- Can you perceive of rhetoric as an ongoing negotiation between people, texts, and issues — i.e., as a way of seeing and being in the world? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Are you a serendipitous reader and thinker, open to discovery and willing to follow where your thinking and learning take you, or are you a hierarchical, confirmation-based reader and thinker? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Did you arrive at college with “funds of knowledge” or a family literacy that informs your attitude about writing? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Are you a high or low context person and writer?
- What kind of critical thinker are you, and how does that shape your writing?
- Are you committed to social justice and to social change? Is it possible to theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you like to engage — or to flee from — perplexity and intellectually challenging projects? Can you theorize your writing from one of those perspectives?
- Can you use DePaul’s definition of literacy to reflect on and to theorize your work? “We are helping students become more literate. By literacy, we do not mean merely learning to read and write academic discourse, but also learning ways of reading, writing, thinking, speaking, listening, persuading, informing, acting, and knowing within the contexts of university discourse(s) and the multiple discourses in the world beyond the university.”
- Can you characterize your brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading process — both intellectually and mechanically? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you like to play it safe and dislike being judged? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- “Every wolf in Yellowstone, therefore, is more than just a wolf …”: Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Can you think back to writing you did in high school and look ahead to the rest of your college career? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- What is the role of solitude and unstructured time in your life? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- What is your sense of the world and what counts as “official” and “unofficial” knowledge? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Are you a bullshitter? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you write in order to learn? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- Do you link your identity to your writing? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- The essayification of everything: “This is the force of the essay: it impels you to face the undecidable. It asks you to get comfortable with ambivalence.” Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
- David Brooks’s analyses of “The Organization Kid” (April 2001), “The Empirical Kids” (March 2013), and “Started at the Bottom” (May 2013) — Can you theorize your writing from those perspectives?
- This article – “Our Universities: Why Are They Failing?” – appears in a publication, The New York Review of Books, that we’re not reading, but I was struck by how closely it resembles our ongoing conversation on “what is the purpose of college?” Do you have a cultural script of college life in your head? What does it look like? How does it affect your approach to your work generally, and can you theorize your writing from that perspective?
Non-cognitive attributes — can you theorize your writing from these perspectives?
- Persistence
- Problem Solving
- Motivation
- Time Management
- Organizational Skills
- Do you hate writing? Can you theorize your writing from that perspective?