Hello Students:

I’ve written up the general critique notes for the class (in lieu of individual critiques, although your pieces will have copious notes on them). As you are working on your second critiques, please refer to this document.

You can find it on the Wiki’s main page or you click directly to the page.

Please make sure your group members see this before Tuesday.

Hello Students:

I’ve uploaded Nick von Foerster’s critique of the David Foster Wallace profile. He did an excellent job analyzing the piece. My notes are scrawled on it, which is a bit of a distraction. However, I highly recommend that you read his work and use it as an example of what you should be doing with your paper.

This is also listed in the BSU Lecture Note section as well.

Hello Students:

Your critique and quiz grades should be up now. You will get a full response on the quiz next week. Here is the explanation, for now:

Everyone who participated by the Monday, 5 pm deadline received 65 points (the total for completing the quiz) and 35 points were allocated for the individual answers that were in the quiz. There were 7 individual answers: 5 points for each. You received full credit if you gave it a shot.

Hello Students:

Since you won’t get my thoughts back until AFTER you turn in your next critiques, I thought I would post a few general comments here:

1. by and large, you did well on your first pass; however,
2. you need to get specific in the text. There were far too many generalities and assumptions (e.g. you assume that everyone agrees with your point so you don’t prove it.);
3. which functionally means for the next critique: make sure whenever you 1) have a point about the writing 2) that you then illustrate with the text and 3) explain why that illustration proves your point.

That was my biggest blanket critique. Your thoughts were good, but there was oftentimes nothing to back them up. Get specific.

All in all, though, a pleasing set of papers to read.

Also: remind me to tell you the story about my potential agent and my lack of formatting (this happened last week + nearly cost me a chance at representation). I am not enforcing the format rules for no reason.

Hello Students:

Two things:

1 – Phil brought up a point that maybe some of you are struggling with. The CRITIQUE for tomorrow is for the award-winning profile of David Foster Wallace (the link is in the syllabus). The Critique instructions are in the BSU Lecture Notes.

2 – Please don’t steal the locks on the Wiki. If someone is editing a page, you’ll see that notification across the top. If you steal it, the other person loses all their work. Simply do you work in a text file and then cut and paste when they are finished editing.

Hope that helps.