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 ofÌýGuangzhou, 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€� Ìý

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.”

Recently appointed as director of Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Daniel Sanford comes to Maine from New Mexico. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A linguist and ardent advocate of language rights, Daniel Sanford has been appointed director of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College’s Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ program, as well as director of the college’s new Academic Resource Commons.

Sanford began at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Aug. 1, following 13 years at the University of New Mexico, where he served most recently as director of the award-winning Center for Academic Program Support.

“Dan is deeply experienced in both writing program administration and, more broadly, the oversight of student support centers,” said Matthew Auer, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

“We welcome his keen intellectual engagement, his strong record as an academic support leader, his commitment to student success, and his already palpable collegiality.”

“I’m honored to serve as the director of Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, leading the staff in supporting students in their growth as writers, and faculty in the use of writing in their courses,” said Sanford.

“I’m fascinated by the role that writing plays in the transformative experience of a liberal arts education, and I believe strongly in the power of writing to help individuals to access communities both within the academy and in the world beyond it.”

He said, “I’ve always wanted to work at a college like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — an intimate community where there is a close relationship between faculty and students.” Sanford added that he was also drawn by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion. “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has realized that commitment in very impressive ways.”

Strongly intentional about developing students’ abilities to communicate through the written word, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ curriculum is bookended by writing. First-Year Seminars ground students in college-level writing. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ distinctive senior thesis program is the culmination of a student’s writing for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Along the way, students are required to take courses designated as writing-intensive.

Sanford directs a staff of writing specialists who support both faculty and students. In addition, Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ incorporates a large team of peer writing and speaking assistants, students who help students.

Situating support for both faculty and students in one office, Sanford says, “is a unique model that I’m lucky to have inherited. We’re supporting the teaching of writing in the classroom, and supporting students as they use writing in their courses, in order to approach writing from both sides — and hopefully make a real difference.”

Still in development at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the Academic Resource Commons coordinates Writing at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the Mathematics and Statistics Workshop, and other resources for learning and teaching. “A goal is to converge all of our resources in one central area so that students and faculty have a clear idea of where to go for support,” Sanford explains.

At the University of New Mexico, Sanford headed the Center for Academic Program Support for two years, following stints as associate director of CAPS and, before that, head of the writing center within CAPS.

Sanford is particularly proud of two achievements as CAPS director. For one, he broadened the writing center’s mission to support student writing in not just English, but in all languages taught at UNM — including Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, and Navajo.

He also shifted the advising emphasis away from one-on-one sessions with students to working in groups. “That change, I think, fit well with the goal of writing centers to treat writing as a process rather than a final product, and to encourage students to engage with one another over writing.”

Sanford became involved in writing center and academic support work while working toward a doctorate in linguistics at UNM. He earned an undergraduate degree in classics and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin.

An active scholar, Sanford conducts research in cognitive science and linguistics, composition studies, and language rights. Sanford says that while it’s more common for writing specialists to have backgrounds in composition or English, his training in linguistics has served him well.

“As students come in from a whole host of international backgrounds and U.S. dialects, and move toward the fluencies we’re trying to teach them, understanding typological differences across languages can help bridge those boundaries.”

Sanford adds, “A lot of the work that I do in writing centers is through the lens of language rights. So I’m thinking about students having the full right to use the languages that they grew up with as a way to navigate the world — and how we can help empower them in that.”

“When you have an institution like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ that’s so intensively committed to diversity of many types, it’s important to engage with writing in a way that allows every type of student from every background — linguistic, cultural, and national — to fully access everything here.”

Sanford lives in an 1850s farmhouse in South Paris, Maine, with his wife, a landscape artist, and their two daughters. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, running, hiking, and biking.

Spring being an elusive season in Maine, we tend to seek bellwethers that don’t depend on the weather.

Senior Lecturer in English Robert Farnsworth congratulates Ashley Lepre ’13 after the annual creative writing thesis reading at Mount David Summit on March 29, 2013. Photographs by Jay Burns.

