WP4: Rewritten
At home, if I pick any direction and drive, it will take no more than fifteen minutes before I run into a farm. My longest-running job was at a blueberry field less than five minutes from my house. I literally live on a nature preserve. These aren’t complaints — it was wonderful to grow up in such a natural environment — these are just pieces of information that exemplify that I grew up in the middle of nowhere. With all this lovely nature came a few features… including but not limited to a lack of diversity, self-actualization, and general critical thinking. Basically, all aspects that form the pillars of this class were not present in my secondary education and the writing I did for it.
While my writing and English teachers have taught some of the most valuable classes I took in high school, it would be a lie to say that any of them used their classrooms to challenge the beliefs put forth by the community I lived in. (Granted, doing so would have been a difficult feat seeing as my 10th grade writing teacher almost got in trouble for simply mentioning the vaccine in class). I was allowed to live my life unchallenged by unique perspectives and unaware of my role in society, and I took the opportunity not knowing any better. I defined myself and felt no need to change or evolve; even as I did, which I recount in my WP1, it was not due to my own initiative as much as it was the work of fate. The change being unintentional caused one glaring issue that didn’t have a chance to rear its face until this class: almost all development I had made to my views was completely superficial. I took letting go of the bigoted views I previously held as equivalent to actively supporting the opposite, socially conscious ones, and it allowed me to live my life thinking I was a good person without having to do any of the actual leg work of being one.
You can imagine then how jarring it was to walk into class for the first time and sit down in front of one of the most socially conscious people I’ve ever met.
I began this class angry. First, because I simply did not want to take WRIT 150, and second because I was woefully unprepared to face my own deficiencies. This, in retrospect, was silly of me considering I signed up for a class titled Identity and Diversity in American Contexts. We did not even get through a single class period before I realized that I was far out of my depth, and at first, I hated the feeling.
Until this point, writing had been a completely functional tool for me; any paper I wrote or prompt I responded to had been more or less a means to an end. Even in my most personal writing, the essays which got me into USC, I wrote introspectively not because I wanted to be introspective but because I wanted to sound introspective to my admissions officer. However, from the first paragraph of our syllabus, you made it clear that I would not survive with my current attitude. You told us all that “this class is a critical thinking, reading, writing, and self-actualization course. YOU are the foundation and center of the work you’ll pursue.” Even knowing that I would have to embrace this fact if I wanted to do well, I attempted to push back against it and not allow myself to change. I was scared of facing the problems with the person I was, but without any other options for WRIT 150 and determination not to get a bad grade, I warily gave my attention.
Fortunately, there was a point, I’m not sure exactly what caused it when I eventually did come to terms with this class and decided to try and engage. Being thousands of miles away from home and in an environment that supported self-growth made me realize that I could actually embrace these ideas instead of just pushing back against them because they showed me that I was not as good of a person as I thought. I am grateful that it was within this environment that I was able to take this journey because of the emphasis placed on understanding our pasts; I was able to not only acknowledge the problems with my roots but appreciate the events in my past that allowed me to make changes in the first place. Instead of labeling my past self as a bad person and trying to forget about them, I analyzed my growth and can understand what events made me who I was, who I am currently, and who I want to be.
All this being said, I still made it incredibly clear in my third post titled I Am Not, I did not see myself as a writer halfway through this class. I also said that it would be a miracle if I did see myself as a writer by the end of the semester, and while I hate to be the bearer of bad news, the miracle did not happen; I still do not consider myself to be a writer. However, I do feel confident saying that my ability to write has been permanently transformed because the writing we have done has changed me fundamentally. I came to USC still subconsciously holding many of the beliefs that I thought I had already shed, and it was this class and the work I did for it that revealed the reality of my beliefs. As the semester progressed the classwork that once felt like pulling teeth became an opportunity; one that I tried to embrace. I became a more distinctive writer and much better at analyzing my sources, but these were functional improvements; what I will truly take away from this class is the awareness of myself and my surroundings that was cultivated through the discussions and writing we did.
Three months ago, I would have done anything within my power to avoid this class, but I sit here now, grateful that I was unable to swap sections. This experience has been difficult, but I have come out on the other side not only as a better writer but a better person with an understanding of the world defined by writing and tolerance.
Work Cited
Addison, Louis. “I Am Not.” Medium, Medium, 19 Sep 2021, https://medium.com/@laddison_7240/post-3-i-am-not-243ff0ca51b6
Dissinger, Daniel. “Fall 2021 Syllabus Writing 150: Writing and Critical Reasoning: Identity and Diversity.” Medium, Writing 150, 17 Aug 2021, https://medium.com/writing-150/fall-syllabus-writing-150-writing-and-critical-reasoning-identity-and-diversity-a8a299c29f08
