English 100 at Ashland

Later in the course, I will have a lot to say about the difference between hard skills and soft skills . Briefly, hard skills are things you can write an instruction sheet for: changing a tire, writing a computer program, or taking blood pressure. Soft skills are all about attitude: how you approach the world and the work you do there. That’s what this list covers. Interestingly enough, in both the academic world and the world after college, soft skills determine your success more often than hard skills. I can teach you how to run a printing press or drive a stick shift much more easily than I can teach you how to be a cooperative part of the workforce, but that doesn’t mean the soft skills are unimportant. One of my friends who owns an electrical contracting company says the rule is “Two strikes and you are out”—late to work twice and you are fired. This list comes from a website for athletic coaches , but I think ...

A little background Years ago, the in-class handwritten exam was standard in almost every college course. Across Ashland University, we are returning to that sort of assignment, and many other colleges are doing the same, to assess what students can do without ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or any other machine doing the writing. What do you know? That’s the question we are working on. Here is my advice for doing well on these tests. Before the test It’s always OK to ask beforehand what sort of test it will be. If you are asked to discuss course content (lectures, reading, and so forth), spend some time reviewing your notes. Bring your own pen and paper. Bring extras—pencil points break and pens run out of ink. If your instructor has special requirements (blue book, for example), be sure to bring the right stuff. A good night’s sleep will help a lot. You probably do not want to tank up on coffee. ...

Stuff that just isn’t true 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. “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. “Showing up late is how I assert my independence” No, showing up late is how you miss im...

Almost every bit of printed information in this course will come through the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS). I assume you learned how to use it during orientation, but just in case you missed that part, here is a quick access guide. There are a lot of ways to get to the first entry point. Here is one that works. You are already in our blog, so go back to the home page and look in the upper left for the little three line thing ☰ (it is called a hamburger). Click that to open the sidebar and find Our English Course. Now click Blackboard Log-in . The username and password are the same ones you use for Ashland University email. If you cannot get in using these, your next step is to talk to the IT people in the library or Patterson Hall. Once you are in, you are faced with (unfortunately) a very confusing screen which has little to do with you. On the left, in the dark grey area, click Courses. Th...

The word “syllabus” is one of those specifically academic words (perhaps your first) that only means something in college. You did not have one in high school, though a good teacher had a lesson plan and probably a set of personal rules and regulations. I have intentionally made our syllabus very complete, probably more complete than the ones you will meet in other courses. This is because I assume you are new to the college game and I want to give you a good overview of the sort of requirements you must face. In a way, the syllabus is a legal contract between you (the student) and me (the representative of Ashland University). When a dispute comes up between me and a student, the first question my supervisor asks is “Was it in the syllabus?” If you have ever dealt with union contracts, a college syllabus will make more sense. A word about audience On your first pass through, you will notice a lot of jargon and technical language. This is because—surp...

I just received an email from Dr. Grady, the Director of Composition, with this paragraph. (I assume you already knew this material, but I am posting it here so we are all on the same page.) Please note if you have student-athletes in your classes that coaches and the athletics’ staff want to be alerted to any issues asap—the student-athletes are required to inform their professors of any sanctioned absences due to game participation. Student athletes are NOT permitted to miss class for practice, advising, or photos or other team-related events that are not directly related to scheduled games where they are playing. Normally you will get some kind of paperwork from your coach, telling you when the excused absences will occur. I want to see that. When this email refers to “any issues,” I take that to mean such things as being habitually late, missing deadlines for paper submission, getting lost in one’s phone, or dishone...

Here is the problem everyone faces when they enter college. For twelve years or so, you were in school and it all felt the same: you came in, sat there for several hours (maybe moving from one room to another), then you got to eat lunch, then went back to a classroom and sat there for a few more hours before they let you go home. If you messed up, you had to face the assistant principal and your parents. And some school districts were very poorly run—they truly did not care greatly about some things. If you could get through the day without committing a felony, that was a success in their eyes. Now, suddenly, you are in college, and all those rules have changed. First problem: It just doesn’t feel like school. You spend a lot less time sitting there. Fifteen credit hours is a pretty standard load for freshmen, which means that you might be in class only three or four hours per day. It is too easy to feel like the rest of the day is vacatio...

