So it’s that time of the semester when I am to pull out my crystal ball, reflect on our readings, and say what’s going to happen. My crystal ball, I have discovered of late, is not particularly dependable, and never was. My ability to see into the future is small (hell, sometimes my ability to see into the present is pretty bad, too), and just about the only time I really dependably fire up ol’ Hermione the Crystal Ball is when I’m talking about my kids (all parents, I think, have a wee bit of the soothsayer in them, but it’s less crystal ball oriented than it is just common sense and life lessons, but I digress). What’s to come in comp studies?
Well, there will be a massive revolt when students discover that there will never be a truly dependable Rosie the Robot maid to write their papers for them. This revolt will be followed by a similarly disinfranchised set who are still waiting for the flying cars and jet packs.
Students will continue to plagiarise, and teachers will continue to get upset and rend their garments over said plagiarization; however, some inroads will be made, slowly, in the same vein as TurnItIn.com, but the compulsion to cheat and take the easy way will be around as long as we humans tread the earth.
Composition theorists will continue to argue and theorize about how and why we write, and much like the discussions about whether or not we landed on the moon, or if there was a second shooter in Dallas, the discussion will never really be solved to everyone’s satisfaction. After all, what we are debating when we take up the discussion of how we write is the creative impulse (the same impulse that caused God to create the Earth, if you believe that sort of thing) and somehow, I just don’t really see that getting resolved in a fundamentally satisfying way.
I am better able now to at least understand why I teach a certain way, which to me is very important – I’m a big believer in trying to answer the “Why?” question, which has not always been successful, but that’s just a part of my genetic makeup, I think.
This prompt makes me think of my trip to wash my car recently. I had the grave misfortune to park my little beater of a Toyota under a tree inhabited by some very incontinent birds last week, and when I returned to it after class, it was quite a mess. So I decided to swing through the car wash as I headed to the library this weekend. I pulled in to the car wash, handed the dude my $5 (which essentially was enough to get me a drive past the car wash with the hopes that some of the damp overspray would hit my car) and drove my poor little beshitted car onto the tracks of the car wash.
The car was pulled along through the car wash on the tracks of the conveyor belt, and I didn’t have to steer, didn’t have to hit the brakes or anything. I just had to sit and watch the foam build up on my windshield (and, unfortunately, bubble through the floor board in the passenger side, which was a new occurrance for me) and let the car wash do its thing.
I think that composition studies is going to continue right along, picking up shiny bits of new technology on the way, sometimes with a surprise or two (sort of like my surprise when the floor of my car burped up soap suds), and we are going to have to hang on and try to keep up. Eventually, when we all get old enough to retire (and for some of us that time is coming sooner than others), we are going to look back at how things have changed in our discipline, and how other things have stayed the same, and be surprised. Or not be surprised, because we saw it all coming. Either way, we are eventually bound to come out the other end, and students will still be writing argumentative essays, and comp theorists will probably still be writing journal articles about who and what comp studies is and isn’t.
Perhaps my Blog-o-Meter is stuck on Cynical, or maybe it’s some of my residual foul mood, but ultimately, even with all the technology and cool stuff that is sure to come down the pike that will change various ways we teach, and various ways students learn, there are still going to be some basic similarities, no matter what.
Students are still going to ask to see what an A paper looks like, and will still try to talk their way from an A- to an A, and they will continue to moan and groan at the idea of researching a paper. And we will still complain about grading (or at least I will, well into the dark and cloudy future), and we will fuss about students plagiarising, and being late, or cutting class too much…some things don’t ever change.
Oh, and what about the future of this blog? I won’t delete it, but I’m not promising that I will keep updating it. I might, but then again, the future is a little murky.
Let’s ask the Magic 8 Ball, shall we?
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Laura, I like your car wash analogy and your photos. A lot. Your predictions into the future are depressing but probably spot on. Thanks for at least being funny while bearing the bad news!
Laura,
I’m not sure if I liked your post more because it made me laugh out loud, or if it’s just nice to commiserate with a fellow skeptic.
However, I have to say that the carwash analogy can, hopefully, be modified a little. As an insider in the field (one with the authority to make knowledge) you don’t have to sit on a track and be taken somewhere. There is still your ability to enter the fray and attempt to direct the knowledge in the field into a direction you see as being more beneficial to the field.
However, allow me to put my cynic’s hat back on. Scholars need to publish. And to get tenure, one must publish a paper with more than the words “Everything’s great in this field!” Therefore, I think you’re correct in predicting little change, and a lot of perpetual uncertainty. I think that expecting scholars to come up with a definitive and final theory is like expecting a body of auto mechanics to invent the car that never breaks.
Matt
Laura,
I loved your blog entry this week (but of course, I always feel this way about ALL of your posts)! But seriously, your 8ball image made me “lol.” And your car stories are so entertaining. I think you should keep blogging & so if you kill this one & start a new one, please notify me so that I can subscribe! Thank you. : )
My mood, like your Blog-O-Meter, is stuck on Cynical too. (At least that’s what my myspace profile says.) And unlike Matt, my cynic’s hat rarely comes off. Whereas Adam Smith referred to economics as the “dismal science,” I would like to begin referring to Comp Studies as the “abysmal science.” With that said, have a happy day & I will see you in class!!!