Canned Goods

I returned from Chicago on Saturday night, and I’m whipped. Without a hotel room at the Palmer House there’s no place to nap, and naps are an important factor in keeping your batteries charged.

When I think back to my first 4Cs (2003), I was a noob, just six months into my Masters, and pretty much clueless. Highlights included compstars like Peter Elbow and VV, and I was planning a study on service-learning in FYC, so I went to a cool session with Linda Flower, Ellen Cushman, and Jeff Grabill.

This year’s conference (my 2nd) felt different. I know my way around the world on comp and rhet, and I have a lot of my own ideas (as far as one can have one’s “own” ideas). I had been moving towards a focus on New Media for my upcoming dissertation. But I’m a certified “PedHead” (Is this a new term?) one of those folks that feels the compulsion to ask, “That’s cool and all, but how does that help me work with students in first-year comp?” I love theory, but often I want it to inform my work in the trenches. Anyway, back to New Media. I was unimpressed with many of the tech-centered sessions I attended. One was a 40 minute listing of all the types of digital media students might use: “They can do webpages, powerpoint, blogs, blah, blah, blah.” And what that part of the pres focused on assessment of these works? “It’s important to develop a criteria for evaluation.” Doh! Thanks for the information. How did I not get in this year? I could have showed up with no prep and given the same presentation. (Yes, that’s bitterness you’re hearing.)

It didn’t get much better after that; however, a trusted colleague felt the same way (althought she arrived late to this session and got trapped along a wall; I eventually escaped), but she managed to find a couple session she liked. Without naming names, I later saw a session on blogs by a person whose work I really respect and admire, but maybe I went to the wrong one. I didn’t need a warming up-intro to blogs or the idea that they can function as a type of peer review. I wanted to hear about this person’s use of blog and their research, but that’s me.

I soured on multi-modal multi-media for the rest of the conference, instead attending sessions on another passion of mine, narrative research. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe the meaty (sorry my veeg friends) substance of these presentations is the result of a couple decades of solid work done in this field of research.

“Composing Storied Spaces: Four Generations of Composition Teachers Reflect on Two Decades of Conducting Narrative Writing Research” with Gian Pagnucci, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; David Schaafsma, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Robert Wallace, West Virginia State University, got me all amped up to do a narrative dissertation. And the next day I saw the session on creative nonfiction chaired by Sondra Perl.

I don’t like boxes, and narrative research breaks the mold of academic traditional, author-evacuated prose, and if I wasn’t in RhetComp, I’d be doing creative writing. And the narrative research I’ve read, and the books and articles about, demonstrate the variety of approaches one may take when composing. In my own narrative research I’ve taken a Sir Mix-a-lot angle, weaving the autoethnographic, 1st-person with more distanced reflection and analysis and a more traditional academic voice. Now I just have to sell it to my committee, when I get a committee.

I’ll add something on Sirc’s session in the next post. Gotta get to work.

I happened into a group today as I was chatting with a warrior in Ironforge. He was asking about a quest, I answered, and he joined a group a few minutes later and asked if I wanted in. Not exactly well-balanced, 3 warrior, a priest, amd me, if worked out really well until the warriors got a little overzealous and wiped us a couple time when they pulled in too many mobs. Eventually, I person left for dinner, and we couldn’t go any further. We had also, in the confusion of mixed intentions and desire to go foward, missed going to two earlier locations for quest items.

So, I went it alone to one location and made it the room with the treasure, but I died–just as my dinnering party memeber came back online. He had joined another group, and I joined too. They worked their way to were I was at, and we all completed that quest. They headed deeper into the dungeon, but I had to go; however, I felt pressure to stay after they had helped me. And this is common–at least for me.

Since I gave up grouping, I set myself to grinding for the materials so that I could make myself some better armor–since I can’t get into the places that have the good gear without a group. Although it might take me 3-5 hours to do an instance, I decided to grind for that amount of time because I knew I’d get a return on my investment. And I did. I mad the items I wanted (tough scorpid armor) and even made 40 gold in the process.

But, as a player type that enjoys exploration of the world, it would be cool to do some of those instances.

