Computer Abuse

Most English teachers really hate teaching in a computer lab. The school administrators who put these things in seem to think that a writer spends almost the whole day hammering away at a keyboard. Maybe that's true, but a writing class doesn't.

The class enters the room. We've just read a chapter on, say, finding a topic, and I want to give them some more information. The students immediately fire up the computers and log on. I try to do the class, while two or three, sitting in the back corners where I won't see them, are hammering away furiously on the keyboard. One is doing homework for another class. Another is doing instant messages. Yet another has a furiously typing a paper that's due in our class today. None of them is really in the room. All think they are fooling me.

Classes that don't meet in computer labs almost always have at least one or two keyboard jockeys who assume I won't see that they are totally engrossed in their laptops, hammering away on the keyboards, staring with fixed expressions at the screens.

I assume, by students' behavior, that when you were in high school, only your physical presence was required in a room. If you spent the time sleeping or staring out the window or text messaging, the teacher didn't care because at least your body was there. College isn't that way.

Many of my students feel offended that I want to interrupt their 24/7 keyboarding to friends. One hour! Imagine all the important stuff they could miss in an hour! All the gossip!

Well that's fine. If you really need the uninterrupted electronic contact, simply don't come to class. See if you can pass without hearing any of the material we go over (you won't hear it anyhow if you're focused on text messaging). We'll be happier without you.

For the record (and I know it's a surprise to many students) here's the basic stuff about electronics in college classrooms. Almost all teachers would agree with my rules:

• Do not use cell phones within the classroom. Do not make or receive calls. Do not text message (even below the desk where you think you won't be seen).
• Shut off the ringer on the phone. Better still, shut off the phone itself. Your incredibly important caller can leave a voice mail message.
• Sometimes computers are useful within the classroom, but only as tools for the current class. Do not:
  • Send email during class
  • Use Facebook or other social networking sites
  • Buy things on eBay
  • Look at porn
  • Play Solitaire
  • Do homework for other classes
  • Finish the paper for this class

Do you really want to lose participation points for the class? Do you really want to convince the person who is grading your paper that you're an immature pain?

By the way, turn off your iPod and take out the earbuds too.

Beginning this fall, I will be marking my attendance to deal with computer abuse. Every day that you show up on time, you get 100% of the attendance credit for that day. (Excused absences also get 100%.) Late students (and students who leave early or wander in and out of the classroom) get 50%. Students who are sleeping, studying for other courses or messing around with the computer on unrelated material get 25%.

My High School Teacher Doesn't Agree

I get a lot of static from students when I say something that differs from what they were taught in high school. They seem insulted that a college lecturer might know more or be more specialized than a high school teacher. They are put out that the information from Miss Phipps in the 7th grade isn't the last word on a topic. For those people, I'll throw out a few observations and a question or two:

Public school teachers don't need specialized education. Yes it's true. Especially in the lower grades (and many of my students haven't actually done anything with English since the 7th grade) a general degree in education is enough. That's not true in college. A master's degree in the specific subject is the minimum to teach here, and most college instructors have more.

Ohio doesn't require any public school teachers to know anything about English grammar. (That one speaks for itself, though they may have tightened up the requirements in the last few years. Even if the rules do tighten up, there are plenty of ignorant teachers out there.)

Even the best teacher in the world pitches a topic differently to a 12-year-old than to a college freshman. Seventh-graders are wonderful people, but they simply cannot deal very well with abstract thinking. They don't have much experience. They are on a very elementary level.

The source of the problem

A teacher who doesn't know grammar and usage that well is facing a bright-eyed 12-year-old who needs a concrete answer that will always be true. The result? The teacher (who doesn't want to look like an idiot to this child) makes up a fake rule on the spot, and the child faithfully memorizes it. Other (better) teachers talk to the same child and know that the elementary levels are better for laying down foundations, not for inserting insecurity, so more rules (nearly correct ones) come in. Yet other teachers who were taught in ancient tradition show up and don't realize that the English language likes to change and adapt very quickly, so they teach the child rules that come from Latin—rules that never did work in English.

A partial list of fake rules

1. Put in a comma when you take a breath. No! No! No! A comma is not a mark for public speaking. It has nothing to do with the writer's physical condition. It's a grammar mark.
2. There are no grammar rules, just opinions. People who teach this are just plain ignorant. They simply do not know what they are talking about. Punctuation isn't like the sprinkles on an ice cream cone. It's not a matter of personal taste. (If it were, then written communication would be impossible. We would all have our own systems.)
3. Any sentence over seven words long is a run-on. Obviously people who teach that one have never read anything in their lives. One teacher who taught this lie told me the reason: "It's easier than teaching structure." I nearly punched here then and there.
4. Every essay must have five paragraphs. This is another rule from people who haven't read anything. I'll sometimes teach the five, but only as a means of getting people into structure. REAL writing has a structure that comes from the subject.
5. You must end with the words "In conclusion." This rule only applies if you are speaking at a Rotary Club dinner and want to kill your audience with boredom.
6. The word "Although" at the beginning of a sentence always has a comma after it. No! No! No! It almost never has a comma after it. Yes, the CLAUSE it begins usually ends with a comma, but that's a different matter.

