Looking over my blog, I realize how far I have come in my ideas of writing.  I used to think that writers should just write, and should just write well.  I didn’t have any knowledge of voice or spirituality in writing.  I just knew that I wrote differently for an academic paper than I did for my prayer journal.  I knew that my styles varied, but that was the extent of it.  So I really enjoyed re-reading my posts and seeing the ways the articles challenged me to think of writing in a different way.  I also enjoyed reading and understanding the progression of my thoughts as the semester went on.

I also enjoyed that I could publish my finished work on a space where not only I could read it, but a space where other readers could view my work as well.  I realized the importance of this while reading my classmates blogs.  In their blogs, I was able to see their final work and make comments on their blogs.  Publishing papers on blogs allow me to receive constructive feedback that I wouldn’t get otherwise.  This forum of ideas is the largest benefit for me.  I enjoy feedback (and yes, I invite criticism).  There was only one time in the class that we commented on other’s blogs, but I really enjoyed that aspect of the blog.  In future classes, it would be great to require students to post on more blogs.  It was sad for me to get to the end of the semester, read the blogs, and realize, “Wow.  I wish that I would’ve kept up more with the other blogs.”

In my blog, I highly enjoyed having the space to write my work.  My only regret, looking back, is that I wasn’t as intentional about using the space.  I found myself writing the responses on the morning they were due, trying to grasp the complexities of the author’s argument and put that into words right before class-time.  I wish now that I would’ve blogged more of my daily life as a writer also, rather than just writing what was required of me.  I do feel, however, that I made this space my own.  I really enjoyed organizing the posts and changing the appearance of the blog. 

Overall, I enjoyed having the space to publish my ideas and work.  The access to this kind of webspace is so valuable; I just wish that I would’ve taken more advantage of it.  I approached the blog as an assignment, and it was because of my approach that my blog turned out to be just that: I wrote on my blog when I was required.  It was a good assignment though, because I realized the importance of keeping up a blog and the value of publishing my work.

When I was given this assignment, my stomach churned.  I knew it would take a lot of effort to see blogs that would be exactly the same:  the same topics of papers, responses to the same authors, even posting on the same day.  What I found when I began reading the blogs was entirely different than my first reaction to getting the assignment.

I was struck by the diversity in formats and style, as well as the different voices of my classmates that distinctly came across in their blogs.  Reading the final memoirs of the people in my group was a pleasure; I was able to see the progression and the finality of the text (at least, for some).  I especially enjoyed re-reading Joey’s memoir, and seeing the changes that he made that improved the paper so much.  Being able to experience the progression of a work is a great honor.

It was also interesting to note the differences between the writing responses.  Some articles we read inspired people to take a stand and state their opinion, while other responses were written more academic and scholarly.  Interestingly enough, generally the same articles received the same type of response.  The article by Hashimoto received more opinionated responses, probably the most of any author we read.  His controversial statements really sparked people to think.  When I read Dave’s response of Hashimoto, I thought to myself, “I had the same reaction!”  Dave pointed out that there was a distinct difference between Elbow’s voice and the biblical voice, which Hashimoto misrepresented in his text.  The key difference is that the biblical voice and all the passages quoted by the Bible, refer to God’s voice or a celestial voice.  So in this way, it was nice to see that someone else had the same reaction that I did.

The responses to the article on narcissism were also different in content, but overall, were more personable to the reader.  I really like Claire’s personal example of a time when a friend exemplified the characteristics of the narcissist.  The connection she made from reading the text and recognizing people in her life made her response more authentic.  I also liked Brandon’s quote from Star Trek and how he uses the movies he sees as a reference.  I feel that in knowing these specific examples, that I am somewhat closer to really knowing my classmates. 

This leads me to my next thought.  After reading through the blogs, I actually do feel closer to my classmates.  Even at the end of class, where we had built a good community and felt open to sharing our opinions, I didn’t know a lot of the students personally.  In reading the blogs, I feel that I have been granted access to parts of students’ lives that I didn’t experience in the classroom.  I have learned which movies were faves (Brandon, that’s you), the religious beliefs of some (Dave), and some times of difficulty of others (Kelley and Kelley). 

