My next writing class

I like to use writing to figure out the way I feel about something. I think the reason that college students sometimes write crappy research papers is that they weren’t genuinely curious. The way a research paper should work is that there is an urgent need to figure out something you don’t know. You begin with a question, separating what you do know from what you want to/need to know. Then, using the tools at your disposal, you find the information you seek, and place it into a form that’s most appropriate for your audience.

I don’t think it’s entirely possible in the first-year writing class to create a genuine research situation. Due to the nature of school and grading, it’s always going to be kind of faux. But I believe we can create research paper topics that genuinely interest students. But what would interest a random group of 20-year-olds? What confuses them? What do they want to know more about but do not yet have sufficient information?

Relationships. It seems to me that at the beginning of college students are leaving the high school mode of transient relationships. They’re less hormonal. They ‘re even beginning to think about the future, long-term relationships, even marriage. Though they’re processing all these possibilities, they don’t have it quite figured out yet. This is the perfect occasion for a research question. (Plus, I’m confused about relationships too, so we can all learn together. William Perry shows that students move to higher levels of intellectual development when the teacher is seen as “in the same boat”)

I’m thinking the class could even follow an arc of a relationship.
1. How do you find/create a relationship? How to pick up people, where to meet people. This could also include discussions of phenomena like online dating (rhetorical analysis of a match.com profile?), and of course, the awkwardness of first dates, dating etiquette. (Possible texts: online dating profiles, The Game, that scene from Magnolia where Tom Cruise plays the pickup artist, books that tell you how to pick up women/men, how to find a husband/wife )
2. How do you nurture a relationship? Transitioning from someone you’re “dating” to someone you’re “with” – In fact, think of how much terminology and wordplay factor into this phase. The first time your partner refers to the two of you as “us,” the first “I love you.” (Possible texts: Sex and the City, those self-help books that talk about how to get your boyfriend to propose to you)
3. How do you end a relationship? This is, of course, all a matter of words. How do you break up with someone? What do you say? (Possible texts: He’s Just Not That Into You/It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken, that episode of Seinfeld about “It’s not you, it’s me” – in fact, any number of Seinfeld episodes would work, we could also analyze breakup songs)
4. How do you maintain a relationship? Marriage would be a topic here, obviously, and gay marriage and civil unions (I would have to make sure the class wasn’t too focused on the heterosexual). It might even be neat at this point to have students interview someone whose relationship they admire and ask for advice. (Possible texts: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus)

I’ve been looking up relationship books on Amazon, and they all have comic names like Why Men Love Bitches, and I Used to Miss Him But My Aim is Improving.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other texts I could use?