Yes, there are a lot of "always" and "never" rules. (For example, always begin a sentence with a capital letter and end a sentence with some kind of punctuation that has a dot.) Generally, though, the "always" rules that involve counting things or avoid thinking about structure and meaning are LIES.

Phishing

That's pronounced "fishing." It's an attempt to trick you into revealing information that a criminal can use. College e-mail accounts seem to attract a lot of it, and here's a very typical example I just got on my University of Akron account. The sender was "CAMPUS WEB EMAIL TECHNICAL SERVICE" but strangely, the e-mail address was in England. The subject line read: Weekly Email Maintenance!!

Dear campus e-mail User,

A Computer Database Maintainance is currently going on. This Message is Very Important. We are very concerned with stopping the proliferation of spam. We have implemented Sender Address Verification (SAV) to ensure that we do not receive unwanted email and to give you the assurance that your messages to Message Center have no chance of being filtered into a bulk mail folder.

To help us re-set your password on our database prior to maintaining our database, you must reply to this e-mail and enter your CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESS ( ) and PASSWORD ( ). Please kindly fill in the bracket with the Exact Email and Password, your domain name will also be required. If you are the rightful owner of this account, Our message center will confirm your identity including the secret question and answer immediately and We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.We assure you more quality service at the end of this maintenance.

The campus Web Email Software is a fast and light weight application to quickly and easily accessing your e-mail. Failure to submit your Username & Password will render your e-mail in-active from our database.

Thank you for using the campus Web Email!
WEBMAIL TECHNICAL ADMIN

It had a very professional-sounding website address to visit (which sort of compensated for the immature spelling, grammar, and English usage of the message). I forwarded the message to the UAkron computer people, who gave this terse response:

The University of Akron will never ask for your password, in an email, or in person.

Ashland University has issued this blanket warning because of a similar problem:

The Information Technology Department is warning people to ignore and not respond to the request to confirm your email identity that is being sent to many Ashland accounts. The email is titled “Verify and Update Your Ashland University Webmail Account” and asks for personal information such as email password and date of birth. IT will never request this type of personal information in an email format.

So there you have it. People who want that sort of information in an e-mail are never from the University.

Daily writing assignments

Lots of courses have little writing assignments, perhaps a page or two at a time. Don't fret. They (probably) aren't going to be graded that tightly on grammar, though you should run the spelling/grammar checker when you write them. Teachers assign these things to find out whether you are actually doing the reading and to get you thinking the way the course thinks. Often these assignments are read very quickly, and the main benefit is to lubricate your brain for class discussion.

Do:

• Actually write them and turn them in. They count for a grade.
• Think of them as a time to practice the crafts of thinking and writing.
• Try to think and write the way the course thinks and writes.

Don't:

• Be satisfied with a five-word answer. The teacher will think (with some justification) that you didn't give a hoot.
• Use them as a chance to tell the teacher just what you think of this terrible assignment. The teacher probably thought the assignment was pretty good, and when you say it sucked, you are alienating the guy with the red pen. And there's the possibility that the teacher (and the source material if you had to do some reading) might really know something that you need to take in. Get humble. Figure it out. You aren't the caped crusader, riding in to fix everything that's wrong with the English department.
• And finally, don't write that you can't figure out this kind of assignment. If you're truly lost, schedule an office appointment with the teacher. This sort of short writing isn't the place to complain about (or even glory in) your ignorance.

Apple Survival

I understand (from Apple advertisements, actually) that Apple is now the favorite college campus laptop. I think that's great. I have two Apples and love them, but if you have one, you need to be aware of some basic politics and/or technical issues.

Though Apple might be very popular among students, most campuses are run like big businesses, and have a very hard time ignoring Microsoft's clout. This means that many campus services are set up to work best with Windows and Internet Explorer (things like email, course download sites, etc.). To make things worse, apparently the newest Apple operating system (the one that's been out since October 2007) is different enough from the previous one that it simply doesn't work with some of these Microsoft sites. What to do?