So my idea that the blogs were the same has been disproved.  And it has been a pleasure to read these blogs and get glimpses into the lives of people that I have worked pretty closely with the past semester.  So, for all you students graduating in 12 days, I salute you and say: Let’s hear it for the blogs.  Let’s give the students a hand…”      

Spirituality in Writing: Is it worth the risk?

Hashimoto accuses writing, specifically writing that Elbow describes as “voice” as having evangelical tendencies. In regards to voice, he states that, “Good writing has it; bad student writing doesn’t” (70). His purpose in establishing evangelism as a metaphor for writing is to warn against the dangers of evangelism. He accuses writing teachers of gaining power by manipulating students’ fears, of passing judgment against their work, and of creating anti-intellectual students. The problem with Hashimoto’s work is that he assumes that Christianity and writing teachers share enough similarities, including their overall goals and ethics to make an effective argument comparing the two. In establishing the metaphor of evangelism to writing, Hashimoto unconsciously leads readers to perceive another danger, which I believe to be an even greater risk to students.

Evangelism is very much a Christian term, in which many Christians would define as sharing the message of Jesus’s sacrifice. There are absolute truths associated with Jesus’s time and implications, according to Christians and myself. Because people are sinful and imperfect, and God is perfect, people can no longer have direct communication to God. That is where Jesus comes in: a picture of ultimate sacrifice, the link that through his perfect life, death, and resurrection, people can reenter the presence of God. These truths summarize the basic evangelic message that is shared with people. Now, if evangelism is about sharing absolute truths, something greater than ourselves, then how can our writing, which we produce, be greater than ourselves? How can the written word be greater than the mind of the writer? Our writing can transcend time, as it is evident when you look at the canon, but we make ourselves to be liars if we say that our writing contains absolute truths. In turn, acknowledging that our writing contains absolute truths puts us above correction. We make ourselves to be little demi-gods. But our writing is never above correction, or we would have no need for the institution of college, and none of us are all knowing, or there would be no need for books. In essence, we are all bias toward one opinion or another, which results from our various background, experiences, and exposure to certain aspects of cultural and social life. That bias can be found in our writing, but it is only one perception of the truth. In our writing, there might be shreds of truth or we may write what we think to be true at that present time, but these truths can change over time. The continual shift of what counts as the truth is not enough to equate it to evangelism (sharing of the Truth). So why does Hashimoto insist that academia see the spiritual link between voice and evangelism?

One of the criticisms that many people have about the term evangelism is that many times evangelists are insincere, caring only about sharing their word, their personal message. Often times, the approaches seem untactful and encroaching on people’s space. Many times, even when you ask Christians how they feel about evangelism, there are mixed reactions. So many people have had bad experiences with evangelism, either with over-zealous, seemingly fake Christians or the Bible- thumpers, who enjoy pushing the Word of God in people’s faces. The stereotypes and reputations of these kinds of evangelists overshadow the others: the humble, whose deep relationship with God is undeniable and because God is such a strong presence in their lives, they share what He has done in their lives. These horrible stereotypes overshadow the people who evangelize not out of a sense of duty, guilt, or because it is a requirement, but because they are passionate and believe God’s Word to be transcendent, omniscient, and completely applicable to today. These people really care about whom they talk to, and have genuine conversations instead of conversing with lofty language and prideful hearts.

The problem with using evangelism as a metaphor for writing with voice, then, is that the same dangers, the same stereotypes that are associated with evangelism are automatically transferred to writing. And, as Elbow states in his book Writing Without Teachers, “When you make a metaphor, you call something by a wrong name. If you make a comparison…you are thinking of something in terms of something else. There is always a contradiction” (53). There are many associations, both negative and positive, that transpire in the metaphor of writing voice and evangelism.

