Student Voices

John Fuentes

I have never been a true fan of William Shakespeare, so my worst writing assignment had to have been in English 1B where we had to write about King Lear. This assignment wasn't very long or difficult, but I simply could not enjoy Shakespeare because I had a hard time understanding the language and style. In fact, the core of the assignment was merely to summarize the events and to explain their larger implications in the play.

My best writing assignment had to have been for a Political Science class on Constitutional Law, even though it was probably the most rigorous and intense writing assignment I have had in college so far. For three weeks our class had to read six hundred pages of Supreme Court decisions defining the limits of the Interstate Commerce clause and the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Then we were assigned roles. Less than a fourth of the class were "attorneys" who had to argue the case law, and the rest of the class were "justices" who had to interpret the case law and write a fifteen- to twenty-page opinion. I was a "justice" who wrote an opinion, and I think I ruled in favor of the plantiffs. This intense assignment required understanding extremely arcane legal language as well as thoughtful analysis, but I found out how much fun I could have with a challenging writing assigment.

John Fuentes is a senior majoring in Political Science and minoring in Business.

Sarah Wiliarty

The worst writing assignment I've ever had is: Write a thirty-page research paper on a topic relating to the class. This assignment has two main problems. First, it teaches the students nothing about how to define and answer an interesting question. Second, this assignment appears vague, but often it conceals a different, much more concrete assignment: Write a thirty-page research paper showing that you have understood (and agree with) the professor's theory. The problem is the secrecy of the assignment, not the focus on the professor's own work. After all, we have chosen Berkeley for graduate studies because of the quality of the faculty. It is perfectly reasonable to test us on whether we have understood their research. Many of us, however, will not recognize the hidden assignment and will write on some other topic entirely, thereby missing our best chance at finding out whether we have understood a particular approach.

The best writing assignment I've ever had was to compose a supposedly impromptu speech analyzing the work of John Maynard Keynes from three different analytical perspectives. The analytical perspectives were the topic of the seminar; a list of possible questions to consider was provided. The combination of strict constraints and the speech format made this a good assignment. By requiring an examination of different perspectives, but allowing for more creativity through the speech format, the assignment helps the writer to generate ideas and connections that might not otherwise occur.

Sarah Wiliarty is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science.

Paige Daniel

"Ekutonyoniya ebyafaiyo." With words such as these, Onesimus Semalulu, a Ugandan graduate student who had landed at a Kentucky research university, gave our graduate linguistics/anthropology seminar pieces of one of the most elusive puzzles any of us had yet encountered: what concepts in language are universal? After an entire semester of eliciting, transcribing, and analyzing Lugandan morphemes, lexemes, and sentence parts, we were asked to write a twenty-page paper that pieced together our cross-linguistic comparisons.

Just an undergraduate at the time, I was a bit overwhelmed by both the task and its terminology. I had written countless papers, none produced from particularly "bad" writing assignments, but most crafted for a poor purpose: to perform a one-woman show aimed at a singular audience—the instructor. In contrast, this data-driven class research project guided me for the first time to the backstage of academic life. Pandora's box of seemingly unsolvable questions had long been opened by my professors, and I was finally allowed to participate in the attempt to search for answers.

Paige Daniel is a graduate student in the School of Education.

John Leibee

My worst writing assignment ever was a two-page brief of a business article. I had to answer a long list of questions, and answering each in detail was extremely difficult with the two-page maximum. However, it was my lack of freedom as a writer that bothered me the most; there was no room for creativity, only summary. The grade was based on how well the facts were regurgitated.

My best assignment was also from a business class, but this assignment was not as structured. I was asked to compare and contrast a business issue from the past with one from the present. This topic offered basic guidelines but also gave the writer choice; it forced the writer to think. The maximum length was anywhere from fifteen to twenty pages, and this flexibility empowered the writer as well. Every person's paper was different for this assignment because every person could express their unique perspective; every person's paper looked similar for the worst assignment because the regurgitation of facts constrained individuality. A good assignment, therefore, must not only make the writer think; it must grant the writer freedom to express those thoughts!

John Leibee is a senior majoring in Rhetoric.