I thought I’d give it another go yesterday and put together a group to do the instance, Uldaman. It took an hour, but it finally happened, nad it was a well-balanced group that might have taken us through the entire dungeon. But there were new problems: contrasting player intentions. A couple people wanted to simply kill things and hope for good loot, while three of us wanted to do the quests in there that, ironically, require killing everything and getting the loot. In addition, one pair started to whack everything, effectively draw several mobs to us at once–a very deadly maneuver.

Eventually, the other two got frustrated and left. This group lasted less than the last group. My solution, I decided to work on what you could call a mini-game. A a leatherworker, there’s a set of armor I can make, but I had to find the patterns (mob drops) and get my skill up, so I took to hunting, killing mobs that have a good percentage chance of dropping the patterns I needed and the scorpions that drop the leather and scales that I can use to make the armor (I was also able to complete a couple solo quests along the way).

It’d be nice to have a good group, but that requires joining a guild, and guilds mean a social commitment I don’t want to make. So my interests in games are based on my interests in Composition, and I’m focused on player motivation and types (Bartle, Yee), as well as collaboration. (there’s the whole thing about production and consumption too–player generated content, inside and outside of the game).

I’ve written in my gaming log about the tension between casual and hardcore gamers and that casual gamers would like to be rewarded for the time they have to spend within the games they play. A game like Halo does this wonderfully. You always feel like you’ve made progress and moving on to the next level or cutscene (revealing more of the plot) is the reward. WoW, at the higher levels, simply isn’t rewarding a casual gamer such as me in a way to keep me interested. Levels 0-20 are incredibly satisfying for gamers I’ve spoken with–either those who have the time to group or need to solo adventure. I was even able to reach 45 mainly through soloing.

However, without doing hours of research in search of solo quests, I have to enter areas of the game that require groups. Last night I sat down and put aside 2.5 hours just for this. The first 40 minutes went something like this “LFG [looking for group] for Uldaman!” That’s me repeating the message over and over in the LFG chat channel. I eventually got 4 people together, but this was a poorly balanced group: 2 hunters, a priest, and a warlock. We met at Uldaman, where the hunter other members decided to go in the back door, allowing them to get to the section they needed for their quests–leaving me with no reason to be there since I needed something from near the other entrance. I continued on with hopes to get a few good drops. Things quickly fell apart, as the priest wasn’t very good at keeping the hunter’s pet alive–the pet that was acting as our tank. Eventually, the group disbanded–no one having completed anything.

HALO log:
You might not think that a FPS would require a lot of strategy. Often, these games can be quite linear and have limited options available to complete a goal, and I can’t say that HALO doesn’t feel this way at times. But rather than a simple “blast everything!” approach (which you can try, and often die trying), HALO requires (at the higher difficulty levels) the player to conserve ammo and methodically plan attack approaches and use of weapons.

As I played in the role of Master Chief and understanding that he doesn’t (I didn’t) have stealth abilites, I had to plan ways to get to the next goal by killing just about everything in my path. For example, towards the end of the game there is a large skirmish between Covenant forces and the Flood. The check points (save points) in this area are far apart, requiring you to make it thru as long as 30+ minutes to the next save point. Sometimes it was just luck, many more times skill, that eventually got me thru, but the problem was that I was to immersed in the game world. I was playing as though my life was at risk. I couldn’t risk dying or getting to injured to complete the next level. After playing thru the game the first time, immersed in the role, I got frustrated once again by this section. After several attempts, I decided on a new tactic–run like hell!

I decided to sneak around the perimeter of the valley while the Convenant were distracted by the Flood and make a run for the Banshees (the small aircraft I needed to steal). After a few tries it worked. I didn’t need to expend mounds of ammo to kill everything, I just needed to not play as a “real” MAster Chief. I played it as though it were a game without any risk to my “real” person.

Sure it was cool to complete this task without all the work, but, on the other hand, it’s more satisfying to defeat the enemy (an big achievement); also, I like being immersed in the character. It makes it more real.

HALO Log: HALO requires you to understand which weapons do what, as well as what two-weapon combination to use. For example, the convenant energy pistol allows for a super overcharged shot that is capable of discharging the energy shields worn by elites, while the human pistol can’t get thru that shiled well. Solution: discharge the shield with a blast from the energy pistol, switch quickly to the human pistol, and 2-3 head shots later you have one dead elite. Without the energy pistol you could blast thru your human pistol ammo quickly, without doing any damage to the enemy.

