Feb 14 2022 Lesson: Syllabus, Class Overview, The Passion Trap, Week 1

Computer Lab Schedule

I reserved the computer lab H103 for my English 1A class so that instead of meeting in H301, the students and I will meet in H103 on the following days from 2:15 to 4:20:

March 2, March 7, March 30, April 4, May 4, May 9, June 6, and June 8. 

Your First Three Assignments and Due Dates

All assignments in this class are uploaded as Word or Google Docs documents on Canvas. We don't mess with hard copies except if you come to my office for editing. 

1A Essay #1 (Essay worth 200 points): Is Following Your Passion Bogus Career Advice?

Due on March 9 as an upload on Canvas.

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-1,500-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates Cal Newport’s claim from his online article “The Passion Trap” that the career advice to follow your passion is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. Be sure to have a counterargument-rebuttal section in your essay.

An Analogy to Help Further Your Understanding of the Topic:

As you consider Cal Newport’s rejection of “Follow your passion,” it might be helpful to consider the analogy between looking for the ultimate career and looking for love. What Cal Newport is saying is this: Looking for your “dream job” is futile if you’re not a highly skilled dream employee. It’s like love. No “right” person can cure a selfish emotionally-challenged narcissist. Such a person will go through an endless parade of failed jobs & relationships & be perpetually bitter and angry because “nothing ever works out for me.” In other words, such a person might be well served to reach a point where he or she says, “The problem isn’t the job or the other person. The problem is me.”

The Purpose:

From a thematic level, the purpose of this assignment is for you--a college student embarking on a journey that will take you through higher education and help escort you to what is hopefully a rewarding career-- to take a deep dive into a principle that has most likely been drilled into your brain since you can remember: “Follow your passion.” It should seem self-evident that you would want to follow your interests and passions and veer away from those subjects that you find boring or even repellent. No one is arguing against that. What we are exploring here is the value in the mantra, “Follow your passion.” What, if any, is the value in “Follow your passion”? What possible dangers might lurk behind the slogan of pursuing your dreams? Therefore, you want to do a deep dive of the “Follow your passion” mantra and see if under scrutiny the principle has any kind of value that is proportionate its popularity from counselors, gurus, teachers, educators, and other well-intentioned adults who tell young people or anyone having an identity crisis to follow their passion. What possible traps lie in following your passion? How might you avoid these traps? How could this essay actually affect your higher education and career plans? These questions are of paramount importance. That is why this is your first essay assignment for the semester. 

Your Essay Design & Structure

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In this essay, you will make an argumentative claim about how persuasive or not Cal Newport is in his critique of “Follow Your Passion.” Your claim will be followed by supporting paragraphs and before you arrive at your conclusion you will provide at least one counterargument-rebuttal in which you anticipate how opponents would disagree with your claim.  

Use MLA Format for Your Essay

Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.

For MLA format, I recommend the following:

Jason Morgan’s video:

Formatting a paper in MLA style 

“Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs”

Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs

Support Your Essay with Sources Using MLA In-Text Citations:

Also be sure to use signal phrases for your correct MLA in-text citations, as you will find explained in this Purdue Owl article. 

Kate Guthrie Caruso has made an excellent video on MLA in-text citations titled “MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics.”

MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics

Other Sources for Your Essay:

For other sources to help you further understand Newport’s critique of “Follow your passion,” you should read “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” (book summary) by Cedric Chin, “On Passion and Its Discontents” by Cal Newport, “Don’t ‘Follow Your Passion’” by Janie Kliever, “Why ‘Find Your Passion’ Is Bad Advice” by Terri Trespicio, “The Career Craftsman Manifesto” by Cal Newport, and the YouTube video “Follow Your Passion Is Bad Advice” by Cal Newport. 

Building Block Assignment #1 

Due as an upload on February 23 for 25 points.

Learning Objectives for Formative Assessment #1, Follow Your Passion Essay

One. Write an introduction paragraph for your first essay that frames the debate of whether or not we should follow our passion when we select a career.  

Two. Use this paragraph as a building block for your Follow Your Passion essay. 

Three. Show an authentic connection to your subject matter to make your readers care about your exposition. 

Assignment Description

Write an Introductory Paragraph

I recommend one of four approaches for your introductory paragraph. 

Approach #1: Write a paragraph in which you write an extended definition of what Cal Newport means when he critiques “The Passion Trap (Links to an external site.).” Then transition to your thesis paragraph in which you agree, disagree, or both agree and disagree with Newport’s claim. 

