Concerns about writing ability.

Ironically, I'm probably not the best instructor to help with writing as I struggle with it, too. However, if I am qualified enough to know when I should re-write a sentence to avoid a grammatical transgression, maybe I can give some direction to those who would want it.

Writing is very hard. I used to think that it was relatively easy. I wish it were. And I sometimes wish education was simply a collection of facts and information. It's not. A college education requires much more than this and it has a lot to do with communication.

If you cannot communicate what you know, than what you know is meaningless to the world. Thankfully, we have many ways to communicate. But writing is probably the most important.

So, here are my suggestions to improve writing:
1. Write a brief outline. Brief. Like 3 or 4 main points. Jot down some ideas for transitioning from one point to the next. Don't worry too much here because more ideas will occur to you when you write.

2. Write more than you intend to submit. Doing so gives you room for editing and thus precision. And you might discard things that are brilliantly written because they are not related to the main point you are trying to make.

3. Word choice is, in my opinion, the most difficult task in writing, and it's probably the hardest. You have to hunt for the right word to convey the most meaning in the shortest amount of time. And if you want to have some flair with your writing, some style, then choosing words becomes even more difficult.

4. Read all of your drafts out loud. Awkward phrases, logical leaps, redundancies, and ugly phrases are heard, not seen.

5. Read your drafts backwards, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. This helps catch logical flow from paragraph to paragraph.

6. Don't submit your first draft. Ever. And upon writing a final draft, read it one last time after a several hour break.

7. Lastly, check out these questions from George Orwell.

Now, related to Case Study #1:

1. Do me a favor and organize the rest of your Case Study Assignments with numbers referring to the case study questions (#1 Erikson issue, #2 Non Erikson issue, etc.). Some of you did this already.

2. It's the stage, not the age that matters. Some people will age past a stage, but remain psychologically stuck there (so to speak). Some people are precocious.

3. Infants have yet to develop a good deal of what it means to have "thought". Piaget has lots to say on this, but basically infants aren't thinking like adults, and it is very hard to infer about the thoughts infants have.

4. Beware of your word choice. Infants don't necessarily 'know,' but they can show signs of familiarity. When a child smiles at Dad, is it because the child 'knows' him? Possibly, but it is just as accurate, perhaps more so, to say that the child smiles more at Dad than to a stranger. This *might* indicate knowledge, but it might simply be a sign of familiarity. Or even 'stimulus-response'. The trick of science, then, is to devise experiments to discover which.

5. Beware of your certainty. I noticed that a lot of students wrote in such a way to imply certitude, but without justification. This could have been because the student felt justified, or that it was common sense, and so they didn't provide evidence.

6. I think your book may oversimplify the Erikson stages when it refers to them in the table located in the 2nd chapter. It's not terrible, but be thoughtful about the words used to communicate the infants experience. I'm not sure, for example, that self-reliance for infants is the same as for adults. To say that infants learn self-reliance in the Eriksonian 2nd stage may be taken the definition a bit too far. It would be worthwhile to read what Erikson meant by the term self-reliance.

7. Many students choose to have a family member care for their child instead of day care. Although it could be a reasonable choice, it's not always practical. Nor does it guarantee against separation anxiety, or for that matter, safety. Fathers find it shocking the first time mom leaves to discover that he is insufficient to quell the storm created by the child's perceived loss. Another choice highly sought after would be a nanny--another reasonable choice, if one can afford it. I sometimes wonder whether relegating day care to the last resort is as an extension of our own issues with trust versus mistrust. If a qualified daycare has been shown to be a good place for children to be cared for, why are we so reluctant to expose our kids to good socialization? Plenty of family members have outdated knowledge about children. And there are other dangers in the home as well, as accidents can happen anywhere. It seems to me that it would be prudent to be open to any choice, so long as a vetting process is followed. Which brings me to the last point about daycare selection: it's not a choice to be made quickly. Get to know the place before you drop your kids off.

8. Erikson's first 2 stages:
a. Trust vs. mistrust: it's about whether the world is scary or not. Is it safe or not.
b. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt: it's not so much that they are self-sufficient or that they can rely on themselves. It's more about discovering that they have a self, and that choice has meaning. It's also a time for them to discover that it's okay for them to exercise choice without getting in trouble or shamed for having a will of their own (called volition).