Hashimoto states that, “Much of the power of evangelism comes from fear: fear of death, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of one’s sinful thoughts” (70). He then includes a quote from Robert Schuller, in which he asks these questions: “Are you limping when you could be walking strong…? Are you being defeated by your problems…? Are you bored with life…?” (70). Hashimoto is essentially saying that Christians capitalize on others anxieties and fears, exposing people’s inadequacies in order to reach them for a higher purpose, found in that of Christ. Hashimoto then puts writing teachers in the same category, as they also take advantage of many of the same kinds of fears by raising students’ concerns about their writing to advance the voice movement.

If composition teachers use their position to capitalize on their students’ fears, then what message, underlying or surface-level, do writers code into their words? What are the motives behind those words: is it a pure desire to communicate or is it to demonstrate agency and create a hierarchy of power and intellect? As you have evangelists with different motives, so acknowledging that writing teachers can be like evangelists in many ways acknowledges that some composition teachers will take advantage of their power, and destroy the agency of their students. The teacher’s motives will not always be interpreted as pure, and sometimes could be more accurately described as an obligation to teach, in order to communicate their personal truth, as a means of what is expected of them, because they sense they are closer to the truth than their students.

However, I will now dare to play devil’s advocate. Is it necessarily a bad thing for people to admit their imperfections, for writing teachers and preachers alike to provoke learners to reflect on their inadequacies and as a result, have honest, vulnerable conversations? This is the same thing that Elbow advocates in writing with voice, with power, that writers need to be authentic, honest. Every person has their own set of fears and in order to write with authentic voice, perhaps writers must voice their fears. I admit that in posing these types of questions, there will always be someone trying to use the writer’s vulnerabilities to exploit and take advantage of the reader. There will always be people who use their agency to take power away from other people. That is a reality that we can’t ignore nor take lightly, but the idea of the “power of evangelism” (70) stemming from fear may not automatically be a negative idea, as long as the composition teacher uses his/her power to expand student’s learning and reflection about themselves. If it serves as a learning tool, and if the student gains a community of learners as a result, then the fellowship gained through a sense of community can be more powerful than not exposing those fears at all. Students who build community with other learners can then meet people who share the same fears; they can then work through their writing problems together, hold each other accountable in producing their best work, and encourage one another to continue writing. Creating a community of learners also builds ownership; students who feel accountable to others will invest more in their writing and in their participation in the classroom.

Does writing with voice and evangelism really have enough in common to assume the risk and stereotypes that encompass both when the metaphor is applied? In one poignant argument, Hashimoto applies the Christian ideas of heaven or hell as a binary for writers to think about their writing. In Hashimoto’s terms, either your writing has voice, or it doesn’t. Elbow also states that, “Writing with no voice is dead, mechanical, faceless (287).” The main problem with this statement, and hence the binary of heaven/hell in writing is that it truly depends on the reader. Who is to say if the writing has voice in it or not? Elbow himself admits that many times, one student will sense voice in a particular passage where another student will not. The concept of voice in writing is truly subjective; judgment depends on the audience and their measures of worth. And since every person differs, there will never be one unified consensus on a piece of written work. The concept of a relative judge versus an absolute judge is one of the main problems that exist when deciding if a piece of work receives ‘salvation’ from damnation. Salvation in the Christian sense is not an elusive concept, one that depends on whoever decides that day. In the Christian idea of heaven and hell, God is the one, ultimate judge and God’s expectations never change.

The real danger then, is that teachers’ words and opinions are granted a god-like quality when teachers are granted the power to be the ultimate judge of their student’s writing. It is teachers who define the expectations of a valuable text. If writing teachers are the ultimate judge of their students’ writing, then it is easy for teachers to take advantage of their students and to manipulate their writing fears. With power comes the desire to control; this dominance can easily lead to oppression of students’ ideas and words. Granting teachers’ the power and ultimate judgment of God is more dangerous to students than the concepts of voice, and is what I believe to be the real problem that Hashimoto creates for readers.

Elbow, Peter. “Writing without Teachers.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Hashimoto. “Voice as Juice: Some Reservations about Evangelic Composition.” College Composition and Communication 38 (1987). 70-80. University of Mary Washington Blackboard: English 307 Documents. 31 March 2008. <http://blackboard.umw.edu>

What is Miller’s understanding of the self (of the writer) in relation to the text? How’s her conceptualization of that relationship speak to Bazerman’s work (e.g. in his discussion of the “spot”)?

