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Dan Wendlandt

June 6th, 2002

Looking Back … and Ahead:

Reflections on my PWR Experience

Rodents that kill snakes; how cool is that? That was my rational for choosing to write a 6th grade research paper on ocelots and mongooses. These animals join the illustrious ranks of flying squirrels, Special Forces troops, Richard Nixon, and a manned mission to Mars as subjects of past research papers I wrote during my first twelve years of school. Outside of research, I wrote shorter papers on everything from Carl Sandburg poetry to a character analysis of Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment. In IHUM I have had the “opportunity” to compare the views of Locke and Rousseau and think about the motif of judgment in Kafka’s “The Penal Colony.” While these were undoubtedly valuable writing experiences, I couldn’t help but feel that each one of these topics was stale; my essay would have been the same if it had been written ten years earlier or ten years later. For me, this class was different. Almost every issue we discussed is alive and shaping us everyday. For me it gave a sense of importance and immediacy to all my writings, which I found was both enjoyable and successful in motivating me to work harder on my papers. This is not to say that this year has been easy for me, or that I feel I really “broke out” as a writer. Neither is the case. But I do think a large value of what I gained from the course was realizing exactly I did like about writing and what type of writing I would like to do now that the days of required fuzzy classes are over.

I’ll be honest, writing has never been “my thing.” This is not to say that I think I am a poor writer but it does mean that I, like so many freshman, was dreading finally having to take PWR this spring. After sleeping through (quite literally) the 5:00 pm deadline to submit PWR section preferences, I was happy to have still received my first choice, a class called “The Rhetoric of War.” The class had a political slant that I would pique my interest and hopefully give particular insight into writing about political issues, which is the main type of reading I imagine myself doing in the next few years. The class was much more work than I had expected and indeed, at times, more than I thought I could handle. I remember going back from my first conference frustrated and a bit angry at having received a B- on a paper I had thought was solid. I know it’s popular to say that grades don’t matter, but personally I have never really bought into that idea. In my mind, they are a reflection of both your skill in the subject and your willingness to work diligently and writing is something that can always be worked on more. At that point, I sat down with my scribbled covered paper and I decided that for this quarter, writing would become “my thing.” I mention these memories not as a critique of the course, but because in the end, I am very proud of having sat down and focused more on the quality of my writing than I ever had before.

As a result, I think I have become a better writer. Not in any obvious way, but in the small and incremental fashion that seems to be the only way to improve a skill as difficult to master as writing. I believe that this class has increased my awareness of my own writing. I think that the process of writing, followed by in-depth “suggestions for improvements” from Tim and other students, and completed by rewriting has done a lot to bolster my understanding of how I organize my arguments and try to express my ideas. Going over my research paper was a good example of this, as I learned that even my “favorite” parts of the paper may have to be drastically pared down because their value in advancing my thesis doesn’t warrant the space I was allotting them. I have also realized that I am often not bold enough in making assertions key to my arguments. Often I was caught (gasp!) using passive voice when my paper needed to be making a forceful point. On a larger scale, I think I have also become better at recognizing the more general structure of my own arguments and those of others. I thought one of the most interesting things I took from the class was a greater understanding of how assumptions and implications are used along with explicit statements in advancing an idea.

Along with this improved understanding of my writing, I feel like I have also gained confidence in my ability to write and revise. Yet this is still an area where I can still make a lot of improvement. I have never been good at taking criticism of my writing, especially when the comments are directly from the person and not just written on a draft. I nearly quake in fear whenever someone is reading my paper to critique it while I am in front of them. Though I always tried to tell myself that criticism is good and will help me in the end, at moments the personal conferences were torturous. For me, writing will never be an easy process. There’s always improvement to be made by eliminating passive voice, improving grammar, being conscious of flow, and focusing more on writing in a way that creates images for the reader. These are just a few of the things I know I need to always keep in mind while I’m writing in order to improve.

Despite the focus on the process of writing, I thought some of the most interesting parts of the course came during in-class discussions. I always found it ironic that my PWR class had discussions that were more intelligent, in depth and focused than I ever experienced in IHUM section, which had the sole focus of developing such discussions. I think the experience was valuable in that it forced me to confront a lot of ideas that I disagreed with in a very personal way, because often someone advancing that idea was sitting just a couple of feet away.

Coming into the class, I felt mixed emotions about the Community Writing Project. I thought it might be a cool chance to do something totally different than the normal class experience, but at the same time I was wary that all the overhead of dealing with busy “real world” people might be more trouble than it was worth. To a degree that has been the case so far. Jasmin and I still aren’t finished with our CWP project, which quickly took a backseat to the research paper. In the end, the project hasn’t been as interesting as I had hoped it would be. I wouldn’t call it grunt work but it was hardly intellectually exciting, which is a merit I saw in most of the other things we did this quarter. We are basically asked to regurgitate, though I suppose a more positive term would be summarize, information to create a presentation on International Humanitarian Law. But we are only supposed to present information, not to analyze the issues or draw conclusions, which I would consider to be the most fun and interesting. Maybe the lesson to learn is that real life work isn’t always fun and interesting. Consider that lesson learned.

But I won’t end on a negative note like that. No, I have saved the best for last. If I learned one thing in this class, it is that writing is ten times better when it is about a subject you are intellectually excited about. I’ve dragged my feet through four page IHUM papers, but I cranked out the over twenty pages of my research draft in less than three days. Hanging out in the library and researching this and that about the politics of cyberterrorism was orders of magnitude more fun than my problem sets or IHUM reading. Righting the research paper has convinced me that I definitely want to write a thesis in two or three years, maybe even about a similar topic. It was a good reminder that writing can, and indeed should be, something that I am excited about. This, I feel, is the most important lesson of writing that I will take from this class and keep with me for the rest of my years at Stanford, and beyond.

It’s been a short quarter. Filling out the course evaluations, I felt like it was only a week or two since we filled out the sheets of paper detailing what we wanted to learn and improve on in the class. Some parts of my writing improved and some still need lots of work. I know that, and I can accept that. As with many things in life, PWR is something after which I will neither claim victory nor admit defeat, but instead choose to focus on how the experience made me face a little fear, have little fun, and ultimately learn a little more about life and about myself.

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