Welcome to English 101!

This writing course takes its inspiration from two places. The first is a quote from American novelist Neil Gaiman: "You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it." The second is a website that suggests that the best way to deal with boredom is to dress up your dog. Throughout the semester, we'll be investigating various aspects of writing our everday lives. Where do we find the inspiration to write? How do we write about omnipresent things, things we overlook, things we've always wondered about, even things that bore us? How can we turn that inquiry inward and use it to inform our understanding of the rhetorical process?

As a class, you will develop strategies for using writing as a tool in order to explore and reflect on the world around you, your own ideas, and your individual processes for writing. You will explore beneficial ways to break the writing task into smaller steps, such as generating and organizing ideas, investigating topics, creating early drafts, seeking feedback and revising. You will also improve your ability to adapt a piece of writing to the needs of an audience or situation, and your ability to revise and edit your own writing.