The way that people feel changes everything. — Helen Oyeyemi
About the Writer
When I first arrived at Wake Forest, I thought that I was a writer dependent on luck. There had always been students in my writing courses that received better grades or approached their writing process more methodically, and for a time, I thought that this meant they were more well-rounded writers. Walking into my First Year Writing Seminar at Wake, thoughts like these kept creeping into my mind, encouraging me to doubt myself and my writing at every turn. This all changed when I was forced to write freely and reflect without a stated intention or final destination. Writing soon became the things that made me feel heard and capable of tracing my own milestones of growth, and now as I’m approaching the last few days of my senior year of college, I see myself as a writer.
My development as a writer here at Wake has been an interesting journey that I will begin to think about in terms of WRI 212, The Art of the Essay. As one of the first classes writing minor’s take in the discipline, this is often the course many of my peers have the strongest feelings about. I myself hadn’t been sure what the class would actually entail with such a vague tittle, but I was excited none the less. We began our class by reading stories, and while this may not seem like earth shattering news to the average college student reading this introduction, I must say that at the time, there hadn’t been much that I’d read prior to that class that I'd genuinely enjoyed.
The writers that we read were daring, they challenged my understanding of structure and narrative in a way that I found to be engaging and exciting, and through those writers I began to identify the first step in my process as a writer: mimicking other writers. This is a first step that many students have likely taken without even thinking about it, but when I was tasked with mimicking someone else’s writing, I was forced to reflect more intentionally on how I’d been doing something similar in most of my writings prior.
In order to complete my first assignment in that course, I wrote “Medicine.” “Medicine” was one of the first writings I submitted to a professor in college that I was truly proud of, and most of that writing was inspired by an essay I’d read in that class. Though I had to mimic the form of a professional writer we’d studied in class for the assignment , I chose to expand on my interest in learning from what I read throughout the peer review process around the assignment. This is when I realized how much I valued the next staple in my writing process: peer review. Peer review is a process that most writers are familiar with, whether you are an academic submitting work to a journal or a freshman hitting send on a group email chain, we all have to participate in peer review, but for most of my career as a student writer, I really hated it. I often found myself embarrassed to have my peers read my writing, but when I began interacting with themes and subjects that mattered to me, it began to feel all the more important.
Reading my peer’s writing began to give me an idea of the kind of language and approach to writing that resonated with the people around me. I learned new techniques and garnered more confidence in my own writing through the process of engaging with the work of my peer reviewers. I also began to actually take their advice. Although it can be hard to receive criticism of our writing, the more I began to put stock into my subject, the more I wanted my final process to include the advice of my intended audience. Writing was no longer a solo experience, but rather one that was dependent on community engagement and input. Discovering the value in this step of the writing process aided my development as a writer tremendously and it made me view my process with less scrutiny and more of a willingness to fumble along the way.
In my Cover Letter to my professor, I can look back and see how much that process meant to me as I wrote, “In my final revision, I changed a little bit of the content and structure of my essay. Initially, I was not planning on changing the layout of my essay, but Libby suggested that I try something new. She suggested that I should replicate an image I describe in my essay, a layered birthday cake, by layering those lines.” I understand now that feedback is something I value as a vital part of my writing process.
My final step is just to write. When all the chips are down and I feel prepared to tackle a prompt, I now feel capable of just putting words down on paper. Professors are always quick to remind us that the hardest part is starting, but it’s also good to remember why we do what we do. We write to connect in some way, and as long as someone can see a bit of themselves in my work, I know that shitty first draft was worth it.
Creative and Public Facing Projects
Medicine
For this creative writing piece, my classmates and I were tasked with creating an essay that mimicked one of the many unique forms we'd read over the semester. I chose to mimic writing that played with both the physical form of the essay as well as the use of lengthy sentences. This required me to thoughtfully use punctuation and creatively connect with the reader in an effort to transplant them into my undkrstadnign of how 'medicine' as a field and concept showed up in my life.
A Good Boy
My thoughts in this essay revolved around revision. When my professor assigned us this writing, we were tasked with using descriptive language to pull the reader into the writing, but we were only allowed two pages to do so. This required me edit and revise my writing over and over agin until each sentenced seemed to serve the broader narrative.
Falling
While I was writing this essay, I was trying to think of what it is like on campus in the rain. The first thing that came to mind was the emptiness. Back home when it rains, the area is anything but empty. Traffic piles up, people forget how to drive and I’m typically surrounded by people while I’m stuck in traffic, but at Wake it’s completely different. Everyone holes-up, orders take out and hangs out in the dorms. So I tried to address this emptiness and relate it to how even though there are few people around, I don’t really feel alone when walking through a storm across the quad.
Should SNAP be Restricted to Healthy Foods?
