WP4: New Perspectives
Signing up for WRIT150, I already had a preconceived notion of how this semester would go according to my past experiences with academic writing. The professor would give us a few individual assignments with straightforward prompts, and we’d review writing techniques during class. As for the theme, I figured it meant we would just be writing about our race, gender, and/or sexuality and that most people in the class would probably interpret these the same way. What I did not expect was to be challenged by so many different perspectives from people I assumed would think like me.
I had never gotten the chance to explore my identity and learn about other people’s interpretation of their identity at the same time. Identity to me was just the way people were categorized into society, but I never considered that identity can be tainted by our social conditioning leading us to misinterpret what we believe our identities and others’ identities mean. And I believe writing out my own understanding and analysis of identity helped me discover many connections I wouldn’t have if my ideas had stayed in my head like usual.
I didn’t like most academic writing because the subjects held no personal importance to me and the strict environment I wrote in forcibly diluted my voice to the point where I was more worried about “grammar” and enabling “ethos, pathos, and logos” to get full points rather than actually learning and expressing myself. In this class, it was virtually impossible to not learn anything through writing because I was writing about and analyzing myself. Often when deep in thought my thoughts can be incoherent and jumbled because there are too many aspects to consider. However, I learned that by writing my thoughts, word by word, sentence by sentence, it is a lot easier to understand myself and link different aspects I may have previously believed were unrelated. Seeing my words on a screen or paper without the filter caused by academic pressure is great for a visual learner like me because I was actually able to see my train of thought and reconsider why I thought a certain way about myself. But through this course, I also realized writing for an audience helped enhance my own writing in a different way than I previously thought.
As a private person, writing for an audience — on social media or for a class — has never been my strong suit because I thought the way I wrote was too honest and vulnerable for me to share with anyone else. But the willingness to be vulnerable with others was definitely needed for my writing this semester because I had to consider how other people may be able to relate to my unique experiences. The topics I wrote about were important to me and I needed for the readers to empathize with that so that they could understand who I was. By keeping this mindset while writing, I wrote with more passion and clarity (by actually revising my essays and asking for advice) to make sure I could connect with my audience beyond the surface level. Besides the ambiguous audience of “whoever-decides-to-read-it” on Medium, I was also able to connect with my father over fall break not directly through my writing, but because of it.
The main topic of my writing pieces for this semester was how the effects of my two cultures (African and American) coming together created a sort of “workaholic” identity for me. I’d developed this idea for a while but didn’t realize how far it had gotten me until I spoke to my father face-to-face for the first time in months. He brought up my career and academics as usual but as he talked, it was like I was hearing his speech for the very first time. I was able to connect the things he said to ideas I developed in my essays, and it was a very surreal experience because it felt like everything was starting to make sense even though I didn’t know I was confused about it before.
Because of the writing I did, I gained new clarity of my identity and the conversation with my dad helped me see it. Even though I knew I wasn’t lying, it was still a shock to see how everything I wrote was completely accurate to my real life and why I viewed myself the way I do. It also helped me understand why not all writing should be done in a void, where only you and maybe your teacher will see it. If I had not shown my professor, my classmates, and my friends my work, I probably would’ve never seen all these connections in my identity. Likewise, if I could not see what my classmates and professor were writing, I would’ve never been able to challenge my own concept of identity since I would’ve only been exposed to my limited experience and knowledge.
Identity and diversity take on a new meaning for me because it is a lot more specific and indefinite than I previously believed. I used to think of the theme in broad generalizations and the only argument was about whether they’re valid or invalid. But after taking this class I see it’s not that simple, approaching identity requires careful examination of your environment and media you consume. But even then, two people can grow up in the same environment and identity as the same thing but could interpret those identities in different ways because of the nuances of living in a dehumanized society. For people to state “I identify as ____” or judging other’s appearances isn’t enough to fully grasp how people view themselves unless we engage in discourse with each other and with the world. Through writing and reading others’ writing, I have now formed this new understanding of identity and diversity.
In the future, I won’t be so stubborn as to claim that “writing isn’t for me” even though I still don’t enjoy it as much as other subjects. Writing is just a tool used to convey ideas and I shouldn’t associate it with negative connotations because of past experiences. Overall, the writing I’ve done in this class helped me learn a lot despite my struggles with it so I will approach future writing classes with the hopes that I will gain new perspectives rather than just scraping by so I can get an A. Getting an A while doing the former would still be nice tho.