For Rob Farnsworth, who advises ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ creative writing students along with English department colleague and novelist Jessica Anthony ’96, spring arrives on Mount David Summit day, the annual academic festival of, in Farnsworth’s words, “student research, scholarship, analysis, composition, performance — you name it.”

“It’s my favorite event,” he added.

“Serious and deeply attentive discipline.”

Spring being all about rebirth writ large, the interplay of spring, the Summit and the creative work produced by student writers was also on Farnsworth’s mind.

A creative writing thesis “involves serious and deeply attentive discipline,” he said. “The experience offers those who undertake such projects a first experience in the practical and emotional challenges that the work of writing presents to anyone who seriously commits to it.”

Please note that some readings contain strong language.

Ashley Brunk ’13

Ashley Brunk ’13

Brunk, of Phoenix, Ariz., reads from her fiction thesis, “Sheila’s Heart.”

In the reading, the protagonist is Sheila, who in high school received a heart transplant and is now a senior in college.

Sheila helped to organize a buddy program called Big One, LIttle One, and her buddy in the program is Jessica, who has the congenital spinal cord condition spina bifada.

Other characters are Mark and Robbie, a buddy pair that Sheila and Jessica recently met; Coop, Sheila’s doctor; and Professor Doerer, faculty adviser for the buddy program; and Caitlin, one of Sheila’s friends.

Eryn Gilchrist ’13

Gilchrist of West Simsbury, Conn., reads from her fiction thesis, “The Sharpening of Carlton Beavers.”

Eryn Gilchrist ’13

In the reading, the protagonist is Carlton Beavers, who is on a bus that’s traveling from New Oreans to El Paso. He’s sitting next to “the worst person you can get stuck next to on a bus,” says Gilchrist.

That man is named Marvin Deckler, and he’s “very large, very opinionated, and the only carry-on he has is a megaphone. And, he speaks almost exclusively in very bad puns.”

Joanna Harran ’13

Joanna Harran ’13

Harran, of Pukalani, Hawaii, reads three poems, two of which explore places in her native state.

/news/files/2013/04/130329_0139-Harran1.mp3“Plumeria Graves” is about Keawala’i Church, a small stone building on the island of Maui, represents the blending of traditional Hawaiian polytheism with monotheism brought by Christian missionaries, explains Harran. Today, the church conducts services in Hawaiian, and is famed for its beautiful flowers, grounds and ocean views, and its distinctive, traditional Hawaiian stone graves.

/news/files/2013/04/130329_0139-Harran2.mp3“New Woman” is about a woman trying to find a place in a family as she navigates a relationships with a man whose wife has recently died.

/news/files/2013/04/130329_0139-Harran3.mp3“Paths” is set on the small Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe. Used as a U.S. bombing range during World War II, the island today is littered with debris and unexploded ordnance.

During ancient times, Kaho’olawe was sacred land, used only for religious ceremonies and to train seafaring Polynesians how to use the stars for navigation. Still uninhabited today, Kaho’olawe is the focus of strategies to control erosion and re-establish vegetation.

Mollie Kervick ’13

Mollie Kervick ’13

Kervick, of Windsor Locks, Conn., reads five poems.

Her poetry, she says, asks explores the weaving of myth and family heritage. In the process, it asks and answers the question “How do I ground myself?” The act of writing, she concludes, “gives me a cultural context — something for me to grab on to.”

/news/files/2013/04/130329_0139-Kervick1.mp3“Rose Anne Helferty” is based on a story that Kervick once heard about a relative named Rose Anne Helferty.

“On the Way to the Franciscan Well” is set in Ireland, where Kervick studied last year. Her father was visiting her, and “on the way to the pub, we heard a splash, and saw this beautiful object in the river.”

“A Boy Who Died in Cork” is about “someone I felt connected to, but never met,” she says.

“Winter at 30 Elm Street” is about her home in Windsor Locks, the town where she, her father, and her grandfather grew up in. “It’s the hub of many childhood memories,” she says. “What I’ve learned about writing is how strange and scary memories can be, and what sticks out.

Ashley Lepre ’13

Ashley Lepre ’13

Lepre, of Fairfield, Conn., delivered a selection of poems chock full of smart wit.

