Meta Moments in Collegiate Level Writing

In Laurie McMillan's review of Down and Wardle's "Writing about Writing", I hear a lot of the same reactions I've gathered from previous works read this semester, including: writing at a college level is essential for a student's college experience; collegiate writing puts composition scholar's skills to good use; learning collegiate-level writing not only improves student writing, but also language skills and the thought process. However, McMillan also to attention another essential component of the writing process and the college experience which often gets overlooked: "Meta Moments."

McMillan describes the presence of "Meta Moments" in Downs and Wardle's work as a feature set apart in a box from the rest of the text "appearing exactly as 'Meta Moments' should appear - in their own space, where a different kind of thinking can take place." (McMillan) The idea behind "Meta Moments" - thinking outside the box - is an important feature of metacognition, which is an essential part of the thought process and of the freshman experience. 

Ah, metacognition. Where would we be without it? I say this with complete seriousness because without the role of metacognition brilliant people would still be brilliant, but wouldn't change their thinking to reach a point beyond what their predecessors (world explorers, professors, scientists, etc.) had taught them. Metacognition - the awareness or analysis of one's own learning or thinking processes - is what differentiates each scholar individually. It is essentially thinking outside the box, applying personal experience, knowledge, and opinion to understand the thought more fully, and in the end, forming a unique conclusion to the problem.

My first recollection of a professor introducing students to metacognition occurred during a creative nonfiction class I took during my junior year of college. The class had just completed workshopping our first writing assignment and were preparing for the final revision. After handing back the graded papers, our professor pulled up YouTube and played the first seventeen takes of "Strawberry Fields Forever." 

"As you can hear, the Beatles could have stopped after Take Eight or so and still have an impressive song worthy of an A-side. But they kept experimenting and polishing until they reached Take Seventeen, which is what you hear on the Magical Mystery Tour album. " the professor told us. "This is what I want you to do when revising your essays. Even when the essay looks perfect, keep working at it. It could be the difference between Take Eight and Take Seventeen."

Another form of metacognition is using a figure of contemporary culture as a vehicle to obtain academic knowledge. The University of Mary Washington provides several freshman seminars to introduce first-year students to the college environment through the lens of Harry Potter, Dracula or the Beatles to name a few. These platforms of focus successfully teach freshmen the basic elements of writing, public speaking and technology through learning about a topic of interest. It's almost, as I've heard students say on occasion, taking a class that doesn't feel like a class.

In "The Beatles in the 21st Century" FSEM, students learn the basic skills of collegiate-level writing, technology and speaking through reviewing a Beatles' movie or book and presenting an argument proving why their favorite Beatles' song is the best, to name a few. The benefit of this style of metacognition is allowing students to learn new skills in an area that they are passionate about, and through these assignments form conclusions on their favorite music, book or movies that they may never have considered before.