“Writing is at once a way to be myself and hide myself.”  This statement really sums up Miller’s argument, that she writes so that her audience perceives her to be a certain way, and particular kind of person.  One thing  that really struck me was when Miller was introduced to a man who had read her work.  His reply was that she was too young to be the Miller that he knew.  He was able to “know” Miller by reading her work and assuming certain characteristics about her, which he found to be false when he was introduced to her.

Miller can write because of feelings of uncertainty & dislocation, which constantly make her a student of writing.  She attributes her environments to her effectiveness as a writer, much like Bazerman does in his essay.  These different social environments she finds herself in saves her from rote, repetitive writing and ultimately enhances her work.

Hashimoto talks in depth about voice in writing, and relates it specifically back to Elbow in labeling voice as “juice.” However, Hashimoto warns composition teachers about the dangers of this juice as well, saying that voice, “brings with it a kind of evangelical zeal that may not do us any good at all” (1) His constant reference, to that of respected preachers and the Bible, seems like a way for Hashimoto to release some built up hatred for Christians. I personally thought his constant references were insulting, and I think it’s interesting to note that only one religion that is being bashed. You cannot say that your writing voice is like God speaking to Elijah or God speaking to John in the wilderness. My writing voice is not God’s; it has no qualities of God. It is not perfect, not omnipresent, not omniscient, or anything of the sort. To claim that my writing, with voice and power, is similar to that of God’s is sac religious.

If Hashimoto wanted to claim that my writing is a representation of myself, or a manifestation of my emotions, feelings, and past experiences, I would believe him. Hashimoto states that voice is often equated with heaven or hell: your writing either contains it, or it’s dead. Hashimoto quotes Elbow: “Writing with no voice is dead, mechanical, faceless” (3). He takes a different stance on the dangers of voice at the end, however, when he warns that it may not work for all students or all writing experiences. His argument about voice and zeal having potentially anti-intellectual views, once again strikes down Christianity as it also warns of the dangers of writing. These quotes of respected and/or famous Christian speakers, are sometimes taken out of context, and sometimes, the quote is just ridiculous. I personally wanted to hurt Billy Sunday for saying such a ridiculous thing; I cannot respect Sunday for his stance on education, and I doubt that any Christians would. His words are not a common thought among Christians, but this article makes it seem so.

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Mommy Hair

South Africa was hard. Really hard. Four college students, including myself, and our fearless leader endured the sixteen hour airplane trip, so that we could work in Johannesburg and a township on the outskirts of Kroonstad. It was my first plane ride, my first trip out of the country (excluding Canada). There was an eight hour change in time, and yes, our clocks stopped while we crossed the Bermuda Triangle. (All watches were about twenty minutes off when we arrived in Johannesburg).

We experienced all the stereotypes that Americans have about Africa: the overwhelming poverty, the sick children, whole families dying of AIDs, communities coping with the end of apartheid, and the violence. Approximately sixty percent of South Africans have the HIV/AIDs virus and seventy percent of people in townships are unemployed. Only a few hours after we left the township, Maokeng, on the first night of the trip, twelve men gang raped a woman in the church building we worked in all week. The experience was emotionally, spiritually, and physically draining. Despite all these despairing facts, I had a difficult time saying goodbye, especially to the children.

The date is May 25, 2007. I awoke to a beautiful South African sunrise. It was a cold morning, but serene and calm. I opened my eyes, and immediately the chilliness of the air took my breath away. I didn’t want to remove the covers. This particular week in South Africa just happened to be the one of the coldest ever recorded. The previous night I had piled on four layers of clothes, as heat was a luxury, and one that we didn’t have at that time. I stepped outside of my room into the open air, as I made my way to the shower building. The air was so cold that I couldn’t breath; it seeped into my core and found its resting place in my bones. Never before had I experienced the cold like I did those two weeks in Africa.

