One of my old students e-mailed me recently about something er other, doesn't really matter what, the conversation eventually ground down to "I can't believe you let me write a paper about strippers."
Hrm, what to say? He wrote one of the best essays in the course which managed to circumvent most of the problems such a paper could have. He interviewed people, he didn't write in a boring format, and his presentation was entertaining. He wasn't even demeaning to women, and approached the whole "this is our power over men girlfriend!" thing with a sort of skepticle aplomb.
So, given that he was able to engage with the subject and write a non traditional really GOOD essay for a course, why should he still be surprised that I said okay?
Yeah, it was a risk. But I'm not particularly afraid to take risks. I thought his paper was far less a risk than "I hate this fucking class" girl of a term earlier who insisted writing about how much she hated affirmative action because it *sniff* kept her out of U of M, which quoted racist sites (and she wouldn't take no for an answer on that either). Honestly, writing about a profession that we either joke about or look down on or are suspicious of--yeah it could have gone badly, but things have gone worse.
And so my response fell into the lines of "you wrote a good paper." Would it have been a mistake if he hadn't? I dunno. It's too difficult to tell ahead of time sometimes what will be "good" or not.
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