Seriously Funny              

What will progress look like for you?

How will you know it when you see it?

For the final portfolio, you’ll revise one or two of your essays from this semester. Each essay you revise will be re-graded. I don’t average grades, and you can’t lose any points: your grade will either stay the same, or it’ll go higher.

The portfolio is paper, not electronic. You can submit it in the box in front of my office (JH305) anytime before midnight on 5/3. Don’t worry about putting it in a binder or fancy cover-thingy; a neat stack of stapled papers is just fine (but please staple it. If you drop a bird’s nest of loose papers into my box, I’ll be pre-irritated when I grade it, which is probably not what you want).

The portfolio will have two sections, with an option for a third.

1. Cover letter

In which you’ll talk about the big changes you made to your essay(s), and why you made them. This “why” is very important. “No revision without reflection” is the old saying. If you made changes just because someone else told you to, then you’ve learned little. The big game we’re after here is your improvement as a writer, and that will only come through the reflection and reasoning behind your changes.

These cover letters are usually about a page long.

2. The Essay(s)

Highlight the changes you’ve made. You can either do this by hand, or by using the compare-documents function on Word.

The highlighting step is required if you want your essay(s) re-graded. All together, I’ll be looking at around 600-800 pages in these final portfolios. Don’t make my job harder. If you skip the highlighting, I skip your portfolio.

3. Contribution Note (optional)

Your contribution score for the stand-up unit (out of 5 points) is posted in Moodle. If you would like a chance to raise your contribution score, you can write a short essay outlining all the ways you have contributed to the class outside of whole-group discussion. Remember: this is a persuasive essay, driven by evidence. Vague claims like “I talked so much in small group, like ALL THE TIME” are much less persuasive than specific examples and details. This option isn’t an invitation to grade-grub; it’s an opportunity for you to show me all the pixels of the picture of your contribution, particularly the ones that I can’t see in a Harkness discussion.

LAST THING: Remember to write & turn in your process letter for the stand-up unit through Moodle by 5/3. It’s worth up to four points on that twenty point assignment.

Here are some great Chappelle clips, followed by an invention work prompt to help you develop your comedy notebook.

Chappelle often does a kind of compare/contrast humor. He takes a situation and shows how it would go for a black guy and a white guy. Try out some compare/contrast humor of your own by coming up with a situation, then plugging in two people who are opposite in some way (white/black, young/old, rich/poor, gay/straight, male/female, etc). Then think about the larger point you might make with such a bit.

And here’s some Mitch Hedburg, who’s a short bit/one-liner kind of comic. Also, he’s dead. Don’t do drugs, kids.

Think about what comedy is, and what comedy can do. How is your idea of this changing?

Talk about the evolution of Hicks’s career. How did his material change—and why did that happen? What does it suggest about the evolution of an artist?

Have you ever heard such an angry person talk so much about love? What do you make of this?

Hicks talks about playing from the heart. How will you play from the heart in your own set? What does this mean to you, in terms of material and delivery? What do you need to talk about, and how do you need to talk about it?

Come up with  a discussion question or two of your own. Avoid evaluation (I like/didn’t like, this was good/this was bad).

Nester’s essay considers the unconsidered, exploring the less-traveled path that Morrison might be a “real poet.” What are the less-traveled paths that your essay might explore?

Your big question should lead to sub-questions (like Nester asking “Why is it embarassing to have been obsessed with the Doors?”). List out some sub-questions.

Starting the Counterargument 
What are the likely objections to these “less-traveled paths” you might explore?

Leads, not Intros
Write a possible lead or two. You might steal a technique from Nester or Levine, or from a writer we’ve read earlier in the year.

Craft
List some techniques or moves that you might steal from this essay.

If you’re shy of 750 words, you might consider:

• wrestling with some of the sub-questions you just wrote about, or
• writing about your personal connection to your subject, if you haven’t done that already, considering the following:
  • What are your experiences with the subject?
  • What draws you to this subject? Why do you want to think about it?
  • What’s the ambivalence, or internal conflict? Why do you feel ambivalent about it?