Essay 1 — Warm-Up

Purpose

This essay gives you a condensed preview of the writing process we will follow in this course. As such, it contributes to the following learning outcomes:

• Outcome 1. Read significant texts carefully and critically, recognizing and responding to argumentative positions as part of a literal or metaphorical conversation between authors
• Outcome 2.4. Write clearly throughout an argument
• Outcome 2.5. Improve the substance of an argument through revision (only assessed for the final version of the essay)

Background

I will try to persuade you in this course to approach writing with two key ideas in mind: first, that writing is a form of conversation with others interested in the topic you are writing about, and second, that writing is a process of revision rather than something to get right the first time.

To encourage these attitudes, most of the writing exercises in this course will follow a pattern consisting of most or all of the following:

1. Class discussion of the material you will write about, to generate ideas and literally start a conversation.
2. Writing a first draft of an essay.
3. Sharing that draft with one or more classmates, for their reactions and suggestions. This is called “peer editing” or “peer review” by writing instructors.
4. Meeting with me to discuss the draft and your goals for the essay.
5. Writing a second draft of the essay, presumably incorporating your own new ideas once you been away from the essay for a day or so, and any suggestions from the peer reviews and your meeting with me that you feel improve the essay. Notice that the point of peer review and meeting with me is not to tell you what you must do, but to give you things to consider and make your own decision about.

This essay introduces you to a brief example of this process.

Activity

In class on September 3 you had a chance to talk about, or hear other people talk about, various aspects of cryptography. Write an essay that responds to and continues some part of this conversation. For example, you might summarize what someone else said and then write about why you agree or disagree with that statement; you might say in writing something you wanted to say in class but didn’t have a chance to, relating it to the comments that were made in class; if you have a different way of approaching something someone else said you might summarize their view and then describe your own. These are, of course, only a few of many possible examples, and you may certainly write about things besides them too.

I expect that positioning your ideas in some existing conversation and then adding to it will take between one and two pages.

I hope that the conversation in class will really be multiple overlapping conversations with lots of different ideas and points of view. Do not try to summarize and extend all of them! Pick one that you can dig into instead of touching superficially on many.

Write your essay as a Google doc. This makes your essay easy to share with other people for reviews, and easy for them to comment on. (If for any reason you cannot use Google docs, let me know and we’ll work out some alternative.)

Follow-Up

We will do peer reviews of drafts of this essay during class on the “Peer Reviews of Drafts” date shown above. During that class, be prepared to share the essay electronically with the person you work with in the peer review. Also, please bring your computer to class on that day so you can access other people’s essays.

Between the peer review date and the “Grade Draft By” date, I will meet with you to share my thoughts on the essay and answer questions you have for me. You can make an appointment for this meeting via Google Calendar. Please make the meeting 20 minutes long, and schedule it to finish before 5:00 PM on the “Grade Draft By” date. So that I have time to prepare for these meetings, please share your Google doc draft with me by midnight the evening before the reviews.

Following the peer reviews and meetings with me, you’ll have a chance to revise your draft essay. Share your revision with me by 11:59 PM on the “Submit Final Draft By” date. If your second version is in the same Google doc you already shared with me for the first draft, “sharing” it again just involves emailing me a quick note that the document is ready for me to look at. Then, during the three weekdays following the “Submit Final Draft By” date, I would once again like to have a 20 minute meeting with you to talk about the final version; as with the drafts, please sign up for this meeting through Google calendar.