Personal writing is distinct from other forms of essays we complete for school. With academic papers, we as students are expected to beat home a point, to prove something, to substantiate our thesis with evidence, argument, and reason. It is not so different from delivering a sermon atop a mount. Or perhaps taking a bulldozer to anything that obstructs you from your path to Why I'm Right.
Yet with personal writing, are we trying to prove something or we are trying to understand something?
Because if it’s understanding that we’re striving to achieve, a voice of countless certainty begins to take on a simplistic or even narrow air, whereas a voice of doubt or ambivalence can start to sound intelligent, humble, and empathetic. Doubt is strength, but it’s also distinct from not going anywhere. It’s a process of understanding our formulation, frame, or approach to a life problem, rather than attaining the absolute solution to said problem.
I hope our lives can be one of discovery — of peeling back the layers and forever discovering there is more. Under most conceptions, it’s both good and efficient to have goals. But when we set our minds out do something, the ensuing process is often less a process of discovery than one of execution. We feel compelled to track to that goal, the closest equivalent of a GPS for life. Any detours into new and unexpected territory could threaten to derail or even undermine our path to said goal, so better not go there. Better stay on track. Better not acknowledge that wayward truth lest we risk starting over.
But it’s precisely in the wayward paths that we discover new and surprising things about ourselves. We learn something unexpected that fundamentally alters our frame of understanding for the world. We peel back the onion. Only to find there is more. We grow.
It’s a costly process, in the event we discover our original goal was never quite what we wanted in the first place. But wouldn’t you say it’s better to discover that sooner rather than later? Or perhaps we adhere to the original vision, the finish line, and keep the blinders on. We reach the finish line expediently and efficiently. Have we bettered our lives because we are expedient and efficient?
In this regard, the personal essay and the academic paper are two competing, non-complementary ways to live life. Rather than ask ourselves what we want to do after graduation (which most Dartmouth seniors will approach as a multiple-choice exam anyway: consulting, banking, or med school?), the more critical question may be, how do you wish to write the narrative of your life? As an academic thesis (“I am awesome! I am right! Let me prove it to you!”) or as a lifelong quest for understanding?
I’d like to think that our education has prepared us for the latter.
Update: An adapted version of this musing was published by the Rockefeller Center here.