Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

I learned about myself by writing a second personal identity essay this spring. Certain feedback from students about the content helped me understand myself better as a teacher, and specific examples from students about where they became confused pushed me to express this understanding more clearly.

In terms of content, students identified the (self-perceived!) components of my identity in the first draft: nonconformist, out-of-the-ordinary, ever-changing, facing challenges, resilient, and seeking surprise. I felt "read" accurately by my audience, meaning they "got" what I wanted them "to get" about me (one indicator of success as a writer). However, they also correctly diagnosed that I had not yet actually stated how these components work together as a generic model of identity. In the next version I was able to summarize, "Identity is the spirit that rises to meet what is: identity ... engages the environment ... [identity is] how a person reads and responds to the action occurring around them."

Rhetorically, students were not able to follow my logic in the first three drafts. The logos of "identity is a surprise" was not explained carefully enough or with adequate detail. Some students connected with my pathos, although the link between the rap verse and the rest of the essay was tenuous. I failed to establish ethos in both domains of academic writing and creative wordplay. I left the rap out of the next version, which I thought was a loss but one of my critics did not: "the only things you threw away were the things that got a lot of us confused in the first place."

Because of the problems identified already, most students found my first version ineffective. I am proud that they did not tell me nice (fake) things. Instead, I received a list of weaknesses: "too many quick transitions," "scattered" thoughts, "unclear" ideas, and general incompleteness: readers "don't know how it ends." A few comments went further, questioning my motivation, "It's like the author was trying to fit in with the type of people." Another clarified that instead of providing insight into my own identity, I "[question] others on how their identity should be." The narrative, explained another reader, seemed more about the movie I used as my example than about me. One lone (!) comment did indicate a positive effective, meaning the writing was received in alignment with what I had intended. This reader recognized that I wrote: "to cause emotion from reader, cause a response. [T]his is...neat since we said that she measures identity through response and this essay causes a reaction...a response." On the basis of this and other generous feedbacks I knew that some seeds of what I wanted to grow were floating in the tidepool of my first attempt!

I am quite tickled returning to these comments now, a month or two later, and recognizing how similar this collection of feedback from the students to me is to the feedback I give them on their assignments. We all suffer the same challenges! The suggestions for improvement are precise: tell more about me (do not leave my identity vague for the reader to infer), provide more answers than questions, explain more, relate myself more to the example, improve the flow, and - most basic? - finish it! Focus! (Can you see me smiling?) :-) Despite all of this, some readers did believe that the first draft gave a sense of my identity, while others insisted on a more clear representation of who I think I am and why. Why did I write "that poem"?

knowledge elusive,

grounded in surreal space, transmitted via

myspace, facebook, cellphone, I’m-not-at-home

yet,

all alone surrounded by dead eyes,

trying to reach the right size,

in order not to compromise.

Sell out for the right price,

it ain’t just any roll of the dice.

Memory dictates what it will,

life won’t make me swallow that pill.

I’ve got game without the shame;

you gonna play or pack it up for a later day?

Sometimes when I write, words move through my body like a current of the sea, welling up and out of me.

References:

1. Student feedback on first draft.
2. Tom and John?'s critiques on the second draft.
3. First Draft (really the third, but the first public version). :-)
4. Second Draft, No Bullshit: Living Against the Jacket