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Water and Molasses

            What makes a writer a writer? Is it skill? Success? You have a multi-million dollar book contract with a leading publisher, but I just got an A on a research paper. Are we different? Is there a difference between being a writer and writing? I think there is. When I first came to college I knew that I could write, but I did not identify as a writer. Now, four years later, I claim my identity as such, but the journey to becoming a writer was not always clear. Being a writer and writing are two different categories, although deeply connected. My History and Political Science classes required writing of me, but it was for the most part simply going through the motions. Conversely, my Writing and English courses forced me to look deeper into myself, as well as into the theories of writing. While most of my writing may come off as the same, the stringing together of words and sentences meant to get a specific point across, by embracing my identity as a writer, I can explore the minute differences in method and purpose, as well as the bleeding of applicable skills from assignment to assignment. Every writing assignment is inherently unique, asking different questions, requiring different modes of thinking, or utilizing different resources, but the navigation remains the same. That process of navigating writing is comparable to swimming and Raymond McDaniel claims “writing is the act of failing to drown, but being a writer means knowing how to swim.” But if the water is equal to the words, is all writing equal to water?

 

            If we are to elaborate on this metaphor in a constructive way, let us suppose that the writing I completed for my Writing and English classes is water.  On the other hand, the writing for my History and Political Science classes is some other substance, molasses. Each class has its own requirements and goals, accomplished through specific assignments, or pools. In addition to the variance in substance (water vs. molasses), these pools also vary in size, depth, and viscosity, representing various lengths, styles, and format. It was in my Writing and English courses that I learned how to write, how to swim. Through instruction, the water was made smooth and navigable, very conducive to travel and exploration. While the pools of molasses, or my History and Political Science classes, were more difficult to navigate, I was able to utilize the swimming lessons from the water to not only survive, but also excel. These writing skills were transferable from my Writing and English classes to my History and Political Science classes, leading me to become a writer, not simply someone writing.

 

            Growing up, I had always considered myself a good writer. Whether that was because of the constant support from my mother or because I had been told that in third grade and it had stuck, I never lacked for confidence in my writing. In reflection, I now realize I had only mastered the art of writing what they wanted. The five-paragraph essay format that permeates the secondary school curriculum was an effectual “plug and chug” for me, not requiring thought of any sort. I cannot overstate the formulaic nature of my writing in high school. Instead of swimming, I was simply failing to drown. Little did I know that the self-perception of greatness I had become so accustomed to would soon be taken down a few pegs by the academic advancement I was working towards.

 

            The summer before my freshman year of college I received an email from the University with instructions on how to complete the Directed Self-Placement Essay. The goal of the essay was to help me decide which English class to enroll in during my first year. I distinctly remember panicking about the essay because I felt I did not know how to write at a college level. I knew deep down that the five-paragraph essay format was not going to work with this. I did a fair amount of basic Google searches that are probably more embarrassing than what I actually ended up writing (“how to write for college”, “writing in college”, “college writing help”), but inevitably I managed to do what I had always done, I put words on paper. The quality of these words? Lacking. It was as if just by introducing the concept of college, everything I had learned in high school was rendered ineffectual. Take for instance the first half of the first paragraph:

 

When Brian Christian decided to tackle the Turing Test, he was confident in himself and wanted to defend humanity from the onslaught of artificial intelligence. Utilizing his participation in the competition, he attempts to discover what exactly it means to be human. I believe that he comes closest to accurately depicting that when he describes humanity as being “about more than simply showing up.” Throughout the article, Christian relates that more than spontaneity is required to be human.[1]

 

This is how I began my essay, by jumping straight into my argument. No introductory paragraph, no nothing. In college I learned that the thesis statement traditionally goes as one of the last sentences of the first paragraph, but in high school, the thesis statement was expected to be one of the first sentences. In the second sentence, I immediately notice a tense error, easily catchable if I had only reread my essay, but at this point in my writer’s journey, I was a “one and done” kind of writer, staunchly refusing to revisit my papers. Finally, in the third sentence, in perhaps the most egregious and embarrassing error of them all, I do not offer an in-text citation for a quote from the assigned reading. Four years later I am astonished and ashamed that this paper is something I turned in to my future university. The paper does not get much better as it goes on, existing only to offer my future professors guidance on which parts of writing I needed help with: all of them. I was entering a new pool and I needed to learn how to navigate these strange new waters.

