(The following advice is based on feedback from students at the end of the Fall 02 term.)

Manage your time well! Understand that writing is hard work and that Will wants his students to learn to work on their writing everyday. So that the difficulties with writing don't pile up into a last minute, desperation draft, try to do the required thinking, reading, researching, writing, and revision processes in this class as conscientiously as possible. The literacy challenges of the course are divided up so that consistent, everyday work will not overwhelm you unless you ignore your immediate responsibilities. In other words, try very hard not to fall behind! Will truly appreciates students who try hard.

Plan time to do two readings of every assigned reading. Annotate your reading ideas, look up all words you don't know, ask questions about the reading, and do some quick research about the author.

If you are shy and don't like to talk in class, force yourself to participate. Try to say something in every class. Often, shy students have the best questions so if you are in class and not sure what to say, ask a question about anything that is confusing you. Chances are, others will have the same question and respect you for voicing it.

Take Will seriously when he says that he cares about both critical and creative thinking. He wants students to be critical of their readings and their own writing, and he's flexible enough to help you creatively develop ways to better articulate your ideas.

Have fun with your ideas and write your papers selfishly. Although Will will act like a cowboy keeping cows in the herd of an assignment, he actually wants students to use their writing projects to learn what they most want to learn beyond writing. The theory is that we learn to write well when we care about what we write, so Will is hip to a wide variety of ways to answer his writing challenges. Be creative and take risks!

Listen to criticism and try to use it. It's human to be hurt by too much criticism or unfair criticism, but writers need to gather criticism intelligently and then act on it. Feeling hurt is not fun, but feeling smarter about your essays will make you feel better.

Save everything! Drafts are part of the writing process and sometimes Will makes us look very closely at our processes. Plus handouts for one topic sometime work well in others, and of course, you never know what you need until it's not there so stay prepared with access to all of your reading and writing work in the term.

If you know of interesting texts that may be part of class, suggest them to Will and he will probably make copies for the whole class.

Will loves to talk with all people--visit with him in his office as often as you can. Not only does he usually have free candy, but he will always try to help you with ANY of your learning concerns. Whether you need help understanding how commas work or whether you are not able to cope with student life, no problem is too small or large to be talked about.