SENIOR ENGLISH: ADVICE FROM ALUMNI PART II

The second question I asked the DHS alumni was � When you got to college, were there areas in which you felt unprepared? What were they? Are there areas or subjects that Senior English did not cover that would have been useful in college?�  Here is a representative sample of their answers:

I really didn't feel unprepared in college. Overall it can be an intimidating situation at first, but I don't feel I lacked in my English skills.

I feel significantly better prepared in terms of reading and writing than my peers at college.

What this taught me was how useful the English help room (I forgot what it was called) was and that I should have used it a lot more. I realize now that I should have been using that resource a lot more. I don't remember if we ever did this in high school, but a couple times I was able to decide my own essay topic. I found this very hard. If a topic was given to me, I could write on it. When I had to make my own, I just sat and stared at a blank page. If you don't do this at all, it might help to show students they will have to decide their own topic and be able to write a strong essay on it. 

I really can not think of a single time that I felt unprepared from my education at Deerfield . However, it may have proven to be beneficial had I read a piece of scholarship from a journal. We spend all of our time reading novels and maybe introducing how to read a journal on an issue pertaining to Senior English could be very beneficial. In college I was taught to read the abstract, then the conclusion and then start again at the abstract and read all the way through. Had I had even a little experience with such articles, I would have been a step ahead.  

It might be useful to have a few days talking about adjustments and transitions with friends from home. Many students find it difficult to maintain relationships with their friends from high school when they go away. Maybe some tips or advice from recent alumni.  

I would have liked more serious research assignments--more secondary sources and more criticism. 

In college, I only felt unprepared with vocabulary. Although, differences between college and high school English were the organization of how papers could be written and college text was a lot more difficult and took longer to read because of its complexity, not its length. Another topic that should be emphasized more is public speaking. It was touched upon sophomore year but public speaking helps in more areas than just English.  

I felt unprepared in specific grammar rules and structure, I know I learned most of them in earlier years, but in Senior English it should all be brought up and tested again. 

I believe that Senior year is a time to explore different types of writing and that shying away from "just fiction" would be very beneficial to future Seniors.

I regret not reading more in high school. I think more reading would have taught me to become better at reading comprehension, and maybe made me a faster reader, too.

The only subject/area I think I had to QUICKLY adjust to because I wasn�t ever given it in DHS were research papers/expositional papers.

I feel that there should be less stress on the 'standard' essay format and more emphasis on the analyzation of the text.  I think the comment I got the most from professors was 'why do you always do intro, body, body, body, conclusion...this isn't high school!'

The only frustration I had when I first came to school is that I did not feel as knowledgeable about the classics as I would have liked. If students are planning take anything more than English 101, texts were referenced in these classes that I had never read. It would have been a huge advantage (and stress reliever) to be a little more familiar with the Iliad, Odyssey, etc.

I did not have preparation in Classical literature which made it so I had to catch up with my classmates in one of my classes where we read Homer and Virgil since many of them had read at least The Illiad, if not more classics.

Being a philosophy major who had taken no philosophy classes in high-school left me feeling a bit unprepared in knowledge of basic terminology which initially inhibited my ability to participate in discussions, but I found it fairly easy to pick up on the basics and catch up quickly.

 I think we could have been more prepared with research papers and quoting more. The expectations in college were above what the teachers had in high school. 

I felt unprepared to do research papers.  I don't enjoy them in the least, even if I am allowed to choose my own topic and approach, but everyone has to write them constantly, and I felt that I lacked the skills for it, mainly because I felt I didn't really know how to maximize the resources that the school's library, its online catalogues and the Internet in general have to offer.  However, I wasn't unprepared to write the paper itself; that part is fine with me.

I think the most beneficial thing that you can do is to grade students a little harder and to do a lot of in class essays. While papers throughout the semester aren't in class papers, the final must be written by hand and having a good sense of how to write a paper under pressure is always useful.

I think the only area I felt as though I had not touched upon it in high school was public speaking. Everyone was required to take a speech class and although we did debates and some public speaking in Senior English, I feel as though more could have been incorporated to make the speech class in college less of a struggle.

I was not prepared for the intensity of research essays in college or the revision process, and to what extent to take that process.

Although high school kids hate it, I think that in-class essays can help kids prepare for college exams. Whether it�s a psychology or an art history exam, essays seem to be included on all of them. I felt that there could have been a little more preparation with these in high school.  

More technical writing or presentations.  No speeches, but presenting ideas and getting people who are watching interested.

I wasn't used to writing any sort of argumentative paper in which I could not use emotive words. Using emotionally charged vocabulary has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion when my teachers wanted a factual paper (like a current events sort of thing) and did not want opinion in the mix. It was hard for me to adjust to that kind of writing

In college we were grading not only on our papers but our critique of others....I think it would have been nice to critique other people's papers in class.

I wasn't really sure how to write a paper that combined research and taking a position.  I thought of those two aspects of separate.  So I had difficulty writing the paper at first.  It definitely would have been useful to cover that in Senior English.  It would have been especially helpful to require students to use multiple non-internet sources.

Click here for advice from alumni on the Senior Project.