At this point in the semester, it's fairly standard fare for me to receive an ungodly number of "my grade is atrocious!" emails when the panicking students are only missing one or two assignments. It's very important to remember throughout the semester that your grade will always be out of proportion to reality until your final drafts are turned in at the end of the semester. For example, I noticed today upon changing one student's 0 to 20 on the Library Treasure Hunt that his grade went up 11%. That was just one homework assignment. The difference is even greater if you're missing five or ten points on your rough draft due to forgetting to email it to me and/or having not conferenced with me over it yet. We just don't have that many points yet, so one missing assignment makes a much bigger difference now than it does later in the semester.

So before you freak out, take a look at which grades have a zero listed next to them. If they're one or two assignments' worth of small points in the long run or rough draft points that will be made up soon upon conferencing with me, there's no need to panic. However, if you've turned in next to nothing, and that's why your grade is the pits, then you need to do some self-reflection.

Also, remember that there's a difference between a zero and a blank. A zero means I did not receive it. A blank means I'm still in the process of grading it--especially in the area of blogs, since the way the system is set up, I need to do them all at once, because once I close the browser window, I lose all the notifications about which blog entries and which comments are new--and that's a tallying nightmare. Can you see your blogs, and can everyone else see them as well? Are they on time (or close)? Did you complete your commenting quota for the week? Then you know you're going to get those points.

So... breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out....

Silents to Talkies Transition

For those of you writing your critical analyses with the history of cinema in mind, here's an article that you may enjoy reading:

http://www.forgetthetalkies.com/2008/06/talkie-myth-why-some-transitioned-and.html

12 Blogs for Writers to Read

I came across this article this morning on Pinterest; it shares twelve different blogs (from twelve different perspectives) that can help you gather ideas and wisdom about writing:

http://www.e-junkie.info/2011/06/12-blogs-that-every-writer-must-read.html

Brainstorming Techniques

We'll be discussing brainstorming briefly, mostly likely the idea of using broad, general topics and narrowing them down via mapping, but here area few other techniques that may help you. If one doesn't succeed, don't throw your hands up in the air and give up... try another one.

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/writing-the-paper/brainstorming

J.K. Rowling Quote on Not Fearing Failure

Take this as a source of encouragement:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.


You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.


Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

J.K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement Speech, 2008