“The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”is from a series of ‘Where Are They Now?” poems about the fates of well-known fictional characters, this one muses about Orphan Annie’s potential career choices.

“This Be Worse” is a parody of a Phllip Larkin poem about parenting, “This Be the Verse.” Lepre reads Larkin’s original, then her parody, “This Be Worse.”

“The Bachelor: A Villanelle,” written in the 19-line villanelle format, is about the TV show The Bachelor. (Catch Lepre’s theme? So far, poems about orphans, bad parenting and dicey relationships.)

“The Brat” is a meditation on how a woman grow up to be a pitiable character on a reality show like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette? Maybe it happens like this.

Haiku featuring boiling pots, a dyslexic groomsman, poor mistletoe placement and wishing upon a star.

In this video clip, Lepre reads two haiku:

“The Way They Please”captures “a lot of how I feel about people and a lot of things in the world and a lot of parts of myself.”

Matt Williams ’13

Matt Williams ’13

Williams, of Clarksville, Md., reads a selection of creative nonfiction about his encounters with writers, including the poet Eileen Myles, titled “Eileen Myles, This Is Why I Love You.”

Williams is an American cultural studies major who is, in a sense, on loan from his major program.

He’s pursuing a creative writing thesis because he wants to confront and investigate his own subjectivity in his writing.

“The goal is to explicitly place myself as the author as well as a participant in my stories, confronting my own subjectivity through the use of ‘I.'”

Ìý

Charlie Schroeder '95 has penned Man of War: My Adventures in the World of Historical Reenactment.

The Washington Post and other reviewers say Man of War by Charlie Schroeder ’95 offers entertaining insights into the lives of war reenactors.

During a year spent with various reenactment groups, Schroeder, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater major, played a German soldier fighting the Soviets at Stalingrad (in Colorado). He lived in a Roman fort and battled Celts (in Arkansas) and experienced the Vietnam War (in Virginia). There were stints in the French and Indian War, and the Civil War. And he was a Viking, too.

Writes Timothy R. Smith in :

“Schroeder…got into reenacting because he longed for history. He grew up in an 18th-century log cabin in Mennonite country, where history abounded, but he didn’t notice it. In L.A., though, where history lasts about 12 seconds, he started to miss the past. After touring a living history program in Southern California, he had an idea: ‘What if I could reenact my way through history? To learn not only about the hobby but maybe, just maybe, about the past too?'”

But the book isn’t all earnestness, as Smith and others point out.

Barton Swaim of says it’s worth the price of the book just to read the part about the Colorado ranch owner, a Vietnam vet no less, who doesn’t want ersatz Nazis taking on faux Soviets on land adjoining his, which prompts a young reenactor to mutter, “Leave it to a dumb redneck to ruin it for everybody.”

With poet and writing adviser Rob Farnsworth looking on, Karen Nicoletti '12 reads from her novel during the 2012 Mount David Summit. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

As is his custom at the annual senior thesis reading, creative writing adviser Rob Farnsworth blessed the graduating ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ poets and novelists whom he has advised during the academic year.

A poet and senior lecturer in English, Farnsworth invoked the four ingredients that Herman Melville said writers need to continue their important but often thankless art.

“May you go forth into the world,” Farnsworth told the seniors, “and find what every writer needs: time, strength, cash and patience.” And like any good public reader, he paused at “cash” for appropriate humorous effect.

Farnsworth also praised them for their “dedicated commitment to the life of the imagination.”

The seven readers and their voices at the May 17 event (an eighth creative writing major, Emily Cull of Greenville, S.C., was unable to attend):

Alison Cornforth of Warren, Maine, read autobiographical poems. The experience of creating them, she said, raised emotional issues, “but I ended up writing them anyway.”

Listen to Alison Cornforth read her autobiographical poetry.

Alana Folsom of Los Angeles read part of her prose thesis that explains, like a parable, the curse on the small Southern town that is the focus on her story.

Listen to Alana Folsom read prose about the curse on a small town.

Lil Henry of Lee, N.H., read from her poetry on relationships, including one about difficult emotions a young mother feels toward her new baby.

