first day of school!

Welcome to Topham's Attic!

This is a place you will need to visit often, as it is your link to this class when you are not in Room 305. You will find much information here, from pages directly focusing on your class to requirements for portfolios and recs and other important things. (Please note: all info, unless the page references a current date at the top, is last year's information and therefore subject to change.)

Explore it, and feel free to email me and ask questions. Here you can also access the bulletin boards and the conference schedule, as well as a calendar that will allow you a quick reference for HW due dates and even journal topics from the day's class if you missed it. For now, I have opened a few forums of last year's bulletin board so you can browse them to get an idea of how those classes used it. Check them out!

By being here, you have accomplished your first homework assignment of the year. Your second, of course, is to buy a journal. As I explained in class, your journal should be hard covered and permanently bound, not a spiral class notebook. (Hard spirals on permament journals are perfectly fine, though.) Comp books are discouraged. Make the journal reflect you; it is an extension of your thoughts.

The first entry in your journal (or any new journal) should be to introduce yourself (or "say hi") to your journal. After that, it's a playground where you record your efforts to find the writer's voice that lies within you. I won't look at it. It's yours, and it cannot be wrong. Actually, that is the major secret to understanding how to succeed in this class: to realize that it's pretty darned difficult to be wrong. You can get off target and you can end up on a limb that goes nowhere, but that is not wrong; it's merely an idea that didn't pan out. Never be afraid of those limbs: they are what make discussions (and writing) fun.

CW: You also have an assignment to write a description of a single moment in time in a location that is meaningful to you. You may fudge time for sound or smell, but generally it should not pass at all. This is an exercise; it may end up standing alone or it may be incorporated into something larger, but right now keep it as a single frozen moment.

It was great meeting all of you today. See you tomorrow!

kt