In Wasilla, Alaska, this summer, incoming ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student Karsten Stiner ’26 looked through the offerings for First-Year Seminars, and landed on one offered by Professor Emerita of History Margaret Creighton. 

Called “Inventing New England: The World of the Wyeth Family,� it promised a rich look at both the place he was moving to and three generations of American artists named Wyeth: N.C., his son Andrew, and Andrew’s son Jamie. Stiner had never heard of them, and he mostly associated the words “New England� with a football team, the Patriots. “I’d heard the term like four times in my life,� he says, smiling. “I didn’t even know what states were included in New England.�

As he signed up, he did note that it was interesting that a Wyeth family member, Victoria Browning Wyeth ’01, who is the only grandchild of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, would lecture in the course, helping to answer sweeping questions like: What is New England? Who and what gets included in popular images of the region? How does New England differ from other imagined areas, particularly the American West?

But he didn’t realize what having a Wyeth as a teacher would actually mean, or how deep of an insider’s look that she would provide into Wyeth World, especially during the group’s ultimate Midcoast road trip on an October day. 

“I didn’t know that this would all be involved,� Stiner said as he walked through fields browning in the Maine autumn under gray skies, the tidal reaches of the Saint George River a few hundred yards away. He’d just come from a tour of a Wyeth family home in Cushing, with a window seat looking out over the very New England countryside.

The group wrapped up the day at the famed Olson House in Cushing, the setting from many of Andrew Wyeth’s works, a tour of his very last studio, and a visit to the grave of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, where Victoria would leave a couple of pumpkins, in honor of the Wyeth family love of Halloween (and kiss her grandparents’ tombstone, as she does on every visit). 

There’d even been a guest star: one of Andrew Wyeth’s models from the 1970s, who talked to the students about what it was like to pose for the painter of such works as the iconic 1948 work Christina’s World, which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Walking ahead of Stiner on the dirt road were his classmates and both his teachers, who two decades ago were teacher and pupil. Creighton was Wyeth’s thesis advisor when she was at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and also her professor in a course that offered deep community engagement in Lewiston. Wyeth, who majored in American Cultural Studies, says today that Creighton was a vital part of her development as a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, nurturing and mentoring her. 

She and Wyeth began talking about co-teaching this First-Year Seminar last year. As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ continues to improve and revamp its overall First-Year Experience program, both traditional and brand-new seminar offerings such as “Inventing New England” continue to play a key role in introducing students to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ academics — close contact with professors, intensive writing and building both a real sense of community and of place.

In the case of “Inventing New England,� a sense of place is particularly pertinent. The syllabus is filled with New England specific work, like Carolyn Chute’s 1985 novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine, but also some classic Westerns, such as John Ford’s Stagecoach, to provide perspective on how the American West is represented on screen or canvas.

“That was a good way to start talking about region and regional identity and how the West got imagined in dominant American culture,â€� Creighton says. “And one of the advantages here is that N.C. Wyeth did a lot of Western paintings as well.â€� 

The field trip to the coast had started with an up-close and personal visit to the art itself at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, where artworks from all three generations of painters are well represented in the Wyeth Center. There, Victoria Wyeth, who knows the paintings the way others know a family photo album, led the students through multiple galleries.

She’s a generous and ebullient lecturer, gesturing for emphasis, always inviting student input and sharing strong opinions about everything, from the media Andrew Wyeth used â€” on watercolors she says, “they control him, he doesn’t control themâ€� — to results. While talking the students through the composition of one study for a later work, she confides “I actually like this better than the final version.â€� She also connects with her own ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience, readily offering up a tale of getting a B-minus in an art history class in the middle of the whirlwind of her highly personalized, expert crash course in the Wyeths. 

In one gallery, currently showing Islands in Maine, an Andrew Wyeth show of works from Muscongus and Penobscot bays spanning the period from 1939 to 2008, when Wyeth and his wife Betsy spent his last summer on Benner Island, Victoria Wyeth stopped in front of a 1999 study for Dock.

