"eye hait engliisch!" (BTW, if you love English--it happens--this can apply to other stuff :)

Well, of course (some of) you hate English because (some of) you think, "I'm no good at English!"

Really, it's not about being "good at English." Sure, some people are better at this or at that. Ray might be a fantastic cook; Janelle is a killer bass player; Marcus can throw a 94 mph fastball at age 16; Glenda is a math whiz. Yes, I know it; it's absolutely true. But not being genius at something is not the same as "I'm not good at _____." That usually comes from "I am not even trying to do _____." You CAN ALL learn this and do as well as you need to at it, but that's on you. You have to give it a shot. It is true of college, of work, of relationships. I will ask you to follow a set of step-by-step instructions. Can I FORCE YOU TO? Of course not. Only you can force you to.

Let's watch a little video.


I know, you are thinking, "Uh, OK, but this is not a music class. That was kind of neat, but it wasn't about English."

Sure it was. And, in fact, it was about pretty much everything you try to do. Aside from the specific skill set he is teaching, there are two major takeaways from that video:

  1. for most things, there is a "secret sauce," something that allows you to be successful fairly early on (which is not the same as mastering it)
  2. to get better at something (life Final Fantasy XIV, for example), you have to practice, often, daily, at least a little

This is true of English (both reading and writing), and you all can get quite a bit better at it, fairly quickly.

A lot of what you read in the lectures you will have seen in some form or other, but some of the things I will ask you to do are probably a bit different, maybe wildly different. When I say things such as "Never use the word good or the phrase 'I think' in your writing," you might just shake your head, but I am saying these things for a reason. Often I will give you the reason, but if not, you can always ask me about it.

Come with doubts, but give all this a try. Let's see how you do. I do have a pretty good track record that stretches over a very long career (I'll give you some more details when I introduce myself in the first Discussion this week). Many students come back, call, email to tell me, "Hey! I'm at Berkeley (or CSUDH or Arizona State or Rutgers or Penn State or...). I was nervous at first, but my writing is getting me top marks in all of my classes that require papers, and that's most classes."

OK, that is enough preamble. Let's do this!

is there an 8-note secret sauce for writing?

My colleagues and I have discussed this idea for years, decades even. The short answer is, "Probably not," though, to be fair, those 8 notes in the YouTube video only get you so far; they get your over the initial, "Do I even want to try to do this?" hurdle. Beyond that there is indeed note reading and music theory and billions of variation that you will only get to with practice. I don't play piano. I play guitar. In the 1970's I discovered I could play pretty much anything in the British Invasion catalog by learning three chords. It took awhile to move on to the more-elaborate fingering of surf guitar.

But here's a starting point, a little exercise that Annie Lamott teaches in her creative writing seminars and which she shared in her book Bird by Bird. Oh, and this is going to be part of this week's Class Discussion, but don't panic; it's simple, kind of fun, possibly eye-opening, and something that will actually improve most people's writing. Oh, and we are going to do the cheap version.

Her students go to Michaels or CVS or wherever and buy a wallet-size photo frame then take out the backing and the glass, leaving just the frame and the 2.5" x 3.5" opening. We can do that with four strips of paper or cardboard (I'd cut up an old ginger ale box myself, but, whatever). Tape the strips together so that you leave just a 2.5" x 3.5" opening. Trim the edges is you are the sort who wants the edges to look neat. Does it feel like English yet?

Next, get some paper and something to write with (don't forget your frame), and go somewhere. No, I don't care where you go, but be safe. But if you go out somewhere, be sure you follow the next instructions; you are NOT describing a whole beach or park; you must limit yourself to about 1 ft. x 1 ft, only.

NOTE: the best sort of place is right by a really full trash can. Really!

This is an exercise in seeing, looking VERY closely, and that trash can suggestion really is a very good one because you never know what to expect looking in a filled trashcan. You DO know what to expect when you see a beach; you don't even really have to look, and that is not good for this exercise.

This next bit is VERY important: LOOK DOWN!

Now take your frame, hold it so that all you can see LOOKING DOWN (at the ground, in a trash bin, in the trunk of your car, in a junk drawer) so that you can see about 1 ft. x 1 ft. (give or take an inch or two). NO MORE!. If you don't like looking down, then stand close to a tree trunk or a wall with graffiti or a mangled car, and look at that thing. Do not turn your head; you have a very very very small area you are looking at. Think of the area visible in the center as a very artistic, detailed photograph. What exactly do you see? Look, write, look again, write, look deeper, write some more, until you capture every tiny detail (objects, words, colors, shapes, textures, light/shadow, movement, ?) in that picture. It might start something like this:

The yellowed filter of an American Eagle cigarette butt sticking out of the sand at a thirty-degree angle, torn flecks of brown-orange kelp covering cracked bits of white and grey seashell, specs of black, beige, reflective crystal dots which make up the sand, faint bird prints (probably left by a seagull) trailing off towards the foaming grey-green water, iodine-rich yellow-brown kelp surrounded by bits of black tar, the drying corpse of a sand crab, and on and on...

