Stacking Stones Contest Winners!

This semester in our rock and roll writing class the class worked hard and completed more work than ever before. Over the course of sixteen weeks, the eight of us:

• Read 1,072 pages of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry

• Wrote 289 pages of our own work (as well as 123 liner notes in response to the songs that excite us).

• Listened to 69,375 seconds of rock music by 150 different artists. (That's 19 hours, 16 minutes, and 15 seconds of rock and roll glory for those keeping track.)
  

No small accomplishment!


As you'll recall, this spring we also had a contest going on where any student who met all of the following criteria would win our grand prize:

1. Complete each of the sixteen weekly writing assignments for the semester
2. Upload each of them by the weekly deadline
3. Meet the minimum recommended length on all assignments
4. Reasonably match the theme and genre of each assignment prompt
5. Post responses to the work of at least four different classmates over the course of the semester

I'm happy to say that most of the class came very close to meeting this steep set of criteria, but four students in the class met the challenge and I'd like to take the time to recognize their accomplishment here on the blog . . . .

---

Congratulations are in order to Carol Hamblen, Dominique Bruno, Susan Truxell Sauter, and Kathleen Abate!

Your prize, for winning this semester's Stacking Stones Contest is the rock album of your choice. Once you've decided which album you want, let us all know by posting a comment to this blog entry, and I will send it your way. The only criteria is that it has to be rock music.

Oh, by the way, I also completed all of the work along with the class, and so I'll be treating myself to an album today, too. For those interested, my selection is Temple of the Dog's eponymous 1991 grunge album Temple of the Dog.

---

While prizes are fun and flashy, the most important point to take away from all of this is that everyone was a winner this semester. It sounds corny, yes, but every student in the class wrote more than he or she had ever written before. Every person showed obvious improvement in the quality of their poetry and prose. And every student left feeling as though he or she had accomplished something viable. And that's the most important part of any writing course. You should all be proud of what you accomplished, and I hope this will be a stepping stone toward continued productivity as writers. Keep your pens on the page!