By John Warner. My “grittiest” composition students are simultaneously among the easiest and most difficult students to work with. The “gritty” rarely, if ever, struggle with sporadic attendance or failure to meet deadlines, things that often derail others. If drafts are due, drafts are done. They come to office hours, they ask questions, they are generally respectful of authority (perhaps overly so). They can immediately articulate their goals and dreams and the path they intend to take along the way. Read more...

By Barbara Fister. Disruption. Creative Destruction. Innovation. Entrepreneurship – terms we’ve heard constantly in recent years, with certain irrelevance and the total collapse of the world as we know it as the inescapable alternative. We’re supposed to think like a startup, though given the failure rate of startups, I’m not sure why – maybe that’s the destructive part of this version of creativity. The message always seems to be “you can’t do things the same way anymore, and if you don’t change really fast to anticipate the future, you’re doomed,” regardless of what the change is or whether it’s positive or simply a malign force, like an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, that cannot be avoided. Read more...