Don’t overdo it. I often see students laboring around campus with little suitcases on wheels. I assume they are carrying their computer, their notebooks, and every textbook they were asked to buy this semester. Maybe a few library books and their lunch. Here’s what you need to bring to class that first day: A copy of your class schedule, just to remind you where to go. (Sometimes campus computers make mistakes and send you to classes that don’t exist or put you in places where you don’t belong. A printout of your schedule will solve a lot of problems if you have to ask questions.) A campus map would not be a bad idea either. Pen or pencil. You do need to bring your own. Only annoying fools think everyone else should supply them with writing tools.  Spiral notebook. On that first day, someone is certain to say something you will need to remember. (It wouldn’t be a bad ide...

Every course at the university has a “Master Syllabus,” a document that governs the rules and regulations for that course in general (though individual instructors are free to introduce their own customizations). I have just received (at 3 PM today) revised copies for the Master Syllabi for our courses, but I do not know what (if any) changes I will be making to conform to the University standards. I suspect the changes will be very minimum, and probably will affect the number and kind of written assignments we will do. it’s Friday afternoon; I’m going on a bike ride. I'll spend Monday and Tuesday pulling things together and making changes so we will be ready to roll on the first day. A Google Change Google has changed the front page of the Blogger site, so you do not see the sidebar immediately. You can still get very complete information about our course by going to the home page, looking in the upper left corner, and clickin...

As I write this on August 20, the course plans and assignments are finalized. You can read them by going to Our English Course in the sidebar and clicking Course Content . (Blogger has changed things a bit, so you probably need to click the little three line thing ☰ in the upper left.) A word about the QE For a long time, English 100 had a very hard-edged requirement called the “Qualifying Essay” (QE), an in-class essay that you had to pass in order to pass the course. When we ran into Covid-19, a lot of things changed, and one of them was our class schedule. We were mainly meeting by Zoom online connections (that didn’t work too well), and one of the things that just did not fit was the QE requirement. Over the last few years, a lot has changed in higher education, and one big change is that a very large number of students now use Artificial Intelligence to write their papers. Here at Ashland, it has become too common for my...

Academic Integrity—plain old honesty—is a big deal at Ashland, and I will hit the topic several times as the semester begins. (You will probably get tired of hearing me talk about it.) At least two reasons are behind my focus on this topic. “My high school teachers didn’t care.” I hear this one all the time. I take it to mean one of three things: the student is lying to me, the high school teacher was a fool, or (probably the most likely) the public schools didn’t have a meaningful way to enforce the rules. None of these is a good sign. Ashland University might be a tremendous change for these students. The teachers and administrators really do care here, and we do not have any obligations to keep dishonest students. “No harm, no foul.” We probably inherited this one from athletics: if the referee didn’t see you do it and you didn’t actually injure the other guy, everything is OK. The peopl...

During this last month Look carefully at your class schedule. Mistakes happen, and you will find it much easier to correct them in the week or two before classes start. Do a campus walk-through. We are a small campus, but we are still big enough to be confusing. Some buildings are known by more than one name. (A great example is the building our class is in: commonly called Bixler, it’s on the campus map as “14 Bixler Hall; Center for the Humanities (CFHB),” and it shows up in your computer list as “Center for Humanities Bixler.”) Your Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule is different from your Tuesday-Thursday schedule. Walk both of them and actually find the rooms. Get an eye exam. Don’t laugh. At least one student in every section I teach sits in the back, squinting and struggling to see the board. If you need glasses, get them. Wear them. They don’t look weird. ...

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 th...

