Resources for Students

For more information, contact Kiik or Alexandra Sartor 

Or follow us on Twitter (@Catwriting) or join us on Facebook

Sixth College is happy to announce the opening of the Sixth College Writing Studio! The studio is designed to be a resource for CAT 1-2-3 and 125 students, offering in-depth, one-on-one writing coaching for assignments in CAT courses and beyond.

The studio is different from office hours with your TA in a number of ways. First, it is staffed by upper-division undergrads. Many of our writing consultants have gone through the CAT core sequence themselves, and all will offer writing advice and tips from a student's perspective. Second, our consultants will be able to work with you on your papers in greater detail than your TA can. Whereas TAs have a limited number of office hours, consultants at the writing studio will be available at a much wider range of times, and you can simply drop in to see them at any time that's convenient for you. Finally, the writing studio is located right where you live.

Where and when can you meet us?

Mondays: 6-10 PM
Tuesdays: 6-10 PM
Wednesdays: 6-10 PM
Thursdays: 6-10 PM

* Closed: Fridays, weekend days, and major holidays/academic breaks

Pepper Canyon Hall, room 261 (the Orange Room) is just across from the CAT office and next to the Digital Playroom; please note that there is no entrance to this room from the external hallway. To get there you need to enter through the door opposite the CAT office, number 258, then turn left at the end of the hall.)

What it is:
A growing program created to help CAT students improve their writing abilities and become more confident, capable, and happy writers. We are a team of CAT TAs and carefully selected UCSD seniors here to help you!
• We help with any aspect of writing, including organizational structure, theses, and grammar
• We tutor collaboratively – we work with you rather than just handing back a marked up paper
• We have all of your writing prompts!

Who We Help:
Any CAT student, including both those in CAT 1-2-3 and CAT 125.

Additional Campus Writing Resources:
Campus Writing Center
OASIS

The challenge:
Spin 140 characters into literary gold with the inaugural Sixth College Twitter Fiction Contest! Your Twitter stories could be moving, chilling, hilarious, riveting, polarizing, but above all, fascinating! You will set up the backdrop for your story and respond to ongoing prompts from the contest organizers to develop your narrative.  Fabulous prizes will be awarded along the way, but only the most nimble storyteller will earn the grand prize: A Kindle Fire HD!

Get inspired!  Check out experiments in Twitter fiction here:
http://blog.twitter.com/2012/11/twitter-fiction-festival-selections.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/coming-soon-jennifer-egan-black-box.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/25/ben-okri-poem-twitter

Participation Guidelines:
Begin your narrative with a series of three tweets: 1) Describe the setting, 2) Describe your protagonist’s external characteristics, 3) Describe your protagonist’s internal characteristics.

Tag all contest tweets with #6thstories.

Your first three tweets must be posted by 11:59PM on Monday, February 11, 2013.

Follow @SixthCollege for continued prompts and instructions.  You will receive one prompt per week.  Prompts will be posted Thursdays at 12:00 noon. Response tweets must be posted by 11:59 PM on the following Monday.  Winners will be announced on Fridays.

Encourage your friends to read along and favorite the best tweets.

The Rules:
You may create a new account to develop a narrative persona, however, these personae must be fictional characters.

The 6thstories Twitter Fiction contest is an exciting creative opportunity. As you stretch the limits of the medium and yourself as a writer, please remember to respect the UCSD principles of community: http://www.ucsd.edu/explore/about/principles.html.  Any contest entries that do not live up to the spirit of these principles will be disqualified.

Participation is limited to enrolled Sixth College UCSD students. One entry per participant.

The prizes:
Week 6 of winter quarter:  2 AMC movie tickets chosen by
Academic Programs/ResLife, raffle tickets to top 5 “favorited” by unique users
on Twitter

Week 7:  $20 Bookstore gift certificate chosen by Academic Programs/ResLife,
raffle tickets to top 4 “favorited” by unique users on Twitter

Week 9:  $50 Bookstore gift certificate chosen by Academic
Programs/ResLife, raffle tickets to top 3 “favorited” by unique users on Twitter

Week 10:  Group vote at Academic Programs Office and in ResLife
Office during open hours to award Kindle Fire HD as grand prize; all raffle
tickets into a container and next two winners drawn

Raffle Prizes: One $50 Amazon Kindle gift card, one $25 Amazon Kindle gift to support your digital reading habit

All winners posted to Vine

UCSD Principles of Community
The CAT program stands behind UCSD's Principles of Community.

Assignment Submission
Assignments are due in hard copy to your TA at the beginning of the lecture unless otherwise stated. You must submit your assignments directly to your TA; you will not be able to leave papers for your TA at the Sixth College offices. Writing submitted late but before the end of the final exam period will be accepted but marked down by one grade notch for every day it is late.

You are required to complete and submit all assignments by the end of the final exam period in order to pass the course.