Throughout my time at Wake Forest, I have completed experiences through which I have been able to develop my communication skills and engage my curious spirit. In my Politics of Food course, I wrote an opinion piece on whether or not SNAP should be restricted to healthy foods. My initial reaction to this prompt was to reject the idea of increased restrictions, but it took research and self-exploration to understand why I landed on this opinion and how best to approach audiences who may not be familiar with this point of contention in food policy. In a concise two-page op-ed, I began by referencing Halloween with the goal of opening a dialogue around moderation and portion sizing and to provide focus to a question that could easily became enveloped by the grandness of the issue. I also argued the point that “healthy” is an objective categorization and difficult to define in a country where what we eat is influenced by our culture, education and a host of other factors. This assignment required that I both consider a contentious issue and that I synthesize research to substantiate my claims and perspective. Creativity in this instance, was vested in forming an opinion and then telling a convincing story that would engage the broadest possible audience.
Democracy in Honk Kong Op-Ed
In a concise five page op-ed, I repurposed a research paper I'd written to be geared toward a more public facing audience. In this op-ed, I discuss the viability of democracy in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong following the return of the region to the central government of China. Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire, and as such, the country mimicked the democratic and common law practices of England. This interest in maintaining democratic practices and freedoms following the return of Hong Kong to mainland China, was what sparked my interest in the topic.This piece felt especially current considering current protest raging on in the region as the people of Hong Kong push back against infringements on their rights.
Net Neutrality Op-Ed
In my WRI 210 course, we were tasked with re-writing any paper we’d written in college in an effort to produce an essay that was geared toward the public. I chose to take a research paper on as my jumping off point. This paper was written for one of my major courses in the Department of Politis and International Affairs, and my topic was net neutrality. The prompt for the original paper encouraged students to pick something of relevance to our internships and write a research paper on that topic. Though my work had not directly related to net neutrality, it was a concept that was being talked about frequently in our company wide meetings. Knowing that net neutrality was a concept that private companies were supporting, made me really start to think about how little I knew about the subject given the effect it could potentially have on my day to day life. Thinking about this and how I could break from the structure used in the initial research paper, was just one example of how I was constantly thinking about telling a story in a way that was both informative and entertaining.
Research and Academic Writing
Democracy in Hong Kong, Research Paper
For my senior thesis, I chose to write about the potential for democracy to flourish in Hong Kong.
After writing in this discourse community for most of college, I’ve developed a better understanding of the kind of language expected of me as a student. Even though I was stating my own claim, it was necessary to substantiate that claim with some form of research from an academic in this field. This need to constantly be referencing academic text was the most distinct difference between writing in public facing genres and writing that's more academic.
Net Neutrality , Research Paper
This paper was inspired by some of the work I encountered while interning in Public Relations.
U.S Foreign Policy
For this assignment we were asked to address three prompts all having to do with the maintenance of power in the United States’ foreign policy. Throughout the midterm, we were meant to display a comprehensive understanding of the text. Knowing this, as well as the typically features underscoring a good essay in politics, I pulled from the course readings extensively while formulating my argument. In my introduction I wrote, “In “Models of International Relations and Foreign Policy,” Holsti writes that classical realist “…view conflict as a natural state of affairs rather than a consequence that can be attributed to historical circumstances…” (14). This definition of realism is one grounded in an inextricable tie to a quest for power in the international system above all else, and in this way, it seems that the above quote most resembles the realist school of thought. Where an idealist would argue that self-interested actors are amongst a misguided minority, realist believe that these characteristics are central to human nature. Where classical realist theory focuses on human nature and how that impacts human decision making, more modern theorist have turned their attention to the international system to explain state behavior (15).” I used to the text to substantiate my main claim that I came back to throughout the midterm. Setting up my paper in this way offered my reader a clear perspective on the kinds of techniques I would use throughout the essay.
How might the high levels of stress/anxiety characterizing millennials as a group be diminished?
For this assignment, the class was tasked with writing a short opinion piece on the topic of stress within the millennial generation. Though this was a more public facing piece, it required that I use research similar to the way I use research in papers directed toward a more academic audience. We were required to pull from no more than four sources, and without exceeding 600 words I worked to answer the prompt. While working on this essay, I couldn’t help but think about the discussions we’ve had in class about writing from within an academic community, and how those discussions could translate more broadly to writing within any group. Though a discourse community that we elect to join is very different from a generation grouping we’re born into, I found many of the characteristics of a discourse community to be present in my understanding of what it means to be a ‘Millennial’. One characteristic that seemed particularly relevant was the idea of ‘silential relations’ whereby there is a sense of things that do not need to be said or spelled out (Becker). Understanding my generation’s relationship to anxiety in this way made it challenging to articulate my thoughts on the subject.