As you leave our English 1103 class for the last time, aim to continue the practices you have cultivated this semester, including blogging. Although you may prefer to delete your major writing assignments from your blog, I encourage you to maintain your WordPress site. Tailoring it to showcase your writing and other projects in your major—and posting your resume on it too—will serve you well when you apply for internships and jobs. In your application cover letters, you can direct employers to your blog by writing, To learn more about my work, please visit my website: [yourblogname.wordpress.com].
For many of you, composing longhand isn’t preferable to typing—and often it isn’t for me either—but I recommend putting pen to paper at least occasionally, especially when you find yourself struggling to move forward with a piece of writing. The words you are now reading—and those in the other posts I composed this semester—all began as scribbles on paper. Also, remember that putting pen to paper offers us an opportunity to turn away from our screens, a practice that not only benefits our writing but also our overall well-being.
Envision how the papers you wrote for English 1103 and your other classes may evolve into larger projects for upper-level courses or conference presentations. Look back at those assignments and ask yourself the same questions that you addressed in your final essay for English 1103: What larger project might develop from it? What would serve as its theoretical framework?
The photograph at the top of this post features my former student McKayla Flood, a junior who received the 2026 Outstanding Education Fellow award. Congratulations to McKayla on her success in the Stout School of Education.
Please share the news of your own successes, so I can celebrate them with the students who follow in your footsteps.
Superlatives
Congratulations to the students who have earned the highest preliminary averages and to those who achieved perfect attendance.
Highest Preliminary Averages
Perfect Attendance
Students who do not enroll in a course until after the first, second, or third class meeting are eligible for perfect attendance because their attendance records commence only after they have added a course.
Congratulations to Aidan Berlin on winning the vintage Scrabble game (pictured above) in last Wednesday’s drawing.
Parting Thoughts
The essayist Susan Sontag advised writers to “[l]ove words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.” As you commence life after English 1103, keep those words in mind.
Jane Lucas 