It shows a woman walking down a dock. The image of a woman walking away, straight-backed and somehow resolute, even from behind, conjures up a hundred possible stories for the imagination, but Wyeth knows the real one. “I always told you, he paints his life,� she told the class. The woman is Ann Call, she explained, a frequent model, easy to recognize by her perfect haircut. Call worked with Wyeth’s grandmother Betsy on Benner Island, but lived on nearby Allen. “So this is her getting ready to go on the boat for the end of the day,� Wyeth said.

Wyeth lectures worldwide on the artists in her family. In 2011, she shared some of her never-before-displayed collection of family works in an exhibition at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art. As a student, she organized a 2001 show at the museum focused on her grandfather’s process from a series of studies to the final painting, Her Room, which was the very first Wyeth painting acquired by the Farnsworth in 1964. (She’s also a talented photographer, who has occasionally exhibited her work, including portraits of her grandfather.)

As the group moved around the galleries, Wyeth leaned into paintings and invited the students to do the same, to see all the little things that don’t show up in digital slides quite the way they do in person, like the little birds, and the dry brushwork that sketches out a lichen-covered roof, or “just the feeling of this storm coming in.� She knows the technical details of the works, like the way her grandfather came to use and cherish tempera as a medium, but also the emotional landscapes behind them.

She drew the students in to look at the last painting Andrew Wyeth completed before his death in 2009. It’s a view of a white building on the shore of Allen Island and its ghostly reflection in the water, and is called simply Goodbye. Wyeth reminded the students that her grandmother typically named her husband’s paintings and then asked if they could tell which white parts of the painting were tempera and which were simply the white panel, left bare by the artist. Leah Belber of Washington, D.C., got right in, and she and Wyeth debated the topic before deciding neither one of them can tell for sure. But it was easy to agree that the painting is beautiful, a haunting farewell to a well-loved place.

Belber was one of several students already well-acquainted with the concept of New England, and even the Wyeths themselves. She signed up for the course because “I love museums and I love looking at art.� She’s been relishing the interplay between Creighton and Wyeth. “It’s definitely quite a class. They have a fun dynamic.�

Josh Smith of Farmington, Maine, felt a pull to the class because in his family home, a print of Jamie Wyeth’s Fog Bound Coast has long hung on the wall.

Riley Baker of Northfield,Ill., says she signed up because “I just wanted something different,â€� but as with Smith, a specific piece of art sparked her connection. She attended St. Andrews in Delaware, where a giant mural by N.C. Wyeth covers the wall of a dining room. And that mural is featured in Dead Poets Society, a 1989 film shot at St. Andrews. Baker has watched it over and over again. 

When Liam Shlager of Ross, Calif., signed up for the course, he, like Stiner, was a newcomer to the Wyeth mythology but was intrigued. “Then I walk in the first day and Miss Wyeth is there and I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is going to be big.’�

And it has been, from the lively classroom discussions about art to the history lessons and insider stories about growing up in the Wyeth family, where artistic talent tends to make itself evident by age 6, according to Victoria. 

Getting to spend a day touring various Wyeth-related properties, and hearing from one of Wyeth’s iconic models in person, standing in the exact spot in the farmhouse where Wyeth painted her as a teenager 50 years ago, only elevated the experience. “Like 100 percent,� Shlager says.

The model, who asked not to be named, shared a detail about posing for Andrew Wyeth, about how he asked her to wet her hair every time she arrived to pose, and that detail caused Victoria to gasp. “You never told me this,� she said. “I am blown away.�

“This is so cool,� Victoria went on. “That’s how you guys are going to remember this. I mean, I know it’s sinking in now, but I’m telling you, in 20 years? You’re going to remember this.�

For Wyeth herself, the excursion was equally joyful. “I was so thrilled to get to know my students on such a different level,� she says. “We all had a blast on the bus ride to Cushing. I learned about their taste in music and some fun family stories. I can’t quite put into words how much closer it made us as a class. We went from being a class to feeling like a family.�

Thirty minutes spent staring at the same unmoving thing might seem more like a snooze-fest than a feast for the eyes, especially for a college student. But that’s exactly what students spent time doing recently at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art.

