, in fact, coffee is proven to be the most destructive substance on planet Earth when spilled. It assumes the characteristics of some sort of supernatural entity run amuck when unleashed, no matter how much of it actually escapes its container.
Why is it that coffee seems to be attracted to white paper like a magnetic force?
Like a shark attracted to blood, coffee seems to feel the need to be absorbed by paper of all things. Regardless of where you spill it, chances are it will find paper to stain, and it won't be something harmless like an old newspaper. No, it will find a book. It will turn its pages a darker shade of brown and a warped shape that resembles some form of radio wave.
Is there anything I can do to prevent coffee from spilling on my books?
No, there really isn't a defense against coffee spills. In fact, the more you try to prevent coffee from spilling, the greater chance your coffee will adapt to the drastic measures you are adopting. It's an unstoppable force that will never be stopped in our times.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Before I further address the issue of revision that I wrote about in my last post, I have to clarify some of my comments.
When I wrote that I never had to revise a paper in all my days as an student, I meant that literally. Never once, as an undergraduate student in English and education, did I have a professor require a revision of a paper as part of the course curriculum. It might have been optional, but I just don't recall it ever happening as a required assignment in class.
This was also the same program where I got away with not taking a grammar class until my last semester. Did I suffer gradewise up until that point? No, in fact I did very well, and that leads me to something I've always had trouble with resolving in my head, the differing grading policies of all the professors I had over those years. Some marked my papers thoroughly, others didn't. It makes one wonder about the quality of one's writing. Was it grammatically correct as well as thematically interesting? Was it neither? Did the professors even know how to check for grammar? Sometimes I wondered if they did.
The comment about having a hard time accepting criticism isn't right. That makes it sound as if I had a problem with any comment that wasn't glowing praise written on a paper. I should clarify that to mean that the criticism I have a problem with is that which is written for papers intended to be rewritten. For the most part, these types of comments are vague or unhelpful. When you're confined to writing only three or four pages, you don't have a lot of room to expand upon your ideas. It's a very cut and dry paper. When the grader writes that you should do this, this and this, it's hard to fathom how you're supposed to accomplish any of it within the confines of a three to four page paper.
This leads to the related point that writing a philosophy paper is much different from writing a paper on a literary topic. Arguments have to be formed and concluded within the confines of the paper with little or no room for creativity. I don't like this at all. Parts of my paper that I think are worth keeping are earmarked for revision with little or no reason as to why. It's also not helpful when one paragraph out of the entire paper that is written in a faux-philosophical way is singled out as being what the entire paper should look like. How one is supposed to sustain a style that boils an argument down into, what I would term, talking points is beyond me. I can't sustain a paper that long without writing in a looser sense of creativity. Handcuffed might be the proper terminology to use in this instance.
Having said all that, I will admit that the paper I had to revise did need revising. The problem, though, relates back to what I was talking about earlier. I had a class over the summer where my papers weren't confined in any sense, and I was allowed to expand at length on the points I wanted to make without any fear of it being marked as being lengthy for no reason or off-topic. Again, it probably depended on the fact that I had a different grader than I do now. Both are teaching assistants, but one has a doctorate in comparative literature and the other does not. Obviously the former has a much more extensive knowledge base with regards to grammar and writing and that accounts for most of it. What I'm boggled by is the fact that the papers that we're ripping apart in our section from the other writing section seem to be awful. One of those papers happened to be the only one that my instructor deemed worthy of granting an A, an A- but an A nonetheless. I thought the paper was terrible and asked why it was granted that grade. Saying that, I realize that I might sound bitter at my grade, which was right in the heart of the majority of the distribution. I'm not, because, like I said, it definitely needed revising to some extent.
I don't know that this clarifies much of anything that I wrote previously, but I think it fleshes it out a bit.
When I wrote that I never had to revise a paper in all my days as an student, I meant that literally. Never once, as an undergraduate student in English and education, did I have a professor require a revision of a paper as part of the course curriculum. It might have been optional, but I just don't recall it ever happening as a required assignment in class.
This was also the same program where I got away with not taking a grammar class until my last semester. Did I suffer gradewise up until that point? No, in fact I did very well, and that leads me to something I've always had trouble with resolving in my head, the differing grading policies of all the professors I had over those years. Some marked my papers thoroughly, others didn't. It makes one wonder about the quality of one's writing. Was it grammatically correct as well as thematically interesting? Was it neither? Did the professors even know how to check for grammar? Sometimes I wondered if they did.
