Did Sedaris follow Michael Harvey's Nuts and Bolts of College Writing?

            Writing a paper is one of the hardest things to do, whether it’s a college essay or a research paper for school.  A good essay “…like a personality, hangs together through a delicate balance of forces; it should be clear but not empty, thoughtful but down-to-earth, strong-minded but fair-minded” (Harvey ix).  This seems about impossible but Sedaris managed to do so in “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, this essay was concise, flows very well, and has catchy and entertaining beginning and end.  On top of all that Sedaris managed to make this essay funny and captivating, I’m going to admit I wasn’t too thrilled to be reading this essay when I started,  but as I kept reading I got into it and it was like reading a book I couldn’t put down.

                In The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing Harvey says that most people have a pompous style of writing and are afraid to write concisely because “…doing so can make us feel exposed.  Concision leaves us fewer words to hide behind” (Harvey 1).  Sedaris is very descriptive in the essay and gives us the feeling we’re in the classroom and can feel the apprehension of the students dreading they’ll say something wrong, and the hawk like teacher hoping someone will say something wrong.  For example in the essay Sedaris describes all some of the students while giving us a feel for the classroom atmosphere, “The two Polish Annas surely had clear notions of what they loved and hated, but like the rest of us, they were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than sophisticated.  The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandonian player, loved wine, music…” (Sedaris 2).  I believe if Sedaris had shortened this description by any percentage we would have lost the essence of the class and if you keep reading further in the paragraph you can see how the teacher is snappy and rude.

                As I said earlier “Me Talk Pretty One Day” was hard to stop reading once you got going and I believe this is partly due to the great flow.  In the essay Sedaris avoids using big words and sticks to the little ones, which proves he’s an excellent writer, “…experienced writers, less anxious to show off their learning with every word, make frequent use of some of the shortest and humblest words in English…” (Harvey 25).  This is present not only throughout the whole essay, but in the title of the paper itself, as a reader the title told me a lot about how this essay would be written.  I inferred that that it would be somewhat childish sounding, but still mature.  Sedaris also has good topic sentences for each paragraph, which helps the reader ease from paragraph to paragraph, and it also gives the reader an idea of what is about to come.  “After being singled out as a lazy kfdtinvfm, I took to spending four hours a night on my homework, putting in even more time whenever we were assigned an essay”(Sedaris 14), after reading that topic sentence it’s obvious that the narrator is now going to step up his game and work hard in the class.

               Lastly in this essay Sedaris has good beginnings and endings according to Harvey's rubric. “Good writers usually start an essay with something small – a story, a quotation, an example, a detail or the like…”(Harvey 80), this is demonstrated in this essay because Sedaris starts with detail of his student ID and how it got him into many attractions. This is a very insignificant detail that doesn’t relate to the main idea of the essay but it eases the reader in. According to Harvey the endings should possess “a sense of closure combined with a suggestion of new spaces to explore”(Harvey 83). These exact qualities are present in the closing of “Me Talk Pretty One Day” because the narrator has “a sense of closure” when he realizes he could understand everything his teacher was saying. This also led to “new spaces to explore” because the narrator realized he was improving in French and that led to many new possibilities.

                “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a very different kind of essay that is humorous, but still a real story that gives us a message.  I believe that Harvey’s Nuts and Bolts of College Writing applies to not only serious essays but also fun stories or light hearted school essays.  Reading Sedaris’s essay and Harvey’s book has made me more excited about writing papers because now I have a set of rules for writing a good paper and I've seen that the end product can be fun, and entertain the readers.

 

Poetry Study Goals

1. When I read the poem for the first time I shouldn't analyze it or think about the questions I have to answer, just read it to understand it
2. Don't spend too much time on words I don't know, I can just look at the context of the word and make an educational guess
3. Read the poem sentence by sentence don't just read it line by line or it won't make sense
4. Try to figure out the main idea of the poem rather than getting caught up in smaller ideas of the poem
5. Use footnotes when reading the poem don't just skip them

The common issue that I have is analyzing poems and trying not to get caught up in the smaller ideas. I also need to learn how to understand what a poem is saying and I think the footnotes will help with that, as well as trying not to waste too much time trying to figure out what words mean, because that can lead me to become distracted on the main idea of the poem.  Overall I think these goals will improve my skills in reading and analyzing poems.