Welcome to English 101

School starts in about a month, and I just got assigned to our section last Wednesday, so it’s time to start thinking seriously about our coming semester together. (By the way, all colleges experience these last-second rearrangements—it’s not surprising that Ashland is still nailing things down.)

The first rearrangement (possibly) is our room number. I have two back-to-back classes in Bixler, and I have asked the official powers if the classes can meet in the same room so I don’t have to do a lot of shuffling. Watch this space for the latest when they make their decision. (This brings up an excellent point: Before your first day, take a last-minute look at your schedule to learn whether your classes are still where you thought they would be.)

What to expect in our course

In a way, our English course is like learning to ride a bicycle. There are a lot of tasks you need to focus on, but it is really difficult to separate them out and just do one at a time. You need to balance AND steer AND brake AND watch where you are going. All at the same time. English class is like that. You need to get used to college culture AND figure out how to write an essay AND figure out how to use a computer. As if all that isn’t enough, you have several other courses where you need to pick up other skills. Yikes!

My plan is to ease you into things, and that is where this blog comes in. I will be using it primarily for the “college culture” part, but the first material you see below all has to do with handwriting. This handwriting part explains itself, and it is very much a response to the use of AI by so many students, so I suggest you begin (NOW!) by getting a notebook and a decent pen and beginning to reclaim your handwriting ability. The first thing we will do as a group on the first Wednesday is an in-class handwritten essay. Be ready for it. (I promise that the topic is something you can do without studying—I just want to see how you write.)

A few details about this blog:

• This isn’t an official AU site, and everything here is my own opinion. Because it’s not an AU site, anybody on the Internet can read it, so if you have a friend who is in another English class—perhaps even in another college—I have no problem with you sharing the address.
• The blog software puts the newest items at the top, but you can still read older items that have fallen off the opening page. Just click MORE POSTS at the bottom. Or you can use the Archive and Labels tool in the left sidebar. (If your browser doesn’t show the sidebar, click the little three-line thing ☰ in the upper left.)
• I have enabled comments on the posts, but comments will be moderated, so if you write something, it won’t appear for a while.
• I will be sending out invitations and a link to the blog several times during the summer. People get added to the course all the time, right up until about the second week of classes, and I want to catch as many newcomers as possible.

One more thing:

Almost everything we do in the course will come through an online Learning Management System program called Blackboard. You will not have access to that until the official first day of the course, so the information here is intended to get you going and fill in the gap. Do not panic. Your time will come.

Welcome to our class

—Curtis Allen