A WRITER'S EVOLUTION
My mother once told me that I was considered a good kid during elementary school, except for one thing—my inability to keep quiet when a teacher asked a question. My kindergarten French class went something like this every day: the teacher would ask the class a question like “what is the French word for white?” The very moment I heard the last word of her question, I’d blurt out “BLANC!” It profoundly offended my teachers, who wanted to make sure that classes were run as equitably as possible. Naturally, they complained to my mother during parent-teacher conferences but only recently did she explain to me that this had all occurred. The way she responded to the teachers was what surprised me most. She told them that they shouldn’t be so upset, and that they should relax. She never reprimanded me for it and needless to say, she ended up pulling me out of that school system soon afterwards to go someplace where the environment wasn’t as stifling.
I can’t defend my actions as a kindergartener aside from claiming youth as my transgression. My mother, on the other hand, had her reasons. The more I consider her parenting style, the more I realize that she is an exceedingly clever woman. When she decided not to punish me for speaking out in class, she knew that she was helping her daughter grow in such a way that she would not be afraid to speak out. Fortunately, she also taught me some tact when it comes to speaking in public, but she made it clear that I should never feel ashamed for having opinions and speaking to them.
I later learned that it is much more effective for me to voice my opinions via writing than it is in spoken word. Writing
can be drafted, edited, and re-edited before actually submitting it. Speaking is oftentimes spontaneous and it’s
difficult to avoid the occasional slip of the tongue that can come back to haunt us.I also recognize that writing has a
certain permanency that comes with its tangibility, so I ensure that my written work is the best representation of my
thoughts and opinions. The time and practice that I have put into writing has helped me gain an understanding of
what I deem as an exemplary representation of what I believe. As is often the case with college students, the university environment developed my writing more than ever before. My Academic Argumentation class was a wake up call, and I do not say that lightly. I learned the importance of preciseness, proper usage of other authors’ work, and argumentation based upon facts and logic. Following the generic five-paragraph format no longer meant a good piece of writing. This was also when I realized that my writing could be used for so much more than voicing my opinions. Instead, it could contain significance far beyond myself. By doing research and educating myself, I had the opportunity to provide evidence-based suggestions that I thought could improve the human condition. I believe that it is extremely important that the human race constantly seek to progress, for what would be the point of our research, our politics, or our innovations if we didn’t try to better our world?
After my freshman year of college, I visited our nation’s capitol with my mother. I told her that it was crucial that I see the Jefferson memorial, so I dragged her down to the national mall to see it the very first day that we were there. Thomas Jefferson became my favorite U.S. president when I discovered that not only was he a founding father, but he physically penned the Declaration of Independence. He used his written words and intellect to advocate for a radical change, and that his words had so much power astounded me. As I entered the rotunda of the Jefferson memorial, I felt a chill run down my spine. In the center of the rotunda was a large bronze statue of Jefferson, who stood tall and his expression was permanently resolute. Surrounding Jefferson are several panels that contain inscriptions from his writing. One panel specifically caught my eye and it had the following:
"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more
developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
As I looked at the panel, I reflected on two things. First, I liked Jefferson even more after reading that. Second, I decided that I would try to remember this for every future endeavor, especially my writing.
In the Academic Argumentation class, I was assigned with the task of providing recommendations to the U.S. government on how to modify its overcrowded prison system. One of the suggestions that I provided was that convicts of “petty crime, drug usage, and DUI should be put in rehabilitation centers or other alternative forms of correction”. The idea was that this would cut costs for the state and that it would be the ethically sound decision. At this point I began to synthesize my opinions around broader societal issues rather than focusing on problems that directly related to my life.
