Classes On the day my live students at Columbia College (the other one, in California) enroll in my six-week course, I email them my first lecture, complete with “for example” illustrations, quoting writers I admire. They also get their first writing assignment. Later, when we meet for the first time (classes run two to three hours), we’re already in business. I run my six week online classes in similar manner. Rule One: We carry no passengers. Students are expected to write 500 words a week. If you are unwilling, then I am not the teacher for you. If you tell me you don’t have time, I’ll ask how many hours do you watch TV. Detailed instructions will come when you enroll, but right now lets say that you, as an online student, will get the week’s lecture and your writing assignment by email every Monday morning. Posted on the class bulletin board, you also get the writing done by your fellow students the previous week. That stays up, available to you day or night. In the five days that follow, working to your own timetable, you are expected to complete your new writing assignment, and equally important, comment on the work of your fellow students, emailing it to me by Friday. Take note of this: In my classes, it does not cut it to say, “I like it” or “I don’t”. Why do you like something? Why not?  Exercising your critical faculties in the rough-and-tumble of critical give-and-take not only develops a sense of yourself as a writer; it also: 1. Teaches you that adverse words don’t kill but in fact can often make you aware of something valuable you did not want to learn. 2. Strengthens your ability to see your own work objectively when you are alone at the keyboard; and 3. In my classes, the word “criticism” is used in the old-fashioned sense to include praise too.