On page 201, she gives an example of student writing about video games.  She explains that he was writing the way society has almost pushed him to write. Formal, objective, distant.  However, when I read it I felt the piece was strong, sure the style was impersonal but I started to think about different students I have known throughout school.  What if this way of writing is the way a student wants to express themselves, or they feel that writing in the style Ronald suggests would mean writing only for the teacher and not themselves.  I suppose the true question here is how do you react to students who view style very differently than yourself?  If what you view as “good writing” is very different from what he views as “good writing?”

Secondly, I really liked her point about writing as if you were actually talking to someone on page 204.  She states that too often we write without actually thinking about a real audience.  My question here is how do we do this?  How do we as teachers get students to practice this or feel comfortable writing this way?  For some this may come easily and for others I can see this being way out of their comfort zone, given the way writing has been taught by some teachers.

I also found the section titled “Personal Writing in the Early Phase of the Process Movement” found on the bottom of page 79.  I felt it odd that until this movement in the 1960′s and 1970′s, assignments were not commonly assigned that students felt familiar with or that contained subjects that personally concerned the students. This just seems like a “well, duh” idea to me because I feel that many assignments given to me today that I actually enjoy or feel are important contain that familiar aspect or involve something interesting to me personally.

I also identified with the section on writer’s block because I do procrastinate and often can not afford to “block.” When I went through the checklist of factors contributing to writer’s block I saw myself and my detrimental tendencies.

I believe that this culture is primarily made up of girls or at least a girl would be involved (if a boy was writing a note, it was probably to a girl and not another boy).  However, boys are sometimes the recipients of these notes, so they are members just not the primary or active members.  Notes are usually secretive, due either to their content or just that the act of writing notes during school is prohibited.  Students write them during study hall, in the back of their classes, or while pretending to do other work.  A good note is one that has something “juicy” in it, usually gossip that you write for a particular person and that person only. And then there is the passing of notes. This can be done while sitting in class, sneaking it underneath or in between desks or simply when the teacher is not looking.  You can see pass-offs in the hall ways and the lunch room as well, or even sticking them through the vents of someone’s locker.  These notes create boundaries between social groups and tend to label who is friends with who.  This has the ability to define social groups and ultimately leave some students out.  To those involved, note passing is fun and can make you cool, but to outsiders it can cause feelings of being left out or even stir up arguments between a note passer(s) and a non-note passer(s) or even amongst two different groups of note passers if gossip is involved.

Ultimately, I like this topic because it involves writing and the social atmosphere of school where we will be teaching.  We have probably all written notes at some point and someday we are going to have to handle students who pass notes in our classes or in between them.

I am torn about this whole “rhetoric” thing… I mean I really like the idea that anything can be rhetoric, in fact all of language and communication is, but maybe it’s the way rhetoric has been presented to me in the past or just my mere need for there to be a better defined explanation of the term for me to feel fully comfortable with it. I think it’s just breaking that old mind set because in the past rhetoric was not “all language,” at least not to those grading my papers.   so, while my idea of rhetoric has been broadened it has also become more obscure…

Overall, I like the definition mentioned in class as rhetoric being the personality of a paper.  I can see that, understand that, and defend that.

I really enjoyed Didion’s piece.  It was interesting because I could completely relate to different points she made throughout the article but would not have been able to put those thoughts and feelings into words as honestly and humorously as she did.  At first, and still, I am not sure I agree with her statement, “keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”  I feel that anyone can write or keep a journal, not just those so-called misfits, but as I actually reflect on my own writing experience, it was those times that I felt down, hurt, jaded, scared, or confused that my journal entries overflowed and became more consistent.  Something I had not actually thought out before I read this article.  I also enjoyed her point about telling what some would call ‘lies.’  Some of my favorite writing pieces are those of which start entirely true and bend or weave whether consciously or from merely remembering my own memories incorrectly or exaggerated.  One of my favorite lines from this article is about this point exactly.  She states, referring to one of her fictitious memories, “perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.”  Not only is she presenting a point all too relatable to most people, but she describes it so elegantly.  

The part that struck me the most in this piece was the section that touched on how we forget things we swore at the time we would never forget.  I think that line alone explains the true heart of why I keep a journal.  I usually never go back and reread my pieces but on some rare and curious occasions I find myself leafing through old notebooks that contain my adolescent life. At the time I feel like I am capturing that moment on paper, to keep it forever. I agree with her idea that we change and the person we are today may be completely non-relatable to who we were five years ago.  Writing is a way to document that evolution and record those feelings, ideas, memories, and stories that have made us who we are and show us who we have been.