My Existential English Crisis: a walk through
I feel that my English education was what one might consider normal for most of my learning career. The only time I would say it deviated from the “normal” path was my junior and senior years of high school. During those years I had the most amazing teacher who pushed me to think about reading and writing in a whole new way. She helped me develop the skills and showed me techniques that I still lean on today (not that it was that long ago, but it fits the aesthetic). Because of this teacher and her classes, I felt like I had a somewhat advanced definition of writing and rhetoric going into college. I was wrong. Very wrong.
Original Mind Map
One of the first activities we did in class was to make a mind map and a personal definition of writing. I used words like Self Expression, Reflection and Communication. Below is what my mind map looked like, in all its purple and blue glory.
The main things I focused on in my mind map were the things that I had been told to focus on for school projects and papers in the past. Many of these things therefore connect back to formal writing and a few of these ideas I stole from the time I have spent journaling. Under each of the main terms I added to the mind map I put a reasoning. I was purposely vague during most of these reasonings because I didn’t really know what to say. I had a broad idea of why they were important, but I didn’t know of explicit reasons. This was also the beginning of the quarter and I wasn’t sure what Megan (my current teacher) wanted from the mind maps or what we were going to do with them in the future (I assumed we would tie it back into something later in the quarter).
Original Definition
My original definition of writing was: Writing is a form of communication that effectively conveys a message. It is self-reflection that reflects on a person’s past experiences, ideas and how they view the world. When I was writing my definition the only thing I was really focusing on was using as many of my key terms as possible, which is a very backwards way of thinking about this activity. Instead of actually trying to write a working definition and making a mind map based on that, I wrote a definition that fit with the mind map I had already created. I do think that the definition is alright though, and it holds some good ideas. I don’t think its the most cohesive however and I also don’t think that the ideas were super well thought out.
Projects and Class Work
Over the course of this quarter I have read many a text, written many a reflection and typed many an essay. There were a few that stood out more than the rest though. This could be either because it was extra interesting, made me think in a new way, or just stood out amongst the other information. One text that stood out to me in particular was James Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics” (WAW 274). In this text Gee talks about Discourse Communities, what they are, who is in them, and how they function. I found it really interesting to learn about this topic because I had never been exposed to it. When the text was assigned I was also talking about similar topics in my other classes and it was helpful to be able to connect this idea to other similar ideas to understand them better.
Throughout the class I have also gotten to work with multiple new types of projects and ways of establishing writing. One of my favorites was Project #2, our Discourse Community Ethnography (can you see a theme here?). I found this project very fulfilling in a “I want to die” sort of way. During much of the project I was lost on what direction to take it and what to talk about. For some background, a Discourse Community Ethnography is a paper analyzing data collected from a Discourse Community to make a noteworthy claim. For my Discourse Community I chose 14 East Magazine, an online magazine based out of Chicago run by students at DePaul. The magazine focuses on long form publications with an emphasis on data and multimedia contribution.
For my data collection needed for the paper I interviewed two students on the staff at 14 East and stalked them on their social media as well as their website. After all of this I learned that they try to put a large focus on creating a safe and inviting learning environment. I found this to be really interesting and used it as a focus for my paper. This is where the “I want to die” feelings started. The writing process for this paper seemed much harder than any other paper I had written up to that point. I had so many different directions I wanted to take the paper and so many things I wanted to talk about. It was really difficult to cut down what I wanted to say so the paper was both concise but still meaningful. Because of all these struggles, the paper was very fulfilling to finally turn in.
Final Mind Map
One of the last things we did in class was create a mind map of our current definition of writing. This final mind map of mine highlighted words such as Purpose, Rhetoric, and Feedback.
Many of the words on this mind map also show up on my first mind map, such as Reflection, Convey a message, and Past Experiences. I think this is important to note because even though many of my ideas of writing have changed, I was on the right track to begin with and many of my original ideas have tied into what we learned in class. Of course there are plenty of new words as well. These are words that we learned and talked about in class such as Genre, Discourse and Discourse Community, and Multi-Modal. I included these words specifically because they were words and ideas that I feel I regularly use and think back on when composing any kind of writing, inside and outside of the classroom. That was a large overall topic during the quarter as well, that writing happens all day everyday, in formal and informal settings, in multiple genres, throughout multiple Discourse communities and about any topic you could think of.
Final Definition
To go along with my final mind map I also wrote a final Definition of writing. My final definition is: Writing is conveying a message through the use of one or more genre. Getting feedback and doing revision to make sure it is effective in using rhetoric to get the purpose across to the intended audience.
When comparing and contrasting this to my first definition, there are some obvious differences in word choice. My first definition focuses on the personal aspects of actually writing the piece, whereas my final definition is a more well rounded definition discussing the writing, revision, and presentation of the piece as well as talking about the audience that will be reading the piece. The similarities are that both pieces discuss conveying a message and getting an intended point across to an audience.
Throughout this class I have been pushed to look and think about writing in new ways. Because of this the way I go about writing and creating has changed. Before taking this class I would just sit down and write out a paper not really taking the time to fully think out my ideas and mostly focusing on getting to the page count needed as well as covering the topics required. After taking this class and learning about how expansive writing really is I have found myself taking more pride in my work and making sure I fully understand a topic and prompt before beginning writing. I have also found myself taking more time for revisions and making larger revisions. Examples of this would be cutting out entire paragraphs, rewriting entire sections, changing the main point/ revising the main point, ect. The most important thing I have learned this quarter would be that everything can be considered writing and as long as it is meaningful to you then it is effective. This isn’t something that was explicitly talked about in class but more something that I have figured out myself both in and outside of the classroom. This idea is something I know I will carry with me for the rest of my college career.