An hour later, we walked around the campgrounds in Johannesburg. The camp was located on top of a large hill. We stood looking out over into the hills and valleys of the city. From where we stood, we saw thousands of rectangular homes littered across the landscape. In between the houses stood pine, palm, and willow trees growing side by side. The sky was a beautiful blue, the chilly morning air was crisp, and the sun was shining. I have never seen anything as brilliant as the African sun. Never since that time either, have I seen so much of a city from one perspective. It was incredible. Standing there, I felt so insignificant and humbled; how much of an impact would I have on a city this massive? Shadrack, intently observing us “Americans,” approached us and said, “Johannesburg means ‘city of gold.’ It really became a city when they began to find gold here one-hundred fifty years ago. Now it is this.” Viewing the city that morning was like a scene from “The Lion King,” when Mufasa and Simba are looking out over the land, and Mufasa tells Simba that all this land will one day be his. In reality, many of my experiences in Africa reminded me of this movie; it was a surprisingly accurate representation.

Later that morning, the team and I arrived at a seemingly normal house in downtown Johannesburg. From the road it looked as if the house was one story; however, looking at it more intently, you could see the second story was built behind the hill. As we emptied the van, we approached the six foot, black iron gate. The top of the gate had spikes pointing in different directions, all saying, “Try to climb over me; it will be your biggest mistake.” It was strange seeing all the houses gated and closed off to the public world. As we traveled around for the rest of the trip, I also noticed that businesses, churches, malls, and restaurants had black iron gates as well. Seeing gates everywhere made me feel discouraged; instead of acting as a gate of safety, it made me feel as if the residents were secretly telling the outside world, “We resent and despise you, go away back to where you came from.” I never adjusted to seeing all the private and public buildings with black iron gates.

We walked towards the entrance and a woman unlocked the gate for us. As I approached the house with the rest of the team, I became overwhelmed. I thought to myself, “So this is the Door of Hope. This is where thirty abandoned, abused, neglected, or orphaned children in Johannesburg call home.” Before I left Virginia, I had read a brochure on the Door of Hope. I learned that every thirty seconds, a child becomes an orphan in South Africa. In addition, the HIV scourge alone has left 450,000 South African children orphaned. One baby is abandoned every day in Johannesburg. Babies who are brought to the Door of Hope have been found in garbage cans, in plastic bags, flushed down toilets, and tied to train tracks. These children’s hope relies in the social workers that take care of them as well as in the parents that adopt them and raise them as their own. As I stepped into the house, I knew that those cold statistics were about to transform into living, breathing children. I was getting ready to put a name and a face to those numbers.

Later on that night, as Michelle, Emily, and I discussed the day, we began to write in our journal. Leaving the Door of Hope was emotionally painful. As the initial reflection of the day occurred, it hit me that in just a few hours, we learned to love those kids, as we played and interacted with them. Those children, infants, toddlers, and young children immediately trusted and loved us. My first thought was who would love and protect them? What would their adoptive parents be like? I hoped they would be kind. The three of us lay on our stomachs, brainstorming the day’s events and what we wanted to remember about our time at the Door of Hope. The one thing I especially wanted to remember was the precious names and beautiful faces of those children, so that I could tell their stories and make their situations real when we returned to the United States.

“Wow,” Michelle said with a sigh, “where do we even begin?” In my mind, I was thinking similar things. Thirty children, all of whom when we left, still remained. Those children remained without homes. I remembered the agony I felt when I realized the difference between playing with those children and babysitting children in the States. When I leave a child in Virginia, they return to their parents. When I left the Door of Hope, those children still had neither parents nor a permanent home. With these thoughts in mind, I began to journal about one child in particular. I didn’t remember the details of how she got placed at the center or her original home, but I experienced such an intense brokenness as a result of playing and interacting with her. Sometimes, my only antidote is to journal, to record those memories onto paper, so that others can get a glimpse into a particular moment in my life.

Her name was Malkia, meaning “Queen of Nations.” The first time I saw her was during naptime, when one of the social workers gave us a tour of the house. She was sleeping peacefully on a set of bunk beds in the room. She was four years old, a beautiful child, with teeth so white she could do commercials. Her short, course hair was braided horizontally across her head, and when she ran around, all you could see was the orange hair-tie holding her two inch ponytail flying around. When she first met Brandon, whose headband held back his shoulder-length, dyed blonde hair, she looked at him and pointed. She was dumbfounded. She first asked him, “Are you a boy or a girl?” After he chuckled and replied, “Yes, I am a boy,” she stared at him a few moments and stated, “You have mommy hair, and big eyelashes.” She then grabbed Uncle Oliver, one of the social workers, and proceeded to bring him over to look at Brandon. “He has mommy hair,” she told him, “and that’s a boy.” She was such a fire ball. She knew how to take charge of a group, especially a group of adults. She had attitude and knew what she wanted everyone to do.

There was one moment, when I was standing around the children’s playground, just observing that Malkia pulled me aside. “Play with me,” she demanded in her four year old voice. I obeyed, and we began to run aimlessly around the yard. We ran together through the bushes, jumped over obstacles, and played like hooligans. Suddenly she stopped. “Do you hear a baby crying?” she asked. I was used to playing imaginary games with children, so I decided to play along. “Of course. Where is it coming from?” I replied. “Over there, in those bushes,” she responded. So we ran over there together, picked up the “crying baby” and placed it on the sidewalk, which we pretended was a bed. We played this game for some time. At one point, she stopped running, shook a ball she had in her hand, and said, “Do you hear that? Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.” She paused dramatically. “Let’s go!” So we went on our way. When Uncle Oliver returned from running errands, she approached him, and said, “Me and mommy are saving babies.” When I heard this, I inhaled sharply, as to push my tears into my throat. The innocence of her response astounded me, but at the same time broke me. We had been playing for only a few hours, but she instantly attached the label of “mother” to me. I remember asking God in quiet petition, “Please give her a permanent mother. Please send her soon. Thank you, God.” There was also another reason why I was instantly broken by her response. We were saving babies. Babies just like her, and the twenty-nine other children that she labeled her brothers and sisters. She didn’t realize the impact of her words, but I recognized her hopes: one, that she would one day have a permanent family; two, that other babies like her would be saved and given a future filled with promise, full of love and HOPE.

All this dialogue I wanted to remember. Years later I want to recall her precious voice and personality. I wanted to remember the specific times I shared with her and how she impacted my life. So I wrote. As I wrote, I felt a sense of peace overtake me. My emotions, from discouragement with the social systems of South Africa, to the lack of justice in the government’s aid in ending the abandonment of unwanted children, began to fill the pages. I would like to admit that I didn’t cry while I journaled, but I would have to brand myself a liar if I did that. I knew that when I returned to the US, I would take Malkia’s story, along with the other twenty-nine children, and tell it to whoever would listen. This is the point of my journal. To remember the children, and not only their faces, but the things they said, their interactions with the team, and the injustice that surrounds them.

It is now a year later, and I am reflecting on the trip and how my journal helped me cope with the challenges I faced. I realize I didn’t change the world by writing in my journal those two weeks. I did, however, use what I wrote to help me readjust to the life of luxury in the States, where every building is heated and where it’s not uncommon for men to have “mommy hair.” My journal echoes both my healing process and my state of brokenness. What broke me the most was that I desperately wanted to help those children find immediate homes but I was powerless. The only thing I could do for them was while I was there was to play with them and form a temporary bond of friendship that would last only until 5 o’clock. And at 5 o’clock, we climbed into the van, drive off, and I haven’t had any updates or new information on those children since that day. My biggest healing occurred within the pages of my journal. In recording those children’s stories, in describing detailed dialogues I had with them and the social workers, I was making sure that they wouldn’t, with time, turn into lifeless memories of children I had met in a past time and in another world. Every child I met had a unique personality and story that I wanted to represent accurately. And during my presentations to hundreds of children, youth, and adults, I shared many stories of the children we met at the Door of Hope. In telling their stories, I was helping to raise awareness of the social conditions that these children lived in, with the hope of inspiring others to take action. Even now, my ultimate purpose is to raise people’s awareness of the world’s conditions and get them motivated to initiate change. As I am writing this tonight, my hope is that Malkia is telling her adoptive parents about the boy who had “mommy’s hair” and the friend that saved babies with her last summer. In reality, though, I know that I am the one forever changed by my encounter with her, and my journal is a testament to that.

