Sarah Schuman

Writing can be so damn hard. I can always anticipate the sense of dread that will fill my gut and pulse in my head when I see a professor pull a writing assignment out of their book bag. Before I see the expectations, word count, and purpose for the assignment, I am already remembering my schedule and trying to determine how much time I can allot for brainstorming and if I’ll be able to make a thorough outline. Admittedly, the most embarrassing part of that moment is that I likely have already decided how successful the outcome of this assignment will be without even beginning it.

I get especially self-involved, wrapped up in my own worries and thoughts with every academic assignment. When I overthink the assignment instead of just writing, the writing process feels like a chore and my product is a reflection of that. This year, between the Writing 420 Capstone course and my English 325 creative nonfiction class, I’ve been challenged in ways different from the rest of my college experience. In many ways, the way I have been writing for years is being turned on its head. These challenges have forced me to take a step back, get out of my head, and look at my writing from an outside, highly critical position. I’m experimenting with taking myself out of the equation and seeing how that really changes my writing. I recognize how personal writing can be and how contradictory it seems to take an objective stance. However, like my writing teachers have explained, when a writer looks at their work as if it was completed by someone else, they are able to see aspects of their writing that felt inherent but can actually be changed or improved upon that. To most effectively achieve that in this evolutionary writing essay, I’m going to approach analyzing my past work not as Sarah, but as an unbiased outside observer. 

Question #1: Has Sarah challenged herself to break established writing patterns?

All first-year LSA students are required to complete the Directed Self-Placement for Writing, or DSP. The DSP is intended to help freshmen determine how comfortable they are with college writing and to guide them in making an informed decision about which first-year writing course to take. Sarah’s freshman year, the topic of the DSP was the concept of “groupthink.” She made the argument that the best ideas flourish when people with varying perspectives on an issue are brought together. Sarah’s essay effectively lines up with the expectations of typical non-creative university writing assignments. She does not stray far from the argumentative essay structure taught somewhat uniformly in high school. For example, she has a strong thesis and topic sentences that directly support the thesis. She also effectively integrates relevant quotes as evidence. However, the voice that she develops through further university writing assignments feels underdeveloped in this piece. Her concluding paragraph states:

The ways that different perspectives can be brought together vary. However, this dissent is necessary to produce fresh ideas. Charles Nemeth, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, asserted, “dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints.” Working with people you may know well in familiar conditions may be comfortable, but it won’t be as productive.

A couple of aspects of the above paragraph work well. Sarah clearly integrates the quotation into her argument. Also, the evidence she presents is relevant to her overall argument. Still, it could have been a fitting place for Sarah to incorporate some personal experience, thus displaying a more sophisticated voice. However, she focused on keeping her conclusion as consistent with the argument as possible. That habit extended to one of Sarah’s assignments for the Writing Minor.

Sarah’s first major assignment for the Writing Minor Gateway Course was the “Why I Write” project. This project challenged students to consider why they decided to apply to the Minor in Writing program in the first place by creatively examining why they write. Sarah used presentation software “Prezi” to create a presentation document that mimicked a Twitter user homepage called “@ContemplativeCollegeWriter.” The main goal of her project was to analyze where, when, for whom, for what, and how she wrote in the past and present. Interestingly enough, in exploring her purpose for writing, she stuck to the writing conventions she was most comfortable with. Sarah tends to use longer sentence structures. For instance, her “About Me,” section says: “I’m a methodical but honest writer seeking to rediscover the joy that writing for myself once brought me; while the process may require me to be a bit selfish, I will maintain the connections I build through writing for others.” This sentence, while important, has too many words that muddle the takeaways. If she were to break the sentence up into two, each argument could have come across more clearly.

Outside of grammatical conventions, Sarah doesn't stray far from some of the analytical conventions commonly found in other pieces in which she analyzes her writing. She claims that she wants to begin writing for “herself” again while still maintaining her connections with others, but does not clearly define the difference between writing for oneself and for others. If Sarah were to break the patterned structure of introduction of evidence, evidence, analysis, and so on, she could expand upon what she really means by her claims.

Question #2: Has Sarah come to understand what revision really means?

For the final assignment of her Communication Studies Upper-Level Writing course, “Persuasion, Communication and Campaigns,” Sarah chose a brand and analyzed one of that brand’s recent campaigns. She chose the GoldieBlox toy company, which introduced alternative, more empowering toys and dolls for girls with the goal of getting them building. She utilized communications psychology theories to determine the success of the campaign according to best practices of communication campaigns. Through a literature review and an analysis of the campaign, she determined that “the campaign seamlessly tapped into existing schemas about toys for girls, appealed to their potential for efficacy, and strategically framed their campaign ideas to change people’s perceptions of what an engineer is and can be.”

