COMM 317: Oral presentations April 17

Here are the guidelines I gave you Tuesday night in class.

Your presentation will be 3-5 minutes long. It can be very informal. I do not want a summary of your term paper. Instead, briefly address the following points:

1. What did you expect to find out when you started your research? In other words, what was your research question and/or preliminary hypothesis?

2. What did you find out? What was your final thesis? How did you modify your hypothesis in light of the evidence you found?

3. What surprised you? I mean really surprised you? If research is a cut-and-dried academic exercise, it isn't worth doing.

4. Tell us something interesting that will wake us up. If it relates to the main point(s) of your research -- or to No. 3 above -- so much the better!

I'm serious about this business of surprise.

This emphasis on surprise I got from the late Donald Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer for The Boston Herald and longtime writing teacher at the University of New Hampshire. In 1984 he wrote in College English (link is to excerpt in the online JSTOR archive): "My students become writers at that moment when they first write what they do not expect to write. ... Writers value the gun that does not hit the target at which it is aimed." Murray liked to explain that cultivating the ability to be surprised is linked to discovery and to creativity. He's right. It is. But there's another reason, as well. Life is just too short to waste your time on what you already know.