Being a Student: Writing for the Course

“He could have written this before ever taking my class!”

Among my rubrics for student writing is the requirement that they rigorously engage the course materials (readings, lectures, discussion) and also engage the methods taught in the course (narrative criticism, form/genre criticism, attention to historical contexts, and so on).

For introductory students, who are still trying to get a handle on just what we are reading/doing/talking about, this can at first feel a bit abstract. Recently, an exasperated colleague at another school made a comment that, in my view, offers an excellent “thumb rule” on this business of writing for the course:

“He could have written this piece before ever taking my class!”

If I had to isolate the single most common complaint that I’ve heard professors utter about student writing, it wouldn’t be about grammar and spelling, or about making deadlines, or even plagiarism. It would be this complaint, that a piece of student writing (often for a final project in the course) could have been written by the student without ever having taken the course in the first place.

So, ask yourself—early in the process of planning, and again early in the writing, and again when approaching completion—could I have written this before I ever took this course? Or am I making concrete use of the readings I’ve read, the lectures offered, the modes of inquiry that have been encouraged, the discussions facilitated in class?

Being a Student: Crazy, Mentoring, and Office Hours

Everyone who has taught first-year students in higher education knows it: besides teaching the subject matter of the course (“Introduction to X”), we are also triage nurses in the task of academic formation: writing skills, critical thinking, academic integrity, time management, methods in collaboration and mutual support, and so on. In short, being a student. All of this depends in part on soliciting the students’ trust so that they’ll hear our sage advice. Some of my recent reading has me considering all this under the umbrella of “mentorship.”

Sparked by a post about faculty mentoring in Inside Higher Ed, there has been a conversation in the academic blogs about mentoring in grad school. In the final link below, Dr. Crazy writes about her strategies for forcing students to accept mentoring.

1. Historiann: Mentors and mentoring: whose responsibility?


2. Sisyphus: Lessons for Girls: Don’t Just Ask, Insist on Help (even if it makes you feel weird)


3. Dr. Crazy: How to Force Students to Let You Be Their Mentor

In a nutshell (and in my own words), Crazy wants to say two words to you, Ben. Just two words. Are you listening? “Office hours.” Face-time is the necessary-though-not-sufficient ground for a protegé/mentor relationship. This accords pretty well with my own experience, though “office” for many adjuncts will often and awkwardly mean the library, a quiet corner of cafeteria, or an unused classroom.

Like “extra credit,” the “office hours” strategy has a common drawback: the students who take advantage of it are almost always the ones who are already going to earn top marks in the course. So how does one draw in the students who need it most?

Crazy’s strategy is to frighten them early and often, while wearing a sandwich board sign saying, “This way to my office.” For example, she describes the tactic of responding to a written assignment with “see me” and holding back on other feedback until the students shows up to meet.

This probably sounds controlling to some, but in my experience, students who are struggling with the course really resist interaction with the prof: it’s just that natural, poisonous impulse to “get one’s act together” before meeting with the powerful authority figure. It often takes a trigger incident of some kind to prod the student out of the slow freeze of inchoate anxiety and into motion toward the office-hours sign-up sheet.

This term, I also have a plan for driving students to my door. I am starting our first-year students off a very short written assignment that a mean to be enjoyable and low-stakes (graded only as done/not done). After it’s finished, we will discuss it during a brief office appointment. If nothing else, it will help me learn their names, and it will show them the way to my office with a suggestion that I don’t mind company as long as an appointment is made in my available hours. As Crazy writes, students who have found the office once will tend to come back again.

If you are a student, what sorts of “carrots and sticks” drive you to a professor’s office? If you teach, do office hours have a role in your efforts to offer mentorship, and if so, what experience can you offer to other teachers or to students?

Being a Student: Letters

Bryan Bibb’s recent post on “How to Argue with Your Biblical Studies Teacher” has me reflecting on that hatful of things I’d like my students to know about being a student. Expect occasional posts on the subject, beginning today with “letters of reference.”

Imagine it’s the first day of the first year of your course of study. Besides everything else on your plate, take a moment to focus your gaze on that figure at the front of the room. Think: “I will be asking this person for a letter of reference.” It may be for admission to a degree program, or for a scholarship or fellowship, or it may be for the thing you don’t know yet you’ll need. That is, it will involve money and opportunities: can you hear me now?

Advance preparation:

• Don’t be a wallflower, even a high-performing wallflower. Come to class with genuine questions that engage the subject matter. Check in with the prof before or after class occasionally. Sign up for office hours. If you are self-conscious, do this enough that you can relax and be yourself: after all, you are the self that she will be supposed to be writing about.


• Do what you can to perform well. Do you devote two hours outside of classroom on the course for every hour inside the classroom? More on “performing highly” in a later post, but for now: if you follow that 2:1 formula and do not get the results you want, check in with the prof about tips on how to spend that time.


• Get advance permission: “Would it be possible for me to ask you for a letter of reference in the future?” This translates to, “Don’t forget about me while two or three more waves of incoming students crash over your bow in the next year or two.”


• Cultivate more than one professor. When you need a letter, any one prof might be out of commission: What if she has been denied tenure and left; or had a family emergency; or been carried off by a twister?

Getting the letter:

• Give your prof a month’s notice if at all possible. For one thing, she’s probably over-booked already with responsibilities that are out of her control. For another, her writing practices may include multiple sittings with periods of “percolation” in between.


• Be ready to offer a portfolio. Besides any official instructions for the letter, I like this to include 1) the graded copies of everything you have written for her; 2) copies of any personal statement and cover letter that you are sending to the approving institution; 3) a URL for the approving institution. The point of this is to help the prof write a personal and on-target letter rapidly. You win because it’s the best letter it can be; she wins because it takes as little of her time as possible.

Think on the difference. In one scenario, the prof is unhappy to find herself rushed, to fill a page about a student she doesn’t remember well, and whose records show sub-optimal performance. In another scenario, the prof is grateful to have time to woolgather, concerning a student with whom she has a relationship, producing a letter that recalls detailed and individual accomplishments.

All of these steps are simple to do (even the one on “2:1” homework: in the long haul, “short cuts make long delays”).* However, none of them can be made up later if missed.

Remember that profs want to write good letters: we need students in the chairs, and when the “housekeeping” aspects of your life are going well, you hypothetically are better positioned to focus on our coursework and do well. Take care of your end, and we’ll do our part to help you reap some benefit.

* Peregrin Took to Frodo Baggins, Chapter Four of Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkein).