Reviewing, reminding

1. Remember that I'll be in Helen C. White Hall 6172 this evening (Tuesday) from 7 to 8:30 pm. I'm not preparing any sort of mini review lesson: bring with you questions about the exam and about the texts for which you will be responsible and we'll work our way through anything you like!
2. Two quick requests
   1. Write your exam in pen! I have no objection to your crossing things out -- skip every other line if you think you will need to make a lot of revisions to your essay.
   2. Write as legibly as you can! If I can't understand what you're writing, your essays may not get as fair a shake as they deserve. Please, have pity on my poor eyes.
3. If you want to practice the exam, you can find my attempts to imitate the longer essay questions in this week's hebdomadal topics (NB: these questions replicate only the style of the essay questions you will see on the exam -- a comparison between texts focused around topics central to modernism; they do not necessarily replicate the content or difficulty of the actual exam questions)
4. You can find a mock-up of a list of twelve passages to be ID'd here: again, this only replicates the barest essence of what the actual ID section will look like; I honestly do not know whether the passages to be ID'd on the actual exam will be as long, as obvious, etc.
5. How might you study for the exam, given that you have only these vague resources available? I highly recommend comparing texts: grab two passages randomly from that list of passages to ID and ask yourself "What do these passages have in common? How do they both address the central issues of modernism? How do they differ? How does their difference define the range of approaches modernists bring to the specific problems of modernity?"
6. Be attentive to the exam instructions: please, please don't lose points due to missing some of the nuances of what we ask you to do. To be specific:
   1. Do not write on the same text on the exam that you wrote on for your first essay. For example, if you wrote your first essay on "The Waste Land" do not write on "The Waste Land" on the exam; you can, however, write on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
   2. This same flexibility is not available if you wrote your first essay on As I Lay Dying: even if the essay question on the exam doesn't deal with a part of the novel you wrote about in your first essay, you still can't write on it on the exam.
   3. Do not write on the same author on the longer and shorter essay questions on the exam. So if you answer a longer essay question dealing with, say, Yeats and Stevens, you can't write your shorter essay on either Yeats or Stevens, not even a different poem.
   4. You must write at least one essay about poetry. If your first essay was about a poem, you are home free. If your first essay was about Faulkner, however, you must write at least one of your essay questions on poetry. (Prof. Wolfe is a huge poetry geek, and he wants to make sure everyone struggles through at least one close reading of modern poetry.)
7. Finally, remember that even though we don't have section on Friday, you are absolutely invited to come hang out with me at the Steep & Brew between noon and 2:15 pm -- during usual class hours -- to chat about the exam, the reading, modernism, or what's going to go on in the second half of the semester. I'd love to see you!!
8. And, as always, email me any questions you have about the exam or anything else!