• Until recently, I would have recommended Firefox as a web browser, but it has trouble with PDF files (screen shots of printed pages). You should try Safari, Apple's built-in browser, first (and ignore warning messages about unsupported browsers). If you have trouble, you can always get Firefox. It's a free, stable download.
• One of my college servers refuses to accept uploads from the newest Apple operating system, so I use a third-party uploader called Cyberduck.
• Many of your professors still think that DOC and DOCX files are some sort of universal file format. They aren't, but you probably shouldn't tell the prof that. Instead, you can open them using TextEdit, iWork or NeoOffice. If you have to send anything TO these professors, make sure it's either a DOC or an RTF file.
• Of course, if you're having trouble getting your Apple to talk to the University, you could simply go to a writing lab and use one of their machines.
• You could simply buy a copy of the Windows operating system and set up your Apple as a dual-boot machine. I'd call this a last-resort answer because it costs money—and you'll have to invest in an anti-virus program and download an anti-spyware program too (because Windows is so vulnerable to those problems).

BTW: If you ever do a website of your own, please make it standard HTML, not something that requires the rest of us to buy a specific piece of equipment.

Using THAT Word

Every so often I get a student who thinks that (since we're now in college and we're all big boys and girls) it's OK to use the "F" word in an essay. Or some other troubling word, perhaps the "N" word. And I've had students appear in class wearing T-shirts with astonishing words on them (one had cartoons of women's breasts with cute little labels below them, classifying them).

Well yes, we're big boys and girls. In fact, we're bigger than that.

Two questions are really basic to all writing:

1. Who is your audience? Perhaps some of the people in the room fit best into the "bunch of teenage drunks telling dirty stories" audience, but not all of them do. One in particular who doesn't is the teacher, the guy with the red pen. This red-pen guy also knows that he has a responsibility to protect the interests of everyone in the room, so a T-shirt that offends women, an essay that disparages a minority, or an essay that is generally offensive becomes a problem


2. What are you trying to do to your audience? There are a lot of legitimate answers to this question: entertain, inform, persuade, and so forth. I doubt if "convince your audience that the author is insensitive and immature" is an aim you should pursue. And if nobody is on your side by the end of the essay, you can't accomplish any aim besides alienating them.

Taking Notes in Class

I wish I could give you a one-size-fits-all set of instructions for note-taking, but I can't. (I'll bet your college bookstore has a pamphlet that attempts this daunting task, though.) Here's why: everyone learns things differently, and every teacher teaches differently, so when I face a room with 25 students, I'm probably going to see 25 different learning styles. When those 25 students move on to the next class (with a different instructor), the new combination will yield another 25 possibilities. So far, fifty different possibilities for note-taking! In spite of the task, here are a few guidelines.

Equipment

I simply do not respect the student who shows up in class empty-handed: no paper, no pen, no way to keep handouts I give (the trademark is the handout laying on the desk when this student leaves). That attitude says either that the student is going to remember everything that's important, or that nothing is important enough to write down. (It's always amusing to watch these students scrambling for writing material when I give a surprise quiz.) If you're serious about college (and intend to return next semester), you will need:

• Something to write on. I like the feel of a legal pad, and it works well on the little half-desk most college classrooms use, but it does present an organizational problem. I've got to sort out my sheets, punch holes in them, and put them in some sort of notebook. A spiral notebook for each class would probably be smarter.


• Something to write with. Pencils are probably the worst choice because the points break. I used to carry a fountain pen, but I know I'm alone on this. Cheap ballpoint pens are difficult to write with and run out of ink at the worst possible time (when they aren't vomiting blobs on ink on your notes). Whatever you use, it should be legible and unfussy. Keep a spare because you'll inevitably lose your pen or it will run out of ink. My first choice (after the fountain pen) would be a good-quality brand-name ballpoint.


• A way to organize stuff. You'll probably have a backpack or purse or something, but you also need one of those plastic pocketed folders. That way you can put all the material for the same course in the same pocket: spiral notebook, incoming homework, classroom handouts. You don't want your papers fighting with your lunch, iPod, and personal items.


• Laptop computer? I wouldn't recommend it. For one thing, your battery will probably fail at the worst possible moment. For another, the key-clicking will drive your professor and fellow students insane. For yet another, you'll be tempted to zone out into Facebook or Solitaire.

Philosophy

Taking notes for the sake of taking notes has some value because it keeps you awake and alert, but the most efficient note-taking always has a sense of purpose behind it. Why are you taking these notes? To know the answer to this one, you'll have to analyze the professor and the course so you can figure out what's important. Some professors and courses are focused on tiny details. If you need to know dates, numbers, and definitions, put those in your notes. Other professors are "big picture" teachers who want you to get the overall scope of relations between things.

