Article about Reading David Foster Wallace's Syllabus

The Extraordinary Syllabus of David Foster Wallace
What his lesson plans teach us about how to live
by
Katie Rophie

Here are two of his syllabi.

Two good quotes:

"Even in a seminar class it seems a little silly to require participation.  Some students who are cripplingly shy, or who can't always formulate their  best thoughts and questions in the rapid back-and-forth of a group discussion, are nevertheless good and serious students. On the other hand, as Prof --- points out supra, our class can't really function if there isn't student participation—it will become just me giving a half-assed ad-lib lecture for 90 minutes, which (trust me) will be horrible in all kinds of ways."

"If you are used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense and having the professor accept them 'because the ideas are good' or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. Again, I am absolutely not kidding."