Yesterday we had the initial orientation session for the online English Composition class I’m taking. The only meetings on campus aside from that session will be the sessions for the midterm and final exam.
During the orientation, we were given a half hour to write an essay about an admired person. It took me a few minutes just to decide on a person about whom to write. The essay was not going to be graded or returned, but merely used by the instructor to determine whether it appears that any students may be especially in need of help.
I’m not comfortable writing about family members. Ultimately I decided to write about Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation. He has clearly done more to advance the cause of Free Software than any other person, and although Free Software existed before he started the FSF, the concept had not been formalized.
I am not accustomed to writing essays with pen and paper (how quaint!), so I got writer’s cramp fairly quickly. I was using narrow-ruled paper but wrote double-spaced to leave room for the inevitable corrections. By the end of the half hour, I had written four pages, but hadn’t quite addressed all of the points I’d intended.
I actually enjoyed writing the essay, despite the use of pen and paper, and think I may want to expand it into a blog entry, so after class I explained that to Professor Lang and asked if I might get the essay back after he has read it. He readily assented.
The course is divided into four modules. The first module has a primary assignment of writing an autobiographical essay, and several lesser assignments, the first of which was to write a short (minimum 300 word) self-introduction to share with the class. I started working on it this morning, focusing on why I have returned to school and what my educational goals are. After about 90 minutes, I had completed what I considered to be a reasonably polished essay. However, the length was over 2500 words. While no maximum length was stated, this clearly seemed too long given the stated minimum of 300 words. As Blaise Pascal wrote, “I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I had to edit it ruthlessly, which is always painful when one has put a lot of effort into the writing. I reduced it to under 700 words, and posted it to the class forum.
It would be nice if the longer form of the essay could be used as the autobiographical essay assignment, or at least as the basis for that assignment, but unfortunately I don’t think that will work. The instructions for the assignment state that the essay should focus on a particular person or event (single day or less) in one’s life, and my essay does neither.
I’m having a difficult time deciding what person or event to write about. I’m not particularly good at writing descriptive prose, so I think I am somewhat more likely to be successful writing about an event rather than a person, but I’m at a loss to identify any particularly defining event in my life. Certainly there have been moments with particular emotional significance, but I don’t feel like any of those events have really changed my life in a major way.