Subject: Reading Journals From: "William J. Rapaport" Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:29:24 -0500 (EST) A student writes: > Subject: Reading Journal Due Date > > Assigned yet? Reply: I assume the student is asking when the Reading Journals will be due. The syllabus says that "I will collect these Journals at random times during the semester and will include them in the grade calculation". This should not be a problem at any point during the semester; here's why: You should NOT wait till the day before I collect them, and then try to create a Reading Journal that will simulate what you should have been doing all along! You should be reading *now*; I've assigned lots to read, and will be assigning lots more. In some ways, reading is what the course is all about. All I'm trying to do in lecture is to guide you in your readings, to give your readings some narrative structure (what kind of story do all of these readings put together tell? what answers do they suggest to the questions with which we began the semester?), and to "bring together" some of the apparently disparate ideas. But if you're reading now, you should also be writing in your Reading Journals now. So, if I decided to collect them tomorrow, you should all, already, have a lot written in them. A long answer to a short question! Keep reading, and keep writing (and thereby keep thinking)!