Lines from Lyons
-
Culture Shock for an American English Major
April 26, 2012By Ellen Parent, Class of 2013 My host parents here in Paris are party animals. On any given night, multiple dinner guests want to know what my major is in the United States. They are invariably confused when I tell them I’m an English major. “But you already speak English,” they say, wondering if the [...] More » -
My Voice in Academic Writing
April 21, 2012by Annie Rosenblad, Class of 2012 One of the most daunting challenges I’ve faced in college is expressing my personal voice in academic writing. My high school teachers prepared me well to write strong arguments, which is a valuable skill to be certain, but they never encouraged us to put our own individual touches on [...] More » -
My Writer's Group
April 1, 2012by Deborah Stoloff, Wheaton College Tutor Coordinator I write short fiction. I meet with my writing group every month. We prioritize our time together and are strongly committed to supporting each other in our writing endeavors. There are times when some members are too busy, but we try our best to be there for ourselves [...] More » -
The Six Days of Writing
March 18, 2012By Delanie Honda, Class of 2014. Tuesday, six days left: This is good. I’m starting this essay early so I can turn in a really well organized, polished paper. Lady Chatterley’s Lover: I’ve already read it, but I should probably read it again. While reading, I’ll start thinking about essay topics. Should I talk about [...] More » -
The Dreaded Research Paper
April 6, 2011by Joanna Bouras, Class of 2014. Oh No, not again…ANOTHER research paper?! Doesn't my professor know that I have better things to do than sit in the library for hours conducting research for a ridiculously long paper on something that NO ONE cares about?" If you are like me, you have the same thoughts running [...] More » -
Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice
March 2, 2011by Sedra Davis, Class of 2014. In my English 101 class last semester, I was assigned the task of choosing a topic or subject that had been explored in our class texts, and create a dialogue between me and two of the authors. The purpose of the assignment was to help us understand that writing [...] More » -
Punctuation AND Repunctuation
February 9, 2011by Joel C. Relihan. I write with a certain formality regardless of medium. I have never sent an uncapitalized e-mail; on the rare occasions when I send a text message, that message contains no abbreviations; I enjoy consulting The Chicago Manual of Style. This all suggests an obsession with rules, or at least a conservative resistance to new media, but there is a profounder principle involved, and one that I would like to preach here: Punctuation creates thought. More » -
Technology Camp at Wheaton
November 3, 2010Patrick Rashleigh, Faculty Technology Liason and Professor Tanya Rodrigue, English Department. When we turn on our computers and connect to the Internet, we enter into a virtual world that has transformed writing, writing practices, and writing environments. With a scroll here and a click there, we move from page to page, navigating through a chaotic, [...] More » -
Writing on Fire: From Outline to Orgasm
October 22, 2010by Sam Coale, Professor of English. When I plan to write something--after emptying wastebaskets, walking dogs, fiddling about, anything to prevent that initial moment of staring at a blank computer screen as if looking into the abyss--I make an outline and try to make it as fulsome and full-bodied as possible, the idea being that [...] More » -
The Story of a Writer
October 6, 2010Tanya K. Rodrigue, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Composition and Rhetoric, Lines From Lyons, the Wheaton Wire, October 6, 2010. A 9-year old girl with blonde, curly pigtails kisses her parents goodnight at 8:30 every night. She doesn't let her parents tuck her in anymore; she's too old for that. More importantly, she doesn't [...] More »
