Allen’s personal comments
When I taught the equivalent of this course at another college, it was named “Advanced Composition,” and I had to ask myself what was advanced about it. There is nothing in this course about writing poetry or fiction (two kinds of writing which you should at least try). We don’t even touch on interpreting fiction or poetry. You will have to take yet another English course or two for those. So poetry and fiction are not the “advanced” part—there’s something else.
When I put this course together, I had two main ideas in mind: Broadening your horizons, and helping you to think like a scholar. If you look at the assigned readings, you will realize that sooner or later you will be reading someone who isn’t much like yourself. That’s a good change. If the only voices you ever hear are the ones who sound exactly like you, you will not grow much. Just to take an example from the first essay assignment, you will get inside the head of a boy escaping from Nazi Germany and a young coast guardsman patrolling near Haiti. Thinking like a scholar is a major part of this course too, so I will ask you to consider whether the traditional ABCDF grading scheme is the best one (and give reasons for your opinion). The course ends with a research paper, and I am not prescribing a topic. In a way, the exact topic is less important than the habit of mind—looking at the world and asking smart questions, then finding ways to get some smart answers.
I’ll end this little essay with a couple of stories.
The first is about a student who was in my 101 and 102 classes at the University of Akron. He came in and declared his major as civil engineering because he understood what those people do. They build bridges with cement and make buildings stand up. That makes sense. I gave the 101 class a wide-open assignment for an argument paper to finish the term, and he wrote about the planet Pluto: how terrible it was for it to lose its status as a planet and be degraded to a ball of dirt and ice. He demanded that we begin calling it a planet again. At the end of the 102 course, the assignment was a wide-open research paper (similar to what we are doing here) and he got into the phenomenon in astrophysics known as dark energy. The last I heard of him, he was an intern with NASA.
The other research paper that sticks in my mind came in just a couple of semesters ago in a 102 class like ours with the same open assignment. Clearly the best paper in the course was an argument that the walleye should be named the state fish of Ohio. This guy had it nailed: economic contributions of the walleye, diverse habitat all over the state, quality of the fishing experience, and how it tastes. He learned a lot more than just a fish story; he learned how to pull together diverse information to make a totally water-tight point (and make it an interesting and informative paper in the process).
So the nuts and bolts are behind us now; it’s time to move into a broader field.
The course will end with a large paper which has a very wide-open assignment. As you work your way through the course, keep asking yourself what you would like to spend a month or so working on for your final paper. Ask some questions. Keep a notebook.
* Foreword: One of my editors was surprised and irritated that I didn’t know the difference between “forward” and “foreword.” I guess that proves that there’s always room to learn something. “Foreword” is the word which occurs before a major piece of writing. So now we both know.
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.
Revised 8/12/26 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.