I Broke His Brain (long-tastic)...

[Kheldarson]

I wrote TWO 20 page, end-of-semester, these are the make or break grades for TWO capstone classes in one weekend. And no, footnotes and title page DID NOT count.

Yes, I was an idiot.

But damnit, I knew what I was asking for when I pulled that, and damnit, I still got an A on both papers.

[Magpie]

Really? Here, we have to take 3 English classes. I ended up getting out of all of them from a combination of AP scores and ACT scores [basically, like I tested out AND got credit ]...but yeah. They're required for all majors.

Do you have technical majors? I've noticed that pretty much all universities offer liberal arts (whether or not they should), but some just literally do not have an engineering programme, or even don't have any CS (again, it is not a major that you can select, not just that it's crap and they miss basics).

[Eisa]

Do you have technical majors? I've noticed that pretty much all universities offer liberal arts (whether or not they should), but some just literally do not have an engineering programme, or even don't have any CS (again, it is not a major that you can select, not just that it's crap and they miss basics).

Yep, we have technical majors. We have a whole College of Technology. Computer science, engineering, all that. And while College of Tech students aren't stuck with ALL the general requirements, they do still have to fulfill the English ones. I'm watching my roomies go through it now, it's amusing.

[Jay 2K Winger]

*shudder* English Composition...

It's funny, given that I like writing for fun, or creatively, but when it comes to expository writing (which is what I term anything for one of those English Comp classes) I just freaking hate it.

I was one of those students that would wait till the last minute to do those assignments. I also played with fonts and sizes, even the page margins. I never went with Comic Sans or any "goofy" fonts like that, but I did look for those little shortcuts when I'd struggled to get juuuuust below the required page-length, so I was just trying to squeeze it out to the right length.

Given my own educational experience-- flunking out of UMD after one semester, flaking out twice at NVCC and Strayer-- I was relieved when my credits transferred to ITT Tech and got me out of another English Comp class.

[Jetfire]

Yep, we have technical majors. We have a whole College of Technology. Computer science, engineering, all that. And while College of Tech students aren't stuck with ALL the general requirements, they do still have to fulfill the English ones. I'm watching my roomies go through it now, it's amusing.

Yup, I'm a UW Mathie grad, and I could have gotten my HonBMath without writing an Essay if I had wanted to.

I did take Fine360 and Engl208b (Sci Fi), so I did have to do some writing at some points, but mostly it was exams and technical stuff.

(And I still feel like I was burned on my SciFi course because the prof was 'exploring the edges of sci fi' so most of the reading list barely qualified as Sci Fi IMO. Luckily our essays were our choice for books so I ended up doing one of my essays on Simmons's Hyperion.

[Sapphire Silk]

*shudder* English Composition...

It's funny, given that I like writing for fun, or creatively, but when it comes to expository writing (which is what I term anything for one of those English Comp classes) I just freaking hate it.

I enjoy writing, but it does help to write about something you find interesting.

When I took English 101 in college, I figured the class to be an easy A, since I did well in English courses in High School. When I got my first paper back, it had so much red ink on it, I complained to my mother that it looked like it was bleeding.

Next paper I got back was graded in green ink. Seems Mom narced on me: she played bridge with the prof's wife

I sure learned a lot from him, though.

As for comic sans . . . *shudders*. I've had students turn in work to me with it, even after I told them to use Times New Roman

Last Spring, we invited a gal from Developmental Services to give a lecture on resume writing. It was my idea; the prof who usually does it was giving a lot of outdated information, and this gal gave lectures on it all the time.

She actually advised students to use fancy paper and Comic Sans Among other errors.

Should have just done it myself, and saved myself the grief of correcting all the mistakes on their drafts.

[Geisman]

I went to Carnegie Mellon for engineering, and had one of those annoying English Literature grad students teaching my required English Writing for Freshmen course. This teacher came up with the idea of having us watch various documentary-type videos, then read published papers about those videos, and then write our own paper synthesizing the articles and our own opinions. I got lucky, because the time she had the class meet up to watch the videos conflicted with the crew team practices, so I said I would watch the videos on my own. I never watched a single one during the semester, and never got lower than a B on a paper (one every couple of weeks, 5-8 pages long).

