Two papers and some time alone

Laura is working on a new essay for her class. The last one didn’t have a required structure—she did a great job with it. You know, she never got the essay back! Finally I wrote a note to her teacher asking how she did, since they were starting a new one. Ms. H wrote back that Laura made an A, but that she’d graded the papers at home and now couldn’t find them to return them. I’ve lost homework papers before, but never real essays! Makes me feel a little better…

Anyhow, her new assignment is to write a very traditional five paragraph essay, which is just reminding me all about why I don’t like teaching that structure so rigidly. Five paragraphs, with five sentences in each paragraph. Exactly. And no deviations, thank you. I understand why they’re learning it this way, but ugh. Anyhow, here was her very first draft of the intro. Hmmm.

Why I like Cats
Cats have great exprient in my life. I think they are soft, furry, and cute. I really love cats!

And here’s her brainstorming cluster, with Ms. H’s comments from their conference. I agree with her teacher that it’s going to be tough to write five whole sentences about soft… but I didn’t think quiet was a much better choice. We’ll see what they come up with.



I am writing these days too. I made good progress on my conference paper yesterday—although boy am I hoping no big experts show up for my panel (unlikely, might I add). I should be able to finish it today, which will be wonderful, because then I can leave the laptop home when I fly out Friday morning. You can always tell the biggest procrastinators at academic conferences—they’re the ones reading their papers off the laptop screen because they didn’t want to pay a buck and a half to print the paper off at the hotel or the local copy shop. Although Todd suggested to me yesterday that if I ended up doing that I could always just introduce my talk by explaining that I am a strict environmentalist and don’t want to kill trees by printing out my papers. A little weak, but better than most of the excuses you hear.

This’ll be the third conference I’ve been to since Will was born that I’ll have gone to alone. I hate leaving him home (I invited Chris to go and he didn’t want to, so that’s his own fault). He’s old enough now to talk on the phone, which makes it more interesting but also harder. A whole day without William twirling my hair? But I have to confess I am really looking forward to being alone for a while. Well, I have grading to finish this morning and I still haven’t reread “Desiree’s Baby,” so I’d better get to it.