Over the course of this class, I did a lot of writing that I am proud of. I do feel that I had a very strong foundation in academic writing coming out of my high school, which stressed critical thinking and the construction of strongly-evidenced arguments as crucial skills. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and I think the thing that was newest to me in this course was considering what it means to write for contexts other than the academic journal or classroom, and for audiences other than my peers and teachers. Writing the digital essay, in particular, required attention to this, but I think that by my final draft I was able to strike an appropriate tonal balance between my traditional essay voice and a more informal, generally accessible one. Having the ability to choose my own topic for this project helped a lot with this, since I picked something that I felt strongly about; ultimately, the process of finding an appropriate voice was a question of letting those feelings bleed through into the text without overwhelming or discrediting my argument.
I am particularly confident in my work on the second project, which was a typical history essay, with an argument that I feel is quite strong. I do wish I had been able to gain more depth in my research, but I think that within the constraints of time I was able to find a variety of trustworthy sources and read them productively enough to round out my claims. Based on this work, I believe I was able to support my thesis well, and explain each piece of evidence clearly and concisely. In the past, being overly verbose has been one of my weaknesses in academic writing, but I was careful about it while drafting my second paper and I feel that, though the final product is a little longer than it probably could be, everything I included ultimately serves an important structural purpose.
We spent some time in class thinking about the idea of the ‘so what’ question, and the importance of interrogating your paper’s contribution to the general scholarly conversation. Although my choice of topic was typically somewhat obscure, I feel that in all cases I was able to come up with a solid answer to that ‘so what,’ and that I engaged well with the ideas of other thinkers when appropriate. One thing I didn’t do, and which I instinctually avoid because I find it sort of aesthetically unpleasant, although I know it’s valuable, is negotiate potential counterarguments. I didn’t necessarily feel that this absence was a major loss given the specific content of my work for this course, but I know it’s something I am missing in my writing generally, and which I’ll focus on becoming more comfortable with going forward. As always, I continue writing with the weakest points of these projects at the forefront of mind; counterargument, tone, and brevity. I’m ultimately very grateful to have had the space to work closely on these concerns in this class, and to be able to feel that, with the help of my peers and professor, I negotiated them well.