Approach #2: Write a personal paragraph about your struggle to find a career that you are passionate about on one hand and is practical for your long-term financial needs on the other. Then transition to your thesis. 

Approach #3: Write a paragraph about someone you know who started a career with minimum interest and passion but over time as the person became more skilled at this career the person’s passion sprung from the added skills and expertise. 

Approach #4: Write a paragraph about someone you know who pursued his or her passion and how this resulted in a Big Nothing Burger, a complete flop, because the person’s pursuit of passion was done blindly. 

1A Building Block Assignment #2 for Follow Your Passion Essay

The Assignment That Will Be Used for Your Follow Your Passion Essay: 

Due March 2 for 25 points:

1. Write a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph before your conclusion paragraph to gain credibility with your readers by showing them you have considered opposing views to your thesis or claim. 
2. Use the correct counterargument-rebuttal sentence structures available to effectively present such a paragraph. 
3. Use your rebuttal of your opponents to strengthen the persuasiveness of your thesis.
4. When you defend your position or refute someone else's, be sure to use a quote or a paraphrase, a signal phrase, and an in-text citation to give your paragraph more detail and persuasion. 

Assignment Description

For your Follow Your Passion essay, present a counterargument-rebuttal section in which you present an opposing view to your argument and give this opposing view, a counterargument, a rebuttal. 

Why is the counterargument-rebuttal necessary for an argumentative essay? Because for an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section to show your argument has been “tested” by the “fire of opposing views.” 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

Instructions for This Assignment

One. To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures as are presented in the following templates:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter-argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

The Passion Trap: How the Search for Your Life’s Work is Making Your Working Life Miserable by Cal Newport

The Priest and the Parachute

It began with a joke.

In 1968, Richard Bolles, an Episcopal priest from San Francisco, was in a meeting when someone complained about colleagues “bailing out” of a troubled organization. To remind the group to return to this topic, Bolles jotted a clever phrase on the blackboard:  “What color is your parachute?”

The line got a laugh, but as Bolles recalls in a 1999 interview with Fast Company, “I had no idea it would take on all this additional meaning.”

Two years later, Bolles lost his job as a priest and was shuffled into an administrative position in the Episcopal Church, advising campus ministers, many of whom were also in danger of losing their jobs. Noticing a lack of good advice on the topic, Bolles self-published a 168-page guide to navigating career changes, which he handed out for free. Looking for a catchy title, he re-purposed his blackboard one-liner. The initial print run was one hundred copies.

The premise of Bolles’ guide sounds self-evident to the modern ear: “[figure] out what you like to do…and then find a place that needs people like you.” But in 1970, this concept was a radical notion.

“[At the time], the idea of doing a lot of pen-and paper exercises in order to take control of your own career was regarded as a dilettante’s exercise,” Bolles recalls. It was also, however, a period of extreme workplace transition as the post-war industrial economy crumbled before an ascendant knowledge work sector. Uncertain employees craved guidance, and Bolles’ optimistic strategies resonated. The book that began with an one hundred copy print run and a clever name has since become one of the bestselling titles of the century, with over 6 million copies in print.

This story is important because it emphasizes that one of the most universal and powerful ideas in modern society, that the key to workplace happiness is to follow your passion, has a surprisingly humble origin. What began as a quip jotted down on a blackboard grew into the core principle guiding our thinking about work. “What color is my parachute?”, we now ask, confident that answering this question holds the answer to The Good Life.

But when we recognize that this strategy is not self-evident — and in fact not even all that old — we can begin to question whether or not it’s actually right.

And when we do, it’s dismaying what we find…

The Passion Trap

Let’s summarize Bolles’ insight as follows: the key to a fulfilling career is to first figure out what you’re passionate about, and then go find a job to match. For simplicity, I’ll call this the passion hypothesis. We can think of the past forty years — the post-Parachutes era — as a vast experiment testing the validity of this hypothesis.

The results of this experiment, unfortunately, are not pretty.

The latest Conference Board survey of U.S. job satisfaction, released earlier this year, found only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. This number has been steadily decreasing from the mark of 61% recorded in 1987, the first year of the survey.

As Lynn Franco, the director of the Board’s Consumer Research Center, notes, this is not just about a bad business cycle: “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.”

Though many factors can account for workplace unhappiness, a major cause identified by the survey is that “fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.”