Writing as Refinement

Elbow identifies helplessness as the writer’s feeling toward the writing process.  I think he’s only partially correct, as feelings of frustration and discouragement play part in it also.  The intense pressure of the perfect and flawless paper haunts every college student.  Perfection remains an impossible task to achieve due to time restraints and the many other activities that college students are involved in, that take away from the endless hours needed to make a paper ready for submission and judgment.  I wonder about the characteristics the ideal paper embodies.  Who actually spends the time necessary to create that perfect paper?  Does it even exist?  I don’t know.  The idea of the perfect paper is so abstract that I’m not sure I would recognize it even if I laid eyes on it.  So perfection then, for the Jennifer Bevilles in the world, relies on writing in the most effective way for the time they have.

Many times I begin the drafting process the day before, like I am currently doing for this paper.  Is this a problem of procrastination?  Perhaps.  However, I think that my procrastination is only the surface of a deeper problem: writing is painful, excruciating, draining.  Many professors demand divine perfection, a flawless paper with impeccable grammar and word choice; when I begin to write, I feel so human and emotionally vulnerable, and most of all, erroneous.  And that’s okay, because it is when I am feeling vulnerable and honest that I write with pure passion; this passion makes the literature worth reading and enables the writing to have the power to speak to people, which Elbow describes as “real voice” (283).  My real voice speaks when I truly let my guard down and just write my first impressions.  My “real voice,” however honest it is, doesn’t always make good reading.  It is sometimes unorganized and incomplete, and sometimes it only makes sense to me.  It’s important to know that although I sound authentic, and my ideas remain valuable, my writing needs to be continually refocused and reshaped by a painful process that I define as refinement. 

Refinement, of gold or silver, begins with an impure, mixed substance.  An untrained person would pass right by it, not wanting to waste time or energy by picking it up.  It is ugly in form, a rugged piece of rock; nothing about it looks stunning or precious.  The miner, however, knows what to look for, and immediately sees something valuable and desirable within the seemingly worthless rock.  The miner sees the final product, beautiful silver and gold, as a worthwhile, profitable investment, and well worth the long, repetitive process of refining.  I am like the miner.  I know the process of refinement. As an effect of years of schooling and writing papers, my writing process is now habitual and predictable.  I know the pain, the hard work, and the backbreaking sweat of forming and molding my writing.  I hold on to the hope that the words I use will have a powerful effect on people and that my writing has the potential to captivate people, and that hope inspires me to continue with my writing process. 

 However, it’s hard to motivate myself to begin the process.  Even now, as I am writing this, I sense my attention focusing on other things: other school work, my schedule for today, in an attempt to delay my ultimate fate - this paper.  Even though I know the outcome is well worth my investment of time, it is hard to get started. 

My ideas, when first put down on paper, or rather typed into my word document, are scattered throughout the page.  My job, as the refiner is to take these raw and fresh thoughts, organize these ideas into a coherent piece, and refine them.  During refinement, the mixed metal is place in a searing fire, where the impurities rise to the top.  The refiner scrapes off and then disposes of these impurities, leaving a purer gold or silver than before.  In the same way, when I look at a draft of my writing, I scrap off the “impurities,” leaving my paper a purer gold than before.  When I read through my first draft, I realized that within this paper, chunks of precious metals existed beneath my ideas of “the writer” and “the critic.”  What I wanted to make personal, I made distant from myself, by not including my own personal ideas and experiences into this paper.  It was only after the work-shopping process that I reread my first paper and realized my writing echoed an unfamiliar, formal, academic tone.  I then “scraped” off most of my existing paper, keeping only the ideas and thoughts that pertained to me personally as a writer.  I took the remaining ideas, the underlying gold, and expanded them more in depth.  As I molded and reshaped this paper, I saw it constantly changing before my eyes, turning into something beautiful and rare to behold. 