 

            And so I entered college, confident in my writing ability without really any cause to be, but also slowly realizing how little I truly knew. I was a first year member of the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, a Michigan Learning Community that focuses on writing and the arts, specifically how they can be brought together. Within the program, I took my First Year Writing Requirement, LHSP 125. This was to be the first of the classes outside of my majors, and one of the most formative classes for the writing I was to do over the next four years. According to the syllabus, “to be a good writer, you must also be a good reader. How better to understand introductory paragraphs, transitions, or uses of metaphor than to look at successful models and figure out how they did it? In this class, we will be reading not only for content (what the writer is saying) but also for technique (how the writer is saying it), and we will examine how the “what” and the “how” are linked.”[2] As far as classes go, this one had the very intent of making me a better writer, in fact all of the assignments and conversations were geared around that.

 

            My second semester at Michigan, I was faced with my first writing challenge. I decided to take a 300-level course in Political Science and with it came an extensive research paper assignment, at least large to me at the time. I do not know if it is simply because the class was an upper level class or because the class was truly awfully taught by a professor the GSIs could not even stand, but there was no education for me on how to write a research paper. A research guide posted to the class CTools page pointed me to the library, Google Scholar, or my GSI. With no clear reflection, I thought about what I had learned up to that point. “To be a good writer, you must also be a good reader.” There was the answer, not in the class the paper was for, but in the course I had just finished, LHSP 125. To put it colloquially, I hit the stacks. I decided to write on electoral fraud, a topic I found interesting at a time when my first presidential election vote was steadily approaching. There was a fair amount of scholarship on the topic, although not much of it was about the United States. Towards the end of the piece, I allude to the amount of research I accomplished:

 

Despite obvious differences, there exists an unusual amount common ground between scholars on both sides of this argument, due to the fact that there is only a central disagreement about which type of fraud more frequently. The large majority of scholars agree that “the study of electoral fraud is an ideal way to shed light on whether political behavior is shaped more by sociological factors or by institutional arrangements” (Molina and Lehoucq 1999, 199). Another area where scholars agree is that “the frequent undermining of free and fair… suggest[s] that sometimes adopting new democratic institutions is not enough” (Ziblatt 2009, 1). Finally, even if they could not agree on anything else, political scientists can agree on the simple fact that electoral fraud is a serious problem in the world and poses a problem to fledgling and developing democracies that cannot be ignored.[3]

 

I was obviously still in need of more training in the written word, as evidenced by the presence of similar sentence structures throughout this relatively short excerpt, but I was attempting the replication aspect of what I learned in LHSP 125. Quotes are supposed to be integrated into sentences in arguments, so this was an attempt to do so. In reflection, this experience raised some red flags for me. Why was I not taught how to write in my Political Science class? Was I expected to have learned everything I needed to know already? Was it possible that I was learning without realizing it?

 

            At some point during my freshman year I decided that writing was something I liked to do and something I wanted to pursue in a more academic setting. I applied to be a member of the Minor in Writing program through the Sweetland Center for Writing. Once accepted the first thing for me to do was take the Gateway Course, WRITING 220. One of the best classes I have ever taken at this University, the course taught me not only how to write more effectively, but how to think. In addition, for the first time I was given the opportunity to reflect on my writing and myself. According to the LSA Course Guide: “In this course, students…will investigate why we write, how we write, and how writing shapes us — intellectually, emotionally, and cognitively. Through peer review, instructor feedback…and other forms of collaboration, students will develop a shared vocabulary for reflecting on their own writing and cultivating a reflective practice that will provide a basis for assessing their growth as a writer.”[4] One of the strongest parts of the class was the forced reflection, both on my own writing, as well as others. The critical thinking that was required of myself led me to being able to offer helpful analysis and critiques to my peers, both in my Writing and English classes, but also in my History and Political Science ones. For one assignment in particular, I reflected on what I went through during the process. The task was to answer the question of “Why I Write,” similar to the pieces by George Orwell and Joan Didion. In the aftermath, I was able to examine some hard truths about my process, as well as myself:

 

Why I Write was one of the hardest pieces I have ever had to write. On the surface it seems so simple, but as soon as you devote some time to thinking about it, you realize the wading pool has turned into the ocean. I initially approached the assignment as a sort of introspective, a chance to really look inside myself and discover my motivations for writing. The result was… interesting, to say the least. I had started by observing my past and wondering how it affected my present, but after more and more conversations with others, I began to feel like I had not had a strikingly different upbringing than some of my peers. That being said, I tried to salvage what I could, while simultaneously trying to go in a different direction. That different direction proved to be more of a challenge, but one that was infinitely more rewarding. Instead of being a look at what led to me writing, it focused on actually why I write, as in why I choose to do it and what it does for me. What I ended up surprised me with its frankness and honesty. I put my hands on the keyboard and out came truths. I came to realize things I didn’t know about myself.[5]

 

This analysis of myself was helpful as I was beginning the study of writing theory, but it also translated into how I approached constructive criticism of others. Of course I was not as brutally honest with others as I was with myself, but I was able to give feedback in all of my classes based on the self-realizations I came to in WRITING 220. In one of my peer reviews I noted how a colleague could utilize other disciplines to expand her points on healthcare:

In class, you mentioned that you wanted to bring the paper out of a mainly Political Science realm and into a more interdisciplinary area. I believe that can be achieved. There are elements of various other disciplines that could be brought in:

 

  • History: Definitely take a look at health care through the years, how it was created, what changes it has gone through and why. This will add a fuller picture of the system as a whole.

  • Economics: You had a little bit of this and I thought it was great. You could bring in more numbers directly tying health care to the economy. It might be a good idea to talk about ObamaCare and the split views of it.

  • American Culture: One possibility here is to talk specifically about how health care affects different realms of society, such as different classes or social groups.

  • Philosophy: It might be a good idea to insert more of your own opinion into the piece. I know you definitely took a stance, but inserting personal thoughts and views could contribute to the paper.[6]

 

I then turned around and utilized the same skills in my HISTORY 322 class on the Origins of Nazism, providing feedback to my peer on her take-home final exam:

 

I really enjoyed your paper, but I think that it makes a giant leap in the fundamentals. Your thesis claims that Hitler’s understanding of the East led to the Holocaust, but I don’t think you prove that in your paper. I’m not saying it’s not provable, just that you are not there yet in your paper. My overall advice to you is to tie your paragraphs back to your thesis, maybe just in one sentence at the end of each. Finally, you seem to equate the East, Russians, and Jews as the same, but don’t really talk about treatment toward the Jews that much. If that equality is something you believe, talk about it.[7]

 

It was the comfort I had with my own writing and self-criticism that allowed me to be more constructively critical of others. I knew how to get the writing where it needed to go, so why not help others?

 

            College for me was about writing, but it was more about becoming a writer. I can still go through the motions like I did in high school, but I can also delve deeper into the material I engage with to produce a solid block of analytical prose. It may have taken some time, but now I can confidently swim through water or molasses, no matter how deep the pool is. The base skills are mine and I can adapt them at will. A writer. Writing.

 

 

 

 

[1] Andrew Loeb “Turing Tables” 29 May 2011.

 

[2] Carol Tell “The Rest is the Madness of Art” LHSP 125, Fall 2011.

 

[3] Andrew Loeb “Electoral Fraud: The Purposes and Motivations” 22 April 2012.

 

[4] LSA Course Guide, WRITING 220.

 

[5] Andrew Loeb “Process Reflection for ‘Why I Write’” WRITING 220, 12 December 2012

 

[6] Andrew Loeb “Thoughts on Sami’s Re-Purposed Paper” WRITING 220, 25 October 2012

 

[7] Andrew Loeb “Anne Morris Final” HISTORY 322, 13 April 2013

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