Put another way, as we’ve placed more importance on the passion hypothesis, we’ve become less interested, and therefore more unhappy, with the work we have. I call this effect the passion trap, which I define as follows:

The Passion Trap
The more emphasis you place on finding work you love, the more unhappy you become when you don’t love every minute of the work you have.

I argue that the passion trap is an important contributing factor to our steadily decreasing workplace satisfaction. So far, however, my evidence for this claim is circumstantial at best. We need to dig deeper.

The Young and the Anxious

If the passion trap is real, recent college graduates should be the most affected. At this young age, before the demands and stability of family, their careers are more likely to define their identity. It’s also the period where they feel the most control over their path, and therefore also feel the most anxiety about their decisions.

This predicts, therefore, that the passion trap would make young workers the most unhappy. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what the Conference Board survey finds. Roughly 64% of workers under 25 say that they are unhappy in their jobs, the highest levels of dissatisfaction measured for any age group over the twenty-two year history of the survey.

To better understand why young people are so unhappy, let’s turn to Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner’s 2001 ode to youth disaffection: Quarterlife Crisis. This book chronicles the personal testimony of dozens of unhappy twentysomethings, and as the passion trap predicts, most of the stories revolve around uncertainty regarding the search for the “right” job.

Consider, for example, the tale of Scott, a 27-year-old from Washington D.C.:

“My professional situation now couldn’t be more perfect,” Scott reports. “[I] chose to pursue the career I knew in my heart I was passionate about: politics.”

Scott succeeded in this pursuit. Though he had to start at the bottom, as a volunteer campaign aide, within two short years after college graduation he had the “Capital Hill job I dreamed of.”

Rationally, he should be happy with his work: “I love my office, my friends…even my boss.” Yet he’s not. “It’s not fulfilling,” he despairs. He has since restarted his search for his “life’s work.”

“I’ve committed myself to exploring other options that interest me,” Scott says. “But I’m having a hard time actually thinking of a career that sounds appealing.”

The passion hypothesis was so ingrained into Scott’s psyche that even his dream job, once obtained, couldn’t live up to the fantasy. Unhappiness followed.

Story after story in Quarterlife Crisis follow this same script:

“I graduated college wanting nothing more than the ultimate job for me,” says Jill. Not surprisingly, she hasn’t found it.

“I’m so lost about I want to do,” despairs 24-year old Elaine, “that I don’t even realize what I’m sacrificing or compromising.”

And so on. The passion trap strikes again and again in these pages.

This all points towards a troubling conclusion: not only is the passion hypothesis wrong, it’s also potentially dangerous, leading us into a passion trap that increases our feelings of unhappiness and uncertainty.

Happiness Beyond Passion

These initial articles in my Rethinking Passion series have been negative. My goal was to tear down our assumptions about workplace happiness, because as long we cling to the passion hypothesis, other factors will remain obscured in its high-wattage glare. Soon, however, I’ll be taking on the positive task of figuring out what does matter.  I’ve written at length about the importance of ability and craftsmanship in developing passion for your work (see here and here and here), but I also want to explore equally important (and equally nuanced) factors, such as:

• authenticity (why are we attracted to the stories of people living simply in beautiful surroundings?),
• autonomy (what’s the importance of having control over when and how you work?), and
• mission (how vital is a cause for transforming work into something meaningful?).

 

Syllabus Overview

Welcome to English 1A

Hello, I'm Jeff McMahon, your English 1A instructor for this semester. I want to help you be successful in your college writing, not just for this class, but for any other college and non-college endeavors.

Here is some personal information, background, and an overview of Essay 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24woscXkZOo

This class is divided into 4 units with each unit addressing a different 5-page essay assignment, so you will be writing 4 essays.

I won't be giving you any quizzes or tests. Instead, we will work on writing paragraphs that we can use to build our essay.

Here are the subjects we will be covering:

Unit 1: Is Following Your Passion a Fool's Errand?

Our first essay will address the argument that "finding your passion" is a cheap cliche that rests on several fallacies and may prove to be a faulty premise for embarking on a successful career. 

Unit 2: How Has Jim Crow Evolved Since Its Original Inception?

Our second essay will compare the original traits of Jim Crow after the Civil War with those rendered in Childish Gambino's viral video "This Is America."

Unit 3: How Does a Genius Redirect His Passions?

