Roy Lichtenstein, Compositions
Greetings, fellow investigators of literature!
The daybook is the primary investigative tool for this course. A required material for this course is a composition notebook, similar to the one pictured above in Lichtenstein’s painting. It must be at least 9 3/4 inches and 7 1/2 inches wide, consisting of no fewer than 80 sheets (160 pages). It should be quad ruled. That is, the insides should be graph paper, preferably four or five squares to an inch.
Note that a spiral bound notebook or other form of non-composition book is not an acceptable starting point for a daybook. You need a proper composition notebook with sturdy pages sewn into the spine. You’ll also need some writing utensils, such as pens and pencils, Some assignments will specifically ask you to write in more than one color. You may also want to acquire some markers, colored pencils, and/or crayons for use with your daybook.
Additionally, you’ll also need a gluestick or pot of rubber cement (I recommend the latter) for when we paste things into our daybooks. And you’ll want a few dollars for photocopies (placed on your Redbird Card if you want to use ISU copiers). Five bucks ought to do it, unless you end up making a lot of stuff in full color.
All these items, along with the selected works of literature, constitute the basic required materials of the course. With the exception of adding money to your Redbird Card for photocopies, all of these materials should be obtainable on campus at either the Barnes & Noble in the Bone Student Center, the Alamo bookstore next to Stevenson Hall, or the CVS pharmacy in Uptown Normal.
Once you have acquired your daybook, open it up to the first page and fill the page with a message like this:
IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN TO [YOUR NAME] [YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS] Thank you in advance!
Your daybook’s pages can and should hold anything you want: shopping lists, diary entries, doodles, notes for other classes, etc. Start writing whatever you want in it right away! Much of your homework in Eng110 will consist of reading, thinking, learning, and then documenting that learning by writing in your daybook. It is called a daybook because your task is to add material to it every day. You should always bring your daybook to class, as we will often write in them or compare what we have written between class meetings. And you should generally have it with you wherever you go.
Your daybook should be your constant companion this semester.