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This paper was a crowning achievement in the worst class I have ever taken at this university and it was only my second semester as a freshman. Political Science 314: American Political Parties was supposed to be an amazing class taught by Professor Hanes Walton Jr. Unfortunately, Professor Walton Jr. spontaneously went on sabbatical before passing away a semester later and this course was taught by a hastily found substitute who had no teaching experience whatsoever. I barely survived the class. Only through my GSI did I even make it through to the end. It was with this paper that I really figured out that writing was something I had the potential to do well. The assignment was very open-ended, a standard research paper that had to only be tangentially related to the class topic. I had read a little bit about electoral fraud, so I decided to explore the topic in more depth. The angle I took was that it was political interests that motivated electoral fraud, rather than economic interests. In terms of significance to my writing development, I think it is safe to say that this was one of the earliest demonstrations of my views on political power, or at least my opinion that political power was something important to keep in mind. I enjoyed writing the paper, especially because I learned more about elections in other countries, but also because I gained more knowledge on how to conduct research. It was a trial and error process, especially because I received minimum guidelines from the instructors about how to go about the paper. Going back into my writing history, I am surprised how much the idea of political power kept popping up throughout the various assignments I had in class.

This paper hails from my History 496 class, my colloquium in history, as well as my other Upper Level Writing Requirement. The class was titled “In the Aftermath of War and Genocide: War and Remembrance in Twentieth Century Germany” and was taught by Professor Kathleen Canning, the chair of the History Department. This class explored one of my other passions in history, the concept of memory and culture. The class dealt with how Germany moved on from the world wars of the 1900s, or how the culture reacted and absorbed the truths that existed. For this specific assignment, I discussed how in the wake of World War I, the German people bought into myths based around the war in order to preserve nationalism amongst German citizens. This paper was on the shorter side, but still allowed me to flesh out my point of view on the myths utilized by the German people, such as the Myth of the War Experience that crafted the war as a sacred event. Again, throughout this piece, I was able to convey that manipulation of the public came from the government, forcing a specific rhetoric in order to minimize loss of support after loss of the war.

I look fondly back on this piece of writing because it came out of one of my favorite classes I’ve taken during college. Surprisingly, it was not even in either of my majors. This assignment was for my English 220 class on Academic Argumentation, taught by Joe Horton during the second semester of my junior year. What I was tasked to do was write an open letter to someone about something. That was the extent of the instruction. I chose to write to Vladimir Putin about the anti-LGBT legislation that was passed in Russia. Part of the reason I wrote was because the 2014 Winter Olympics were simultaneously happening and it provided a social catalyst for me to share my views. Again, political power seems to be creeping up into my writing as I wrote about the overstepping of the legislative body in Russia, the Duma, passing hate legislation that is prejudicial towards a certain subset of society. I think this paper was a strong example of me trying to make a persuasive argument, something I have thought about often during my time on campus, especially early on, when I was sure I was destined for law school.

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