The occasion was a class session of the First-Year Seminar “Arts and Spirituality.â€� Taught by the college’s multifaith chaplain, the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the course guides students in both the creation and consumption of art, helping them see the connection between art and reflection through a range of spiritual practices and traditions from around the world. 

Their trip to the museum was to practice visio divina, or “sacred looking,� a meditative practice closely related to lectio divina, “sacred reading,� which dates back thousands of years to different religious traditions, particularly Western Christianity.

The objective is to look at something — a picture, work of art, a sculpture, anything — with the expectation of seeing sacredness in it. It reflects the belief that the divine can be found in everything, and is a way of looking at something intentionally, and “giving it that kind of presence and attention,� said Longsdorf.

Longsdorf developed the course a few years ago after seeing many young adults finding sacred experiences outside institutional religion. “[They] might not be attending worship in traditional ways, but are going to concerts and art museums and are journaling and painting and dancing,� she says. “They’re saying that those places are where they feel wonder and awe and feel their true size — feel connected to something bigger.�

The students showed mixed feelings as they anticipated the assignment, says Longsdorf. A few were into it. “They were like, ‘Cool! A half-hour with a painting. This is gonna be awesome.’ But some were like, ‘We’re doing what ²Ô´Ç·É?!’â¶Ä�&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

The idea of spending a half-hour looking at the same thing feels strange today, with the constantly in-motion way of life. “I think we’re so used to just taking it all in, and then not questioning it and moving on,â€� said Longsdorf. 

At the museum on a September afternoon, Longsdorf gave the students two minutes to walk through the exhibit and pick something that catches their eye, that “shimmers,â€� as she told them. That would be the piece they would practice visio divina. 

Caroline McCarthy ’26 of Hamden, Conn., chose to , covered with red, blue, silver, and gold paper and strings. 

Like the others, McCarthy was skeptical whether she could focus her attention on the artwork for a length of time. But after a spell, “I almost didn’t want to look away,â€� she laughed. “It definitely changed my perspective a little bit, and alters the way I’m going to look at art going forward. I think I’m going to find a few things and sit with them.â€�

The artwork they viewed is from the recent exhibition Pedagogy, which features myriad themes, from astronomy, to war, to the environment, all chosen for their potential to be integrated into ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses across academic disciplines. It was an apt exhibition to practice visio divina, said Longsdorf.

Longdorf asked her students to first focus on a single part of it, then the piece as a whole, and finally reflect on questions or meaning the piece evokes for them. She encouraged students to discern what it meant to them, what questions it made them ask, or what the art is “telling� them about what is sacred in the world.

“You see what it’s inviting you to do, or to think, or to feel in the moment and pay attention to that,” she said.

When Longsdorf first taught the course two years ago, a student told her that he’d never looked at a painting in a museum before. “I think some of us take for granted that we have access to those kinds of things,� says Longsdorf. For that student’s first viewing to last 30 minutes “was a really interesting and beautiful start of a relationship to art.�

Students create art in the course, too, as a “spiritual practice,â€� Longsdorf explains. In one lesson, they created clay sculptures with the classroom lights down way down low — so it was just them and their art. “They made these beautiful creations,â€� she recalls. Before the lights were turned up, she told them to take a deep breath of gratitude — and then to smoosh their creations flat before anyone saw them. 

