I am Cat, Writing is Watermelon:
How WRIT 150 Has Clarified my Thinking
by Bridget
[Last Name Redacted]
Dear Professor,
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Call me what you will—a deep thinker, a try-hard, or maybe just an “edgy” teen preoccupied with uniqueness—but one of my greatest fears in writing has always been boring my audience. Even before learning what “forwarding a text” meant, my unconscious goal was to expand on the already present conversation (Harris 37). I could only imagine the mind-numbingly dull task of repeatedly reading practically the same essay, so I would always seek to offer something new, exciting, or maybe just a little less wearisome in my writing. I reveled in immersing myself in ideas that weren’t easily parsable; I held the value of an idea in how difficult it was for me to understand or connect. Well, spoiler alert: an idea, or, in Fareed Zakaria’s terms, a piece of writing, does not have to be complex to hold value. Something can be simultaneously intellectually engaging and syntactically clear. While lots of my writing and the thought contained within it is still excessively intricate, the awareness I now possess about clarity and its importance has been essential to my development as a writer and thinker.
From the outset of WRIT 150, I took big risks with my writing. Breaking the five paragraph bounds was easy for me, especially when I had the “fail”-safe grading contract in mind. For both Writing Projects (WP) 1 and 2, instead of taking on subjects that were comfortably digestible and consequently straightforward to write about, I chose ideas that were hulking in comparison to my timeframe and ability; put in terms of the gifs to the side, I was the cat and my ideas were the watermelon. I chose topics that required significant mental energy to merely crack open: for WP1 that was writing about the extended economic metaphor of “banking” education, and for WP2 that was handling the American Dream, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and these two things’ relation to the liberal (and neoliberal) arts. Now, as I look back at these topic choices, I grimace. Not because they weren’t “good”—in fact, I love these subjects and am proud of taking them on—but because of how ambitious they were within their assignment contexts. For these projects, when I was finally able to break the topics open and get to the meat of them, I went on a sort of “idea binge”: I couldn’t get enough of the intellectual fruit they offered, and didn’t know when to stop. The result of these projects, then, looked something like this:
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While this is potentially an overstatement since my projects weren’t unintelligible and did possess some semblance of control, the point is that my ideas and the language used to convey them could have been neater than they were—as Dr. Taylor wrote in her comments, I “played” with ideas “full of potential,” but “the play [got] away from [me] at times.” I wasn’t exercising self-restraint over my juicy ideas. Instead of cutting down my thoughts into neat, digestible sentences for my readers to easily consume, I did the equivalent of throwing my idea-watermelon on the pavement, letting my readers have at it, and walking away.
When I predictably received criticism about syntactical and argumentative clarity from Dr. Taylor, however, I brushed it off; my excuse for ignoring her suggestions was that she just didn’t understand my argument and wasn’t willing to dive into the pavement watermelon herself. I thought that improving clarity would mean having to sacrifice a complex idea for a more basic approach. I equated “clarity” to “boringly obvious,” and I didn’t want to give up my metaphorical idea-watermelon! But the relation I had assumed between coherence and boredom was deeply flawed. See, with this inaccurate perspective of clarity in mind, I took no ownership of the critique. I knew what I meant by a verbose and convoluted sentence, so therefore I assumed that my audience knew, too. If they didn’t have the same interpretation or were confused, then it was their issue and not mine. However, to “write clearly, means first you have to think clearly,” so whether or not I even “knew what I meant” in the first place was deeply in question (Zakaria). And, it was this question I resoundingly learned the answer to when meeting with Dr. Taylor in a private conference.
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After receiving feedback that poked holes in my essay’s evidence (or, I should say, lack thereof), I did as I always had, resolving the criticism as just a misunderstanding of my intricate argument. When I met with Dr. Taylor a couple weeks later though, the subject of my WP2 came up. While we first talked generally about my claims, later on we got into some specific sentences. For one sentence in particular, she asked me what I truly meant by it, since our interpretations were clearly misaligned based on how our conversation was progressing. My answer? I didn’t have one. I read and re-read my sentence, trying to translate it into something more easily communicable, but couldn’t. It dawned on me: I honestly didn’t know what I meant by it. Suddenly, a paradigm shift worthy of Pikachu occurred. Bringing clarity to an argument doesn’t necessarily mean reducing or changing an idea, it just means simplifying the language used to convey the idea. It does not sacrifice value. If anything, it increases value, because when one of writing’s core goals is communication, then an idea can only be as good as the words used to package it.
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From this realization, I learned that bringing clarity to my writing would not only strengthen my audience’s understanding of my project, but my own as well. By breaking my thoughts down into more easily digestible pieces, then I could even further forward the topic and pursue potentially-overlooked specifics. In WP3, I made this clarity my main goal. As per usual, I started with an intrinsically complex subject that took a significant amount of upfront work for me to even begin to tackle. My rough draft was similar to my previous ones—a cracked watermelon with the ideas scattered everywhere. What brought clarity to WP3, however, is that I then took the ideas I had and shaved away parts that weren’t relevant. While previously I did edit and revise my essays, no major changes to the actual thoughts contained were made; comparatively, on WP3 I spent more time thinking and writing throughout the process, and continually updated my approach to the topic. Discarding aspects of a sentence, point, or greater argument was something I was too afraid to do in earlier projects because I didn’t want to sacrifice any of my subject’s dimensions, but when I took this leap in WP3, I reaped only positives.
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My newfound concision helped highlight and enhance main themes and I could focus more thoroughly on what I truly was trying to say. As Zakaria notes, “writing,” or, more specifically for me, rewriting, “forces you to make choices and bring clarity and order to your ideas.” My paper wasn’t suddenly boring or facile—for watermelon is still watermelon!—but now it was something that could be intellectually enjoyed and understood. Although introducing more clarity took an immense amount of sustained, thoughtful effort, it was something that benefited my readers, myself, and even the conversation I was forwarding. Without clarity, a truly great idea will only be weighed down by its extraneous parts and cannot offer the value it is capable of.
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To be sure, there were still parts of my WP3 that weren’t clear. The same can certainly be said for my WP4, this reflection letter, and projects I know I’ll undertake in the future. However, the self-awareness I now possess about my own writing, specifically my clarity, is greatly improved, and is something I feel shines through my compiled works this semester. Furthermore, constantly revising, clarifying, and updating my ideas is something that betters me as a thinker, not just a writer. While from this newfound self-awareness about the importance of clarity I have discovered how much farther there is to go, improving my writing—and therefore my thinking—is an endeavor I am excited to undertake, for I know the watermelon it will yield will be undeniably juicy.
Warm regards,
Bridget |
Works Cited
Harris, Joseph. “Forwarding.” Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts, Utah State University Press, 2006.
Zakaria, Fareed. “Learning to Think.” In Defense of a Liberal Education, W.W. Norton, 2015.
Zakaria, Fareed. “Learning to Think.” In Defense of a Liberal Education, W.W. Norton, 2015.