The Journal

The journal is a notebook where you record your thoughts and impressions throughout the semester, as well as your questions and answers. It can be any size you like, and any format you find attractive: a bound blank book, a looseleaf binder, even a computer file. The main criterion is that you have ready access to it and feel comfortable with it.

Use the jounal to take notes during class or while you do the readings for class, but use it especially to record your thoughts after attending a class meeting or reading an assigned text. You may find that the brief notes you make in class will prompt further reflections. It's one thing to hear a teacher voice a question or offer an answer, but it's something quite different to formulate the question in your own words and to write down the evidence you find most compelling.

For each class meeting, from January 22 on, you should write a journal entry. Don't worry about the spelling (you can check it later); just record your impressions. Feel free to editorialize or jot down memories that come to mind. There will be time to revise.

Periodically, you will be asked to submit a "polished" journal entry of at least 300 words. For this exercise, you will need to look over the journal and choose an entry that seems promising. Then you will have to identify the main point-what makes it interesting-and develop the point into a short essay of at least 300 words. Now you need to check the spelling and, what is more, the sense. One good way to check is to read the entry aloud, preferably to a sympathetic listener, and ask what is not clear.

Late in the semester, you will be asked to turn in the entire working journal. (If you keep part of it on your computer, you'll have to make a printout.) One or more of the instructors will read it to see how fully you have responded to questions raised in the course and in the readings for the course.

Your FIRST journal assignment is to find a journal and write the entry for January 22. It should address the question raised in the "Academic Bill of Rights" from the Boyer Commission Report: what should you be able to expect for your university education?

The Reports

During the semester, you should attend some of the cultural events offered on campus and in the Tucson community. (Many are advertised in local newspapers such as the Arizona Daily Wildcat and the Tucson Weekly.) You must submit one-page reports on three events of different sorts--e.g., a Speaker Series lecture, an International Arts film, and a "Pizza with a Professional" presentation on a major or a career.

In the report, you should answer the "wh" questions: What was it? Where and when? Who spoke, or whose work was featured? Why did you go? What questions did you have before you attended? What impressions did you form? What questions did you leave with? And how would you rate it? Would you recommend it to another student?

Return to the syllabus.

Assignment for March 5

Great Question: What is normal?

1. Read "Notes on 'On being sane in insane places'" and/or the full article written by D.L. Rosenhan.
2. Write a letter of response in your own words; you will hand the letter in during the March 5th class meeting.
3. Skim through the packet that contains the Letters that respond to Rosenhan's article Choose 2-3 letters that interest you.
4. In your journal, write your reactions to the letters you chose and be prepared to discuss them.

Assignment for March 19

Great Question: What is truth, and what is lying? Background: What Oscar Wilde meant by lying has nothing to do with deceiving government officials or the voting public, much less lovers and friends. It has to do with telling tall tales, with confabulation, and ultimately with literary creation. (Wilde himself wrote "fairy tales for adults" as well as popular plays and poems, and his first creation was himself, the dangerous dandy with a flower in his lapel.) Lying, for Wilde, had to do with satisfying humanity's desire to be deceived, whether into the horror-ride of an Edgar Allan Poe story or the delights of irresistible gossip.

Read The Decay of Lying and listen to Wilde's alter ego Vivian make his "protest": the art of his day is "commonplace" because there has been a "decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure."

Think of a time when you have told less than the whole truth, or have been tempted to tell it, not to get yourself out of trouble but to save someone else from pain or to give pleasure to your friends. Then write a brief statement of what you did not do over the break. Of course, you may claim to have done it, even plead your guilt to engage the reader/listener. After you've written it, ask yourself: Is there a grain of truth in that elaborate lie? If there is, you'll find that it's what people call a parable or a myth, not a literal truth but an imaginative truth.

Procrastinate all you want. Tell yourself all the reasons you cannot start writing the journal entry. These are usually lies, of course, but they should provide lots of material for you to draw upon once you start writing. When you are ready to start,

Evoke a scene like that in Wilde's essay with the story teller and the interested but easily shocked listener. You don't have to write both sides of the dialogue, though you may; just imagine the reader that you want to create as well as the story you are going to tell.

Learn more about Wilde's wit and genius by reading his "Phrases and Philosophies for the Young," which you can find the bottom our text page. Copy out the sentence that strikes closest to home, and write a few lines to reflect on its meaning for you.

Record, as always, any questions that come to mind. Why do people tell stories? Is there knowledge that can be gained best, or only, from a narrative rather than a graph or data set? Is there important information that you can pass on to the next generation without a narrative of some sort?

Make a clean copy of your journal entry-a photocopy or printout will do fine-to turn in after class.