“That made them so mad,â€� laughs Longsdorf, but there are spiritual lessons to be learned about “process over product. No one in the room needs to know what this symbol or image was that stirred your heart except for you, and why do you feel the need to perfect it and share it? Would you have made something different if you knew you weren’t going to share it?â€�

Our consumer society has taught us to think of art as a perfect, public product, she explains, “in a capital ‘A’ artist perfectionist way. But what does it look like to make art that is actually a spiritual practice, about us knowing ourselves and knowing the divine more closely through the creative process?�

One cold Friday in November, a classroom in Pettengill Hall was a little more crowded than usual: The students in the First-Year Seminar “Truthâ€� got a visit from older ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students who, last spring, had been instrumental in creating the brand-new course.

One by one, the new ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students introduced themselves and told the visitors what they liked best about their First-Year Seminar, whether it was a reading, film, or discussion topic — materials the older students had helped choose for them.

Watching the scene unfold were the two professors, Alexandre Dauge-Roth and Michael Murray, who had dreamt up the course last year, involved students in its creation, and deployed the course as one of the rare team-taught First-Year Seminars at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Professors Alex Dauge-Roth and Michael Murray touch base before class begins (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A humanist, Dauge-Roth is a professor of French and francophone studies. A social scientist, Murray is the Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics. Both are among the most popular ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors, each a recent winner of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The professors listened to their students answer the “favorite material� question. One student offered Auschwitz and After, Charlotte Delbo’s memoirs of her time in a Nazi concentration camp.

Another liked comparing restorative and punitive justice. A third really enjoyed Logicomix, a graphic novel about the effort to establish logical foundations in mathematics. (Least favorite? Probably Nietzsche.)

“The main goal is not to solve the question but more to instill a higher sense of methodological awareness within students when they deal with issues of truth.�

The truth is, the new seminar is less about figuring out what “the truth� actually is and more about exploring methods of discerning and crafting truth — from philosophy to quantum mechanics to post-conflict truth and reconciliation commissions to documentary filmmaking.

Faculty and students — participants and planners — discuss the seminar. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“The value for our students is to go and explore different kinds of disciplines that all produce discourse and theories of truth,� Dauge-Roth says. “The main goal is not to solve the question but more to instill a higher sense of methodological awareness within students when they deal with issues of truth.�

The course got its start last winter as Murray mulled the idea of teaching first-year ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students something about truth.

He recalls thinking how the current climate “is one in which notions of truth are under siege in society.â€� Perhaps it would be useful, right off the bat, for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ newest students to be exposed to “a sophisticated sense of questions about truth.â€�

He felt comfortable exploring a few methodologies. As an economist, Murray clarifies reality by working with data and, he says, “looking at the relationship of trust to the economic success of societies.� He’s also studied how philosophy and the natural sciences uncover truth.

Students discuss their favorite readings from the seminar. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

One day, after a committee meeting, Murray shared his idea with Dauge-Roth. It was chance, but fortuitous. Dauge-Roth studies memory and collective trauma through literature, film, and documentaries, particularly representations of the Rwandan Genocide.

Dauge-Roth, who incorporates philosophy and sociology into his work, approaches truth in a different way from economists or physicists. He told Murray about Delbo’s Auschwitz and After. The first book of her trilogy opens with the line, “Today I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful.�

Murray and Dauge-Roth realized their experiences with economics and natural science on the one hand, and literature, film, and sociology on the other, were in this case complementary. They decided to teach the course together.

In developing the course, the two professors cast a wide net, asking people inside and outside of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community to suggest course materials. A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ physics professor brought up an article on theoretical physics by Albert Einstein. The author of a book called Lying directed Murray to a book called Truth.

Last spring, with about twice the material they could possibly pack into a semester, Murray and Dauge-Roth invited eight juniors and seniors, several of whom are double majors across academic divisions, to spend Short Term shaping the syllabus as part of the Short Term Innovative Pedagogy and Course (re)Design program.

A group of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors who helped design the First-Year Seminar â€�Truthâ€� listen as the new students taking the seminar tell them what they did and didn’t like about the course. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College) (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The students and their professors read through the material in five weeks, trying to balance the wealth of books and films with other First-Year Seminar needs, such as showing new students how to write academic papers and use the library and other campus resources. The Short Term students “helped us bring down to a manageable level the amount of reading and define an order that is intellectually stimulating,� Dauge-Roth says.