What are you going to do with these notes? When I took a linguistics course, we'd work out problems in class, then do similar problems at home. Obviously, I had to know how these things worked so I could do it again on my own. My course in 19th century American poetry really stressed the changing meanings of words, and we were quizzed on definitions (as they would have been used in 1880). This stuff wasn't in textbooks, so I had to write it all down. My professor in a pedagogy course was an original thinker who kept throwing out and explaining his own ideas, and I wanted to keep some of them for further consideration. My business writing course was all details. The main thing I wrote down in my Walt Whitman class was ideas of my own that got generated by the classroom discussion and lecture (ideas that would eventually find their way into my papers).

You get the idea. You will need to know what the course is doing so you can take the right kind of notes.

Hint: If you do the assigned reading before class, you'll have a better idea what to put in your notes and you'll be hearing a lot of the material a second time (from a different perspective).

Procedure

This is where individual preferences are strongest, so I'll only say a few words about my own notes. (I actually use all these styles.)

• The running summary. Advantages: Keeps you involved with the lecture, doesn't require a lot of secondary thinking. Disadvantages: Doesn't emphasize anything very much, difficult to use when you study for a test.


• The formal outline. Advantages: Forces you to consider what's important in the lecture, very easy to use when studying for a test. Disadvantage: distracting if you're not used to outlining (particularly if you're a neatness freak who has to have a "B" under every "A"). Don't get so focused on making an outline that you lose track of the lecture.


• The controlled scribble. Advantages: no procedural thinking necessary, has room for non-lecture things. Disadvantage: can be too chaotic to be useful. This is actually my current style: I've got most of the content running up the middle of the page, with ideas for papers, due dates, grocery lists, and doodles on the edges.


• Required elements. No matter how you take notes, you must have these things on each day's product:
  
  
  • Today's date.
  • Course name (if you're taking two science courses, the notes can look distressingly similar)
  • In-class announcements about changes in reading assignments, etc.
  • Ideas and brainstorms for your own research and writing.

Plagiarism

It's an ugly subject. High school teachers didn't care too much, apparently. Several high school kids have confided in me: "Well, I ran out of time, so I just copied an essay from the Internet, but the teacher didn't care." Believe me, college instructors do care.

We all have master's degrees or doctorates, and in almost every case we got there by researching and writing a thesis on an original subject. We place a very high value on original thinking. A fake who claims to present an original piece of writing (when it is just a copy of someone else's) is essentially spitting in the face of everyone who actually did the work.

One of my students said to me, "You got a paper. Why do you care who wrote it?" That says that I have some form of "paper hunger" and I need these student productions to keep me fed. Not true. I'm not accumulating some grand anthology of freshman writing; I'm hoping to produce a group of educated men and women. When a student simply copies a paper, it passes through the system undigested, something like corn kernels through the human body. One of my students wrote, concerning the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," "This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the androcentric hegemony of 19th century medical profession." Great stuff. Too bad she wasn't the first writer. What on earth is "androcentric hegemony"? If she doesn't know, she's learned nothing except how to cheat (and not too well, either).

Here's the minimum penalty for plagiarism in my courses (and I suspect that other teachers and colleges are very similar).

• Zero on the paper, with no chance for revision


• A hearing before the appropriate college authorities. They often impose their own penalties (such things as an essay on academic honesty). If this is not a first offense, the student usually becomes a former student of this institution.


• A failing grade in my course, unless the college authorities instruct me to change the grade. They have never done that.


• Here in Ohio, we have something called PSEO (Post Secondary Education Option). That's a program which enables high school students with good grades to take a few college courses at public expense. When a PSEO kid fails a course (and I've gotten a few plagiarism cases from this group, too), the high school English grade is also an "F" (which usually means no graduation from high school). PSEO students who fail courses have to reimburse the state for their college tuition.

Plagiarism is a big deal. Don't do it. It's so easy to detect.

A Note of Hope

There is such a thing as unintentional plagiarism. If you are concerned that your writing might fall into that category, your best strategy is to ask the instructor to discuss your paper with you. You'll always get a good response.

Writing Enough

Many of my students have a terrible struggle coming up with enough content. In high school, they never needed to know how to number pages (or use a stapler) because they never were asked to write anything that extended longer than a single sheet. Then they land in my classroom, and I assign a paper that's three to five pages long. I tell them that I know all the tricks (enormous type, enormous margins, skipping a line between paragraphs, etc.) and I am not interested in simply killing trees, but in generating content.

They think I'm crazy. Nobody except a professional writer could ever write more than 250 words on any topic whatsoever.

Finally the big moment comes: the paper due date. I take the 450-word essay that was supposed to be three pages (that's about 1000 words), and I give a grade that's multiplied by 45%. I'm so unjust.

