At my university, all students are required to complete the “Core,” which is essentially just a general-education consortium that people love to loathe without going into the nitty-gritty. One of the requirements is “Written Communication and Information Literacy,” which ensures that college students have a level of written ability acceptable for academia.
All students begin with a standardized course: WRT-100, College Writing, that follows the same formula for everyone. However, in the second semester, students take WRT-101, College Writing Seminar, where professors have the discretion to add their style to it and make it more unique. Topics include the Civil Rights movement, true crime narratives, and so on.
The one that I decided to take specifically was based on the writings of The New Yorker magazine, with the ultimate goal of being able to use those styles in my own work.
Unfortunately, it seemed that I did not quite understand The New Yorker until I took the class, and found my self-esteem to have plummetted as a result.
The one good thing about the class was that it utilized labor-based grading, which meant I got an automatic B for completion and effort and could achieve extra credit if I did more work, which for me was a presentation and notetaking.
The first thing to know about The New Yorker was that it is the most self-indulgent piece of literature on the planet. By that, I mean the authors indulge themselves with as many overly elitist words and phrases that, unless you were well-educated (from the 19th/20th centuries), that you would be like “Ah yes I am of the caliber where I don’t quite understand the content but it makes me seem intelligent.”
That’s all nice and dandy until you’re required to do a pop quiz on 5 random words from the article that had likely not been used in the past 40 years prior to its use in the specific piece.
As one can imagine, that would hinder one’s joy of the magazine and make you question your life’s choices.
Now, the elitism is not my only major gripe, aside from the political views that make it sound like the writers have never not been in the Ivy League circle, we also have a more specific genre that I can pinpoint to: the Critic-At-Large pieces. Which used the masquerade of being a review piece as the author’s excuse to go off on a tangent not about the actual piece, but about some vaguely adjacent topic that will make the reader (allegedly) go “Ah yes, that makes sense. I am truly smart.”
I am not an idiot. Contrary to what this post may be telling you. I got credit on my AP English exams and did well in my College Writing class. It is merely the fact that The New Yorker is the epitome of upper-class cosmopolitan society and has never quite moved past that from the 1950s.
A problem with that, in my view when trying to write one of these, is that I write review posts on ZachsThoughts so much so that for me to write a tangential topic essay vaguely connected to a movie, which was Wicked in this scenario, was baffling to the point of “What am I even trying to do?” I was asked what I was trying to argue during the peer feedback.
To be incredibly blunt: I don’t know what the argument was, much less if there was an argument. There wouldn’t ever be a point where I would write like a critic, not even a writer in general for The New Yorker, mostly because I just didn’t care. If I were destined to get a complete grade regardless, why die protecting a style I can’t stand, much less fully wrapping my head around and understanding it? Such a thought process only did wonders for my self-esteem. It made me loathe my peers for their self-supposed intellectualism (alongside incredible selfishness and political extremism, but that’s collegiate education in a nutshell these days.)
However, for all of the faults that I have with the course, it did teach me one key thing.
The closed-thesis essay with explicitly highlighted topics is the way to go in academia, at least for me.