Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

turn, they began to expect a lot from their writing and
themselves as writers – perhaps more than they ever had before.
Those students would come to know very well that I would not
accept mediocrity because I wanted to read their very best and I
wanted them to see their very best. They would also come to
know that I was there to push them - to write. I pushed them
not simply to write more, in terms of the number of words upon
their pages and the number of pages held between their staples,
but to write freer and to write deeper and to write further and
to write more deliberately.
From the start of the semester to the end, I pushed and I
pushed and I pushed – and, through it all, I pushed that
dialectic between Certainty and Uncertainty as far as I could.
When all was said and done, I believe those students left the
course more comfortable with writing and more confident in their
own writing. I also believe that those students knew to be much
more conscious of whom they were writing for and what exactly
they were looking to “say” to that audience. Of the “flow” of
their writing and how the overall construction of their writing
influenced what they were working to say with it. To explain
their thoughts and meanings, as well as those of anyone or
anything else they should bring to their writing, as thoroughly
as they can. And last but definitely not least, to use their
writing to pose that “Why?” not simply outwards, towards others,
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