The comment about having a hard time accepting criticism isn't right. That makes it sound as if I had a problem with any comment that wasn't glowing praise written on a paper. I should clarify that to mean that the criticism I have a problem with is that which is written for papers intended to be rewritten. For the most part, these types of comments are vague or unhelpful. When you're confined to writing only three or four pages, you don't have a lot of room to expand upon your ideas. It's a very cut and dry paper. When the grader writes that you should do this, this and this, it's hard to fathom how you're supposed to accomplish any of it within the confines of a three to four page paper.
This leads to the related point that writing a philosophy paper is much different from writing a paper on a literary topic. Arguments have to be formed and concluded within the confines of the paper with little or no room for creativity. I don't like this at all. Parts of my paper that I think are worth keeping are earmarked for revision with little or no reason as to why. It's also not helpful when one paragraph out of the entire paper that is written in a faux-philosophical way is singled out as being what the entire paper should look like. How one is supposed to sustain a style that boils an argument down into, what I would term, talking points is beyond me. I can't sustain a paper that long without writing in a looser sense of creativity. Handcuffed might be the proper terminology to use in this instance.
Having said all that, I will admit that the paper I had to revise did need revising. The problem, though, relates back to what I was talking about earlier. I had a class over the summer where my papers weren't confined in any sense, and I was allowed to expand at length on the points I wanted to make without any fear of it being marked as being lengthy for no reason or off-topic. Again, it probably depended on the fact that I had a different grader than I do now. Both are teaching assistants, but one has a doctorate in comparative literature and the other does not. Obviously the former has a much more extensive knowledge base with regards to grammar and writing and that accounts for most of it. What I'm boggled by is the fact that the papers that we're ripping apart in our section from the other writing section seem to be awful. One of those papers happened to be the only one that my instructor deemed worthy of granting an A, an A- but an A nonetheless. I thought the paper was terrible and asked why it was granted that grade. Saying that, I realize that I might sound bitter at my grade, which was right in the heart of the majority of the distribution. I'm not, because, like I said, it definitely needed revising to some extent.
I don't know that this clarifies much of anything that I wrote previously, but I think it fleshes it out a bit.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
I never revise papers. At least I never revised any of the papers I wrote as an undergraduate or graduate student. I don't think my writing is beyond reproach, but I never felt the need to write a rough-draft and revise it before turning in a final copy. I also never had a class where you were given the assignment to revise a paper. That is until this semester.
Literally, I just finished my revision before writing this post, so the juices are still flowing with regards to my opinions on the practice. I understand the need to revise and rewrite, but I have a hard time accepting the criticism that goes along with it. I won't claim that I feel all of my papers are works of genius, but I like my writing, and I like my writing of papers even more.
Heck, even in creative writing class I liked my work the way it turned out when I was done. Revise a poem? Are you crazy? It just didn't seem right.
Perhaps I believe that the process of writing is special in and of itself and shouldn't be tampered with after the fact. Writing, when you're writing, has the finality to it that other activities seem to lack. I don't want to go back and try to capture the flow I had when composing the work the first time. It's never there.
It's reminds me a lot of those times when I'm drifting off to sleep and I'm thinking of writing. My mind seems to flow in such a smooth way. Inevitably, I wake up and can't recall what I was thinking about. Where'd it go? Wherever it went, I can't bring it back just like the flow of writing a paper and hitting the final keystroke for the last word. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Literally, I just finished my revision before writing this post, so the juices are still flowing with regards to my opinions on the practice. I understand the need to revise and rewrite, but I have a hard time accepting the criticism that goes along with it. I won't claim that I feel all of my papers are works of genius, but I like my writing, and I like my writing of papers even more.
Heck, even in creative writing class I liked my work the way it turned out when I was done. Revise a poem? Are you crazy? It just didn't seem right.
Perhaps I believe that the process of writing is special in and of itself and shouldn't be tampered with after the fact. Writing, when you're writing, has the finality to it that other activities seem to lack. I don't want to go back and try to capture the flow I had when composing the work the first time. It's never there.
It's reminds me a lot of those times when I'm drifting off to sleep and I'm thinking of writing. My mind seems to flow in such a smooth way. Inevitably, I wake up and can't recall what I was thinking about. Where'd it go? Wherever it went, I can't bring it back just like the flow of writing a paper and hitting the final keystroke for the last word. Once it's gone, it's gone.
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