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Date Posted: 13:16:16 09/08/03 Mon
Author: Hero of Time
Author Host/IP: 66.189.225.43
Subject: Rant : This Online English Composition II Class

I rue the day I signed up for this class. It's a requirement for a degree in Business Management, but I cannot see why.

You all know how much affection I have for writing. Verily, it is a passion of mine, and that's pretty much the only reason why this board still stands. So, I figured this class would be the essence of joy.

It's not, so far.

It started like August 18th. To this day, we're still doing the same thing we did there : Evaluation writing. We go to sites about cultural diversity and write evaluation paragraphs on them. We read other articles and identify their thesis statements and their criteria for the evaluation.

The assignments aren't difficult so much as they are meaningless.

It's not composition because what we're doing is called a rant or a review, and it doesn't take a class to learn how to do it. I'm doing it right now!

And it's not composition because we're not creating anything; we're just commenting on how other people commented on someone else's creations.

I don't see why this is a useful skill set at all. You write a review because you either liked or hated something. You don't put a THESIS in there. Why should you? You don't NEED a reason to evaluate something. And you don't need CRITERIA - you're not Ebert for crying out loud!

As for identifying theses and criteria, what's up with that? I hate the emphasis placed on those, particularly the thesis statement. Can't people just not worry about what a thesis of something is and just ENJOY the work? When you look at Brink of Madness's banner, what do you think? You're probably thinking, "That's kinda amusing...A Jesus Fish/Pac-Man bumper sticker hybrid!" or something. You're not thinking, "Well, let's see, the reason this image was created is based entirely on parody. The artist in question noticed the overwhelming number of Jesus Fish on cars these days, and decided to make a bumper sticker to poke a bit of fun at the phenomenon, and given his love for Pac-Man, the loveable yellow creature was used as the template. Ergo, this image." Do people sit around and wonder WHY the Mona Lisa was painted? No, they're busy enjoying the image. Got a design on your shirt? Do you ponder the thesis involved in it's printing, or do you just wear it and enjoy that you had an option besides a solid color shirt? When we do what these professors do and place such an emphasis on cause and effect, thesis and criteria, we completely drain away the art, and truly, the beauty in writing today. The end result is what you see in most college-kid writing today - an absence of individuality and creativity, creating an overall mockery of the English language.

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