The Practice of Writing: I Have Not Adhered to the Honor Code on This Assignment

About the Project

CRWR 195: The Practice of Writing has a simple but rigorous premise. Each week, students read two texts that approach a topic or element of craft from different perspectives. They then write five short pieces in response to prompts, engaging with and springing off from those source texts. Later in the week, students break into small-group workshops to discuss those responses—to see how their group of writers approached them, what avenues of inquiry they explored.

Over the course of the Spring 2020 semester, each student completed forty-five such writing assignments, nearly all of them on time. In any semester, this would be an accomplishment—each student had a full course load, with other classes demanding time and attention, as well as jobs, extracurriculars, and the demands of everyday life. But Spring 2020 offered new challenges when the COVID-19 crisis caused Oberlin and so many other colleges to shut down quickly in March, making an unprecedented mid-semester pivot to online learning. Suddenly, some students who had formerly roused themselves for a 9:30 AM class were calling in from the West Coast at 6:30 AM; for a student who had gone home to Asia, our class time moved to 9:30 PM. Working from home, often with little privacy and without the camaraderie of a residential college to sustain them, these students still managed to read well, write their own work, and read each other’s stories with support, care, and keen eyes for what each writer intended and what a piece might become.

We are proud to present the first of what I hope will be many CRWR 195 anthologies, this one entitled I Have Not Adhered to the Honor Code on This Assignment. For this anthology, each student chose one piece from the semester—their favorite, or the shortest, or the one that challenged them the most, or the one that diverged most from their expectations—and revised it to include here. Where they wished to, students also included author notes or notes about their pieces.

The work presented here comes from students in all class years, of many gender identities, from the College and the Con, from all kinds of different majors, from various parts of the country and the world, and from diverse aesthetic viewpoints. Yet the works have a few things in common: A willingness to take risks, and to explore new styles and ideas. A desire to say something, as clearly and/or as uniquely as possible. And a commitment to doing the daily, repetitive work of writing, even in challenging times. Through goodwill and perseverance, these students told vibrant stories this semester.

Sincerely,
Emily Barton
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Oberlin College & Conservatory
 

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