Byerly Week 3

For this week’s meeting, Saraphin read excerpts from Sin Boldly and Bird by Bird and wrote a thoughtletter about the public reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing and acts of terrorism in general. We spent the majority of the meeting discussing the thoughtletter. Saraphin stated that she had enjoyed the assignment and had written many pages on the subject. She cut down unnecessary parts in order to make the page limit and said that this helped her with concision. She also said that she had practiced using “free-writing” bullet points and that this exercise had been extremely helpful. The paper adequately addressed a complicated topic and argument in a very small amount of space. It would be a very solid start to a full paper on the subject. However, her word choice and phrasing made the argument unclear and confusing. There were quite a few instances of incorrect prepositions. We discussed prepositions and I plan on bringing a more formal preposition handout to our next meeting. She said that when she translates sentences into Arabic, she can understand why or why not to use certain prepositions. She also used “SAT words” when simple words would have conveyed the same message without distracting or confusing the reader. We discussed the benefits of simple phrasing and words and she will work on this in the future. Many other words were confusing because Saraphin had meant for them to be read sarcastically or for them to stand in for larger explanations. For example, she wrote: “If the Tsarnaev brothers were not Muslim, perhaps they would be honored as mentally dysfunctional and given the help they needed.” By using the word “honored,” she meant to indicate that, in the United States, being Muslim is believed to be worse than having a mental illness. We discussed why the reader would be confused in these instances and she seemed to understand. She added explanations and elaborations to many sentences, including those that she had meant to be sarcastic. We discussed the difficulties with writing sarcastically. She had enjoyed Bird by Bird, particularly Ann Lamott’s occasionally sarcastic voice. I plan on bringing some ‘sarcastic’ readings for her next week so that she can see how other writers handle sarcasm. We discussed what she would do if she had to turn the thoughtletter into a paper. We discussed her assignment for next week (a thoughtletter on the readings for her first paper) and she seemed comfortable with the assignment. Finally, we looked at some handouts on active reading, choosing evidence, and “four steps” in order to prepare for her first paper.