Our third essay will Jeff Henderson's descent into a world of criminality and his ability to harness his passions in a moral framework to become a world-class chef with the transformation of Phil Connors from the movie Groundhog Day. 

Unit 4: What Is "The Sunken Place" in Jordan Peele's Get Out?

Our fourth essay will address the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out uses the horror movie genre to create a realistic horrific state of mind for victims of racism called “The Sunken Place.”

English 1A Essay Prompts

1A Essay #1 (Essay is worth 200 points): Is Following Your Passion Bogus Career Advice?

Due on March 9 as an upload on Canvas.

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-1,500-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates Cal Newport’s claim from his online article “The Passion Trap” that the career advice to follow your passion is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. Be sure to have a counterargument-rebuttal section in your essay.

An Analogy to Help Further Your Understanding of the Topic:

As you consider Cal Newport’s rejection of “Follow your passion,” it might be helpful to consider the analogy between looking for the ultimate career and looking for love. What Cal Newport is saying is this: Looking for your “dream job” is futile if you’re not a highly skilled dream employee. It’s like love. No “right” person can cure a selfish emotionally-challenged narcissist. Such a person will go through an endless parade of failed jobs & relationships & be perpetually bitter and angry because “nothing ever works out for me.” In other words, such a person might be well served to reach a point where he or she says, “The problem isn’t the job or the other person. The problem is me.”

The Purpose:

From a thematic level, the purpose of this assignment is for you--a college student embarking on a journey that will take you through higher education and help escort you to what is hopefully a rewarding career-- to take a deep dive into a principle that has most likely been drilled into your brain since you can remember: “Follow your passion.” It should seem self-evident that you would want to follow your interests and passions and veer away from those subjects that you find boring or even repellent. No one is arguing against that. What we are exploring here is the value in the mantra, “Follow your passion.” What, if any, is the value in “Follow your passion”? What possible dangers might lurk behind the slogan of pursuing your dreams? Therefore, you want to do a deep dive of the “Follow your passion” mantra and see if under scrutiny the principle has any kind of value that is proportionate its popularity from counselors, gurus, teachers, educators, and other well-intentioned adults who tell young people or anyone having an identity crisis to follow their passion. What possible traps lie in following your passion? How might you avoid these traps? How could this essay actually affect your higher education and career plans? These questions are of paramount importance. That is why this is your first essay assignment for the semester. 

Your Essay Design & Structure

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In this essay, you will make an argumentative claim about how persuasive or not Cal Newport is in his critique of “Follow Your Passion.” Your claim will be followed by supporting paragraphs and before you arrive at your conclusion you will provide at least one counterargument-rebuttal in which you anticipate how opponents would disagree with your claim.  

Use MLA Format for Your Essay

Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.

Essay #2 (Essay worth 200 points): Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0

Due as an upload on April 6.

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-1,500-word essay that adheres to current MLA format, provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, and presents either a block-paragraph or point-by-point paragraph comparison design, develop a thesis that connects Dr. David Pilgrim’s video presentation of the Dr. David Pilgrim’s video “The New Jim Crow Museum” as an explanation of “Jim Crow 1.0” to Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” as a gut-wrenching picture of “Jim Crow 2.0” today. 

Your essay should explore the following: What are the parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0? What new mutations do we see in Jim Crow 2.0? How has Jim Crow evolved to be in its current state that is in many ways less flagrant yet more insidious than Jim Crow 1.0? 

The Purpose:

In terms of content, I want you to understand the meaning of Jim Crow as a pernicious, bald-faced racist ideology that persisted in many parts of the country after the Civil War in which recalcitrant or unrepentant racists resented the downfall of the slavery plantation economy and wished to resurrect oppression of African-Americans in any way they could. Additionally, I want you to see how Jim Crow morphed after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s into a more sneaky beast, revealing itself through media stereotypes, mass incarceration, and normalized violence against African-Americans, as we see in Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” By seeing how Jim Crow exists today, we can fight against its normalization and resist it becoming part of the mind-numbing “ambience” of American society. 

In terms of writing skills, I want you to see how a comparison design, either block method or point-by-point, gives more depth, power, and detail to an important term such as Jim Crow.

For example, author Michelle Alexander in her magisterial nonfiction work The New Jim Crow, a book that focuses mainly on mass incarceration, she devotes a lot of time in her book to the evolution of “The Old Jim Crow” with “The New Jim Crow.”

