Drafting College Essays – Pleasure or Pain?

Please read the article, "Process Writing and the Secondary School Reality: A Compromise" (Pages 74-81 of your Bulk Pack Materials). Barbara Carney, author of the article, describes how she makes her students write five total drafts of their papers. This week, you are writing the first and second drafts of your personal statement (essay for college). Mr. Schuman will make you write five total drafts of your personal statement.

DISCUSSION QUESTION SIX:
1. Should Mr. Schuman make students write five total drafts of their personal statement or is the drafting process utter insanity and a waste of time?

2. Which draft is the most important one: D1, D2, D3, D4, or D5?Please base your comments and responses off the ideas that Barbara Carney presents in her article.

Does the University Make the Man or Does the Man Make the University?

The role-play, Where did he go wrong, located on pages BP-16 and BP-17 of your Bulk-Pack Materials, examines whether or not the college a person attends makes that person respected, successful, and competitive. Some people think people who go to "big-name" universities have an edge when competing against people who go to "lesser-name" schools. For example, imagine graduates of Harvard University and Pace University competing for one available spot at a certain law firm. Will the employer making the decision see "Harvard" at the top of the first person's resume and automatically select him? In contrast, some people think the man (or woman) make the university. The other school of thought looks at people who spend their four years of college lying on the college green, cutting class, and going to frat parties. Can people who "waste their four years" at an acclaimed university still find success? You decide: Does the university make the man or does the man make the university?

LISTSERV DISCUSSION QUESTION FIVE (PLEASE RESPOND): Does the university make the man or does the man make the university? For this question, you also may talk about whether or not a high-school student's college essay (personal statement) matters in the overall college selection process.

Would our government do the trade? Practice making a controversial comment in a politically-correct way!

Derek Bell's story, The Space Traders, is a science fiction or political fiction story. Derek Bell believes that racism is permanent (or will always remain and affect every decision in our country). Pretend the trade that he writes about actually is about to happen. Our planet faces a disaster. It has no money to function, no more sources of energy to give people basic services such as a running kitchen sink, and the environment is polluted to the point that people can't walk outside. Aliens arrive, and offer the leaders of our government a trade. The aliens will restore the planet if the government offers up all of the black people. Based off the reading (B.P. 48-65) and your own beliefs about racism, would our government actually do this trade?

Please write a full listserv comment and practice remaining politically correct! Mr. Schuman will grade your response on the five factors we talked about during the first week of class: formal language (no slang) length (an extended paragraph), references to the text, awareness (of everyone else's comments), and originality (try to present a new theory or make a shockingly unique thesis-statement).

LISTSERV DISCUSSION QUESTION FOUR: Would our government ship all Black people to another planet if aliens offered to restore our economy, resources, and otherwise uncurable diseases?