Writing Project 1: Revisiting Past Writing

Part 1:

The writings I have chosen to analyze are the most representative of the various types of writings I have done so far. I sought to choose the most diverse writings I have done, even though I have not written much beyond class assignments. Before rereading my writings, I expected that my writings would all be very similar. I tutor young children in writing, so I tend to be more cognizant about my writing style and more rigorous with editing. However, I also tend to remain rigid with the organization of my writing, since that is what I am constantly exposed to.

One essay I chose was one of the first essays I wrote as a freshman. I don’t remember my writing process during this essay, however I wanted to compare it to an argumentative essay I wrote during writ 150. This first essay was for a GSEM, and was an explanatory writing meant to help me further understand the concept of the picturesque, especially in the context of artworks depicting India done by British artists. I remember utilizing the writing center for this essay, meaning that it was crafted over a longer period of time, instead of quickly put together the day or days right before the due date.

Another essay I chose was the final essay from my WRIT 150 class, my analysis of Mindy Kaling’s works. I remember learning about various rhetorical tactics in this class, and I wanted to see how well I applied them. I had spent the most time on this compared to the other writing projects because it would determine my final grade in the class and I was excited and interested in this topic. As an Indian American girl myself, I was angry that Mindy Kaling was responsible for such a large portion South Asian representation in American television. Upon reading the essay, I surprised myself with how forgiving I was towards Mindy Kaling; I remembered being much more bitter. Although I could have been more concise in a few places, this writing was well-crafted and thought out. I included a variety of scenes, addressed many counterpoints to my argument, and even provided a better example of South Asian representation to thoroughly illustrate where Mindy Kaling fell short. However, it feels important to note that it seemed like the main reason this essay was better than my first essay was more because of the increased time spent completing it and less because of rhetorical tools I learned in WIRT 150, because the organization and writing style of both essays were quite similar.

Another essay I chose to analyze was completely different from the previous two. This was a 20 page, double spaced, times new roman font size 12 as usual. The informative essay was about a global health issue written for extra credit in the class. I distinctly remember this writing process because I finished the paper in one and a half days. The quality of writing is not my best because I remember keeping parts that weren’t completely necessary so I could reach the page count. Additionally, I noticed that different ideas were only connected by the overall theme of climate change instead of looking for intersections to understand how climate change affects global health as a whole. I found different effects of climate change and pollution and simply stuck them together in the essay, because I didn’t have time to reread my essay and form a coherent theme. If I had chosen to spend more time, and if this essay weren’t only for extra credit, I likely would have spent more time exploring connections between the different effects of climate change and pollution and their effect of global health overall.

For all three of the academic essays above, my writing process was slightly atypical than what I was taught throughout my life. I have been taught to research the topic, form an opinion and thesis, then find evidence to support the thesis. However, I usually write the body paragraphs first. While researching, I write my analysis and take note of evidence found about the topic. Then I craft a thesis statement at the end incorporating the information from the body paragraphs. This way, I keep the direction of my essay open to new ideas and information I didn’t know about before. This was especially true for the 20 page research essay. Before writing the essay, I had read about how water and air pollution are correlated with an increased risk of heart and lung disease, so I thought my paper would primarily be about that. However, I kept my research queries more general and found that one of the most detrimental effects of climate change was the increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes, adversely affecting lower income communities.

Additionally, another type of writing I have done is an email template I sent out to various professors in search of research opportunities on campus. This was a very different process than the rest of the writings I had done. Previously, my target audience was my professor and the purpose was for a written grade. This email had a context that was incredibly different, since I was writing to a professor in search of a research position, which can be difficult to secure. I remember making the most difficult edits to come up with the most concise wording. I sent around 30 emails, and I remember making the smallest edits to make the email better after almost every email I sent out. This writing process was more about trying to fit as much information as I could into as few words as possible so that my email isn’t ignored. Never have I reread and revised a writing as much as I did for this one.

My most recent piece of writing required a very different approach since it was a one page research proposal I wrote to receive funding during the summer. For this, I had to write about a very niche topic that I had never heard of before joining the lab I am currently in. The process of writing this was difficult, because I was in the process of reading research papers and learning the vocabulary. I worked very closely with my mentor, and wrote two rough drafts before submitting my proposal. Due to the weight this writing held, I revised this writing multiple times to come up with the best and most concise wording.

