Emily Thomas

Honors 205
Exercise 10a Reflection
Empathy or Otherwise
I think empathy is one of the most valuable things in the world. I could go on for hours--I
actually wrote about this for my honors application, because I think understanding people and
the ability to see things from their perspective is vital. So, I was very excited when I saw the title
in the list of future exercises. The exercise was not what I expected, but did not disappoint.
My partner and I (like the other groups), were in charge of responding to a letter to a law
firm. It took us the majority of the class to figure that out, because the handwriting, while lovely,
made the letter difficult to parse. That was the main difficulty, but with a latter translation key,
some logic, and a lot of help, we managed to get the gist. It felt like a major accomplishment
(really, the As looked like Ns, and the Ms looked like no letter I know--I know that letters were
basically standardized before Chaucer wrote anything, and that was long before this!), and after
understanding that we were in practice, so writing a reply was fun and interesting, rather than
frustrating. Though we didn't have a backstory, we used the the coaxing tone of the letter to
determine that the deal presented was not one we'd like to take, and went from there.
The differences between letter writing etiquette then and now are fascinating. It was odd
to see how deferential even people on opposite sides of a case were to each other--letters were
signed "your most devoted servant," by people who gave every impression of being at odds,
professionally if not personally. The letters were full of compliments and flowery allowances. I
haven't read any modern day letters between legal firms, but letters and emails from other venues
are much more casual and pointed. I need to do some research on the culture of the time to figure
out why it differs so extremely, but it's really interesting! Actually writing the reply came
reasonably easy. We could tell, from the tone of the letter, what sort of relationship the people
had, and decided to argue for the interest of the recipient's client.
This exercise was a really valuable way to "put ourselves in somebody else's shoes." In
order to reply to the letter, we had to think about what our "boss" would feel and want to write. It
was interesting to actually do something as them. I need to do more exercises like this one,
because understanding people can let you help them and better understand their actions. (It
probably also really helps with understanding arguments).