For our final project, we had to write a 15-page paper comparing one of the movies we watched in class to some other documentary. I chose Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" and Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North." I watched about half of the first, and never saw any of the second, and got an A- on the paper, which was also my overall grade.

I also took a 100-level World History course that was equally terrible at that school, but when I spent a semester at a community college in California and took an Honors History class, I met a teacher who I still consider the single best I've ever known and who really taught me a lot. Go figure.

[Android Kaeli]

Kind of reminds me of the art class I took in college. Teacher assigned us the course main paper first day, last week of the course he reminded all of us that the paper was due in two days. Cue almost the entire class saying he never assigned the paper, what in the hell was he talking about, and all that jazz.

Teacher looked at those in the class and told them that not only had he told them two months ago that the paper was due, like, now, but also there were reminders in the informational packets he gave out to the class on the subjects we were drawing. The only ones that turned in a paper? Myself and two other people in the class who, you know, had it done a month and a half earlier.

I think we were the only three that passed the class, it wasn't hard to do the report and the teacher didn't expect any of us to be the next Van Gogh or anything. Hell, the report itself was supposed to be no less then five pages double spaced at no less then 12-point font. O.o

[Sapphire Silk]

My students have no excuse not to know when their assignments are due. Due dates show up on the calender on Moodle 1 week before the assignment is due, and they can browse the calender at any time to see what is due from one week to the next.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh yeah, when given a choice of font, and I almost always was, I went with good ol' Courier.

Verdana. Much wider. Plus, it's technically a serif font, and some teachers cared about that.

That out of the way... I'm apparently the bane of all English teachers. The No Drafter. When asked to turn in a first draft, I actually write the entire paper, proof it, ready it to be turned in...

My "drafts" were nearly always the exact same as my final copies. I do a lot of writing in my head before it ever gets to paper. I never munged a paper to make it look drafty.

Generally, the only actual differences would be some phrases swapped around for clarity.

Of course, this was for high school level writing.

^-.-^

[Drakstern]

My "drafts" were nearly always the exact same as my final copies. I do a lot of writing in my head before it ever gets to paper. I never munged a paper to make it look drafty.

I'm similar. I don't think I've ever written an outline for anything under 20 pages, because I'm so used to essay final exams. I just know that I had one teacher who dinged me because I didn't change enough from my draft to my final paper, so I took to adding mistakes.

I've also noticed that it's important to know if the teacher has a good sense of humor or not. I'm pretty sure that my last Classical Mythology prof was the only one who *ever* would have let me get away with the final paper I entitled: "Odysseus Was An Asshole: Why Greek Heroes Were Jerks."

That is my favorite paper ever, and I wish to god it hadn't been lost in a format.

[Eisa]

My students have no excuse not to know when their assignments are due. Due dates show up on the calender on Moodle 1 week before the assignment is due, and they can browse the calender at any time to see what is due from one week to the next.

Heyyyyyyy, you use Moodle, too.

I hate Moodle. At least for taking exams on.

I've been kind of strange throughout my college career...my major is psychology and yet I've taken a ton of English classes. lol: I've taken several creative writing classes, and linguistics. I'm in Sociolinguistics right now, it is very interesting.

But last year, I took Grammar. I wanted to see if I could improve the way I write because I tend to write things in ways that are technically correct, but very rambling and messed up. It didn't help much, but OMG you should have seen the bitching that went on. People would complain about the homework all the time. Now yeah, having homework due almost every week was kind of a bummer. [I had a problem not in that it was difficult, but just remembering to do it...heh.] My prof even had an awesome late policy--you could turn in homework late as long as she hadn't handed it back graded. But nope, people still complained. About her tests, too. The only mild complaint I ever had was that they were a little long to easily complete in a 50-minute class. But still doable. There was one time after a test when some of them were talking, and one guy mentioned that he didn't even attempt like half of it. Like...dude, it's not that hard if you paid attention!

[jedimaster91]

Im with irving. I can bullshit up to 10 pages, around 15 i might have to do some legitimate work.

That sounds about right.

However, I've written so many 20 page papers when I was a history undergrad (I have two degrees, for those of you who know I'm a nurse) that I find 3 pages is just not enough room to get my point across.