Every essay I have written in college so far has not been voluntary. They exist for a class, club applications, or cover letters. I am fortunate that I have had a lot of experience with writing, so I can adequately write an essay and receive a good grade. I also do enjoy the process of writing enough to prefer writing essays over taking tests or participating in discussions, however I wouldn’t typically go out of my way to write a creative piece for myself. The only writing I do for myself is the occasional journaling, because I am quite forgetful and I enjoy reliving important memories. When I write in my journal, the target audience is only me, I don’t intend to share it with anyone, I use informal language, and my sense of humor shows through. But, I always get tired of journaling after an hour.

After rereading my essays, I realize that the main reason I enjoy writing is actually the research aspect of writing. Whenever I write for a class, since I have mostly written essays for my general education requirements, I learn and understand a new concept or phenomenon. As someone who is curious about many different topics outside my major, I appreciate the various writing I have done for school since I get to engage in depth with ideas and topics I typically wouldn’t get to for my major or on my own.

PART 2:

To further understand my writing, I chose to analyze in depth the research proposal I had written as part of an application to receive funding during the summer. This was basically a descriptive one page essay about what research has been done about my topic, and what research I intend to do to contribute to the current discourse about that topic. My research topic is understanding the function of a protein called Neto in the drosophila melanogaster, a common fruit fly used as a model organism in research.

I worked on this proposal over the course of about a week, asking questions and advice to my mentor in the lab, reading dense research papers, and consolidating all of the information into one page.

This writing process was very different from any other writing I had done before for two reasons. Firstly, I tried to mimic the writing style of the research papers to sound more knowledgeable and credible. Secondly, I used a different organization style since I wasn’t analyzing any evidence or text as I am used to doing. The structure of the writing was quite simple including a background about what is known about Neto so far and a short description of what my project entailed over the summer. I found that for this writing, content was more important than structure and the writing itself. Nevertheless, I was surprised at how dignified my language and vocabulary sounded, especially since writing this proposal was such a struggle for me.

This proposal required me to find the most important information from 5 dense papers and fit it into a small paragraph describing current research in the field. A large amount of context is needed to understand my summer project, including basic definitions and descriptions of the proteins and systems I am working with, past experiments and publications about the subject, and the methods I intended to use. I chose to write more about the background of what Neto is, what has been discovered so far, and what the lab I am in has investigated. Background took up about 80 percent of the page, while a description of my intended summer research project took up about 20 percent of the page. I had to write a lot of background to set up the importance of my summer project.

I spent a lot of time thoroughly understanding various research papers, which was incredibly difficult due to the niche vocabulary used. Due to the context of the research proposal, asking for funding, I had to clearly articulate why my topic is important to research and include specific vocabulary to show credibility. Therefore, the vocabulary had to be incredibly precise. I also had to be as concise as possible to write about as much as possible within the one page limit. Additionally, during the process, I found that there were experiments that other researchers conducted that produced different results than what was found in our lab, however including this was not relevant to the purpose and audience of my research proposal. I solely focused on highlighting the most important research papers in the field and describing where my research fits in the greater picture of understanding how Neto functions.

The most obvious audience was the staff of the fellowships I was applying to. But, this paper was also my way of showing my mentor and principal investigator, the professor whose lab I work under, that I had been paying attention to our conversations and had properly read the papers they had asked me to. I initially had a general understanding of the prior research about Neto due to the preparation I had done for my interview, however I had been procrastinating reading the dense research papers themselves. This proposal was also my way of gaining a more in depth understanding of the project I was working on. Overall, due to the high stakes of the proposal, I had spent a lot more time completing it, created multiple rough drafts, and took the advice and edits from multiple people.

My research proposal is a very insignificant piece of writing amid the relevant discourse about Neto. However, one of the goals after joining this lab is to potentially have my name appear in one of the publications about the project I am working on. This writing is just the beginning of the larger goal of contributing to the discourse about Neto. Although this piece of writing was simply a description of the work I intended to do over the summer, it was one of the more important pieces I have written due to the context it is written in, whether I received funding or not. The process of writing this proposal solidified my understanding of my role in the lab.