If you feel like you're behind, not understanding everything, or just plain stressed, do not sufferin silence!
I've never seen anything like this "life is difficult" statement on any course syllabus, and this feels like a breath of fresh air. I've had and currently have some professors who are so much less understanding than this, so I appreciate the sentiment immensely.
genres andsocial practices that are, in the end, the heart and soul of literacy
It is true that a key element of understanding any text is understanding the social culture in which the text was developed because that will have every effect on how the text is constructed and how it conveys its meaning.
family of social practices
For some reason, I like how this is worded, especially using the word family. We think of a family as a group of genetically related people, so a "family of social practices" means a group of multiple social practices which all have something in common that makes them related to one another.
“He is an outsider – it’s the first time he’s played using this method – but something tells us that he’s hasn’t finished with the surprises,” he wrote.
It just goes to show that there's more than one way to play or be good at a game. It's the same game with the same rules, but people will play it in different ways with different methods and strategies.