After I put my writing through a fire of my own invention, I then put it through a sometimes more critical fire: my peers and professors.  Handing over my writing, as I did with the first draft of this paper, always makes me both anxious and excited.  However, I knew that by distributing the first draft of this paper to them, I would receive honest and insightful comments that I valued.  I was not disappointed.  Their reflection of my writing during this stage of refinement helped me understand which passages touched them personally, and which pieces need to be once again refined.  The many comments I received on my first draft helped me see on which ideas the readers wanted expansion.  These comments, which celebrated my refinement metaphor, also drew attention to trouble spots for the reader.  Since I wrote this paper as a continual thought process, sometimes my sentences were hard for the reader to understand.  In addition, the feedback helped me understand that the reader desired more personality in my paper.  I used this feedback to rewrite and edit my paper, in order to make it more enjoyable to my classmates and others who read this text.  As humbling as this part of the process is (and was, during our workshop), I also realize that my writing generates power when it has an audience.  As my writing went through each of these steps, the creator, my own self, saw this ugly piece of mixed rock transforming itself into a dazzling, mesmerizing beauty that is pure and valuable.  I have seen this paper progress, and continually change, as I persistently refine the words and ideas.

So I am now at the end of my paper.  Is this final product, produced through pure torture and struggle, a jewel?  As I am approaching the deadline for this paper, is the draining process of refinement worth it?  I think so.  Because even though I procrastinated in beginning my paper, struggled through the text, and underwent scrutiny from my classmates, it is still my own creation.  It represents a part of me – my writing process, though sometimes only the miner sees the beauty underneath the garbage.

Elbow, Peter.  “Writing and Voice.” Writing with Power. 1998. University of Mary Washington Blackboard. English 307 Course Documents. 2 February 2008. <http://blackboard.umw.edu>

Muckelbauer uses a lot of rhetoric moves in this piece.  The first thing that I noticed, as he argues that imitation and invention influence by each other, was his reliance on the history of imitation.  He uses a lot of ethos in his writing, using past scholars, like Aristotle and Plato, to establish reliability and credibility.  He also writes in a formal way, almost as a research paper, quoting ideas and sentences from a variety of authors.  I also noticed that he quotes the most from previous writers when he discusses that students should imitate a wide variety of scholars.  I particularly thought this move was clever.  He also acknowledges the shortcomings in each of the three movements he discusses, which also gives him credibility.  By explaining to the reader that he understands the problems with each movement, it serves to further establish his character and authority as a scholar.

At an early age, society teaches its children that they are special and unique, as there is no other person like them. No one else can take their place; each person contributes uniquely yet separately in our country. It is no wonder, then that Gen Y, as the article calls it, is considered narcissistic and vain. We have been taught that this world is a “dog eat dog world” and that “no one but ourself will help us in life.” If you want to diagnose a problem, you must first diagnose the cause. These symptoms of selfishness that our younger generations, including my own generation, are suffering from stem from a larger base: the teachers in our lives. Parents, mentors, teachers, and role models drilled these ideas into our heads.

This past summer, I traveled to South Africa for two weeks where I worked in one of the townships. I was struck by not only their hospitality to my companions and myself, but also in the way that they live as a community. With as much as 70% of the working force unemployed in the township, whole communities bond together, making sure that everyone has basic needs, like food and clothing. Uncles and aunts were raising their nieces, nephews, and grandchildren because of the AIDS epidemic that haunts that society. There was no room for individualism or materialism: people were struggling just to put food on the tables for their children. But you know what? They were so joyous despite their poverty. I think that Generation Y could learn a lesson from South Africa.

It is true that each person is special and unique, but until we learn to live in a community, willing to sacrifice for the benefit of others, we will always be miserable. I know I am special, but I also know that starving children in Africa are too. I know because I know those children. And their dreams of America are distant and skewed; if they did ever visit America, I think they would want to vomit from the vast amount of selfishness, materialism, and narcissism that litters our society. In the end, we are all in this together. It is a mistake to think otherwise.