For the capstone course for the Interdisciplinary Writing Minor at Wake Forest University, we are asked to craft an "annotated bibliography" where we reflect on 10 artifacts of our own work throughout our undergraduate careers, both inside and outside the classroom, to show our growth as writers. We were asked to present two samples which we believe demonstrate our “mastery” of particular genres first first, and I presented the remaining eight samples in chronological order from oldest to newest. I attempted to select old and new examples of the same kinds of writing, so that I could compare and contrast them to explore my improvement as a writer throughout my four years. Finally, as someone whose written across a wide variety of disciplines, settings, and genres — I’m a sociology major, WGSS minor and writing minor who’s taken elective courses in linguistics, education, communication, and more and who’s worked for the Old Gold & Black student newspaper, a startup incubator, a nature preserve, Wake Forest School of Law, a kids camp, and more — I wanted to choose a selection that would showcase work in different discourse communities and allow me to explore all the different ways I’ve written during a time as a Wake Forest University student. I felt that this would be the best approach to help me consider how to organize my final portfolio and what artifacts to include.
“Research Question: Should companies be in the incarceration business?” LIB 100 Academic Research & Information Issues Joy Gambill: Fall, 2018.
This is one of the two samples I selected that I believe demonstrates “genre mastery.” During the fall of my senior year, I was dedicating many hours each week to an off-campus internship, and was in a challenging slate of upper-level classes. I decided to take this library science course because I felt as though I already possessed the research skills to excel in the class easily, but I did not anticipate how much I’d truly enjoy and appreciate the course. While I was right that there was a lot I already knew, it was so rewarding, affirming, and confidence boosting to have my research abilities confirmed. During the course, we were asked to write a research question on any topic, find one source of a specific type each week (encyclopedia entry, journal article, reputable website, etc.), write an annotation on that source, and compile everything into a final report that summarized our findings and reflected on our experiences. I realized that even though I’d written them before, I’d never been formally taught how to write annotated bibliographies in such an explicit and straightforward way. I also realized that while I knew a lot already about how to evaluate internet sources, I’d never used any online encyclopedic database besides the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, and I’d never considered using either an encyclopedia entry or a website as part of my source material for any assignment I’d completed in college, and now I find myself doing so this semester! I discovered numerous new research databases and got to spend time in the archives in Special Collections, and it was overall so freeing and rewarding to be able to research exactly the subject I wanted with no constraints.This document that I’ve included is my final project for the class, which assembled all the citations, annotations, and reflections we’d completed over the course of the semester, and this culmination of my work is something of which I’m truly proud. My paper explored the “incarceration business” — how private prison contracts work, profit motivations behind mass incarceration, and more — through an encyclopedia article, a journal article, a book, and an internet source, demonstrating my ability to effectively read, evaluate, and synthesize numerous sources across a variety of genres and allowing me to show my mastery of the research skills I hold so important as a social science major. My work earned a perfect score, and Professor Gambill told me that it was “fun to grade” as well. While I was one of only two seniors in the course so many of my classroom peers had just begun their college research journeys, it was still really validating of my mastery of the work I love to do and value to have my professor email me and consistently remark that my sources were “superb” and that my annotations were some of the most interesting and well-written she’s ever read in the course.
“Hunting Culture in Gun Culture 2.0: Where Are the Trucks and Bucks?” SOC 384 The Sociology of Guns, Professor David Yamane: Spring, 2018.
This was the second article I selected to exemplify my genre mastery in writing research papers. My final paper for the Sociology of Guns research seminar allowed me to pick any topic relating to anything we’d discussed in the course, which is another one of the few times I’ve been given such complete freedom over my research topic. I considered doing some kind of race or gender based analysis, as these identity-based areas were where my interests, skills, and knowledges typically fell. Ultimately, however, after meeting with Dr. Yamane in his office hours, I decided to push myself outside my comfort zone.Dr. Yamane’s basic thesis of his course, and the subject of his online blog, “Gun Culture 2.0,” is that the gun culture that dominated the first four centuries of U.S. history, one of hunting and sustenance and sport with rifles, had now been replaced by a different gun culture of owning hand guns for self-defense, which is the most commonly cited reason for owning a gun in the U.S. today. However, both from growing up in a suburb near a rural part of Virginia and from having family bayou-side in Texas and Louisiana, I knew people still hunted. While hunting culture was no longer the dominant culture, it still existed, and we hadn’t explored it through our course, so I wanted to know how. Before the course, I’d never handled a firearm, and I knew nothing about hunting outside of some stereotypes, so I had to really dive into research to even know what angle to take, and I ultimately ended up reviewing many more sources than the assignment required. Dr. Yamane held a workshop on writing engaging titles, something I’d never worked on so formally and explicitly before, and had research librarian Hu Womack come to class to discuss our papers with us and encourage us to use more databases and books. For this project, I physically went to get books off the stacks in ZSR for only the third time in my college career, immersed myself fully in my research, and I loved it. It all paid off, because I produced a paper that both I and my professor were extremely proud of. It exemplified my ability to weave a compelling narrative and argument through a research paper, become an expert on a new topic through research, and effectively synthesize sources.
Ultimately, Dr. Yamane asked to post my paper to his blog, where other scholars commented praising my work (which you can view here: https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/hunting-culture-in-gun-culture-2-0-where-are-the-trucks-and-bucks/), and he posted my reflection essay on my time in his class to his blog as well! However, after posting the two pieces, Dr. Yamane emailed me the following: “Now that the semester is over, I wanted to ask you about class participation. You are so smart, and articulate in your writing, what is the hang up bringing that out more in class? No need to answer if you don't want, but it is something I have thought about.” I want to use my work in this class and others to reflect on how, when, and why I’m confident in my writing versus speaking in class, and how I can better utilize my skills in one form of communication in another.
