Massachusetts Daily Collegian

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A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

The beauty of college writing

Jeffrey James Pacres/Flickr
(Jeffrey James Pacres/Flickr)

More often than not, college writing is viewed as a tedious general education requirement needed in order to graduate. Even though the classes are small, the students – the vast majority of whom are freshmen – are not excited to write or even attempt to be creative in a literary way. The class is viewed as just another obligatory prerequisite and not an intuitive and fun learning experience. As someone who is currently taking this class, I think such preconceived opinions are profoundly untrue.

English 112 is divided into four different units along with a final essay. There are no exams or quizzes, Socratic applications or presentations. The instructor – who is often a graduate student in pursuit of a doctorate – does the teaching while we, the students, do the listening.

With that being said, the dynamic of the class is much more student-oriented, where class-facilitated discussions play a prominent role. Unlike some courses in which the professor has a tendency to be really into him or herself and not focused on the educational and academic aspirations of his or her students, the teachers of English 112 are laid back while at the same time persistent in their teaching.

As a current student of this class, I can only speak about one teacher: Courtney Gustafson, a graduate student who has taught this class for the past five semesters. Perhaps I just got lucky, but Gustafson is a great teacher who is able to bring an immense amount of both comfort and intelligence to the class. This is not easy to do, especially when it comes to dealing with students who, for the most part, are still in the process of acclimating to college.

“Courtney did a great job,” said Tristan Sahagian, a freshman finance major. “All around, there was a solid group dynamic.”

With college writing comes the splendidly small size of the class. This is a matter that very much affects the amount of learning and academic facilitation that takes place. According to Gustafson, developing relationships with students is key.

“All the classes I teach are really fun in part because they’re so small,” Gustafson told me. “I get to know all of you guys, you get to know each other and you get to know me.”

At the end of the day, English 112 is also fun. This class has communicated to me how exciting learning can be more than any others I’ve taken this semester. While acknowledging my love for college writing, I also understand that fun cannot be forced upon other students.

“All classes have the potential to be fun,” Gustafson continued. “I think it has a lot to do with dynamic. But I don’t think that’s something you can force. You can do exercises and make people get to know each other and you can force people to work in groups. But you can’t control their takeaways from activities.”

If someone were to tell me from the get-go that college writing would come to be my favorite class of the semester, I would have told him or her to get their head examined. I too initially thought the class was just another gen-ed. But for me, it quickly became much more than that.

College writing became a class I not only looked forward to, but yearned for. This is so much the case that when going through the regular college grind, I would often think about this course during my other classes.

For me, the course acted as a lens for understanding how to organize my free time and process the duration of the semester. In fact, when experiencing totally unrelated incidents during the day – occurrences that more often than not were funny – I made a point of mentioning them during college writing in a further effort to jazz up the mood and have a good time.

Despite the environment, this is not to say that learning did not go on and assignments went uncompleted. Going into the class, I had somewhat of a passion for writing. As the class progressed, that passion strengthened and continued to grow thanks to both Gustafson and my 15 classmates.

Although this comes off as cheesy at first glance, English 112 became a community where 16 students brought 16 different viewpoints to the table, allowing for a pool of academic and creative ideas to flourish. It is a class that embodies the best elements of high school in a college environment. As a second semester freshman experiencing college in the fall for the first time, it became a class that was instrumental to my happiness.

Initially, I felt surrounded by 15 strangers with names I didn’t know and whose stories had yet to be revealed. What emerged were 15 friends that I hung out with during weekends and studied with after class.

“There’s a great dynamic here,” Gustafson said. “You guys are able to laugh with each other and at each other and I think there is a level of respect there too where people are able to listen to one another, and I think that’s really important.”

As the semester draws to a close and with finals now upon us, this will be a class that I wish never ended.

“This is a class I have always wanted to teach,” Gustafson said.

And for me, it was a pleasure to take.

Isaac Simon is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].

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