Moreover, a comparison expository design is an effective way to roadmap and organize your essay. We use comparisons all the time to help us weigh the value of similar things or to  understand how something evolves such as the early stages of Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix with their current state in order to understand what kind of trade-offs these changes make. 

1A Essay 3 Worth 200 Points: Comparing the Purgatory and Redemption of Jeff Henderson and Phil Connors

Due as an upload on May 11. 

The Assignment:

Compare the purgatory and redemption evident in Jeff Henderson from his memoir Cooked and Phil Connors from the movie Groundhog Day.

comparing Jeff Henderson’s from the memoir Cooked and Phil Connors’ redemption from the movie Groundhog Day. 

In this comparison, you are analyzing the following similarities between Jeff Henderson and Phil Connors:

• Both are beset by the false promise that hedonism and pleasure bring happiness, and this false promise chains them to a lower, more corrupt version of their being that slogs through a miserable existence even as they try to tell themselves the opposite.
• Both hit rock bottom from their failed hedonism and are tempted by the great philosophical force of nihilism, the belief that nothing matters, that there is no purpose or sense to life, and that despair is the only reasonable response to a world that is so absurdly lacking in meaning, harmony, and a moral order. 
• Both undergo a reformation of the soul by developing, as Cal Newport calls it, a Craftsman Mindset, toiling at their craft, developing mastery over their craft bit by bit, and accomplishing a maturity of mind and soul that results in producing beautiful art--gourmet cuisine in the case of Jeff Henderson; piano music in the case of Phil Connors. 
• Both find the transformation of their soul is accompanied by excruciating and prolonged suffering, a tribulation that could be described as Purgatory. 
• Both find that their personality transformation bears fruit: They produce great art, they develop character, maturity, humility, and the capacity to love others; and they are unrecognizable from the wretched person they were at the beginning of their journey. 
• Both bear witness to Viktor Frankl’s famous adage from Man’s Search for Meaning that the search for happiness will always fail and therefore the search for happiness must be abandoned; rather, we must search for a higher purpose and moral goodness, and only then will happiness become the natural byproduct of our purposeful, moral life. 

Essay Format: MLA

Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.

Essay #4: The Sunken Place in Get Out

Due June 8 for 200 points

Essay is in two parts; Part 1 is 4 pages and Part 2 is about a page.

First Part of Your Essay (about 4 pages)

Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that Jordan Peele’s movie Get Out uses the horror movie genre to create a realistic horrific state of mind for victims of racism called “The Sunken Place.” Consider that this “Sunken Place” is the result of racist gaslighting, which can be defined as someone in power bullying, confusing, bewildering, and discombobulating the innocent victim, such as Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and attempting to make the victim feel confused and guilty when in fact the bully is the culprit. 

As you consider the notion of gaslighting and systemic racism in the movie Get Out, you will want to watch the 15-minute YouTube video that addresses this theme, “The Philosophy of Get Out--Wisecrack Edition.” 

The brilliant video “The Philosophy of Get Out” analyzes several causes of “The Sunken Place”:

• How white liberalism and the romanticization of blackness perpetuate systemic racism in America
• How so-called “post-racial liberalism,” a form of white self-congratulation during the Obama years, was a hoax, a thin veneer that could barely conceal a racist agenda
• How white liberals going out of their way to be “not racist” make people of color feel weird and alienated
• How the romanticization of blackness by white people, elevating black people to being cool and super chic, is a way of both “lionizing and demonizing” people of color so that they never enjoy the feeling of just being normal
• How white people exploit the black body and use black people to satisfy white fantasies
• How white people are so intent on culturally appropriating blackness that they actually want to be black such as the case of Rachel Dolezal who is referenced in the video. 

Last Part of Your Essay (Counterargument, about 1 or 2 paragraphs or a half a page before your conclusion paragraph)

In the last part of your essay, address the criticism that showered on the Amazon Prime TV series Them. This show is accused of creating a horror genre about American racism inspired by Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, but whereas Get Out is largely praised as a successful work of art, Them is accused of making a spectacle of black suffering and victimization for entertainment purposes. In contrast, Get Out is looked at as a movie that depicts racism in a way that defends the dignity of people of color. Does Get Out succeed in this regard? Does the resistance of Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) with the help of his friend Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery) give a sense of dignity, hope, and triumph for them and in turn give people of color who watch Get Out a relatable, inspiring experience? Answer this question in the last page of your essay. 

You will need a minimum of 5 sources for your MLA Works Cited page. 