Listen to Lil Henry’s poetry about human relationships.

Karen Nicoletti of Brewster, N.Y., read from her prose thesis about a saxophone player and Juilliard dropout who winds up playing for handouts in the New York City subway.

Listen to Karen Nicoletti read a selection from her prose thesis.

Charlotte Simpson's poetry and prose explore the power of imagination to pull us into the unknown. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

Meg Ramey of Bethesda, Md., read her gritty and realistic poem “Violet” and a selection from her prose thesis dealing with mental and emotional disorientation.

Listen to Meg Ramey read her poetry and prose.

Charlotte Simpson of New York, N.Y., read the poem “Opener” and a prose piece called “Space Is the Place,” each about submitting to one’s imagination and the unknown.

Listen to Charlotte Simpson read two pieces whose theme is the lure of the unknown.

Michelle Schloss of Unionville, Conn., read a biographical poem, 18 stanzas each with 10 lines about Zelda Fitzgerald, from her wild Roaring Twenties days to her suicide in 1948.

Listen to Michelle Schloss read her biographical poem about Zelda Fitzgerald.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph engages with his audience in the aisles of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. (Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

For a performance Jan. 13, performer, educator, activist and slam poetry champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph took the Olin Concert Hall stage—only to leave it again.

“This place is really fancy,” said Joseph, jumping off the stage into the audience. “I believe in ‘not fancy.’ ”

Joseph offered a staged (or off-staged) reading of his acclaimed performance piece red, black & GREEN: a blues in the evening event, part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

The piece is usually performed on a circular stage, with large “houses” on wheels representing different American cities. His ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ reading performance included two of the four acts, Chicago and Oakland. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival presents the .)

Joseph called upon the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ audience to fulfill the roles usually performed by the other artists working on the project. For one poem, the audience was split into four sections, each with a verse of “I’ve Got Peace like a River.” Without breaking cadence, Joseph would conduct the audience in singing while he moved around the room telling the story of a woman who emigrated to the U.S. from Sudan to escape the violence there, only to have her son murdered in Chicago.

Along with the excerpts from rbGb, Joseph offered original poems from previous projects. In tribute to King Day, he began with a piece dedicated to the civil rights leader. Using quotes from some of King’s greatest speeches, Joseph asked how far America has come in realizing King’s “dream.â€�

When an audience member asked Joseph how he came to be a performer, he answered with a rap from the album that, he says, changed his life, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. “Chuck D gave me a whole new vocabulary for liberation,� said Joseph.

But his last piece of the evening, a story from his time in Senegal, also shed some light on his emergence as a performer. After realizing his vulnerability to street hustlers and theft, Joseph encounters an American woman who is fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation.

While visiting one village, that friend asks him to distract an impromptu village dance party while she negotiates an end to genital mutilation with the village elders. As a poet, Joseph is unsure how to “distractâ€� a crowd of dancing locals. On a whim, he breaks into the hip hop dances he learned growing up in New York City–and the village is won over, as was the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ audience by his re-enactment.

Joseph performs on the Olin stage.

Joseph worked his magic in a more intimate setting the evening prior to the Olin performance. While plows cleared the streets after the winter semester’s first snowstorm, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students congregated in the student-run coffee house, the Ronj, to enjoy an evening of hot chai, music and poetry from Joseph and student performers.

Sponsored by the Arts House, the evening was a successful turnout of student talent.

It was one of several opportunities for students to interact with Joseph, who also visited anthropology, dance, environmental studies and rhetoric classes during his four-day visit.

Standing in the middle of the room rather than onstage, Joseph performed two energetic spoken-word pieces that combined dance with storytelling and role-playing to captivate the room.

Humorous but introspective, Joseph’s pieces tackle questions about identity: What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be “hip hop” outside of America? Joseph danced, contorting his body to show pain, pleasure and confusion, his arms and legs swinging out over the heads of students sitting on the floor around him.

Eleven students representing all class years read original poems. Although some seemed nervous, the room was supportive and everyone got a hand. Many students admitted it was their first time reading in front of their peers.