As seminar instructors, Murray and Dauge-Roth teach together, each taking on aspects of the course in which they have expertise. Then, as academic advisers, they help the students identify the aspects of the course that interest them and let their interests guide their academic paths at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

“We bring in the physical sciences at a level I feel comfortable talking about, and then say to students who got excited about those ideas, ‘You should take some physics courses,’� Murray says.

In the last weeks of the course, having surveyed the philosophical, scientific, and literary underpinnings of various conceptions of truth, the class finally got to fake news. They read an whether President Donald Trump was a liar or simply a postmodern president, and they watched a 2009 TED Talk in which Nigerian author warns against defining people by a single story.

Murray responds to a student during class discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The talk, Murray says, reminded one student of a particular aspect of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which cave dwellers who have been shown the outside world initially wish to return to the cave, where they are more comfortable but unable to perceive other aspects of reality.

It was a gratifying moment in a course meant to teach the youngest ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to make connections across centuries, borders, and fields of study, something they’re encouraged to do throughout their academic careers.

“That’s very rewarding, when they are able to make those connections that were absolutely impossible or unthinkable at the beginning of the semester,� Dauge-Roth says.

For a first-year ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, the leap from high school to college-level writing can be a daunting one.

You tackle new genres, you look at evidence more critically. And you learn that at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, good writing and good thinking are inseparable.

“Colleges are places where knowledge gets created,â€� says Daniel Sanford, director of Writing At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and the Academic Resource Commons (ARC), programs that provide resources for every stage of the writing process, in any discipline.

“When you learn to write and think in that setting, you are figuring out how to participate in the creation of knowledge.�

Claire Sickinger ’19 of Simsbury, Conn., a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant for Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Nathan Faries’ “Defining Difference: How China and the United States Think about Racial Diversity,” discusses an essay for the class with Zhao Li ’21 of Guangzhou, China, in ARC. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It can be a steep learning curve, but ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ newest writers are supported along the way. Most students take a First-Year Seminar, where professors teach writing alongside subject matter. They walk students through each step of the writing process and offer intensive feedback.

As the fall semester enters its second half, and students look to their final seminar papers, we’ve asked ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors and student tutors how new college writers can make their writing clear and compelling, and what common mistakes to avoid. Here is what they told us.

1. Before you start writing, know the assignment

One of the most avoidable mistakes Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill sees is not following directions. “Some students will write to the task they think they know, that may be familiar from high school — but the college professor may be asking for something different, in terms of content as well as the level of thinking.�

2. Know thy audience — and thyself

Don’t feel like you have to play the expert, says Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker. “First-year college writers often seem to feel as though they need to present themselves as ‘experts’ in their essays instead of presenting themselves as well-informed and capable conversation partners,â€� she says.

Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker teaches the First-Year Seminar “The Nature of Spirituality.” Here, in the 2015 iteration of the course, she shows her students a Rosh Hashanah tradition on Mount David. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

When students adopt the “expert� voice, Baker says, they sometimes feel that quoting heavily from sources means they’re not knowledgeable.

“It is far more often the case that professors are looking for students to demonstrate a firm grasp of the course materials and concepts by showing that they can synthesize ideas from a range of course readings and apply them to a particular problem,â€� she says. “This calls for positioning oneself in an essay as a well-informed conversation partner who thoughtfully and capably draws on a wide variety of others’ insights through extensive quotes and citations, rather than as a solo expert.â€�  

3. Pay attention to genre

Biochemistry major Kenyata Venson ’18 of Memphis meets with Bridget Fullerton, assistant director of writing at Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, to discuss her senior thesis on comparing synthesized drugs to herbal remedies for the treatment of glaucoma. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Technical writing is very different from expository writing in that there’s no fluff — readers just want what you did in the study,� says Technical Writing Assistant Ruth van Kampen ’19 of Brunswick. “That’s new to a lot of students.�

As a TWA, van Kampen helps biology students, often sophomores, with their writing.

