Austin Traylor

Engl 1103-024

Professor Jan Riemann

October 14, 2010

A Glimpse of Retrospection and Foresight

We are essentially halfway through this crash-course now and looking back we can see the trail

carved behind us; the words we have written etched into the ground. Yet when we turn to look forward

we can see forever. Before us there are infinite possibilities and a vast horizon. At some point some of us

may stray towards the left in our paths, others wandering right, and some may even keep forging

forward. We all will continue to head into the future with our stories engraved in our shadows, and we

must all tackle the same objective that looms before us: the midterm paper. A paper that will make us

look at our footsteps and describe the process that has brought us where we stand, and also make us

wonder where our journeys to tomorrow and the days after will take us.

Over the short amount of time that we have been meeting together we have been challenged to

attempt different styles of writing weekly; to try and broaden our comfort zone of writing. The Writing

to Explore pieces we do each week present us with a topic or prompt of our choice, but each is

something that requires you to think. These prompts so far have given me insight into skills I don’t have

and how I might go about obtaining these skills. It is also pretty clear that from my tinkering with these

new styles that I would greatly benefit from their presence. Example of the things I have are things such

as experimenting with a more intra-personal standpoint in my essays. In high school I was taught to

never, ever speak to the reader, like it was a crime. I personally could never agree with this point. I

personally feel as if you lose the opportunity for the reader to superimpose themselves into your

position or venture at putting themselves in your shoes. In one of my earlier writing pieces I also tried to
play with my levels of description. I saw it as a way to try and connect with the reader. I tried to do so I

hopes of complementing the personal point of view I was attempting to adopt in my writings. Some

authors are very skilled with the way they can describe a scene, almost painting a picture with one’s

imagination. Now when I look back at my previous works in which I tried to be descriptive, but I don’t

find myself very gifted in that department. I’m not very good at keeping a train of thought if I become

too descriptive and I start to develop run on sentences. It pulls away from the paper in a sense. Inversely

it almost seems I am better off with trying to make the reader think. Pushing them to read into the

subject and create correlations between the concept presented and other notions. These are the main

things that I have noticed in my recent pieces that differ greatly from my standard writing format.

As for the actual composition of my works, I still feel too un-comfortable with communicating to

express my ideas in any style other than that of a formal essay. While I might not write in the standard

format of “Opening paragraph, definable thesis here, three body paragraphs, and conclusion” I do not

stray very far from that format either. Like a shy, small child clinging to its parent’s leg when it meets

someone new, or a baby animal and its mother. Instead my style doesn’t even truly define a thesis in the

opening paragraph, which I find myself perturbed about sometimes. Instead it attempts to open a

thought process within the reader in which they might agree with or sympathize with my thoughts. I

then proceed to build paragraphs as you would in any other essay; the same old, same old.

Speaking of things I am disturbed about, one such worry of mine is my ability to keep the

reader’s attention. I fear I cannot efficiently keep the reader’s attention throughout the entirety of my

paper sometimes. Some people state that my papers are “too stiff”, or “too serious”, and are hard to

follow, and we all know that if your target audience does not even finish the paper then you have failed

completely.
 Now, putting the way I write my papers and my worries aside, we look instead to standards I

and the course had set for those works to meet. In the beginning of this adventure we had to ask

ourselves what we wanted to learn. We had to ask what we wanted to gain for our composition skills

through the class’ time together. I myself merely wanted to bolster the level of my papers, not to

change the way I wrote them or constructed them. I wanted to have a better sense of what needed to

be done with my papers, and to have a better understanding of words I used. Those were my goals; the

hurdles placed by me at the start. The course goals on the other hand seemed to be more geared

towards the advancement of my own literacy as a person; to build on the confidence we already held

and present us to the world as more sophisticated people than we were before. In both respects I can

say that I feel like I am advancing down the marked path, but the speed I am moving at I cannot place.

However, I feel like the tinkering I have done in my writings has given me an idea of what I wanted to

know. It became possible to learn what I searched for because the chains and shackles of the defined

formats we had impressed into us in our earlier schooling experiences were torn asunder.

Another thing I believe that has been, and is, imperative to our continuous growth towards

these goals is the criticism we receive from having peer workshops. I myself could look at my paper over

and over and not be able to find any problems in it. It’s like a mime mimicking another mime. However

when another person analyzes your work the flaws become so much more apparent because they have

a differing thought process. Going with the analogy of the mime again say a mime was to mimic a person

he passed on the street. The person in turn would then become extremely conscious of their actions and

attempt to change anything that seemed out of place or unusual. The peer workshops and analysis of

our peers’ works really gives us a boost and well needed hints to creating the perfect work.
 I really enjoy having peer workshop with my group. It shows me what different styles of writing

exist and how other people write their papers. Dillan for example, one of my peer workshop members,

has an extremely good vocabulary and is very good at keeping his sentences short and concise. I feel like

looking at his papers gives me a better sense of mine. Dixie and Nicole are also very descriptive with

their papers and make me wonder where I could add more adjectives or descriptive phrases. The best

part though is when we pass the papers around though as we did in the first peer workshop and then

analyze each other’s works. This brings out even the most miniscule errors in one’s paper, again helping

to create a greater work then possible by one’s self.

With all of these ideas, criticisms, and techniques in tow, we have begun to theorize and create

our inquiry papers. Originally my inquiry paper had been on a very broad scope of questions such as

“How is one influenced by the writings and readings they analyze in their early days?” and “How is one’s

literacy formed?” Eventually though I began to realize how hard it would be to write about such a large

field of questions, so I narrowed it down. My new question is that of “How is one’s written literacy

formed? Is it emergent or is it genetic?” In a simplistic explanation however what my question is asking

is when we are young do we learn how to write and understand writing as a necessity and based on text

surrounding us? Or do we simply pick up the language as a genetic understanding? This is the argument

of emergent literacy versus genetic literacy. With this idea I hope to realize the way a child learns to

understand, write, and read. Once I have this answer I will have a necessary clue to the other questions

that dance in my brain. Questions such as “How is the existence of literacy defined” or “What are the

effects on a person’s written literacy based on their sources of learning?”

Looking back on all of this it feels like I have crossed thousands of miles, swam treacherous

waters, and braved enormous mountains. Yet when I look forward I realize that we are only halfway,

and even then our journey is not over. It is merely a parting place from where we will say goodbye to
our traveling companions and begin a new travel. In this sense one must wonder when our roaming is

over. Do we ever stop pioneering forth? No, of course not. After all life itself is a adventure.