Thursday, December 6, 2012

Getting meta on finals week

It's the last week of classes, which means that I've spent a lot of time standing or sitting in the midst of young people and telling them that everything is going to be ok, that no stressful final exam ever actually killed anyone. Of course, no one seems relieved.

Yesterday, in my freshman comp class, I (more or less) said this:

"I know you've been doing nothing for the past two days but revising your final paper, because, clearly, you don't have anything else to do. You have no other classes. No ginormously daunting precalculus or biology or western civilization exams looming like metal-teethed Molochs above the salt mines of your daily lives. I know you've been sleeping eight hours a night, soundly, drinking 8 oz of orange juice every morning. I know that there is no way that stress has taken its tole on you physically, that it's zapped your will to even comb your hair in the morning."

Most students giggle; they get that I'm being sarcastic. I don't need to introduce metacommentary to explain that what I'm doing is sympathizing with them, that I'm satirizing the short-sighted, authoritarian college professor.

Even though I'm pretty sure they know that's what I'm doing, I follow the satire with metacommentary. I say: "That was me sympathizing with you in a playful manner, trying to inject levity into your otherwise stressful week."

I am addicted to metacommentary. What is metacommentary, you ask?

It's a fancy word for sentences that (in Gerald Graff's words) “tell readers how—and how not—to think about” assertions you make as you write (or talk). In other words, metacommentary keeps you from provoking reactions that you don't intend. It lets you clarify and elaborate on crazy claims before readers get the wrong idea.

I tell students that the day I discovered metacommentary was the day I began to love writing. 


I loved it because it allowed me to say things that sounded like I was saying something illogical and then demonstrate how I wasn't being illogical at all. It's a fun rhetorical gymnastic. 


It allows you to be both playful and professional at the same time. Graff uses the analogy of the conjoined twin: When you're writing, you are two people, one who just wants to be heard and another who wants to be careful. Kind of like Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon in Stuck on You.  
One of you gets to say something that gets people's attention; the other gets to clarify and elaborate immediately after attention is grabbed. 

This works well in intro paragraphs. For instance, my freshman writers are working on proposals to solve problems that face some profession of their choice. I'm also writing such a proposal. (Why shoudl students have all the fun.) The profession I chose was trim carpentry (my brother and dad's profession). The problem they're facing is the fact that suburban homes (which is what they trim) are less popular than they used to be. My solution is for my brother to convert his basement utility room into a workshop and to build cabinets for a new market. 

The first sentence of my proposal is this: 

"Throw your elliptical machine out the window." 

By starting with a jolting, crazy command, I force myself to explain immediately what I mean and what I don't mean

"It's not that your cardiovascular health is unimportant but that you could use your home as a business resource. Here's how:" 

The fun part is saying the outlandish thing. The hard part is dialing it back--making sure readers get prompted to alertness without also getting the wrong idea. A good writer, and a good speaker, does both.

Because, you know what they say: "It's all fun and games until you don't follow up your outlandish assertion with clarifying metacommentary." (That's what they say, right?)