Right now, most of the world is racing off to buy clothes for the Fall. That’s OK and pretty understandable—you are about to begin a new enterprise and you would like to look your best. As you plan your shopping trips, here are a few things to remember: Your classes are not all in the same building, so several times a week, you will be power-walking from one place to another. You need decent, comfortable shoes. North-central Ohio weather is somewhat unpredictable and can be cold and wet. Those comfortable shoes should be able to survive a bit of snow and water. You would be wise to get a hat and gloves. Whatever style you wore in high school will work just fine here. Even your high school letter jacket. You won’t have that much space to store things; on the other hand, you probably want more underwear than you had in high school because you might not get around to doing your laundry too of...

We are halfway through the summer (about six weeks until classes begin at Ashland), and if you are like me, you have not done much thinking about college yet. We need to begin getting our brains back into gear though. Quality reading this summer will help you a lot, and it does not have to be school stuff. In fact, it shouldn’t be. I am about halfway through Fahrenheit 451, and I admit that it is sometimes heavy going. It does stretch one’s mind, a good thing to do. You might prefer a collection of short stories. Write an actual paper letter to someone. We will be doing a lot of in-class handwriting this Fall, so you might as well get into practice. The Post Office can sell you an envelope if you do not have one. You know that you will need some preparation for Fall: new clothing, getting the computer fixed, etc. Might as well do it now and do it gradually. (If your computer needs service, you don...

Any time I tell someone I teach college English, I get the same question. Not “How do you get through reading all those papers?” Not “Are students less prepared than they used to be?” Not even “Freshmen are a fun bunch, aren’t they?” No, the question is always “What are you doing about Artificial Intelligence?” It’s a fair question, and it’s being asked on every college campus in the country. Before I get around to answering it, I want to deal with a couple of other questions. Why is A.I. so appealing? I don’t think most of my students sat down in April and said to themselves, “I think I’ll cheat my way through college.” The problem, though, is that many high schools have not done much with teaching students how to actually write things (your teachers may not have known either), and then you get to college and you’re in ...

One of my little projects this summer is finding some music to fill the ten minutes or so before the class begins. I have used YouTube “Ambient Music” in the past, but it is often computer-generated and forgettable. This time around I am looking for some genuine quality. It would be nice to do themes, about a week long. Perhaps one week of Beethoven and another of very young musicians and another of opera in public places. Maybe one of bluegrass and one of stride piano. I have a couple of reasons for doing this. One is that I believe an “educated person” knows more than simply how to punctuate a sentence correctly, and this is a great moment to broaden your horizons. (A while back, I used a movement from Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” for “gap music.” One of my students commented that it is now his favorite piece.) The other is that I think a good teacher transmits more than facts: I want to invite y...

I first ran into this Ray Bradbury novel when I was in high school—a very long time ago. Recently, when I was buying a graduation gift for a granddaughter, I was browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble and saw a 60th anniversary edition on the shelf. Just had to get it. (I think I have an older paperback copy somewhere, but this book seemed to deserve my time.) The title of the book refers to the temperature at which book paper bursts into flame. The book is set in some distant future when all the houses are fireproof and the government wants to control everything people think, so one of the best strategies is to burn books. Firemen (the book’s central character is a fireman.) no longer have water in the tanks of their fire trucks. They have kerosene. And their job, if anyone is suspected of owning books, is to go to the home of the offender and burn everything in sight. I remember reading this as a teenager and never really recovering ...

I’m sure you have noticed that we are setting records for high temperatures. You might not be able to avoid the heat (I remember one very hot summer in St. Louis when I worked in a shipyard and the temperature would drop to 85 at night!), but here are a couple of suggestions. First, of course, get plenty of water. Second, if you are able, do your outdoor stuff in early morning or very late evening. (No distance bike rides for me for a while.) And now one of the best suggestions: find a book or collection of short stories to read and hide out in some cool place, perhaps the basement. County libraries are usually air conditioned (and so is the Ashland U library). I will keep feeding you reading suggestions. (My latest book is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Absolutely excellent.)

