Friday’s class will be online!

ANALYSIS-DIVERGENCE
The new analysis assignment is this:

Write something valuable.

And what I mean is: try to write something that matters to you. Also, write something that will be valuable to another person—probably a close friend of yours. Write about something that’s been bothering you, like Hemley does (see reading)—write a narrative of an event that changed your life—or teach your reader something you have unique expertise about. And don’t forget the ninja method.

READING
For Friday, instead of reading the last chapter of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, read Robin Hemley’s “No Pleasure But Meanness.” And do this before you start your “analysis” (which, obviously, isn’t an analysis anymore—let’s call it the Divergence assignment). It’s pretty light reading. Mostly I hope it changes the way you write—hope it invites you to write your full personality.

CLASS
Looks like I’m jumping ship with me bro, so I won’t be in class Friday. That means I won’t be taking roll. You may still need to attend, based on what your group-leader decides (see below). Also, we still have two assignments, which you can complete online:

ASSIGNMENT 1
This assignment is a psychological follow-up to the proposals we just did. I’ll post the details in a separate blog post—so “at dawn, look to the east.”

ASSIGNMENT 2
This is a peer-critique assignment. I’ll post a video lecture about doing peer critique (again, watch for a separate post). After you watch the lecture, you’ll apply the principles by critiquing a partner’s Divergence assignment. Your final Divergence assignment plus your critical feedback will be due Friday at 5:00. This means you need to exchange papers with your critique partner sometime Friday morning so there’s time to give feedback before the 5:00 deadline.

GROUP MEETINGS
The rest of Friday’s class time will be used for group work. You’re welcome to meet in our classroom (in fact, I recommend it). I know it will be tempting to skip meeting as a group. Just remember how soon this project is due—procrastinating won’t help. Group leaders, this will be up to you to coordinate.

GOOGLE+ HANGOUT
I’ll be online, hanging out on Google+ publicly from 8:00–9:50 am Friday. If you want to hang out there (for questions or just for fun), feel free. If you don’t want to do video chat (sometimes it’s buggy anyways), you can invite my Gmail account to chat.

I’m sending this now in case you want to get ahead.

Email me if you have questions.