I have this same problem. I got so used to having to write 10 pages of fluff that short papers were hard for me. 3 pages is just barely introducing the topic!

Then there was my master's thesis: 150 pages of Civil War fun I actually enjoyed writing it because the vast majority of what I wrote about came from primary sources (letters, government reports, news articles, etc) that no one had seen or touched in 125 years.

Now THAT sounds AWESOME!

I warn my students against playing with font size/spacing/etc. My wife is a graphic designer specializing in print production. We have rulers that measure in point size, and she can type spec TNR and about 100 other fonts by sight (as in, looking at a menu, "This is 11-point Arial scaled to 95% and bolded, and they've done something to the kerning").

Party pooper.

[Hyndis]

My "drafts" were nearly always the exact same as my final copies. I do a lot of writing in my head before it ever gets to paper. I never munged a paper to make it look drafty.

Generally, the only actual differences would be some phrases swapped around for clarity.

Of course, this was for high school level writing.

^-.-^

I do this as well, and have always done this. Before I write I do a lot of tinkering in my head, and while I write I'm constantly correcting myself, rephrasing things, and improving the wording.

This means my very first draft is the final. I don't bother to put in fake error or anything. I turn it in as my first draft despite it being good enough for the final.

That said, there are usually a few things I have overlooked, and those relatively minor oversights are caught and then corrected. The whole process works quite well.

[EricKei]

I've had the opposite. "

Aaaand, opposite of your opposite to my comment (cue eyes rattling around in sockets)...We had to read Pygmalion in senior year of HS...aka the source for "My Fair Lady". I absolutely loathed this book. I despised it with the intensity of a thousand suns. However, I knew that it was going to be the Final. No, not "on the final", but "the final" -- 2 1/2 hours of writing essays using only this work as a source. Thus, not reading it would have been a tad foolish. As a result, I wound up examining it more thoroughly than I had any book in the past (I usually *dislike* looking for overly deep meanings, I find that it ruins the story)...As I had no problem with ruining this story, I tore into it. End result: I was the only person in the class to get full marks on each of the 5+ paragraph essays we had to write for the final. Darn that teacher, making me learn.

I did the "turn a final into a rough" trick all the time... never failed.

I never, ever, EVER did a RD -- or an Outline -- unless the teacher insisted upon them. With outlines, in particular, I usually just made the outline *last*, as the way I tend to write results in stuff getting shifted around so much that I would have had to completely re-do it anyway >_>

Man, when I was in college, and high school, I was able to come up with a 10 page paper within two days.

Ditto. My best papers always came about under critical deadline pressure.

And for everyone else who hates writing essays: you can get through university and never have to take an English course.

My college had two courses: one you could test out of, and one you HAD to take, no matter what (part 2). Testing "out" just meant that writing the essays in-class were quasi optional (these were basically Senior-level HS English Comp courses, given during Frosh year at college), and that you got to take a Special Topics course in Ancient Greek Lit alongside it ^_^ Love them hippie teachers. The thing is, these courses -- if you took both -- literally amounted to a YEAR of "read this 5-10 page essay tonight, you will be writing a short essay based on it tomorrow"...every day. The final? A longer essay on the topic of your choice. That's it. No "homework" aside from the reading, no special projects, no other papers. Just an essay a day. And yet, the Final had an epic failure rate, somewhere around 40% or worse...>_< The only class on campus that could beat that record was Sex Ed 101. 60%+ failures on that one. Most popular course on campus, too. Can't imagine why.

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Favorite English course ever, tho: Senior level, Seniors only, Special Topics in Sci Fi. Frankenstein. Solaris. "I Have No Mouth and I must Scream". Rendezvous with Rama. "Who Goes There?" (basis for The Thing). "The Cold Equations". And so on.

Wonderful, wonderful course taught by a guy who had written several books on the subject, and a room packed to the gills with fellow geeks. Every joke or SF reference, no matter how obscure, would elicit a snort or chuckle from most of the people in the room (my best day was when I gave 'I Have No Mouth' an unfavorable comparison to the writing on the Smurfs); most of the time, the Prof would catch these refs, as well. Truly paradise. Sadly, it was a one-time thing, as the teacher needed to teach "just one more random course" for his minimums that year. Thus, he created that one