4. Don’t lose the argument

Claudia Krasnow ’18 of Bedford, N.Y., works with Madelyn Heart ’18 of Winchester, Mass., on a paper for a Spanish class. Writing Tutors work among other student tutors in the Academic Resource Commons (ARC) in the Ladd Library. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Writing Tutor Mariam Hayrapetyan ’19 of Valley Village, Calif. recommends this exercise: “Write out the prompt in your own words and when you write, make sure that each paragraph somehow contributes to the prompt.�

Take it to the sentence level, too. “Something that can improve clarity is ensuring that everything in each paragraph relates back to the topic sentence, and each topic sentence relates back to the thesis,� says Writing Tutor Kiyona Mizuno ’18 of San Francisco. “This will help keep the writing focused and organized. I find that outlining can be a useful strategy.�

5. Keep it simple

Zeke Smith ’19 of Weybridge, U.K., a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant for Associate Professor of Russian Dennis Browne’s course on contemporary European film, works with Henri Emmet ’21 of New York. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Don’t try to sound impressive, advises Mizuno. “A common trend I’ve noticed is sentences that are repetitive, are too long, or try to combine too many ideas. I would encourage students to try not to beat around the bush and to avoid forming long, complicated sentences to fulfill the word count — ideas can get jumbled and confusing fast if sentences get too wordy.�

Zeke Smith ’19 of Weybridge, U.K., who as a Peer Writing and Speaking Assistant helps First-Year Seminar students craft and correct their papers, often takes students through this revising exercise: “I have them reread their draft with a focus on which words can be cut out, and which sentences can be written more concisely. Sometimes finding the exact right adjective or verb can replace an entire description.�

6. Skip jargon

Chinese major Olivia Stockly ’18 of Cumberland Center, Maine, and biochemistry major Ken Hale ’19 of Cleveland, Ohio, prepare for a physics lab in the Academic Resource Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It is very easy to use a lot of insider lingo, and writers should be conscious of this while they are trying to articulate their points,� says TWA Jackie Welch ’18 of Falmouth, Maine. “They should write as though the reader is familiar with their field but not necessarily with their particular discipline within that field.�

7. Cut the clichés

“Few people use ‘plethora’ right, and when they do, it’s a little precious,â€� if not downright pretentious, says Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read. “I would say we experience a plethora of plethoras in my world — that is to say, an excessive usage of this word!”

Adds Hill, “Nothing that comes after the phrase ‘throughout history’ is true.�

8. Revise, revise, revise

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill speaks during a 2016 panel on the recent presidential election. This year, she is teaching a First-Year Seminar called “Race, Justice, and American Policy in the Twenty-First Century.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“I have often advised students to use an after-the-fact outline or simply go through a draft and highlight their topic sentences,� Hill says. “That will tell you what exists on paper, and you can decide whether that is what you wanted to say or not.�

9. Don’t make the last least.

Bestselling author and syndicated columnist Amy Dickinson discusses her work and tells students how to tell their own stories during a session of “Family Stories,” Kirk Read’s First-Year Seminar, on Oct. 27. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Leave something for the end of your paper,� Read says. “Conclude without summarizing. Save something for the end, so that we appreciate what your point is and that you have proven it in some way.�

10. Record your paper, then listen to it

Reading a draft of a paper out loud can help you catch mistakes — and get around a fixation on grammar. “I try to tell students not to overworry about the grammar and mechanics of everything, but I am conflicted about that,� Read says. “I do want clean writers — so read your writing aloud. Record it and play it back to yourself to see if it makes any sense.�

11. Read!

Wenjing “Wen” Zheng ’21 of Wuhan, China gets her copy of “Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things” signed by the book’s author, Amy Dickinson, during a First-Year Seminar class on Oct. 27. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College).