More shade-tree reading from Project Gutenberg. These are all free downloads—free because they are old enough to have gone out of copyright and become public domain. Later I'll probably suggest some that you must pay for, but I really like the idea of something for nothing. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (This is the first of the Lord Peter Wimsey murder mysteries. I don't think the others are available in public domain, but if you like this one, you can certainly buy the rest online from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott (This is a very political science fiction about a world that only exists in two dimensions. There's no thickness to anything, only length and breadth. Yes, that really was the author's name.) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K....

A little background I think most of us would benefit from keeping some sort of daily journal. Besides giving an opportunity to practice writing and giving a documented space to remember things, my journal functions like Professor Dumbledore’s Pensieve—a place where I can drop thoughts and clear my mind, but perhaps return to them in the future. I had a lot of trouble getting my journal started when I began several years ago, but then I remembered a writer’s trick: I needed to construct an audience . I needed some sense that I was actually writing to someone. For me, that constructed audience was my children, who might dig this book out of the closet after my death and figure out what on earth I had been thinking and doing. Now that I am rolling on the journal, I guess the journal itself is my audience, but not in the “Dear Diary” sense. (If that works for you, fine!) I got the picture above from the Internet—...

I was sitting at Panera this morning, writing, as usual, in my journal. And, as usual, some stranger took the opportunity to sit down and chat. Now, you can do almost anything at Panera without attracting attention (knit, read a book, have an argument on your phone), but the minute you try writing something with a fountain pen, you attract attention. At least I do. It’s like someone is performing brain surgery with a butter knife. People are amazed that it is even possible. That’s fascinating because we are not that far removed from a time when absolutely every well-organized adult had a fountain pen. (Probably the 1950s.) My mother had a pen in her purse, filled with purple ink. My father had one for signing important documents, filled (of course) with blue-black. I got through high school with a series of cheap pens filled with cheap blue ink. Banks had fountain pens in holders for people to write checks. (Ballpoints were kind of unreliable....

Right now you are signing a lot of documents—loan papers and such. They seem like annoying formalities that just don’t mean that much. Trust me. They do mean that much. You need to read them carefully and get someone to explain them to you if you do not understand what you are signing. Take your time. Don’t let anyone stampede you. Ask your parents if they have a safe deposit box at their bank, and if they do, the loan documents belong there. At the very least get one of those accordion file folders, and keep your copy of everything you sign. If you are uncertain about what all that paperwork means, you would certainly be wise to get a second professional opinion. (The first place I would ask would be my bank—unless they are the ones loaning me the money!) By the way, you will also want to keep your textbook receipts from the college bookstore so you can return the book if you bought the wrong one or your schedule changes. ...

First, a couple of sad truths Years ago, before you were in school, someone in the Ohio Department of Education (or some similar government office) decided that computers were THE thing of the future, so they stopped teaching elementary school children how to write. I see the result every time I teach a class. If I give a quiz, there is a general panic because several of my students showed up for a college class without paper or pen. Nobody is taking notes, so if I say something in a lecture, they have no way to remember it. If I write something on the board, several people will stand up and take pictures of it with their phones because they lack the equipment and skill to write it down. That’s sad. It’s like these students never got beyond the first or second grade. (I understand, by the way, that Ohio has realized how foolish it was to stop teaching handwriting, and they are putting it back into the school...

The books I am recommending from Project Gutenberg are all “Public Domain.” This means that their copyright has expired and anyone can download them or print them out legally. It also means that they are fairly old (because copyright extends for the author’s life plus seventy years). I was reading The War of the Worlds last night and realized a couple of things. For one, all those place names flew over my head because I never lived in rural England, and for another the author occasionally dropped a word on me that I just did not know. (Yes, even English teachers have limits on their vocabulary.) What to do? As for the place names, I let them sort of flow over me. Wells knows where things are, and it doesn’t matter much to me what was the name of the place where the Martians landed. Looking all that up would interrupt the flow of the story. Vocabulary is a somewhat different matter. The book was published in England 129 ye...