Help is available

Almost every college has a writing lab of some sort. Most students are either too proud or too terrified to go there. They assume it's a room full of grammar Nazis who will pounce on every misplaced comma. They assume that only the mentally-retarded should go there.

The truth is far different. Most writing labs are staffed by graduate students, and usually they would love a chance to help you develop a topic by talking over the possibilities and the ramifications. Sitting and chatting about your work: that's the agenda. (By the way, my students who regularly use writing labs are usually the ones getting the best grades.)

Another sort of help that most students ignore is professors' office hours. We're supposed to have open times for students to simply walk in and ask questions or talk over their progress. Almost nobody ever uses these times, and it's a pity, because this is where the real education can occur.

More advice

Most of my students are terrified of specifics when they write. If I ask them to describe a boyfriend/girlfriend, I'll get:

Mary is really great. She's so smart and fun to be with. She's always there for me. She's good looking, too.

That's 21 words that really say nothing in particular. We know the name and we know that the writer has a positive attitude, and that's it. We've got those enormous, meaningless words ("great") and the cliché "she's always there for me" but nothing specific to hang on to. How much of that essay would you read? You're already tired after only 21 words—can you endure the idea of another 979? I can't. How much better to write as one of my students did:

My boyfriend really is my ideal man. He's got a big, happy smile punctuated by a gold tooth. His head is shaved and shiny and his skin is the exact color of a Hershey's milk chocolate bar.

Reading about Politics

We're never too far from political discussions, and you are actually part of things now because you can vote. Your opinion counts for more than it did when you were twelve. (By the way, one of the main reasons originally given for establishing schools in our country was to have an educated electorate who could vote for things intelligently.)

As I sit here writing on June 5, 2008, I know that the presidential election is about to enter its final phase. Obama will probably become the first black candidate fielded by a major political party, though there's still a chance that Clinton will, instead, become the first woman. California's Supreme Court has issued a ruling that legalizes gay marriage, but the conservatives in that state promise to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot to forbid such unions. Senator Robert Byrd, 90 years old, and the longest serving U.S. Senator, has entered the hospital, and so has Senator Ted Kennedy, probably one of the most powerful Senators.

Politics is interesting daily stuff.

Last semester, I assigned Andrew Sullivan's "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage." It's an article that originally appeared in Time magazine in 2003, pondering what effect the Canadian legalization of gay marriage would have on the USA. Some of my students' reactions were disturbing:

• Many assumed that Canada's decision was binding on the USA. They didn't seem to realize that the two countries are separate.
• At the time the article was written, the state Supreme Court in Massachusetts seemed very likely to rule that gay marriage should be legal there. Many of my students assumed that decision would be binding on everyone else in the country.
• The U.S. Supreme Court was about to rule on the question whether a specific sexual practice should have a different legal status depending on whether one is gay or straight. Many of my students thought the issue was gay marriage.
• Nobody seemed aware that our state, Ohio, has a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage that is so broad that a live-in boyfriend who beats his girlfriend cannot be prosecuted for domestic violence.

All of this brings up two points.

1. You need to know how our country is governed if you intend to make any sort of intelligent comment. Do you know what a primary election is? What on earth is the Electoral College (and why was it put in place)? If California legalizes something, does Ohio have to allow it?
2. If you get your news from the kids at the lunch table, you really don't know anything. If you get it from online sources such as Yahoo, you are in better shape, but their complexity is aimed at a person with a fourth grade education and 30 seconds to read. You will do far better with a big-city newspaper such as The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. You really should spend some time with major news magazines (Time or Newsweek, for example) and actually read the in-depth articles.
   

Learn to Write

I don't mean this in the sense of "learn to put together essays" (though I do think you need to do that too). I simply mean "learn to put words on paper with a pen or pencil."

An astonishing number of kids get out of high school without the ability to make words on paper. Their "writing" is difficult, cramped printing. They suffer over every word. They hold the pen in a death grip. When they are done, their hands are in pain, the product is illegible, and the paper itself is nearly destroyed.

I feel like Professor Kirk in The Chronicles of Narnia: "I wonder what they do teach them in these schools" (Lewis 50). Handwriting is a skill you should have picked up in the third and fourth grades. Since you can't go back and repeat those years, you need to at least teach yourself.

Why?

• You will spend at least fifteen hours a week in lectures. Contrary to popular opinion, the stuff in lectures is often worth remembering. Your best strategy is to take notes. The best notes are easy to write and will help you learn the material.


• You are going to write marginal notes in your textbooks. Highlighting isn't enough. Big messy blobs won't help you either.


• You will probably write lab reports. You can do the finished work on a computer, but how are you going to figure out what to put into the report?


• You will certainly have to write some in-class essay tests. These are timed, and the teacher must be able to figure out what you wrote. If the writing itself is slow, painful, and illegible, you can't get a good grade on these things.