“Read a lot of good writing — and read it as a writer,â€� says Cynthia Baker. “That is, think of yourself as a writer and study what the pros do. When you find course readings compelling, pay attention to how the writers make their content clear and compelling. What strategies do they use? How do they formulate their arguments and ideas? Give labels to those strategies, experiment with them yourself, and put them in your writer’s toolbox to pull out and use in your own writing.â€�

12. And write!

Paige Rabb ’20 of Stamford, Conn., takes notes during a meeting of her 2016 First-Year Seminar, “The Natural History of Maine’s Neighborhoods and Woods.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It might be helpful to think of writing in any form — journaling, noting, ruminating, fine-tuning —as a daily practice,â€� says Read. “Something that you turn to regularly and happily. Something that might even center you or help sort you out, like yoga, working out, meditation. For many successful writers, it’s a regular practice — and a joy.”

Carrie Murphey ’06, assistant dean of students for first-year programs, likens the experience of Orientation to a kaleidoscope.

“If one thing isn’t fitting quite right, or they’re feeling like, ‘Hmmm, not quite sure how this feels,’ they have lots of opportunities and lots of clicks of the kaleidoscope to see themselves in other parts of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,” she says.

Photographers Phyllis Graber Jensen and Theophil Syslo followed members of the Class of 2021 for much of Orientation, as they walked Lewiston, learned about the importance of reasoned inquiry, and spent their days and nights in the woods, on a farm, or at sports practice.

The clicks of the kaleidoscope started Tuesday, Aug. 29, as the new students met advisers in various First-Year Seminars, continued with off-campus AESOP trips and on-campus varsity sports practices late in the week, then returned to campus for Tuesday’s Convocation and the start of classes on Wednesday.

Jaelene Perez '20 of the Bronx, Precious Johnson '20 of Chicago, and Jesus Carrera '20 of Waco, Texas, pose for student photographer Alexandria Onuoha '20 of Malden, Mass., during the OIE reception. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Wednesday, Sept. 6: Catching up at the OIE's reception, from left, are John Collantes '18 of Park Ridge, Ill., Sally Ceesay '18 of the Bronx, Jeanne Hua '18 of Honolulu, and Frederick Cheng '18 of San Leandro, Calif. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Wednesday, Sept. 6: Brooke Drabkin '18 of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., (facing camera) hugs Cash Huynh '18 of New Orleans during an Office of Intercultural Education reception held to welcome the Class of 2021 and give returning faculty, staff, and students a chance to connect and reconnect. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Wednesday, Sept. 6: Students listen to a discussion about the "Odyssey" during the first lesson of Lisa Maurizio’s First-Year Seminar, “Classical Myths and Contemporary Art.â€� Students in the course “explore the ways in which myths give members of a society, whether ancient or modern, meaningful tools to describe and explore issues, values, and conflicts.â€� (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Tuesday, Sept. 5: After Convocation, Marshall Vale pours a cup of water from Lake Andrews on the soil around a red oak sapling near the Class of 1929 Gate. Each year, a memorial tree is planted to honor members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community who have died in the past year. Marshall Vale’s wife Katie Vale, college librarian and vice president for information and library services, died in December. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

By H. Jay Burns, editor

This issue reflects the College’s ongoing ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Contemplates Food initiative in myriad ways, including .

Here on campus, a recent BCF event was food writer . A few hours before speaking to that overflow crowd, Pollan talked informally in Chase Lounge about his writing focus.

In the late 1980s, he got interested in the “messy places where humans and nature can’t be kept from each other.” Food was one of the messiest places, he found, because humans can never retreat from this engagement with nature. “You can’t be Thoreau in your vegetable garden,” he told the students. If you try, you won’t take steps to protect your food — “you won’t firebomb a woodchuck,” he said, alluding to his famous attempt to drive the rodents from his Connecticut garden, as chronicled in his 1988 essay “Gardening Means War.”