This 16-page paper was the longest paper Sarah had ever written. She learned how psychological theories could be explained and utilized as evidence. Through the writing process for this paper, she learned how to brainstorm, organize, and execute a lengthy literature and analysis-based piece. However, Sarah struggled with the revision process. She brought her rough draft to her graduate student instructor and made all of the changes suggested. Sarah was intimidated by the length of the paper, though, and didn't dedicate enough time to making changes beyond those that were cosmetic, grammatical, or simple argument adjustments.

In her first major essay assignment for English 325, Creative Nonfiction, however, Sarah was challenged to face an intensive revision process head on. This essay was initially a portrait piece written in the style of “What They Don’t Tell You About…..” She brought her rough draft, “What They Don’t Tell You About Being Impatient,” into her instructor’s office hours. He suggested she re-think her theme and find a greater relevance of the topic outside of herself. This was really the first time Sarah took a step away from her essay and read it as if a stranger were reading it. She initially outlined her theme and the big-picture of her essay by saying:

What they don't tell you about being impatient is the anticipation, the anxiety, and the challenges of living in the present. But what is almost more often left out of the conversation surrounding impatience is the sense of adventure, a sense of being motivated by the excitement of doing and seeing things.

Then, Sarah changed her topic to being type-A and was able to connect her self-exploration to the way in which this quality comes to head with herself and others:

I am so type-A that often, I’m rushing too much to even think about considering myself type-A. I spend so much of my time anticipating things that are to come that I easily lose sight of what is happening currently. My impatience, my sense of organization, my regular anxiety, and my highly disciplined personality often come to head with those closest to me.  Equally as often, I can make myself crazy.

This revision went beyond grammar, organization, or tone. It forced Sarah to rethink her ideas and purposes for writing.

Question #3: Has Sarah progressed in finding personal purpose for writing, outside of meeting and exceeding the criteria of an instructor?

Evidence of Sarah’s development in finding personal purpose for writing can be found by comparing one of her works from first semester junior year to one from second semester junior year. A blog article she read in her Writing 220 gateway course inspired a blog post titled, “The Scarecrow and Digital Rhetoric.” The article offered a definition and examples of digital rhetoric. She was asked to use the article’s definition of digital rhetoric to find an applicable example that especially interested her. Her blog post was about the Chipotle Scarecrow campaign. Through the use of a game, a short film, and facts, Chipotle aims to educate people about healthy alternatives to processed food, animal confinement, and the use of toxic pesticides in our food supply. The film uses scarecrows as symbols of those interested in healthy and safe food production methods and industrial giant “Crow Foods” as a symbol of the corporations exploiting animal and human safety to make money in their food production. In this dystopian fantasy world, the scarecrow seeks to provide an alternative to these unsustainable ways of processing food (and offers Chipotle as a leader of that movement).

Sarah argued that through the use of a game, a short film, and surprising/upsetting facts, Chipotle offers an effective, affective, and interactive human-interest message. Further, she made the claim that because Chipotle had a clear exigence in their campaign they had the potential to influence significant social change. Sarah’s passion for the topic could have come through more strongly. For example, she could have shared a personal experience that illustrates how she had been affected by processed foods or the use of toxic pesticides in our food supply. She also could have incorporated more pieces of strong, supportive evidence. She caters to her professors requests for clear explanation and analysis, but in doing so, lacks in her opinion about the topic.

In contrast, below, the email Sarah sent to her parents at the end of her study abroad experience. This wasn't an assignment for her, rather, the words spilled out and the sincerity of her words is obvious. 

This email doesn't illustrate one specific purpose for Sarah writing it. She wrote it out of love, out of gratitude, and to express in writing what she had been feeling during a transformative experience. The tone is honest, and the content feels natural.

To conclude, approaching Sarah’s writing through an objective lens will benefit her writing outcomes in the long run. In her capstone project, in which she will be analyzing the transformative potential hidden in liminal spaces, Sarah will get the most perspective out of her experiences when she looks at them from an outsider’s perspective. She may notice aspects of her own experiences that she didn't notice as they actually happened. These realizations could lead to some especially poignant, interesting conclusions about transitions and liminal spaces. When Sarah challenges herself to push her writing past its typical limits and allows herself to appreciate the unique quality, the outcome is reflected in her writing.