by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright August 2016
Here are my reflections on this course.
Overall, the course went well. The classes went well, the readings added insight, and I had fun with the writing projects.
The class discussions were lively and the students who attended were quite willing to do lots of talking as well as lots of writing. The writing produced by the students was interesting to read and had lots of imagination. The critiquing also went well.
The readings offered a lot of variety. One place I can suggest improvement is in how the reading materials are presented. The problem I faced with them was I didn't know what I was reading for. This lead me to lots of confusion and declining interest as I worked through many of the selections. I would read, and not have a clue what I was supposed to get out of the reading until it was discussed in class.
So, here's a suggestion: It would be good to have a paragraph or two in the Canvas assignments section that explained what the purpose of each reading was. I would think of this pre-explaining as being like a movie review -- it would tell me what I should expect and what I was looking for in the reading.
The writing assignments worked well. Doing a summary of a reading ordered my thoughts about it. As pointed out above, it would have helped a lot to have some hints as to what I should have been thinking about before I started the reading, but what I did do was OK.
What I take away from this class is that there are sure a lot of writing styles. There are a whole lot more than I'm interested in reading, or writing. I'm interested in reading to learn things. This means that for me the writing style is not important except as it influences what I learn. This means that in many circumstances I'm oblivious to the style, and I don't mind being that way.
That said, I do like humorous writing, and if humor is mixed with learning, that's best of all. I lament that humorous writing is getting so limited in topics these days. As an example, I find ethnic humor to be lots of fun. Saying this reminds me of the first pun joke I learned:
Question: Two morons are sitting on a bridge: Big Moron and Little Moron. There is an earthquake and one falls off. Which one stays on?
Answer: Little Moron... because he was a little more on.
Nowadays moron jokes are out of style. But not gone! They have morphed into Blond Jokes. A strange transition, indeed, and one that has left my daughter (a blond) head scratching about why there are blond jokes.
I also enjoy tall tales and absurdist stories.
The root of all of this humor is tolerance. For me, tolerance means having a thick skin about uncomfortable issues so that learning can happen, and the humor in them can be discovered and explored.
So the humor styles in these reading selections I enjoyed. The other styles didn't impress me nearly as much. My takeaway from this is I now better understand why I've never been much impressed with literary writing such as that found in The New Yorker or Saturday Evening Post or even Playboy. Here's my contribution to the humor side: For me the business of style has been like a roof -- it's over my head.
I think it's going to stay that way. Like I said earlier, I read to learn and have fun. Much of what style is about doesn't seem to be relevant to those goals.
--The End--