Prompt: Keep an 'Outsider's' Diary
Another installment in my ten-week campaign to get all you former students to do some fresh writing
Only a few of you have taken more than one of my courses. I think Savannah has done what I imagine is unlikely to be repeated: She took my Los Angeles class her very first quarter at UCLA. (My first year! With just eight students total, four of them football players.) Then her final quarter—both of us so much older and maybe a bit wiser?—Savannah took Medical Narratives.
It’s that L.A. class that I’ve been doing the longest. It’s dear to me. This prompt comes at a pretty key point in the class. Students are stressed about their first midterm. They are focusing on making a single argument, feeling disciplined and pressured, trying to build their most coherent essay yet.
The idea with the diary is to free them from that box. To allow them to get shaggy, messy, random. And to think about who’s inside? Who is outside? Why?
What goes in a diary, anyway?
Tell us now!