Welcome to English 100

I set up this blog to help you ease into the new world of Ashland University and our English class—sort of a low-intensity introduction.

The material which follows will be a mix: some “Nuts & Bolts” stuff about managing college life, some personal observations and ideas, and some specific details about our course. I’ll keep the blog going after the semester begins, so this can continue to be an informal conversation.

College is an incredibly big adjustment—almost like moving to a foreign country. I’d like to help you make that move as gracefully as possible.

A few details about this blog

This isn’t an official AU site, and everything here is my own opinion. Because it’s not an AU site, anybody on the Internet can read it, so if you have a friend who is in another English class—perhaps even in another college—I have no problem with you sharing the address.
The blog software puts the newest items at the top, but you can still read older items that have fallen off the opening page. Just click MORE POSTS at the bottom. Or you can click the thing that looks like three little lines ☰ at the top right to search for older posts by key word or by topic.
You should expect something new here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I have enabled comments on the posts, but comments will be moderated, so if you write something, it won’t appear for a while.
I’ll be sending out weekly reminders to your AU email address because there’s a lot of coming and going in the class roster during the few weeks before class begins and I want to catch the newcomers.

Welcome to our class

—Curtis Allen

Comments

Getting Your Computer Ready for School

Back when I was a student, everyone packed up their portable typewriter for the move to campus. Lots of people got a new typewriter as a graduation gift, but I didn’t. I ended up using one we bought when I was in high school. The story is probably the same for you, except that it’s a computer, not a mechanical typewriter. Whether you just bought a new one or kept your old faithful companion with all of its stickers, you need to do a few things to get the machine ready for college. Getting Old Faithful ready for college Is Old Faithful sick? If the machine crashes a lot, has trouble (and takes a long time) doing things, or pops up weird ads to play poker or look at porn, you probably have a virus. (You just had to download that fancy screensaver, didn’t you?) Take a deep breath—bite the bullet—pay the computer repair shop to clean it up for you. Now that Old Faithful is feeling better … Back up the really important stuff. (Your only

Where is our Zoom link?

I will get this question several times during the semester. “I have to be absent on Friday. What’s the Zoom link for that class session?” There isn’t any. During the pandemic quarantines, we got used to the idea that “going to class” meant turning on the computer and logging in (and often it meant turning off the camera and microphone and leaving the room). It was pretty rare for those sessions to be very productive or educational, and every teacher I know agrees that those Zoom students really didn’t do too well. Setting up a Zoom session so I can do a “talking head” presentation from home is pretty simple, but doing a classroom session is much more complicated. (When I taught at the University of Akron, I did two semesters of similar teaching, and the university supplied a technical assistant to simply manage the equipment and software for the whole class session.) So the answer to the question is that we don’t have a Zoom session for every class

Lunchroom Legends about College

A lot of fake news circulates concerning college life. I’m not sure where all of this comes from, but kids seem to tell each other these lies—and you need to ignore them. Spoiler Alert: Pretty much all of the legends below are quick routes to failing a course or flunking out entirely. Don’t believe them. College attendance doesn’t count Yes it does, in two ways. In our course (and in many courses) attendance is part of the grade, and unexcused absences count against you. And obviously, if you weren’t here and the teacher said something you need, that hurts too. Some teachers don’t appear to take attendance, but they really can—they just know who is supposed to be in their small classroom. (I’m not that good. I will usually call roll.) You only think that absences don’t count against you because we don’t have an assistant principal phoning your mother. You are an adult now, and you should know how much absences hurt your grade. Strolling i

English 100 at Ashland

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