A Cautionary Tale about Differing Philosophies of Gift-Wrapping

Some people are meticulous when it comes to wrapping Christmas presents. They carefully pick paper that suits the occasion, the gift itself, and possibly even the personality of the person receiving the present; then, they work assiduously to cut in straight lines, tape everything together neatly, and then proudly present their handiwork with a self-satisfied grin, perhaps hoping that someone will say, "Ooooh, what a beautiful wrapping job! I honestly hate to open this!" I used to be one of those meticulous wrappers, though I cannot say this without any qualification--I was meticulous until, say, around the age of twelve when my mother stopped paying me ten cents for every neat wrapping job. After that, I became a lazy wrapper, and I have remained one to this day, at thirty-two years of age.

I am, unfortunately, one of those awful people who tends to prefer to buy those ridiculously overpriced gift bags--the ones that (whether or not this is an accurate sentiment) scream, "I dumped your gift in here because I didn't have the five minutes it would have taken to wrap it myself. Seriously, I'm just not that into you. But hey, at east it's a pretty bag. And I even did that swirly thing with the ribbon that's tying it together." Sometimes I even "regift" the gift bags that are given to me by friends and relatives who belong to my same lazy wrapper cohort. (I know: does it get lower that that? Well, read on...)

But the point of this post actually pertains to marriage, and how a husband and wife navigate and come to grips with their different points of view about gift wrapping. This, the issue of one's approach to preparing presents for family members, may actually be one of those questions a couple should ask each other before getting hitched, right up there with "Are you religious?"

I recently spent my first Christmas with my new husband, a wonderful man in every way imaginable. He did, in fact, wrap all of his presents to me very nicely, in several different patterns of Christmas wrapping paper. It was so sweet, and it gave me the chance to see each one several days before the holiday and wonder what each one was. I, in turn, did not wrap any of his gifts, but instead chose to lay them all out on the couch before he woke on Christmas morning and pretend that Santa had come. Perhaps that's a lame approach for people in their thirties, but, hey, I wanted to be creative on our first holiday. But I've never seen anyone pull a move like he did for his brother, for whom he bought some nice beer.

Who says you can't wrap an entire present in electrical tape? Not my innovative husband, that's for sure. So, that's exactly what he proceeded to do (as a joke, but still), and the job took several minutes, as I looked on in amused shock. Now, I am convinced that many women, faced with such a spectacle, might begin to question the entire foundation of their relationship. "Who is this man?" They might wonder in the wee hours as they look over at their sleeping spouse. However, I think I can see us using our disparate gift wrapping philosophies to bring us closer together. His birthday is coming up, so who knows? He may get something covered in aluminum foil, or even normal wrapping paper, but with a Hello Kitty motif...

How to Teach Writing?

Clancy Ratliff, author of the blog Culture Cat, wrote the following, and I feel compelled to use this juicy tidbit as a springboard for this post:

"On a somewhat related note, I have a confession to make. I have now been teaching writing and studying composition theory for just over ten years. Over the years, I have come to realize that I have no strong opinion one way or another about How Writing Should Be Taught. I honestly think that students can learn useful skills in an expressivist course, a rhetoric-heavy course, a writing-about-literature course, a current-traditional course, a cultural studies based course, etc. I can't decide if this makes me a terrible writing program administrator or an excellent one."

Reading this comment was especially freeing to me as someone who has taught first year composition as a t.a., adjunct, and assistant professor for the last eleven years. Even in that short amount of time, I have seen perspectives shift within the profession regarding what approach to writing is best for our students. And I've tried several--believe me--here are some of the course content formats I've experimented with, beginning with my earliest days as a teaching assistant:

Writing about Generational Theory
Writing about Education in America
Writing about Language, Power, and Society
Writing about Literature
Writing in Response to Essays

These approaches, I would argue, worked just fine as far as creating a class that fulfilled all of the goals of a first year English course, one of which is to link the four language arts: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Students did all four, perhaps sometimes unsure of how every activity or assignment would aid them, but still, they completed their assignments. For the past five years, I have taught our second semester composition course as a writing about literature course, which is in adherence to the department's standards. Some of the original arguments against using second semester comp as "writing about literature" (see the Lindemann/Tate debate for more explanation) focused on the problems with the trend of having students read literary works and then, with no modeling or scaffolding of the writing process, produce essays that were nothing like what they were reading. Others argued that because first year composition should stand alone and not as a service course for upper level literature courses, the readings for these courses should not be comprised of fictional works. My experience in teaching 1302 as "writing about literature" has been that with enough modeling, students can successfully produce essays in the same genres they would produce in a course that does not use literature as the main reading content.

In teaching writing the one thing that I am absolutely sure of, and which is in accordance with the findings of Ronald Kellogg, author of The Psychology of Writing, is that in order to become better writers, students need sustained, repeated practice at writing in environments that are as distraction free as possible. This may seem like a small and obvious revelation, one that I should have come to early in my teaching career, but in truth I think that realizing this has allowed me to shut out some of the noise of the "Students should read/respond to this specific type of text in order to improve their writing skills" arguments that come and go.

One of the pitfalls I've discovered in teaching first year writing relates to that gray area of having students write about what they are interested in, which is, I think, I noble goal that most of us strive to reach, but a difficult road nonetheless. Students' interests shift constantly, and simply telling them something along the lines of, "This next assignment allows you to write about a topic you have an interest in" is generally not enough to ignite inspiration in students who (1) may have an undecided major, (2) may have already bitten off more than they can chew in taking too many hours. The idea of writing and having that writing critiqued is intimidating enough, but the idea of writing about a subject you genuinely are passionate about and giving that writing up for critique is downright scary. Furthermore, a student who begins the task of a research essay on, say, gender bias in the workplace, which he or she cheerfully assures you is an issue near and dear to his/her heart, may grow to despise that topic as the demands of prewriting, researching, annotating, and drafting pile up. This shift in attitude toward the topic (which I often see happen in our second semester first year composition course, which requires a significant research component) does not discourage me as it did when I began teaching. Instead, their frustration, I think, mirrors the frustrations of any serious writer who takes on a significant project and, along the way, has their own ideas challenged, runs into writers block, or, conversely, feels filled with too many ideas and no sense of organization, and sits down to draft at times when they would much rather be doing something else. I go through the exact same process (several cycles) with every article I write. And, as with most of my students, I go through the process hoping that what I am producing will be of value to someone else--that it will simply be read. My aim in teaching first year composition is not to make it "fun", necessarily, although I do my best with my classes to excavate whatever fun might be lurking beneath the mountains of work in a sixteen week semester, but to instead help students through what I know to be the processes that will lead them to produce work that showcases their best efforts.