Journal Entry #3

When David Bartholomae says a student needs to "invent the university" in college writing, he simply means that he or she must write from the perspective of a person in that particular field. The student has to know the language a person from that department would use and use it appropriately throughout the piece. To make a student feel like an "insider," he or she needs to go around to the commonplaces to understand how people in different departments speak and act. With the two writings about creativity, the one about the football team's socks was very uninteresting and seemingly uncreative. However, he answered the prompt in a clean-cut way and completed the assignment. Bartholomae notes that although it isn't a long and engaging piece, it is tidy and does the work. The writer looks at creativity as doing something that others aren't; as being original. However, the one about the girl who wrote about her creativity with music says that her creative songs were actually "inspired" by popular songs on the radio. She didn't choose to make her music similar to the songs, but it was what she knew and using her experiences with her tastes makes her music creative. Also, the way she wrote her paper was as if she was telling us the story herself, and this made it a lot easier and worthwhile to read. Bartholomae states that her piece is highly qualified and sees that she doesn't necessarily like the word "creative," but she goes on further describing her experience than the football player did.