How?

• Get humble. You won't get anywhere if you keep complaining that all this is beneath you. Concert pianists spend their afternoons playing scales. You can learn the basics too.


• Buy a decent pen. Protect it. Don't lose it.
  • The worst pens are the free ones you get at the bank or pawn shop. They write badly, have almost no ink in them, and feel cheap. You can't respect yourself or your writing when you are inscribing your words with a pen that advertises payday loans.
  • About the only nice thing I can say about those transparent pens that are sold a dozen in a bag is that you can see how much ink you have. They break. They vomit.
  • Five to ten dollars should get you a good brand-name retractable ballpoint. They feel solid, write smoothly, and can be refilled.
  • Consider a cheap fountain pen. It will last forever (after you destroy the first couple of them, that is). It will train you to write with a light, smooth touch. The ink is beautiful. And nothing quite compares with the reaction you get at the lunch table when you pull the cap off a fountain pen to write down a friend's phone number.


• Look around at a bookstore and see if you can find a book to help you—maybe in the kids' section. Calligraphy isn't quite what I have in mind because it takes too long, but at least a calligraphy book will teach you how to hold a pen.


• Buy a big yellow legal pad and just practice. When you need to make a shopping list, write it carefully and smoothly. Write stuff all the time.


• If you have an elderly relative who used to teach elementary school, ask for help. (I doubt if any teachers under the age of 50 would know what you're talking about.)


• Here's a sample page of the old-fashioned handwriting (the way I learned it years ago). The little arrows show you which way to move your pen and the numbers show you the sequence of pen strokes.


• This website on basic handwriting seems really helpful

---

Work Cited

Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The Chronicles of Narnia 2. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Using a Computer

Back in 1995, my English classes included a significant amount of instruction in using a computer: "This is a floppy disk. Don't get it near a magnet. Insert it like this." My classes were scheduled in computer labs and I always had several students who had never been so close to a computer.

Things are different now, but not that different.

Today's freshmen probably grew up with computers in their houses, so they aren't afraid of them. Many received a new laptop as a graduation gift. The problem is that very few know how to use them.

Moving beyond Facebook

You will be writing a LOT in college, so you need to actually learn how to use the machine.

1. Get a word processing program. Your computer probably came with a try-out version of something, and maybe with a copy of Microsoft Works. College campuses almost always use Microsoft Word. Repeat after me: "Microsoft Works is not the same as Microsoft Word." You have several options for word processing programs:

• Your college might have a special discount deal with Microsoft. Ask around to see if you can buy Word for less money.
• If money is a problem, you should strongly consider one of the free, non-Microsoft options.
• Be aware that it doesn't matter if your computer box says "Dell" just like the computers at school. It doesn't matter if your machine runs Windows Vista just like the machines at school. The question is which word processing program are you using? If you aren't using exactly the same one as the school computers use, you'll need to learn how to work around things.

If you are using a demonstration copy, you should be aware that it really will shut down after the demo period if you don't send money. You don't want that to happen just before a paper is due.

2. Learn how to make a basic college paper. In high school you could probably get a higher grade by making a pretty paper with a cute border, inventive use of color and a frilly type face. Not in college. They are all supposed to look the same.

• Here is a sample MLA paper. This is a format your English, philosophy, history, and art teachers will love. The APA format loved by your science teachers isn't too different.
• Microsoft Word has done its best to impose a distinctive look on papers (a look most of your teachers will hate), and the newest edition really tries to hide the instructions for doing anything else. You don't have to accept this. Here are instructions for writing a paper in Word.
• As a bonus, because you haven't had to type punctuation very carefully in high school, here's a basic discussion of punctuation typing issues.

3. Learn how your computer works. I wish I had a dollar for every student who has whined, "I saved the paper, but I don't know where it is on the computer." This is all really basic stuff. If you were a student with Harry Potter at Hogwart's, you would learn how to write with a quill and a bottle of ink. This is the same: it's not advanced magic, just housekeeping.

4. Learn how to send someone else a file. The day will come when you must send a professor a paper by e-mail. Learn how to do it. By the way, I can guarantee that your professor does not have a copy of Microsoft Works, and might not have a copy of the newest Word. You really must learn how to save in RTF format.

5. Your computer isn't just a typewriter. There is a LOT of power in there (even in a very old machine). Learn how to use it. Buy one of those "For Dummies" books.

It's not a toy either

You should be aware that most teachers absolutely hate it when students are messing around on computers doing non-classroom stuff. I routinely give students zero for participation when they can't stop playing Solitaire or reading Facebook long enough to pay attention in class. That's enough to drop a solid B to a C minus for the semester. Last year I gave a D minus to a student whose only real issues were showing up late (so she missed a lot of quizzes) and constant playing on the computer. She actually was a pretty good writer.

