class 9/30

I had a fairly good time with the readings this week, as I found them to be insightful and helpful to myself as a writer and also a potential tutor. Steve Sherwood's article about cencorship brought up yet another scenario I had never considered. As I got through the first couple pages I found myself asking is this guy for real? I just can't imagine someone being so openly biggoted and at the same time not having the sense God gave a billy goat to know why it might be a good idea to tone his sexist opinions down a bit. It is not only sexism that would give me this kind of reaction, but basically any opinion based on pure ignorance and not intellectually thought out or researched, if necessary.
I felt Sherwood's pain in trying to decide whether or not to "allow" the student to write exactly what he felt, as the student brazenly wanted to do. As the student pointed out, we have a right to feel however we please and to be able to express these feelings through speaking or writing. It is a fine line that divides what is gutsy and inspired, and what is ill-informed and inapproriate at times. As Sherwood pointed out, many times students look to their tutor as somewhat of an authority figure and completely trust his judgement. Sometimes it is hard when the shoe is on the other foot and YOU are the one in perceived control when trying whether or notto guide students in a "safe" direction.
Toby Fulwiler's guide to revision is something that I, myself as a writer, benefited from reading. Sometimes when you've known how to do something for so long, you kind of forget the fundmentals that made you good at the thing in the first place. Does that make sense? I felt like this essay brought me back to some things about writing that I hadn't thought about in a really long time and are relevant to writers of all levels, as these provocations are the greatest hits of writing and revision. I recently had a very respected teacher of mine comment on the fact that I don't do enough revision to my papers because she knows I can do better. I silently agreed with her, as I have known it has been true for a while but just didn't know quite what to do about it. Fulwiler's article kind of breathed new life into my lost knowledge of how to revise my own papers and so I felt like I learned something myself, as well as a new strategy in helping others. It's so weird, the parallels between two seemingly unrelated circumstances coming together for the greater good.