In preparation for Wednesday’s class I would like each of you to do the following:
- Copy the text from your blog post wherein you discussed representations of a liberal arts college experience and paste it into a page on the class wiki. Copy this into a new wiki page titled
“First Essay”“Your first name and last initial first essay” (for example “Jim G’s first essay” -thanks for catching this Samantha) that should be located within the page where you copied the URL of your blog. Be sure not to erase you original blog post on this topic, just copy the text into the wiki. - Once you have copied your text into the wiki page, I would like you to use your ideas from this previous assignment as the basis for the next – which is as follows:
Walker Percy’s essay “The Loss of the Creature” traces what might be understood as a crisis of cliched experience, I would like each of you (using your first writing assignment as the basis) to reframe your assumptions about the liberal arts college experience in light of our reading and discussion of Percy’s essay. In particular, here are some questions you might consider when working through this assignment:
- How might the college experience be understood as a “preformed symbolic complex”?
- How might Percy’s discussion of the “loss of sovereignty” relate to the institutional logic of education? -how does this resonate with your previous discussion of the liberal arts college experience?
- How does Percy’s idea of the student as “a consumer receiving an experience-package” inform, if not change, your original ideas about your college experience?
Try not to think of this essay as a reaction to your previous ideas of the college experience, but rather as a measured, thoughtful dialogue with yourself in relationship to framing of ideas Percy’s essay affords.
- Note that you will need to login to the class wiki in order to add and edit your work. Logging in to the wiki will be mandatory from here on out, so be sure you know your login and password.
Finally, if you have any questions, concerns, or problems with anything of the instructions listed above please leave a comment on this post and I will sure to address any issue as soon as possible. Good luck!
Professor Groom,
I went into the Wiki to form my new page for the “first essay,” and when I created the new page under my name, Kelly Key’s essay was there. I went into edit and pasted in my blog entry there, edited it, etc. However, now, when you go into Kelly’s page, my essay is there too. How do I fix this? Thanks!
Sam DiPaola
Sam,
Excellent point, here is how we can fix this issue: put your name in front of the First essay page – for examples instead of writing First essay, write Sam\\\\\\\’s first essay – does this make sense? What is happening is that Kelly created the first essay page and now it seems the wiki is acknowledging this as her page alone, so each of you have to distinguish it by placing your name in from of the the first essay title.
My essay shows up on the page when you first click on “Allison Crerie” on the wiki homepage. I thought I did the “Allison C’s First Essay” thing, but I guess I didnt. How do I go back and label it?
I placed Allison\’s first essay in double brackets within the Alison Crerie page and it created a new (red) link to a new page. I then cut and pasted your text into the new page I created -did you do something similar with varying results?
Professor Groom,
If I did my images to represent the undergradudat college experience instead of specifically a liberal arts experience, what should I do? should I start all over and find symbols of liberal arts college experience or do this new process with the symbols that I have which just represents the general undergrad experience?
Rachel,
The latter. You can easily fold the ideas you discussed for the undergraduate education into similar concepts that define a liberal arts education. Also keep in mind that you are using this earlier writing assignment as a point of departure. The ideas you harvest from your earlier work should by no means limit your development of a larger, more robust examination of the liberal arts experience in light of Percy\’s essay for this assignment.