Quick Notes for Next Week

Please remember:

-- On Tuesday, 2/18/2014, we're meeting in the library -- yes, again! (If school is cancelled, though, this meeting will not take place.)

--  More importantly, your final copy of Essay 1 is due by the start of class on Thursday, 2/20/2014. (And yes, if school is cancelled, your essay will still be due. Right now, I am not changing anything about the submission procedure. However, if there will be more snow in the forecast, I might extend email submission deadlines until 11:59 PM Thursday night.)

One more thing:

-- Please continue reading in Atul Gawande's book, Better. For next week, read the next chapter, "What Doctors Owe," p. 84-111.

Reminder: This Week's Deadlines

This is just to remind you:

1) The second draft of your Essay 1, what I'm calling your "editing draft," is due on your group blog, posted as a link to a Google Drive document, by 11:59 PM Thursday night. (To repeat: I will score this draft based on the differences I notice from your first draft, so be 100% sure you're working on a new file with this draft.

2) Your comments in response to another student's research topics blog post is also due by 11:59 PM Thursday night. (You may respond to whomever you like, but if you're feeling generous, look for someone who hasn't received a response yet.)

And lastly...

3) Your grammar comments, in response to your critique partners' second drafts, their editing drafts, are due by 11:59 PM Friday night -- a day after the second drafts are due. (You're only required to make one grammar comment for each critique partner. And please restrict yourself to just one or two editing suggestions or grammar errors. If you notice that an issue repeats in different places, point out just one of those places, then say that this issue repeats in the essay.)

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(Just a note: These deadlines will stand even if school is cancelled on Thursday. If you're worried you might miss the deadline because of the snow, I suggest you try to submit your draft early. Maybe you should even submit it by this evening, before the snow starts, just to be sure.)

Reminder: Editing Drafts and Grammar Comments

To remind you, your next draft of Essay 1 is due this coming Thursday, by 11:59 PM, on your group blog. This draft will be posted in the same way as your previous draft. Just save it on Google Drive, then share it, then post a link on your group blog, with the label, "Essay 1 Draft 2" or "Essay 1 Editing Draft." (Let's decide in class about what label we'll use.)

To start, please make absolutely sure that you save this next draft of your essay in a different file from your first draft. I've said this a number of times in class. Again, please save your new draft in a separate file and work on it there. This is important because I'll be scoring this new draft, your "editing draft," based on the revisions you've made from your first essay. So I need to be able to see both versions of your essay to give your work a fair assessment.

Once you've made sure to separate your new draft from your old one, work on just the new draft. My advice is this: Try to make deep revisions. Don't be afraid to make bad changes; that's just how the writing process works. Also, be aware: If you've saved your first draft separately, you can always go back to that draft and recover something you've changed in your later draft. In other words, if you've planned effectively and saved your different drafts separately, your work is never lost.

Lastly, don't forget to go back to your critique partners' essays (their first drafts), and collect some sentences that you think have grammar issues in them. Copy down one sentence from each critique partner's draft, and be sure you copy it down exactly. Then bring the two sentences you end up with to class on Thursday. We've talked about making revisions, now we'll move toward editing, which is all about spotting and correcting minor errors like grammar, spelling, and so on. We'll talk a little bit about grammar and grammar comments in class on Thursday.