In Thoreau throws in the trowel on his large-scale bean field after one season because he doesn’t believe it’s right to tell nature how to behave. Pollan calls Thoreau “defeatist” for his backpedaling attitude toward food production. “We are in nature,” he told the students. “We’ve been implicated in nature for a lot longer than you think.”

His references to Thoreau, woodchucks, and firebombing sure got my attention. In high school, I used a .30-30 rifle to kill a woodchuck nibbling on broccoli in our vegetable garden — a great shot, really, as the rodent was more than 100 feet away. The woodchuck’s death brought no reprimand from my father, both a Thoreau disciple and avid gardener.

Like Pollan, he had long since revised Thoreau’s operations manual while retaining its essence. For example, Thoreau burned tree stumps for heat. We would drive from our Waterford, Maine, home to the nearby Paris Manufacturing wood factory. Out back, workers dumped kiln-dried blocks of hardwood, which we hauled back to Waterford in our Chevy truck.

Gwen Lexow, who teaches the first-year seminar “Into the Woods: Rewriting Walden,” understands very well that we all make certain accommodations as we live our lives. Her students, however, haven’t figured that out yet. They tend to condemn Thoreau for not staying on the straight and narrow when he chooses his less-traveled path. “They call Thoreau a hypocrite,” she says. “It bothers them immensely when they find out that he lunches with his mother and that he goes back to the village.”

Lexow helps her students move past that monolithic stopping point. “Their a-ha! moment comes later,” she says, as they read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. “They realize that even within a simple life, nothing is simple.”

The seminar, she says, “mirrors the students’ first semester. They arrive thinking it’s their chance to ‘get out from under the man’ intellectually. But it’s not so easy.”

At Walden, Thoreau does kill a woodchuck that has “ravaged” his beans, and then eats the meat. I tossed my dead woodchuck into the woods.

H. Jay Burns, Editor

As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College prepares to begin its first academic year with a new set of core educational requirements, a foundation in Falmouth has awarded the college more than $250,000 to support the requirements’ focus on writing skills.

The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.

The gave a three-year, $255,000 grant to help implement programs designed to strengthen writing instruction at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The funds will support faculty development and a new peer tutoring program, as well as formal assessments of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ new approaches to writing instruction.

Accepted by a faculty vote in 2006 and taking effect this fall for the classes of 2011 and after, the new represent a significant shift in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ curriculum and teaching methods. For many years, most ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have taken a first-year seminar with a writing focus and have written a senior thesis, a major undertaking that brings to fruition much of what they have learned at the college. The new writing program will develop students’ writing abilities through the interim.

“What the Davis Foundation did was help us build a bridge across the river” in implementing the writing-related requirements, says Margaret Imber, a faculty member and member of a team exploring ways to support students and faculty during the transition to the new requirements.

“We were going there in any case,” says Imber, referring to the new approach to writing, “but here was somebody who had the capacity to say, ‘Let us help you get there faster.'”

The peer writing-tutor program, in which experienced ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students will help fellow students write more effectively, debuts this fall with two components.

One involves the first-year seminars taken by 95 percent of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students. These seminars, well-established in the curriculum, are designed to give new students the fundamentals of college-level reasoning, writing and research. The peer tutoring program will attach 15 tutors to certain first-year seminars to serve as a resource for the class.

The other piece of the program is the creation of a pool of 15 writing assistants in the college library five evenings a week — for many students, prime time for doing academic work. “Students will have writing assistants available to them when they’re actually writing their papers,” says Imber, whose team observed similar writing-support programs at other colleges such as Wellesley and Middlebury.

“The numbers show that students are responsive to these programs. And if that’s where they are, that’s where we need to be.”

Davis funds will also support workshops where faculty will explore new techniques for teaching writing at different levels. In addition, the grant will provide opportunities to examine what works best in the peer-tutor program and to assess the writing curriculum as a whole.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ new “gen ed” requirements emphasize interdisciplinary study, scientific reasoning, laboratory experience and quantitative literacy in addition to writing.