“All of the student readers and performers were incredibly talented,” said Emma Timbers ’14, a creative writing major who co-organized the event with fellow Art House representative Doug Welsh ’14. “And it was exciting to see so many freshmen sharing their work.”

For some, reading has been an important aspect of their time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Seniors Charlotte Simpson and Alana Folsom, both members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Authors Guild, read from their creative writing theses. About half of the readers performed original slam poems and invited the audience to join their new slam group.

As for student musicians, Sawyer Lawson ’12 kicked off the evening with a bluesy acoustic guitar set. Also performing were Grace Glasson ’14, who performed folksy covers and originals on ukulele, and Hansen Johnson ’13, who performed covers and originals on acoustic guitar.

— by Erica Long ’12

As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students submit their senior honors theses in Lane Hall, faculty and staff note the milestone with a celebratory flourish.

Strout, an English major who earned an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2010, talks about her devotion to Olive Kitteridge, the problematic and flawed title character of her : “As I was writing it, I personally had a great deal of sympathy for her, as I do with all my characters. I don’t think there’s anybody I write about who I don’t care for deeply in some way no matter what their behavior is.”

About her own writing process, Strout says, “I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you’re just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that’s great. But that’s not ordinary in a day’s work. So I just rewrite constantly, constantly, constantly, trying to make sure that every sentence can hold the depth of the feeling I’m trying to get at.”

And about her brief legal career, after earned her law degree from Syracuse in 1982: “I did work for legal services in Syracuse for six months. But I was a pretty terrible lawyer. A really, really terrible lawyer. I was terrible first of all because I just wanted to be writing stories. And also, I was not adversarial. And I didn’t know that about myself. I hadn’t thought about that. But when my job was to get on the phone and call up somebody and tell them they weren’t giving my clients their proper due in the school system or something like that, it was very, very difficult for me to do that.”

Perhaps it was in ancient Egypt when a teacher first jotted “awkward� and “lacks coherence� on a sheet of papyrus, sending a student on a long, sad walk along the Nile. Ever since, professors’ comments on student papers have carried real power.

At a recent campus, professors and writing professionals from a number of liberal arts colleges discussed how writing assignments, including the practice of commenting on student papers, create conversations that make a student feel connected to college.

(But not always. One student presenter at the gathering recalled the stark feedback on her very first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ paper. “I felt I had already failed,â€� she said, adding that professors can do a better job explaining their disciplines’ writing styles.)

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, professors tend to accept hard copies of papers and make comments by hand, says Director of Writing Hillory Oakes. She’s encouraging professors to accept papers electronically and make their comments electronically, a practice she admits is “less common at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ than at comparable schools,â€� though she doesn’t know why.

E-commenting, she adds, “fosters a sense of conversation between the student-writer and the faculty-reader that crammed handwriting scribbled in a margin can’t,� she says.

Meanwhile, the an English professor at George Washington who writes the blog “University Diariesâ€�. Handwritten comments “confirm the authenticityâ€� of a professor’s presence in a student’s life. “This professor and no other…did the student the honor of reading, thinking about, and writing directly to the student, in the professor’s own ink, in the professor’s personal scrawl, on the student’s own paper.â€�

When a student submits a paper, it feels like an offering to the gods. And when the clouds part for the sun, you feel it forever. The poet Pamela Alexander ’70 will always remember this comment from the late Werner Deiman: “This paper coruscates.� (Look it up; she and I had to.)

A friend remembers a professor charitably expressing how he saw evidence of promise in a sequence of papers that otherwise regressed. “He could have justifiably blown me away with a single sentence but instead he chose kindness,� said my friend.

I arrived in college armed with the literary equivalent of a musket and black powder. I wrote with some power, a style partly picked up from Boston Globe sportswriters like Ray Fitzgerald, and my aim was sometimes off. I’d write about Hedda Gabler like a Globe columnist, humping one note and stuffing random metaphors throughout the paper like toys plucked from a crane game in the vestibule of Wal-Mart.

