I don't know about you, but Mondays always seem to sneak up and tap me on the shoulder and then when I turn around, they've gone the other way and are standing there, grinning menacingly like a bully waiting to steal my lunch money and shove my head in a toilet. That's what Mondays are like.
You may or may not have this same attitude about Mondays, but nobody seems to be firing on all cylinders the first day of the work/school week, so I'm going to offer a rundown of things you need to know that I may or may not have said during class, or things that--even if I said them--you may or may not have heard, and that you still may or may not see, BECAUSE YOU STILL AREN'T READING MY BLOG! Okay, so the shouting font is probably unnecessary since the students who will actually see it are, in fact, blog-reading students and not the ones who need the memo. But I digress...
Read "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift for tomorrow. It's in your 50 Essays book. Do a nice fat CRJ for it now that you know what CRJs should and should not include and how you should do them. The cycle of random collections has begun. Be warned. Be prepared. Always.
You've successfully signed up for the following for your rhetorical analysis paper:
TITLE | BLOCK ONE | BLOCK TWO |
“The Importance of Being Hated” (Klosterman) | Ruth, Julia, Emily, Shreya, Heather | Kaitlin, Emily |
“Super People” (Atlas) | Caroline C, Sarah, Alicia, Taylor, Jessica | Becky, Nadeen, Matt, Teresa, Bridget |
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Carr) | Abram, Jenny C, Max, Adam | Megan, Fatima, Jason, Jeneen, Ashna |
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and …Dinosaurs” (Gould) | Ryan, Ashton, Eric
| Dwight, Ryan, Summer, Quinn |
“Unsavory Culinary Elitism” (Bruni) | Jenny L, Megan, Meredith
| Jack, Alyssa, Jenna |
“Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Veggies” (Bittman) | Andrew, Kara | Lauren, Ambriana |
“Your Outboard Brain Knows All” (Thompson) | Alison, Sereen | Laura |
“Our Vanishing Night” (Klinkenborg) | Alex | Kira |
|
| -- |
“Curbing Nature’s Paparazzi” (McKlibben) | Caroline A* | -- |
“Games” (Johnson) | Mitch | -- |
“Ugly Phrase Conceals Ugly Truth” (Rushdie) | Graham | -- |
“Authority and American Usage” (Wallace) | Annie | -- |
“To The Academy with Love from a Hip-hop Fan” (Evelyn) |
| Pardis |
*We've talked.
If you end up wanting to change your topic (sooner rather than later) you may do so but you need to communicate that with me. Some are now off-limits because they're full. Some did not get any bids so they're sad right now and you could change your mind and choose one of those other rejected articles. They are not listed here. I only listed the ones you chose. Annie chose the best one. Period. And she's the only one. So she gets an A.
(for choice anyway) But they're all good so you really can't go wrong, just remember what I said about understanding it and seeing rhetorical goodies in it.
Read it bunches and bunches of time this week. Annotate it. Begin drafting your paper. Outline its argument. Outline your argument about its argument. GET. TO. WORK.
We'll hear from our vocab folks tomorrow about this weeks words (see previous post) and those lovely ladies and gentlemen will e-mail me their (creative, smart, and beautifully-formatted) quiz questions by midnight on Wednesday.
Take that, Monday.
