Scholarly Development
Entering college above the level of the ordinary student,—as I perceived myself— I never imagined to what extent my writing would evolve and mature in my four years of study. I present now five projects to serve as a gauge of my growth as an academic and writer. My first paper displays an ambitious scholar unequipped for strong literary study. “Confusing the Critics” shows me beginning to grasp the methods and language of academia. A creative work, Jump commemorates my foray into an untested literary medium. “Conspicuous Clumsiness” demonstrates me doing hands-on analysis and breaking down of a text. Finally, “The Privilege of Heterosexuality and its Consequences” shows me using these skills I have amalgamated in a discipline in which I had little background knowledge. Each of these works illustrates the steps forward I have made as a writer and scholar.
In choosing works to comment on, I knew immediately which I would first examine. I studied Shakespeare in performance spring term my first year, and Dr. Ottenhoff convinced me to take the travel class upper-level. Overly ambitious, I realized that with an upper-level literature class behind me, I would have four of the nine courses required for my major already completed. The only first-year student in the class, I enjoyed the position of having few expectations but much to add in discussions. Writing a final paper, however, offered much greater of a challenge. The result was eleven pages of writing I am surprised I did not receive back crumpled into a ball.
The paper theorized that Shakespeare’s plays have myriads of possible interpretation. It then intensely analyzed the 1999 film A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with some comparison a 1940s or 50s film version and a performance I saw in London (none of which, sadly, appear in the bibliography). I travel from scene to scene in these movies, noting how the different directors characterized the faerie folk and humans, at times bringing in scraps of quotes from various critics available at the public library in Livonia. Little of the paper is professional or scholarly, in spite of some intense analysis.
This work characterizes me as a young student. I was filled with drive and ambition, even possibly had an idea about key facets of literature, but I lacked the tools with which to truly dissect a written work. I remember spending hours watching and re-watching the films and pouring over the few works I had available, trying to scratch together something that made sense. Had I the vocabulary or background to break down the text, read it in light of something else or discuss its social and historical significance, it would read very differently. Lacking these, I could only think about it in more basic terms.
This early in my academic career I was shaping my prowess with the English language. Skimming quickly over the paper, I see a number of powerful words and phrases. While I did not yet realize the importance of having these strong words as active verbs, I attempted to use vibrant language. This natural gravitation toward well-chosen words appears to me a great advantage.
In my future papers, I hope to see my ambition and thoroughness combine with the skills of scholar. My writing will hopefully hone itself lean and powerful. As pathetic as this early attempt at scholarship appears, it serves as an omen to potential success.
Jump, my creative portfolio entry, is good example of my writing throughout college. As I mentioned before, the play garnered many accolades from faculty members and friends. At times, I touch on reality—tiny bits of truth. The work, however reads as quite heavy. Featuring a college student on the verge of suicide, it pulls the characters into discussions over the major issues of life—morality, religion, love and death—in a whirlwind of emotion that gets heavy at times.
Most of the characters in Jump come directly from my life and the lives of those closest to me. I amalgamated the stories of several people attempting to create three-dimensional, believable characters through biography. What I failed to realize at the time, was that the detail of people’s lives do not define their personality; the opposite holds true. In my next large project Expatriot, the characters will demonstrate their personalities through their reactions to the events that happen and have happened to them. The real challenge in that work will be synthesizing something new, not simply pulling together events that have already happened.
I found my third paper, Confusing the Critics: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, a strong work and not difficult to complete. The thesis of the paper—that critics handicap themselves through adherence to a single critical camp—works due to the nature of literary criticism. When a scholar reads a work, she makes connections and conclusions based on her approach to the work and her training. The result is an assertion, proven either well or poorly. These claims describe a facet of a complex work, and as a result never attempt a full understanding. Only more in-depth work, such as Victor Cahn’s book Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom Stoppard, even attempts to gain a full understanding of the play.
Also important in my success was my instructor’s rigorous attention to my diction and sentence structure. For the first time, Dr. Stargardt forced me to look at my writing on the word and sentence level, instead of simply in terms of ideas and structure. This paper represents a major step forward with my writing. Professor Stargardt’s style of teaching helped me understand the rigorous attention scholars must have in their word choice, not only to make a strong argument but also to gain authority for their claims.
“Confusing the Critics” made me realize that I could do the work of a scholar. Not only could I make connections and coherent arguments, but I could also evaluate other scholar’s assertions and spot the holes within them. The accolades I received—both the privilege of presenting at Honor’s Day and the distinction of First Place in the department’s writing contest—solidified, in my mind, my potential for success in graduate school.
My aforementioned frustration with Frank Norris contrasts with my joy in writing “Conspicuous Clumsiness”: repetitive diction in Frank Norris’ McTeague. While I wanted to discover why scholars declare McTeague a novel of literary merit, I also enjoyed researching and analyzing a work about which little criticism has been published. I used a new electronic medium in order to facilitate a quantitative analysis. For the first time, I forged a new path in the scholarship surrounding a novel.
This paper does contain some flaws. Still riding upon the success of Confusing the Critics, I ended up approaching Norris in a similar way. This method was not quite appropriate for my subject. Instead of focusing on the problems with certain critics, I should have used them mostly to supplement my own thesis.
In evaluating my paper, however, Dr. VonWallmenich stressed improvement of my rhetoric in a way that complimented Dr. Stargardt’s approach to diction. In previous papers I allowed myself sloppy paragraphing and thought little of the flow within an essay. Now, every paragraph must have a topic sentence and at least two supporting sentences. While the attention to style was not as intense, it nevertheless encouraged me to become a better writer.
The final paper in my portfolio, “The privilege of heterosexuality and its consequences,” combines the lessons I’ve had in writing and applies it to a different discipline. This shift offered unique challenges. Unlike when writing my previous papers, I could no longer rely upon a text to guide my argument; I had to make my case with more ephemeral evaluations of society. This work proved itself much more challenging than expected.
In previous projects, I could usually find several journal articles of essays to support my thesis, grab a few quotations from the text, and be on my way; not so here. This essay demanded I spend hours in the library reading background and filtering through critical books. I even quoted from a textbook—seemingly a common occurrence for undergraduates in the United Kingdom while unheard of at Alma College.
This class took place at University of Westminster in London, which also presented difficulties. Writing in a foreign country—even an English-speaking one—meant I had to refrain from US colloquialisms and decode the British ones. Often in class I had to whisper the person next to me, “what does that mean?” if the instructor used a common British pop-culture allusion.
Self and Society, the class within which this essay was assigned, is an introductory class for first-year university students. I felt a bit of resentment at the method of assigning a word-length requirement for essays. Remembering my improvement after four years of literary study, I felt assured I condensed my writing much more than the average recent matriculate. These assignments allowed me to concentrate more on sharpening my ideas less on crafting grandiloquent authority.
My four years of literary and rhetorical study have seen a great transformation over four years, as my portfolio demonstrates. I have gained the tools of critical analysis, improved my sharpness creatively, and enhanced my cognition diction and structure. All of these traits I can now bring to writing of any discipline. These skills will travel with me as I move through life.