A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away...

 For anyone who does not know, I graduated with a Master's degree in English Literature in May 2010 from the University of South Carolina. It was a challenging and harrowing two years for many reasons, and for the most part, I walked across that stage and have not looked back. Today, though, I was reading through some unfinished drafts from Ye Olde Blog and came across this gem from May 2010. It is chock-full of quotations gleaned from my students' final portfolio project in English 102, Rhetoric and Composition (I was a T.A.).
I challenge you to read through these and not laugh out loud. Perhaps you will hearken back to your own undergraduate days and those annoying classes that you were forced to take or teach.


"To be honest with you, with all of my exams this week the revision process for this portfolio had to wait till the end....Overall the revision process for all of these papers was not fun at all. Having to look back at my work that was poorly written was kind of annoying." (My apologies, O Infringed Upon One. Being 18 is sooo time-consuming.)

"Thank you for teaching me this semester, I actually learned a lot from you." (I include this one because of the word actually and its bearing on the sentence.)

"Rhetoric cannot leave your side in the environment we live in." (Anyone else picturing a creepy stalker?)

"All of these papers had one thing in common and that was the use of rhetoric." (Since the class was entitled "Composition and Rhetoric," that sounds about right.)

"I am also a waitress and I use rhetoric at work by trying to persuade my customers to upgrade and get the more expensive item on the menu." (This is actually a great real world example. Kudos, random student.)

"It was probably sometime around 11 pm on a Monday night when I began my revision process, after a long and well-deserved nap. After an hour of revising I decided to take a break." (When I read this, I imagine my dog and his lazy afternoons where he wanders between beds, couches and sunny spots on the floor to nap).

"Before this class, I never really thought about rhetoric at all. I did not analyze any posters I walked by or commercials I saw. And I still don't. But now I have outside knowledge so that if I did want to analyze a piece of rhetoric I would be able to." (As if an uncritical approach to the world is something to be proud of?)