Your Participation Requirements:

This online course is the equivalent of an interactive how-to manual, which means you will be going through a sequence of reading and writing activities and getting feedback from me, your instructor, as you build your essay. With four 1,500-word essays over the semester, you will find yourself turning in parts of your essay as you go through the writing process in accordance with the timeline on the course calendar through your Assignments.  In a writing class, when we  build the essay, brick by brick so to speak, we call the process "scaffolding." The two smaller assignments that lead up to the completed 1,500-word essay are part of the scaffolding process. To earn full points, it is essential to turn in these assignments on time so you can keep up with the class and maximize your success.  

Instructor Communications Requirements: 

Part of your communications with me will be the feedback you get from your assignments, not just your completed essays, but the smaller assignments that go toward building your essays. You are also encouraged to contact me with any questions or feedback. Please email me at jmcmahon@elcamino.edu, and I will respond as quickly as I can, usually in 24 hours of time as I check my emails frequently. 

Student Must be Active in the Class Or be Dropped

Students must keep up with the assignments. If students haven't turned in the first two 5-page essays by Week 9 of the semester, they can be dropped. 

Required Materials:

Because this is an online class and you need to access the course as your time demands, you will of course need a computer with Internet access.

About 90% of all your material is online and I provide required links for each assignment on the Canvas Assignments page.

As far as books go, English 1A does require that you write an essay based on a book, and the book I have chosen is the memoir Cooked: My Journey from the Streets to the Stove by Jeff Henderson. It is okay to buy the paperback or an eBook or Kindle version. 

Total Points and Grading

There are a total of 1,000 points for the semester. 

Each 1,200-word essay is worth 200 points for a total of 800 points.

Each 1,200-word essay is preceded by two smaller building-block assignments that can be used toward your completed essay, such as an introductory paragraph, a thesis paragraph, or a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. There a total of 8 of these smaller assignments, and each of these assignments is worth 25 points for a total of 200 points.  

900 points is the minimum for an A grade; 800 points for a B; 700 for a C; 600 for a D.

How I Grade Your Completed Essays:

I grade your assignments based on how well you fulfill the course objectives and what are called Student Learning Outcomes. While there are some variations on how I break down the grading based on type of essay (argumentative, cause and effect, extended definition, comparison and contrast), the grading is more or less the same based on the following model:

Each essay has a maximum 200 points. You earn points through the following:

One. Meaningful thesis statement that generates compelling body paragraphs a strong exposition driven by a distinct writing voice (authorial presence). This thesis produces meaningful content and a powerful writing voice that passes the “So what?” question, meaning that the writing matters, is significant, and elevates the reader to a higher understanding of an urgent topic. 80 points maximum.

Two. Clear organizational design, also called an expository mode, that has a logical sequence and follows a clear structure. 40 points.

Three. The use of signal phrases and correct MLA in-text citations whenever you cite paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material. 30 points.

Four. The essay has sound sentence mechanics, sentence variety, correct spelling, and correct grammar usage suitable for college-level writing. The most common grammar errors students make that diminish their essay grade are comma splices (Links to an external site.) and sentence fragments (30 points.

Five. The essay conforms to the updated MLA format for pagination, spacing,  and Works Cited page. 20 points.

How I Grade Your Smaller Assignments

These building-block assignments are much smaller and should and can be used to completing your 1,200-word essays. I grade them based on how useful they are to you and how well they conform to the requirements. Most of these smaller assignments are introductory paragraphs, thesis paragraphs, and counterargument-rebuttal paragraphs (if the essay is an argument). Since the point scheme varies, I will just give you an example of a typical 25-point assignment, which would typically be one paragraph long, sometimes two:

How I Break Down Your Grade for This Assignment of 25 Points

One. Clarity and usefulness of your paragraph for establishing the importance of the subject to your reader, 10 points. 

Two. Have sufficient details to establish a meaningful, authentic approach to the subject. A writer never wants to just “go through the motions,” that is to say, deliver a perfunctory effort. Deliver the degree of authenticity and meaning this subject deserves, 10 points. 

Three. Write full sentences and avoid sentence mechanics, spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Be especially mindful of avoiding comma splice and sentence fragments, 5 points.

