A couple of days ago I resolved–silently–to postpone blogging until the end
of qualifying exams (Dec. 21). Consider this entry a hiatus from my
postponement. I’ve been condensing notes for the last two days, paring 24k words
down to 8k, the amount I can smunch decently onto four sides of 8.5"x11" paper
with a seven point font. I could drop to a 6 pt. font, but I figure
there’s no real need for more than the equivalent of twenty-four pages of notes
when the answers I’m trying to write will each be 10-12 pages long. If all
goes as planned, that is. Twelve pages spread across three hours:
three…1…2…seconds…1…2…per…1…2… word. I probably shouldn’t
write the beats per word on the actual exam, should I? For today my notes
seem adequate.
Where was I? I really only wanted to return a gratitude link to "New
Media and New Literacies: Perspectives on Change," Carol Holder’s New
Horizons review in the latest Educause. The brief article opens with
the following question: "What’s it going to take to see new media, multimodal
literacies, and curriculum and instructional change at colleges and
universities?":
Fortunately, faculty who teach writing and are writing specialists, who
help students become "literate," are in a discipline that has a long tradition
of focusing research on curriculum, instruction, and the processes that lead
to the development of literacy. Composition, rhetoric, and writing teachers
were among the earliest adopters of computer- and Internet-based technologies
in instruction, sharing results of experimental programs at conferences and in
professional journals. (para. 5)
This definitely strikes a Concord given that I’ve been revisiting the
C&W histories lately, polishing notes about Lisa Gerrard and Hugh Burns just
yesterday. Generally, Holder has written an upbeat piece on change and
diffusion, which also suggests some of the ways digital writing practices might
productively alter the engrained patterns of conversations across disciplines.
Plus, EWM gets an approving nod in the "New Wine" section. Cheers to that.
And now back to postponement, back to juicing the grapemash that is my brains
six days from sitting the exams.
I’ve seen people use notes only sparingly in all the exams I proctored when grad. director. It was mostly to recall a name or page refs. I do remember some folks feeling sheepish about how much they tried to fit on one page and finding the small stuff almost unreadable. So I hope you won’t go down to 6 point font!
Good luck–you’ll do very well!
eileen
Thanks, Eileen. I’m beginning to see what you mean, that the usefulness of the notes while writing is somewhat limited. The notes are worthwhile in that producing them forces me to sift once again through all of the materials. I just went through a pair of one-hour sprints (writing toward the questions I anticipate getting on Thursday), and found that the notes were helpful only for names, dates, and titles. So I’ll stick with the seven-point font and rest assured that will be good enough.