Okay. It took me a couple weeks to get thru HALO. I had given up on WoW for a while because I was at a point where I had two choices: 1) spend 3-4 per sitting to find groups and then work on some quests, or 2) go online and find out what all the high level soloing quests are and do those.

It isn’t that I don’t like playing WoW for 3-4 hrs at a time; rather, I don’t have that time without giving up sleep or falling even further behind this semester. Query: Why do these academic organizations schedule conferences during the academic year? Answer: If you go to or present at every one available, you may never have to see your students? I’m feeling guilty myself for missing a day for MI Academy, and next week (the week after Spring Break, I’ll be gone for 4Cs). That means I will have had class 2/3 of the time, including the day before break started where 6 out 19 students came. Also, I’m taking 3 courses, teaching, and doing a slew of other stuff. Long hours of going thru a dungeon? Right. I’m forced to be a casual gamer, and a game like HALO fits my lifestyle.

This makes we curious about game sales becasue sales are down, but WoW keeps growing. More and more people are taking part in a virtual world that demands long stretches of time to play the game. Maybe this is because more people have faster connection speeds and can play MMOs. It’s new, fresh. And so,maybe, the slump in game sales is due to people buying games like WoW and spending months playing thise rather than completing one game and buying another.

But will the same thing happen to others as it did to me. I switched to a single-player game that allowed me to quit when I needed to. There wasn’t any peer pressure to stay.

And maybe when the shine wears off the sales of non-MMO games will increase.

I was thinking yesterday about how unproductive I find peer review groups to sometimes be in FYC. Sure, occasionally my students have done some great work, but I feel that most of the time they don’t get much done or much out of the experience. Some reasons: 1) they may simply not be interested in writing or talking about writing. 2) It can uncomfortable, as authors and readers, to critique someone’s work or have your own work critiqued. 3) Isn’t critique just another word for tear to pieces? (some students’ perception). 4) The academic writing they have done may not mean anything to them; it’s an assignment. 5) Even after a couple modelling sessions, they are new to talking about writing. 6) In the end, all that matters is what I, the teacher, think (I do the grading). 7) Talking about my new shoes or last weekend’s kegger is a hell of a lot more fun than talking about some stupid paper.

For the last few years my fix has been the writers’ workshop. It was incredibly useful in my graduate creative writing classes because I had 15 voices voicing (and sometimes debating) their thoughts on my writing. And this format translates very well in FYC. !) I’m in charge. Instead of hopping from group to group, hoping that they are on track. I know the entire class is on track, asking prompting questions and answering questions about writing 2) This is a semester-long modelling session, where I slowly can withdraw and let the students take control. It’s an incredible scene to watch. As they take control, I come to see that they don’t need me around anymore. 3) Student get an enormous amount of feedback–19 responses their writing.

Time needed to do this: 19 students @ 3 papers per semester (at UW) and 2-3 drafts = 57 papers and 114-171 drafts. The best solution has been that everyone gets to have one draft workshopped. All other drafts have peer review groups.

Taking 20 mins per draft, I get 2 done each class, over 10 sessions (about 3.33333333 weeks). @ 2 drafts per student: 6.6 weeks. Peer review groups (in groups of 4) takes up another 2 weeks. I think either approach leaves plenty of time for lessons on writing, readings, discussions, project presentations (2-3 weeks), etc.

Except there wasn’t enough time for workshops this semester, so I’ll have to compare the syllabi of these very different FYC courses.

I’ve been really busy over the last couple weeks, and that shouldn’t be an excuse, but I’m usin’ it as one anyway. The new comprhet website has been one of the biggest timesinks, but it’s in the final stages before being published at its permanent home, and I’ve started construction of a personal site, laughing river. Also, this weekend I presented at the Michigan Academy conference. It’s large in terms of interdisciplinarity-ness, but the Rhet/Comp, itself, is a small but growing section with roughly 20 presenters from the Midwest–U of M, Michgan Tech, Bowling Green, and of course, UW-Madison.

This week I have to catch up on my grading and reading, the search for sponsors for the GLS conference, and 2 weeks of my gaming log. Whew.