English 1A Student Learning Outcomes

1. Complete a research-based essay that has been written out of class and undergone revision. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to thoughtfully support a single thesis using analysis and synthesis. 
2. Integrate multiple sources, including a book-length work and a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites. Citations must be in MLA format and include a Works Cited page. 
3. Demonstrate logical paragraph composition and sentence structure. The essay should have correct grammar, spelling, and word use.

If You Run Into Technical Issues:

Here are some important links in the event you have some technical concerns or problems:

El Camino College Online Digital Education 

ITS Help Desk

Students With Disabilities Resources:

It is the policy of the El Camino Community College District to encourage full inclusion of people with disabilities in all programs and services.  Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class should contact the campus Special Resource Center (310) 660-3295, as soon as possible.  This will ensure that students are able to fully participate.     

Student Resources:

•   Reading Success Center (East Library Basement E-36)
•       Software and tutors are available for vocabulary development & reading comprehension.  
•       Library Media Technology Center - LMTC (East Library Basement)
•       Computers are available for free use. Bring your student ID # & flash drive.  There’s a charge for printing.
•       Writing Center (H122)
•       Computers are available for free use. Free tutoring is available for writing assignments, grammar, and vocabulary.  Bring your student ID & flash drive to save work. Printing is NOT available.
•       Learning Resource Center - LRC (West Wing of the Library, 2nd floor)
•       The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring.  For the tutoring schedule, go to elcamino.edu/library/lrc/tutoring .The LRC also offers individualized computer adaptive programs to help build your reading comprehension skills.    
• Student Health Services
• Student Health Center (Next to the Pool) is closed due to Covid-19.
•       The Health Center offers free medical and psychological services as well as free workshops on topics like “test anxiety.” Low-cost medical testing is also available.
•       Special Resource Center – SRC (Southwest Wing of Student Services Building)

The SRC provides free disability services, including interpreters, testing accommodations, counseling, and adaptive computer technology.

El Camino College Policies on Academic Honesty and Plagiarism:

El Camino College places a high value on the integrity of its student scholars.  When an instructor determines that there is evidence of dishonesty in any academic work (including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or theft of exam materials), disciplinary action appropriate to the misconduct as defined in BP 5500 may be taken.  A failing grade on an assignment in which academic dishonesty has occurred and suspension from the class are among the disciplinary actions for academic dishonesty (AP 5520). Students with any questions about the Academic Honesty or discipline policies are encouraged to speak with their instructor in advance.

What about late essays?

I give you 5 days of grace after the due date. Beyond 5 days, I take a grade off the essay for being late.

What if you are not happy with your essay and want to do a revision for a higher grade?

You can get feedback from me and resubmit once for a higher grade. 

Why would the instructor initiate a student drop?

To learn the writing process, the students are expected to keep up with the material. If students haven't completed the first two essays by Week 9, they are considered inactive and I will drop them. 

Contact Information 

If you have any questions, please email me at jmcmahon@elcamino.edu, and I will respond as quickly as I can, usually in 24 hours of time as I check my emails frequently. 

Office Hours Spring 2022

Monday & Wednesday: Office is 121P, but you can Zoom me in my office if you want. 

1:00-2:15 

My Teaching Philosophy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjD5qgfLQvU

Computer Lab Days

I reserved the computer lab H103 for my English 1A class so that instead of meeting in H301, we will meet in H103 on the following days from 2:15 to 4:20:

March 2, March 7, March 30, April 4, May 4, May 9, June 6, and June 8. 

6 Keys to Success in a Writing Composition Class

Hello, composition students. I have been teaching college writing for over 30 years, and during that time I have been able to identify the things that make my students successful. 

Strong Life Skills

Generally speaking, students who do well in my class have strong life skills: They take care of themselves, eat, sleep, and exercise properly and consistently, use self-discipline to manage their time, limit their consumption of social media, maintain and forge strong relationships with family and friends, and show personal responsibility and accountability at school, work, and any other endeavors they pursue. Additionally, my successful students tend to have a lot of gusto, are engaged with life, and see every day as a new and exciting challenge. 

The above life skills are easy to talk about but hard to execute in real life. I can tell you, for example, that when I was in college, I had poor life skills: I lived too much in my head, didn’t make eye contact with people, was overly anxious, prone to panic attacks on the college campus, poor at developing social connections, and too often bored and disaffected with my professors’ syllabus material. I also hated sitting behind tiny desks and listening to professors bloviate for two hours. During those long lectures, I thought I was going to explode. I wanted more than anything to jailbreak from the confining, claustrophobic classroom, escape to the gym, and work out so that I could clear my brain. Additionally, I didn’t see every day as a new and exciting challenge. Rather, I saw every day as a horrifying jungle and I needed to bear my machete and hack my way through the thick foliage of anxieties to clear a path for myself. 