You should also be aware that you will suck in a LOT of viruses, spyware, and malware if you love pornography and illegal downloads. It's enough to completely stop a computer. If you absolutely cannot control your porn and pirating, you should make an agreement with your roommate to reserve one computer entirely for games and the other entirely for schoolwork.

The Basics are Basic

A few years ago, when I was in graduate school, I learned that Ohio doesn't require its public school teachers to know anything at all about English grammar. It shows. Many (not all) of my incoming freshmen are really, really rocky—and interestingly enough, they are rocky in the same way.

College English isn't supposed to be about learning the basics of sentence grammar. It's supposed to be about learning to say something smart. So, as soon as possible, do these things:

1. Buy a grammar handbook.
It hardly matters which one, and it doesn't have to be new. College bookstores have used ones for about half price, and if it's an older edition, they practically give them away. Many colleges are moving to online grammar books, but students often find those awkward to use, which brings up the next point: Use it!

2. Master the top 20.
Someone very helpfully read 20,000 freshman papers and gave us the top 20 grammar issues. Make sure you catch the older list at the bottom of the page. It's got examples and an explanation. I have my own list too.

3. Learn to spell.
Two or three spelling/homonym errors per page is a LOT. You need to learn how to run the spelling checker on your computer, but you also need to know its limitations. The checker won't catch homonym problems. If you never learned the difference between their, they're, and there, learn it! If you don't know the business about double consonants and long vowels, learn it. (The sentence, "I was so scarred in the dinning room that I thought I'd loose my mind," means "I was so covered with old injuries in the room where there was a lot of noise that I thought I'd release my too-tight mind." You don't eat things in a dinning room. When you are frightened, you aren't scarred unless you lose a lot of blood. And when that blood went away, you didn't loose it.)

4. Figure out sentence fragments.
They almost always arise because you didn't have the nerve to write a subordinate clause. Learn about them from the grammar handbook you bought.

5. Figure out comma splices.
I know that J.K. Rowling loves them, and so do the majority of college freshmen. Most academic readers just hate them. Go back to the grammar handbook to learn what I'm talking about.

6. Learn how to write the title of a book.
I've almost never run into a freshman who could correctly include the title of a book in a paper. Look it up in your grammar handbook. While you're at it, learn what to do with the title of a short story, poem, or magazine article. (You should have learned this one in about the fourth grade.) By the way, J.K. Rowling's first book was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. One of the most well-known poems by Robert Frost is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." There. That was easy, wasn't it?

7. Figure out apostrophes.
It's a very simple rule, really, and you'll find it in that grammar handbook. You need to learn how to write possessives, simple plurals, and common third-person verbs.

None of this is brain surgery. All of it should have been in place before you got out of the sixth grade. Teachers, however, seem to have other things on their minds in public schools, so native-born students arrive at college with less ability to write correct English than the immigrant who arrived yesterday.

None of what I said here will give you a good paper—just a legal one. It's like rats and cockroaches. One of the basics of running a restaurant is to keep the rats and cockroaches out. Being vermin-free doesn't guarantee a good restaurant: both the fancy French place and the sandwich shop should be free of rats. But you don't want to eat at the gourmet restaurant that's overrun with filth.

Predicting College Success

I had a conversation this morning with my sister, who is homeschooling her two teenagers. She commented that a prestigious school had dropped the ACT and SAT requirements, which made her happy because she doesn't teach her kids with a final test in mind. So we got to talking about the whole business of college admissions.

The college admissions people are in the business of filling their colleges with people who look like they might be successful students. Nobody looks good when a kid flunks out. And of course, the big standardized tests were supposed to be sort of a democratic device so a kid from a low-quality school district would have an even chance with a kid from a good one. It never worked out that way, of course. The tests were supposed to measure ability (that's why it's the Scholastic Aptitude Test), but they really measure what you have learned.

I'd like a different test. I'm not sure how I'd do it, but I'd like something that measures personal maturity.

We've all known someone like Sebastian Flyte. He's a character in the novel, Brideshead Revisited. He's got everything. Money, intelligence, social position (He's actually Lord Sebastian Flyte). He's good looking, fun, and funny. Off he goes to college. He has trouble finding time to attend all his classes. He drinks a lot. By the end of the very long novel, he has found his niche in life. He's sweeping the floors at a monastery and occasionally taking a month off to be drunk.