The nadir, or zenith, was using a Buffalo Springfield lyric to define solipsism for a Victorian novel class (or was it Romantic poetry?): “My head was the event of the season.� Over time, professors’ comments helped me calibrate my writing style.

Handwritten comments aren’t for everyone. Sociology professor Sawyer Sylvester makes extensive editing marks on papers but eschews long written comments because “my handwriting is atrocious. For the student, it would be an exercise in translation,� he says. “Instead, I’ll ask them to come to my office to talk about the paper.�

How old-school.

H. Jay Burns, Editor

Despite mediocre grades, a student gets fired up about African history and literature. She finds a mentor and becomes more socially grounded.

But another student drifts through college. She struggles with pre-med studies, misses high school and fails to connect with her professors.

Why does one student thrive and not the other? What kind of strategies can pull a drifting student back on course?

Such essential questions were on the agenda for the conference at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, sponsored by the Consortium on High Achievement and Success, of which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a founding member.

During a morning session, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ anthropologist Heather Lindkvist presented the two case studies described above, which are derived from longitudinal interviews with 250 students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Smith, Trinity and Wellesley colleges. The study began in 2006–07 (the students’ first year in college) and will continue into spring 2010.

Befitting the writing focused theme of the conference — it was geared to humanities faculty and writing center professionals — Lindkvist and others explained how writing assignments can deepen a student’s academic engagement in unexpected ways.

“Engagement occurs around interaction,” Lindkvist told the roomful of academics in the Jarnryd Room of New Commons. Tactics to promote interaction around writing can include the obvious (writing comments on a student’s paper) and newer tactics, such as “staging” or “scaffolding,” in which writing assignments are broken down into a series of shorter tasks or components.

The longitudinal study is sponsored by the in collaboration with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. ( of three other cases from the NECASL study.)

Professors should more carefully explain how their discipline’s writing style differs from other styles.

Following Lindkvist, five current ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students explained how writing assignments have helped and hindered their own satisfaction at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Because the conference sponsor, the Consortium on High Achievement and Success, seeks to understand the experience of underrepresented students, the panel’s composition reflected this thrust.

The five students agreed that professors should more carefully explain how their discipline’s writing style differs from other styles, and especially how college writing differs from high school writing, where the dominant style is the five-paragraph essay.

“I remember reading a research article in high school, and thought it was written by professionals,” said Anzela Niraula ’11 of Kathmandu, Nepal. “I didn’t realize that a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student would write them too.”

Asked to describe one “unpleasant surprise” at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Janelle Lyford ’13Ìýof South China, Maine, recalled the “blatant feedback” on her first ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ paper. “I felt I had already failed the course,” she said. “I wish the professor had explained what he wanted.”

Desmond Mushi ’13 of Mwanza, Tanzania, got a laugh by saying that his unpleasant surprise was “that I would have to write!” He excelled in math in high school, and his guidance counselor told Mushi that he’d not have to write in college if he just stuck with math and science.

“Sometimes students wait for a professor to make contact. But we can do it first, too.�

At first discouraged by the writing and reading assignments in his course on the Cold War, yet intrigued by the topic, Mushi sought help from the Writing Workshop, from Emily Grady ’10 at the Peer Writing Project and from his politics professor, Jim Richter.

“After I did my reading but before I started to write, at first there was no one to talk to,” he recalls. “But then I found that my professor would talk with me. Emily would talk with me.

“Sometimes students wait for a professor to make contact. But we can do it first, too.�

Since it is, ultimately, a student’s responsibility to seek help, conference organizer Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and special assistant to the president, posed a key question: “How did you learn to ask for help?”

“Put your question into the context of what you are seeking.”

Kirsten Gavin ’12 of Lewiston noted that “a few professors seem naturally psychicâ€� and tend to anticipate student questions. But with others, Gavin learned not to ask generally about the writing assignment. “That will just result in a repetition of the assignment” from the professor.

Instead, she said, “put your question into the context of what you are seeking.”

A few students offered their own strategies for writing success. Angel Pena ’13 of Providence, R.I., explained that “you come up with new ideas when you read over your paper,� he explained. “So now I reread everything I write. Even my text messages.