Metacognition: The Jane Eyre Dialogue

My thought process for writing the Jane Eyre dialogue involved several key elements. Some of these initial elements included procrastinating, loathing, brainstorming, briefly thinking,-"Oh, this isn't so bad", more brainstorming, more procrastinating, trying not to think about all the endless work i'd have to do, and then panicking once I realized it was Wednesday afternoon and the dialogue was less than 10% complete.

The dialogue itself was about defying the status quo, and like any other writing assingment, it began with the brainstorming: writing down each idea as it came into my head. "St. John's power over Jane", "Jane's concept of marriage", "Marriage on the basis of love", and so on. So I typed each idea onto google docs, called Kate, and asked her to see what she thought of them. She thought they were fine (if not great).

But instead of jumping into the dialogue like I'm sure most other people did after the brainstorming, Kate and i actually posted some of our opinions beforehand. This would help fill in any missing information, clarify certain notions, make sure we're on the same page, add detail to our ideas, and narrow down the discussion topic.

So in any case, that WAS a good start, but after that, things got tougher. Our schedules tightened up, both of us were away for the weekend, other assignments were thrown at us, and a huge miscommunication on Wednesday turned the whole thing into a last-minute nightmare.

With luck, however, we were able to write things out fairly easily. The format of the paper as an open-ended discussion made the writing very smooth and easy-going. Smooth and easy-going, that is, as long as I knew what I was talking about. And better yet, since we typed in tandem, it was almost as if we were actually having the discussion!!