Extra-Credit Opportunities
For English 10

Teaching Assistant: Patrick Mooney
English 10
Summer 2015

There are several opportunities to receive extra credit during English 10; they are listed below. (This list will change periodically as new opportunities become available. If this happens, I will announce new opportunities both on the course Twitter stream and in class.)

There are two important caveats for extra credit that you should be aware of:

1. No matter how many of these projects you engage in, you cannot receive a total extra credit bonus of more than 5% to your overall term grade during the quarter.
2. Extra credit cannot lift your overall grade for the quarter into the A+ range. You can only get into the A+ range naturally, i.e. by performing very very well throughout the quarter.

List of opportunities

• Recite (part of) a poem from the syllabus and lead a discussion on it on the day when the poem is scheduled to be discussed. You will need to discuss your plans with me, in person or by email, before you can do this; there are other caveats, as well, and you should read the full write-up for this extra-credit opportunity before deciding to do it. Worth up to 5% added to your total grade for the quarter.
• Take a draft of a required (not extra credit) writing assignment to a CLAS writing tutor, and turn in the paperwork that the writing tutor gives you (the blue slip) with the paper you had reviewed, attached to the first page with a paper clip (or stapled to the front of the paper). Some caveats to be aware of for this assignment:
  • CLAS attempts to accommodate drop-in students, and does a pretty good job most of the time, but if you go by during a busy part of the quarter, they may not be able to seat you with a tutor immediately. It is your responsibility to ensure that you manage your time well and manage to actually sit down with a tutor; for this reason, it's wise to schedule an appointment in advance.
  • It is your responsibility to ensure that you walk out of CLAS with the necessary paperwork to prove that you were there. If you don't get the paperwork, you won't get any extra credit. You should be sure that you leave with the necessary paperwork at the time that your appointment occurs.

  You may take this opportunity up to twice, if you wish: once on your final research paper, and once on a shorter assignment. Turning in a blue slip with your final paper will be worth up to 2% extra credit, and turning in a blue slip with a shorter assignment will be worth up to 1% extra credit; exact scoring will depend on how well you use the writing tutor's advice to make productive changes to your draft.

  This extra-credit assignment is due when the paper that you have the CLAS tutor look at is due. I will not accept paperwork after the assignment itself is turned in, so make sure that you properly include it with your paper.

• Extra credit essays. These essays are available each weekend for weeks 2 through 5 and give you an opportunity to explore additional implications, connections or applications of the week's reading. Each essay topic will be announced in class on Thursday, followed shortly by an announcement on the course Twitter stream; each essay should be two to three pages in length, and should be a focused treatment of the topic from a viewpoint that engages meaningfully with at least one of the week's readings. Extra credit assignments are due at the beginning of class on the following Monday and may not be turned in late under any circumstances.
  • Week 2: Harry Frankfurt writes, The problem of understanding why our attitude toward bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying is an important one, which I shall leave as an exercise for the reader (50). Why is our attitude toward bullshit more benign than our attitude toward lying? Due at the very beginning of class on Monday, 8 July.
  • Week 3: Rebecca Solnit's essay Men Explain Things to Me is collected in a book which is also entitled Men Explain Things to Me. Look at the Amazon.com reviews reviews of Solnit's book and, based on your reading of the essay, find a one-star review that you take to miss the point of the essay fundamentally. Use Solnit's essay to explain why this review is off-base. (Note that I am not claiming that all one-star reviews are wrong or that all one-star reviews are off-base; nor have I said that each one-star review is an equally good point of analysis for this assignment.) Due at the very beginning of class on Monday, 13 July.
  • Week 4: This week, you are welcome to argue (without fear of entrapment, trickery, held grudges, reprisal, or hurt feelings on my part) that I am, in the technical sense developed by UC Irvine professor of philosophy Aaron James, an asshole. Alternately, if you did (or would like to do) this week's optional reading by UC Berkeley professor of American studies Michael Mark Cohen, you are welcome to instead argue that I am a douchebag. Due at the very beginning of class on Monday, 20 July.
  • Week 5:
    Find, on Twitter, any candidate (except Donald Trump) who is currently running for President of the United States in the 2016 election. Locate a tweet by this presidential candidate that you take to be smarmy in the sense in which Scocca uses the word. Perform a close reading of the tweet in the same way that Scocca does in On Smarm, explaining why you take it to be smarmy: what precisely is the form of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance? What other features of smarm does the tweet exhibit? (Scocca names many features of smarm in his article.) In what way does the tweet act to shut down discussion, to re-draw discursive boundaries, to make the search for truth difficult or impossible?

    As always, whether or not you agree with what you take my position to be is not a factor in your grade on this (optional) assignment. The field of political smarm is wide open and there is plenty of room for smarm hunting everywhere on it.

    Here are some Twitter accounts for current presidential candidates:

    • Physician and author Dr. Ben Carson
    • Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee
    • Virgina Senator James Jim Webb
    • Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley
    • Former Arkansas Governor Michael Mike Huckabee
    • Former business executive Carly Fiorina
    • Florida Senator Marco Rubio
    • South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham
    • Vermont Senator Bernard Bernie Sanders
    • Louisiana Governor Piyush Bobby Jindal
    • Former New York Governor George Pataki
    • Ohio Governor John Kasich
    • New Jersey Governor Christopher Chris Christie
    • Former Texas Governor James Rick Perry
    • Former Florida Governor John Ellis Jeb Bush
    • Former Pennsylvania Senator Richard Rick Santorum
    • Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
    • Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
    • Texas Senator Rafael Edward Ted Cruz
    • Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who seems to have canceled his Twitter account.

    Due at the very beginning of class on Monday, 27 July.

  Grading for extra credit essays: same criteria as for the close reading assignments. An A on one of these papers is worth a 3% bonus to your total grade for the term; a B is worth 2%; a C is worth 1%; anything below C- is not worth any bonus at all.

If you have other suggestions for extra-credit opportunities, I want to hear them! I will consider all reasonable suggestions that (a) have a legitimate educational goal, and (b) are not merely attempts to get credit for something that you're already going to do anyway. If you propose an idea that I accept, I will add it to this page so that everyone can benefit from the opportunity.