Turnitin.com
All graded writing must be submitted to Turnitin.com to receive credit. Late submissions will be penalized. If an assignment is not time stamped in Turnitin.com by midnight on the date it is due, it will be reduced by one full grade (ie.: an A would be lowered to a B).

Academic Integrity
All work that you submit for credit in CAT is expected to be your own original work, created specifically for this class. Where you are making appropriate use of the work of another person, which may include brief quotations, photographs or drawings, charts, special information, specific arguments, etc., you must credit the author of that work by using appropriate and complete citations as discussed in the document “Using and Citing Sources” on the course website. If you wish to include in your CAT assignments any data, information, writing, or artwork that you have produced for another course, you must first consult with and obtain permission from your TA.

Plagiarism refers to the use of another’s work without full acknowledgment, whether by suppressing the reference, neglecting to identify direct quotations, paraphrasing closely or at length without citing sources, spuriously identifying quotations or data, or cutting and pasting the work of multiple authors into a single undifferentiated whole. Do not ask or allow friends or family members to write or substantially edit your work. That is both a violation of academic integrity and a short-circuiting of the learning process.

UCSD has a university-wide Policy on Integrity of Scholarship, which can be found online at http://senate.ucsd.edu/manual/appendices/appendix2.pdf. All students must read and be familiar with this Policy. Students found to have violated UCSD's standards for academic integrity may receive both administrative sanctions extending up to and including suspension or dismissal, and academic sanctions including failure in the assignment or failure in the course.

Attendance and Participation
Attendance is required at all lectures. Also, your presence in section is necessary for you to be graded on participation.

Electronics
Please turn off your phone ringtone before lecture and section begin. Do not use laptops, cellphones, and other electronic devices in class in ways not relevant to the course. If it turns out that electronic devices are detracting from the classroom experience, we will institute a more stringent policy.

Students With Special Needs
In accordance with UCSD policy, arrangements to accommodate disabilities and other special individual needs must be made with the professor within the first two weeks of the quarter.

Participation Grading Criteria
Here is a description of the kind of participation in the course that would earn you an A, B, C, etc. Your TA may use pluses and minuses to reflect your participation more fairly, but on this sheet we will simply show a general description for each letter grade.

• You are well-prepared for discussion in lecture and for section, with almost no absences. You can explain each reading in your own words. In addition, you have already asked yourself questions about what it means, focusing on specific passages that are interesting to you and making connections between various readings and ideas.
• You express your thoughts clearly, making and supporting specific claims. You listen and respond thoughtfully to your peers, helping to create a safe, inviting space for discussion..
• You find ways to connect the course material with issues that matter to you personally.
• You do all section activities with high energy and attention to detail, and actively lead or enthusiastically contribute to small or large group activities, taking personal responsibility for achieving the assigned goal.
• You submit rough drafts on time, and these drafts demonstrate a thorough engagement with the assignment.
• You respond creatively to the feedback you receive (from both your peers and TA) on drafts, making significant changes to your writing between the first and final drafts that demonstrate ownership of your own writing process.
• You are an active contributor to the peer-review process, offering insightful, substantive, and constructive feedback to your classmates. 

• You attend lecture and section with few absences. You have done most of the readings.  If you don’t understand the reading the first time you read it, you wait to have it explained by the TA.
• You talk on a regular basis. Sometimes you offer well-thought-out ideas and connections, supported with evidence; sometimes your contributions are merely a statement of opinions or initial reactions.
• You do assigned activities willingly; but if you run into obstacles, you let the TA or someone else figure out how to overcome those obstacles.
• You submit rough drafts on time, and these drafts demonstrate thorough engagement with the assignment.
• You respond effectively to the feedback you receive (from both your peers and TA) on drafts, making significant changes to your writing between the first and final drafts.
• You are a regular contributor to the peer-review process, offering constructive feedback to your classmates. 

• You are present in lecture and section, with few absences, and have done some of the reading some of the time.
• You occasionally contribute to the discussion; your contributions are opinions more often than they are thoughtful efforts to make connections. You’re not a real self-starter, and you have to be nudged to participate.
• You do activities when asked, because it’s required.
• You submit rough drafts on time.
• You make some efforts toward revision between the first and final drafts of an assignment
• You are involved in peer-review activities, but you offer minimal feedback. 

• You have multiple absences from section.
• When you come, you’re often not very prepared, and you don’t say much. 
• You may have a habit of using your cell phone or computer in class to chat or do things not directly related to the course.  Playing online poker or shopping for surfboards in either lecture or section, for instance, would be ways to earn a “D” in participation.
• You submit late or incomplete drafts.
• You revise minimally or only at a surface level between drafts.
• You are absent for peer-review activities, or offer unproductive feedback.

• You have many absences, are habitually unprepared, fail to engage with the drafting and revision process, or are uncooperative.