You want to fill up a page. Don't worry about perfect grammar or paragraphing; this is essentiallyl a list.

If you keep at it long enough and look closer and closer, your list will grow pretty dramatically, and it is a lot more "writerly" (whatever that means) than the general cliches people write down when they just don't look. It might work; it might not, but you may just have experienced one of the several secret sauces of writing. Oh, and maybe you will have had some fun while you were at it. We will see how it turns out in this week's Discussion :)

First a Tip: unusual things are much more interesting to describe than common thingd, so a coffee-stained, tattered, TY Teeny Beanie Baby is a much more interesting picture than, say, a baseball, but a scuffed, grass-stained baseball signed by Fernando Valenzuela works great here. This is why I keep trying to sell that trash can!

Next Some Help: the Week 1 Readings in the Files section on our Canvas site has a famous example of this sort of writing called "Pencil Rack." You WILL want to read that to better see what you are supposed to be doing with this exercise :)

There must be more to it than that!

Of course, but this is just an introduction, part of Orientation Week. More will come, and soon.


"but wait! why is this lecture called I Hate English?" you seem to have gotten off track

Well, yes, I do that quite a lot, but here in the Orientation Week, that section seemed like a good starting spot. And to get back to the idea of the first lecture title, we really do need to address this "I'm not good at English" mindset that some of you have. I have taught English for 45+ years (I know, good grief), and I've managed to get a whole lot of students who come with that roadblock through my classes. Getting students through these classes is kinda my thing.

Most often the problem is not how skilled you are in reading or writing; the larger problem is that leaping into college a lot of students don't really have much idea of how to be a college student. At larger universities, students often fly out for an Orientation Week where they learn where everything is located, have workshops on time management, form study groups for that killer chem class--stuff like that. It's a good thing.

A lot of mistaken ideas that students bring to the big U get shaken up. About the best I have time for here is to look at some of those mistaken ideas.


things you may need to re-think to do well in   English   college (with an emphasis on an online class)


1. TL;DR does NOT work in this class (and, really, in college and maybe even life after college)

I get it. Some of you hate to read. At your age (whatever that might be) I was reading sci-fi and comic books. It doesn't matter if you like it or hate it or are in between. You DO HAVE TO READ and read carefully and take notes on what you read. This is not a memory test. It is you learning ideas you may not agree with (but who cares?) but which others have. THAT is education. Expanding your understanding of possible ways to look at Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Again: that is what education is; it's the point!

If you don't DO the reading in a READING (and Composition) class, you are toast. Think about it. And that leads us to...

2. "Trust me, I KNOW what I'm doing!" (Sledge Hammer).

Do you? Really? So you have no reason to be getting an education at all? If you know it, you do not need any of these classes. Maybe there are things here that are not quite the way you imagine they are. One very simple example is MLA-8 format. The number of my students who mess up on MLA format because "Trust me, I KNOW what I'm doing!" is legend. Most DO NOT know how to do this correctly. Yes, I will show you with videos and with files (which you need to read *see above*), but if you ignore the information, well, you likely won't do it correctly. It's like me showing you how to strum a D chord on your guitar and you just randomly placing fingers wherever you feel like it.

Now that leads us to...

3. Avoid the Prof. at ALL costs.

Yeah, right, because the Prof. is, what? the enemy. The one thing between you and getting an education? Umm... step back a moment and think about that and try not to laugh at the absurdity of it.

To be fair, there are some XYZ (not going to print THAT out) professors, but most (especially at this level) got into this gig TO HELP YOU ALL! If you do not know what you are doing (and that SHOULD be often because you are learning new things), ask the professor. Send an email (be sure to include a Subject, your Name, the Class, and then ask a complete question (or ten of them). You'll find that the thing you are working on is a heck of a lot easier when you have your questions answered.

Which leads us to...

4. Announcements, Discussions, Email--who needs 'em?

If the instructor takes the time to post an Announcement for the class, to give feedback on the Discussion Board or via Email, it is probably very important information. Do not ignore it.

For instance, for one class I had three different extra credit opportunities shared in the Announcements on Canvas (more than once). At the end of the term a couple of students were begging for extra credit. "There has been extra credit all term. Didn't you read the Announcements?"

And that leads to the classic...

5. "I've got plenty of time; it's not due until _____."

You know things take time; YOU KNOW IT. Your mom or dad or spouse or kids or the guy down the street cannot make you do things in a timely manner so that you are not in constant panic-so-of-course-I-will-do-poorly mode. Manage your time. Prioritize your time. Look at things EARLY (and write checklists); DO THINGS EARLY (and go back to asking the Prof. when things are going pear shaped; oh, and that asking takes time to do and process).

If you always look ahead, you'll learn things like this: "Oh, the first 100-point paper is based on the exercise we do the week before, and that exercise is based on the Discussion we do the week before that." Knowing that, you can think about what sorts of things to put in the discussion and in the exercise leading up to the paper; that will SAVE YOU TIME.

Waiting to the last second is NOT managing your time. It just isn't. You will not win a race if you don't start running until the last second.

The End ?