In twelve years of teaching I've seen a lot of Sebastians. In fact, something like 25% of America's college freshmen have enough of a drinking problem to get in the way of their studies. They were bright kids who really thought that Animal House was filmed as a documentary. I remember one boy from my hometown. He was the smartest thing that Mansfield had made in years—always getting academic prizes, winning everything for his school at Academic Challenge. And, yes, tall and good looking. He got an early admission to Washington University (my alma mater, and a pretty tough place), so he left in January. He'd flunked out by June. Booze.

I also seem to have a lot of kids who have a "condition" (and it isn't always drink or drugs) that just seems to get in the way of attendance. It seems that about 10% of my students just can't seem to pull themselves together to attend class. Sometimes they present a doctor's excuse, and sometimes not. Either way, they usually fail because they haven't a clue what we're doing.

As a little side topic, isn't it interesting that education is the only place where people are pleased to get less than they paid for? If a student pays to attend my class for 45 clock hours and I dismiss class early one day, the student is overjoyed. If the student can skip out of 20 of those hours without me saying anything, he figures he's a winner.

Anyhow, back to my alma mater, Washington U., I remember the chancellor saying that a mediocre person with a good work ethic is much more likely to do well than a person with high abilities and no discipline.

I just wish we could design an SAT that could measure sobriety and work habits.

A few attendance statistics

In the Spring 2008 semester, I had 93 students. At one school, we met twice a week (27 class sessions). At the other, we met three times a week (40 class sessions). I failed three students for plagiarism (a somewhat low total). Two of those students left in the middle of the semester, so I didn't include them in the tabulation below.

At the two-day-a-week school, 18 (out of 56) students got an A minus or better. Six of those had perfect attendance; the worst missed four days. The average number of absences for students getting A minus or better was 1.28.

At the three-day-a-week school, 9 (out of 33) students got an A minus or better. One had perfect attendance; the worst missed four days. The average number of absences for this group was 2.

At the two-day-a-week school, 9 got a D plus or worse. The average number of absences for students getting D plus or lower was 9.33, and this includes two students who only missed four days. Four students missed ten or more class sessions (a third of our meetings). I've included one student who failed her last paper for plagiarism because she showed up off and on right up to the end. She had eight absences. The student with worst attendance missed 21 class meetings (out of 27).

At the three-day-a-week school, 9 got a D plus or worse. Leaving out the student who only missed one class session (but never turned in any work), the average number of absences for students receiving D plus or below was 12.25. Five students missed eleven or more class sessions.

It's interesting that the attendance percentages are about the same. At both schools, the A minus or better students attended about 95% of the time. At both schools, the D plus or worse students attended between 65% and 69% of the time. (It's also interesting that the grade scale shows 90% as the lowest score for an A- and 70% for a C-.)

E-Mail from a Student

After the last semester ended, I got this e-mail from a student:

i do no think i was absent all thoes days because i would email you if i missed class or tell you and i marked down the days in my classes if i had missed for my records and i have only got 5 days missed and i had emialed you for i think two of thoes days. If there isany way i can prove this to you becaus ei have attended all your classes but five. On the days that i missed i asked you what i had missed and you would give me the handouts or tell me nothing meaning papers. if there is any way the absents could be changed because i truely do not believe i was out all of thoes days. If there is any way to resolve this i would greatly appreciate it. You could contact me on my cell phone at 1-000-000-0000. If this would be easier and i think more effiecient to get this resolved faster. if you could contact me i would very much appreciate it. Thank you for emailing me back.

I hate getting these. He's asking me, essentially, to reverse my opinion on his grade and to give him a passing grade. Let's break it down:

1. Audience
I, the course instructor, am the audience. I'm not terribly warmed up by his charge that I'm just plain wrong. Of course that isn't the worst thing about his audience awareness. He wants me to raise his grade, to say that he really wasn't that poor in English. He's sent me a letter that's so illiterate that I suspect his earlier papers weren't his after all. I'm tempted to lower his grade for the course. (Interesting note here: most of the e-mails that ask for a higher grade show about the same writing quality.)

2. Letter content
Even if I do accept his claim that he was only absent five times, that is still two more than I allow before I begin to lower his participation grade. It's interesting that his daily quiz grade has several zeros for missed quizzes. He hasn't done his arithmetic or read the syllabus. If I were to grant his request, he'd get a D+ (and still have to repeat the course).

3. The point of the letter
It's unstated, but the point of all this is "I want to be done with English and move on." That's why his final paper was only three pages for a seven page assignment. That's why he won't even proofread his final communication to me. He writes as if he and I have a legitimate dispute that we need to clear up. We don't. In terms of the real point of the course, did he "get it"? I don't think so.

A last point
We take grades seriously in college. If I want to change one, I have to get several people above me to agree—which means I need to have a decent justification for the change. I've always got to answer the question why this grade was changed and whether everyone else got the same sort of opportunity.