I present you with this thumbnail sketch of my personality profile during my college years to let you know that I am not judging you if you, like me, don’t have the ideal life skills for college. Being mindful of your psychological tendencies and actions and working on changing your habits, you can develop your general life skills to some extent. While I never became the ideal student, I did learn specific skills so that I could succeed in college.

6 Keys to Success in a Writing Composition Class 

Having gotten the general life skills out of the way, I want to address the 6 Keys to Success in a Writing Composition Class. 

One. Argumentative thesis or claim with mapping components that outline your essay. 

A strong thesis should have the following characteristics:

• It should be an explicit or implicit argument that is debatable, insightful, meaningful and challenges your intellect. 
• It should be about a topic that you can address with authenticity since when it comes to writing, you can’t fake it. When you fake your way through an essay, your writing will be dull and larded with cliches and cheap platitudes. 
• It should contain a claim and reasons (mapping components) that support your claim. 

Example:

Topic: Is the Amazon Prime TV series Reacher worth watching? 

My answer to the above question will be my claim or thesis. 

Thesis:

While Reacher is in many ways a mediocre TV show full of paper cut-out, cliche-laden characters, a familiar, hackneyed plotline, and flat, turgid dialogue, it is nevertheless a spectacular series that will be worth watching for many people because the show’s star Jack Reacher, played by the muscular hulk Alan Ritchson, goes right into our brain’s Alpha Fantasy. The Alpha Fantasy is watching a kind, gentle soul use his raw physical power to repel his enemies, watching an outsider who is both confident and comfortable with being a misfit, watching a hero who has superpower-levels of insight into other people’s motives, and who balances his own sentimentality with caustic irony and sarcasm. 

Breaking down the above thesis:

By breaking down my notion of the Alpha Fantasy into its parts, I outline the essay’s body paragraphs:

• watching a kind, gentle soul use his raw physical power to repel his enemies
• watching an outsider who is both confident and comfortable with being a misfit
• watching a hero who has superpower levels of insight into other people’s motives
• watching a hero who balances his own sentimentality with caustic irony and sarcasm. 

Two. Essay Structure in which the thesis determines the outline, which consists of an introduction, thesis, supporting paragraphs, addressing opposing views (if necessary), and a conclusion, a dramatic restatement or reiteration of your thesis. There are other structures such as extended definition and contrast/comparison, but argument is the most common one. 

Three. Templates for signal phrases, counterarguments and rebuttals, and concession thesis statements. 

Common signal phrases

We read in Author X’s essay that:

We read in Corbin Smith’s essay “Alan Ritchson’s ‘Reacher” Is a Gigantic, Unstoppable Force” that Jack Reacher embodies “The four virtues of Stoicism.”

According to Author X, and As Author X writes: 

According to Corbin Smith, the Stoical Hero balances his passion with his powers of reason. As Smith writes: “You are passionate, but not completely driven by your baser instincts.” 

Author X argues that and As Author X observes:

Corbin Smith argues that Reacher’s appeal rests largely in the sheer physicality of its star Alan Ritchson. As Smith observes: Ritchscon “is a slab of rock-hard marbled beef with an unnerving square jaw and blue eyes that cut holes through steel.”

There are many more signal phrases. When you use them in a research paper, you need to include parenthetical citations. For a brief primer, consult this video:

When you write an argumentative essay, most likely you will be required to write a counterargument-rebuttal section in which you address your opponents’ objections to your argument. The following are templates for counterarguments followed by rebuttals:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter-argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

Four. Using signal phrases to introduce textual evidence in the form of direct quotations, paraphrases, or summaries. For an elaboration of quotations, paraphrases, and summaries, you can consult this video:

The best video I have seen for integrating sources in your essay with correct format is the following:

Five. Correct MLA format for essays in a college writing class. I recommend you consult this video:

Six. You need reasonable authority and clear thinking about your subject based on developing an informed opinion. This informed opinion and clear thinking will result in confident, clear writing that has the whiff of someone who knows what they’re talking about. When you write with clear thinking and confidence, you present an essay that has the quality of authorial presence. You can only achieve authorial presence by reading, rereading, and comprehending the reading materials.