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My Vision for Our English Course

English courses can be taught in a lot of ways, and you have probably experienced one or more of these styles that don’t work too well:

  • It doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it; spelling and grammar are all that count.
  • Let’s talk about politics—and you won’t get a good grade unless you agree with me.
  • I’m really in love with this author, so the only thing worth discussing is his/her writing.
  • This is a great time for you to spout off unsupported opinions and treat the course like a political rally.

When I was a student, I had to sit through all of these, and I don’t think I learned very much in those classes. We won’t be doing any of them.

So what will we be doing?

First, a bit of realism: I know that business, nursing, and exercise science account for about 75% of my students. This is probably the only course this semester in which you will be asked to write a paper—most of your college experience, for quite a while, will be memorizing things and taking tests. I also know that many of my students assume (incorrectly) that they will never have to write anything again after English is done.

A skills course

In spite of what you may think now, there’s a lot of writing to be done if you are a nurse, accountant, stockbroker, etc. Just ask your instructors. I want to help you toward the writing skills you will need to move ahead in your profession.

Critical thinking

One of the goals of Ashland University (and of this course) is to teach you how to think.

Consider a typical murder mystery (and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to read a couple this summer). If the victim dies in a simple, straightforward way—there’s an earthquake and a building falls on him—there’s no point in writing a murder mystery. It would be a newspaper story about six pages long. But in a typical murder mystery (for example, Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers) the detective has to figure out who did it, how, and why. That requires a lot of extra thinking and insight. (In my Dorothy Sayers example, even the identity of the deceased is a huge mystery.)

As I write this, the news is carrying the story of an artistic swimmer who suddenly fainted during the world aquatics championships in Budapest and had to be rescued by her coach. The reasons for her fainting were not immediately obvious—so even in the world of exercise science, critical thinking is necessary to know what happened and how it could be prevented in the future.

Critical thinking is a lot like the world of the detective: going beyond the basic facts to examine questions of how and why. An educated person goes beyond simply knowing a lot of stuff: being able to think about information and draw new conclusions is an essential part of being educated.

Dealing with burnout

An enormous freshman problem is burnout. Sometimes it shows up as early as October, and by February I always have several students who just feel used up—no hope for the future, no drive, no joy. I want to help you deal with that burnout.

Of course, some students burn out because they didn’t think college would actually require work, and they are surprised to find that they cannot simply coast through.

Many students, however, burn out because they feel trapped in a major they don’t like or for which they don’t have the talent or preparation. The original application process (plus family pressure in a lot of cases) makes some people feel they are stuck with a decision they made before they took any college classes. The college website presents dozens of possible majors with very little explanation and urges you to pick one. “Undecided” doesn’t look like an option, and the folks back home are pressuring you to find a job in which you can make big money quickly. So you choose. And if you discover in October that your choice doesn’t work, you feel totally stuck—four years of doing something that just doesn’t fit you, followed by 40+ years of working in a field you don’t like very much.

So one of my goals for this course is to help you find a place where you truly belong—and to help you realize that the world is a much bigger place than you had guessed.

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