Throughout the rest of my college career, my writing took many twists and turns, bouncing from subject to subject. The topics for my compositions knew no bounds. What did remain consistent was my desire to provide the best ideas that I could to solve very specific, yet relevant modern day issues. I created pieces that made suggestions for increasing our general happiness in the U.S., for decreasing the homicide rate in Brazil, for correctly measuring corruption from country to country, and for ways to improve the state of the European economy. It may sound like a very random collection of topics, but I enjoy challenging myself to learn new things and view the world from different perspectives from my own. I believe that that is what helps me to become a well-rounded person. A professor that I admire once told me that the wisest man or woman knows that he or she does not know everything that there is to know in the world. That is what I consider to be my mantra and it’s what drives me to seek out new knowledge and form opinions on topics that I’d never even considered before.
A key passion of mine grew to be the role of women across the globe, both in developing and developed economies. When I discussed the position of women in the U.S. workforce in a Pecha Kucha presentation for a Strategy class, I asked, “What can we do to improve the current economic situation we’re in?” I then responded with “I’m going to suggest that the solution can come from somewhere unexpected—women.” The argument involved promoting family-friendly policies in the workforce, which would in turn create openings within the economy for services that substituted for activities associated with running a household. As I am an economics major, I try to support my moral arguments with economic evidence as well.
When I discussed women in the developing world, I suggested that women could be a part of the solution to guide developing countries through the process to becoming developed countries:
“The size and competitiveness of an economy can partly be explained not only by how many men complete schooling, but also by how many women complete secondary education (Levine et al., 2009). An economy cannot work to its full capacity without engaging the skills of both genders.”
Here again, I made a claim that it was ethically right to expand the rights and opportunities of women worldwide but that there were very practical reasons behind it as well. I maintained that empowering women, whether they resided in developed or developing countries, is crucial to improving the general standard of living for all.
In the same vein, once I do feel that I’m expert enough to understand the complexity of a subject, I like to discuss
my opinion with others. This is why writing comes handy. Writing can be mass distributed and it can be mass consumed, especially in this day and age. To be more
specific, new media writing has a particular place in my heart. Not only is it easier to digest, it is also an immediate and almost raw form of communication. I find this kind of writing to be much more organic than the carefully calculated compositions that I write for classes. For example, the posts that I’ve written for the Capstone Course have had a stream of consciousness feel, which is so much more connected to how I think than my formal writing is. The posts are unfiltered and they’re true to my opinions. In an essay for my Gateway course for the writing minor, I wrote that blogging is “similar to a candid picture, capturing a specific point in time without warning…a blog captures an author’s style at one precise moment.” That is the beauty that I find in blogging—it’s instantaneous and it is genuine. In a recent blog post, I took liberty with the medium to express my opinion on gender:
"Blogging is similar to a candid picture, capturing a specific point in time without warning"
“Who I am as a writer isn’t defined by my major or what I am, exactly like how I believe a woman isn’t defined by her gender. In the end, I believe that a woman CAN have it all, but sometimes to do that she just needs to stick it to the man (no pun intended).”
I ultimately return to the original reason that I want to write—to find ways to solve modern day issues and facilitate progress. I don’t claim that I know what it is that we need to do to continue to advance, but I know that I can contribute to the discourse that exists. My current project is a somewhat more creative endeavor that takes the lives and opinions of the seven women that I live with to observe and respond to the pressures that young women face today. So, not only am I providing my own voice, but I am also hoping to give a big voice to a small group of intelligent and opinionated women. It is my dream to eventually publish a significant piece of work that adds to the large body of writing that currently exists, whether that is in the form of a news article, research paper, or novel. So, it looks like that is the next very large step in my writer’s evolution.
RE-PURPOSING PROJECT
This project was created for the Gateway Course to the Minor in Writing program at the University of Michigan. The goal was to take an original piece from another class and re-purpose it into something new. Below is the re-purposed version of this essay that was originally created for a course on macroeconomics.
Writing has always been a large part of my life, both inside and outside of academics. It is a passion that has remained constant throughout my life and I am constantly seeking to find ways to improve it. Near the end of my sophomore year, I applied for the Minor in Writing program and was accepted for the following fall semester. The following two samples were created specifically for the program. The first piece describes my personal evolution as a writer and the second is a sample from my introduction course to the minor.