[701] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: Writing Requirement, cont'd...
eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sat Dec 17 22:37:58 1988
I'd like to quickly throw in my horror story (so I can get on with my
current horror, the Humanities requirement)...
Phase I, freshman year ``instant writing quiz''. It was Marginal Pass
on first reading, which they reviewed and changed to a Failure. They
didn't think my arguments held together in the second half of the
paper, and my conclusions didn't clearly follow from the discussion.
The topic had been ``Animal Experimentation''; I wrote an essay
justifying it, and quoting examples where it had saved lives.
With a topic like that, they want a completely coherent, consistent
essay in an hour? (or was it two? I'm fairly sure it was one.) They
had no criticism of the beginning half of the paper. I did get the
impression (though I have no evidence to back it up) that the grader
violently disagreed with my position.
I took 21.732 to fulfill it, and learned that a writing style which
uses ``she'' as the generic pronoun is jarring and distracting (and
unique; I have recognized published works by the teacher of 21.732 my
freshman year by this trait alone.) I also got some textbooks to put
on my shelf, and had the excuse to take the time to figure out how to
do stereoscopic images with RS/1. Fun, but not exceedingly useful.
Phase II went much better -- I just submitted a 20+ page paper on my
6.121 project. They reviewed the first 6 pages (including title and
table of contents) and ignored the appendices (which were better
written, and more detailed). It failed the first time, but had a
number of excellent comments; making the suggested changes converted
it into a passing grade. The one thing this taught me was that having
any stranger (with some experience with the material) read the paper
and mark things they didn't like will help.
This strategy was useful in the ``Internet Virus Paper'' -- a number
of people have read it (mostly people with some enough knowledge of
computers to qualify as part of the projected audience) and several
iterations have greatly clarified the document.
Oh well. The depressing part seems to be that all the Writing
Requirement provides is harassment; it provides very little of actual
value. It is also only an undergraduate requirement, thus not
``protecting'' us from the likes of Kumar (*my* 18.03 recitation
instructor, a Pakistani who said things like ``chiyero'' for ``zero''
and was almost unanimously considered incomprehensible).
