One of the semesters I taught freshmen composition, I had my students keep a blog. The point of the class was to teach students how to tailor their writing to their specific purpose, audience, and context, and also to the conventions of whatever genre they were writing in. Mid-semester, one of my brightest students started publishing her weekly blog posts late. When I asked her about it, she said she was just following the genre’s conventions. She pointed out that bloggers always start out with frequent, enthusiastic posts, only to peter out a couple months later, prefacing each post with an apology for their lateness, “as if anyone is actually still reading their blog.” Continue reading “When will the van be done? A definitive answer.”