I selected this piece because this was the very first thing I ever wrote, academic or otherwise, while a student here. In high school, I was a member of two different student publications, and writing, editing, and publishing for them is what took up a fair amount of my extracurricular time, so I decided that when I came to college, I would push myself out of my comfort zones and try new activities before ever writing for or working at the student newspaper. However, during the activities fair during orientation weekend, I passed by the Old Gold & Black booth. They explained that their article opportunities were sent out over a “budget” listserv every week, and writers could simply sign up for one by replying and signing up at any time, without attending any meetings or making any regular commitments. I figured it couldn’t hurt to put myself on the list. Then, during that weekend, my email address got confused with that of a regular writer, and I got personally emailed with a special assignment. Even though I let them know that I wasn’t who they meant to email, I immediately got excited about the piece, and ended up getting assigned it anyway.I got to go to the OGB office and meet the news editors, who I was pretty sure were the coolest seniors ever, during my very first weekend here on campus, before I’d even started classes. They told me they’d get me an interview with Student Health Director Dr. Cecil Price, who was notoriously busy and hard to sit down with. When I interviewed him and wrote and submitted my article, I felt so important and so confident, and that was ultimately one of the most informative experiences I had during my first semester. Joining the OGB even when I’d planned not to so soon and realizing my passion for writing is what led me to my minor and two internships I had later. I served as an editor for three different sections and for five semesters. It’s so interesting now to go back and read the piece that started it all and find that while there are places where I don’t follow AP style or standard journalistic conventions and a couple of wordings I’d change, it’s actually still a well-written piece that feels informative with authority and one I’m still really proud of.
“Application to attend BRANCHES retreat.” Fall, 2015.
I selected this artifact, my answers to the application questions when applying to attend the BRANCHES social justice retreat over my first fall break, to compare and contrast it with a similar document I completed much later, the essay prompts I completed as part of an application for an associate community organizer positions last spring. I wanted to see how the way I talked about myself in the self-promotional way applications require and my relationship to social justice causes evolved over time and over 2.5 years. It’s interesting to read on my BRANCHES application the way I attempt to promote myself and my eligibility in terms of my interests, privileges, and what I need to learn rather than what I know, and it’s interesting to look back at how I write in a personal way and how I frame certain things. I share that I was in a relationship with a woman at the time, but that I was in the closet to everyone both here and back at home, which is a very personal and vulnerable secret to have been able to write to an anonymous form across the internet that was being reviewed by students and staff alike. I also framed this liminal state as some kind of a “privilege” which is really interesting and revealing of my mindset at the time. I think this shows something about my writing style that’s always been there – I can write anything about myself and share it with anyone across a screen, and my natural inclination to be real and authentic and vulnerable is a strength I need to embrace while learning how to better master writing about myself. It also shows the way I tend to blend formal and conversational tones especially when I’m personally addressing someone on the other side of a screen for something like an application. My exploration of my sexuality through this application was one of the first times I experienced writing as therapeutic, something that really became exemplified by a later memoir assignment I also included in this bibliography.
“Resident Assistant Cover Letter” Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth: Spring 2016.
Like the application essays, I wanted to pair two cover letters to show how my writing had evolved between them as well. For this cover letter, I was applying to become a Resident Assistant at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer program, a camp I’d attended myself for two years as a kid and where I’d live with and supervise middle school students for seven weeks for the next two summers. You can tell how much my time at CTY meant to me and how much I loved it, but I don’t think my passion not just for the program itself but for working for it, for working with kids, and for becoming an RA shines through. It’s a decent cover letter, and I ultimately got the job, but it’s more stilted, formulaic, and formal, and it doesn’t inspire or showcase my bubbly and energetic personality. I was trying too hard to sound professional, intelligent, and “hire-able,” which conveys my ability to be responsible and plan good activities, perhaps, but I didn’t really sound like a fun and energetic counselor, someone who would connect well with the culture of the team and the camp itself. That’s something I think I’ve learned to do increasingly well with my cover letters, my job interviews, and just with writing in general — letting my personality shine through and embracing writing how I speak — since reflecting on this experience.
“Analyzing the Apologia of Kanye West.” COM 225 Rhetorical Criticism, Professor Jarrod Atchison: Spring 2016.
I particularly remember this paper, because for a long time, I refused to reread or review it, because I knew how poorly written it was. I’d written it all in one sitting, quickly, barely meeting the page requirement, and I knew it was awkward, stilted, and not my best work. I’ve always taken pride in my abilities as a writer and in my written work, even in the papers that were written over the course of one night, but during the spring of my first year as an undergraduate here — a semester when numerous physical health, mental health, academic, extracurricular, and personal challenges all accumulated and I floundered under their weight without much guidance — I turned in numerous assignments I wasn’t proud of, and my embarrassment and shame made it feel even more challenging to put in the right amount of energy into my work when I felt like I was continuously letting myself and others down.I had many classes I loved, including this communication class, but I still didn’t engage with them as deeply as I would’ve liked to and still turned in work I wasn’t proud of. Professor Atchison called me into his office for an intervention. Somehow, he saw my mediocre work as more than a person blowing off his assignments, and was able to know that I cared deeply about his class even if my work didn’t reflect that. Even when he asked me what was going on, as he and several other professors —including you, Dr. Boyle! — did that semester, I hadn’t yet learned how to ask for help (which is something I’m still slowly but surely working on three years later), and I felt at a loss as to how to be truly vulnerable to or form relationships with my professors. I cried in his office, overwhelmed and exhausted, but I didn’t offer much in the way of explanation. He still cut me a deal — if I wanted to, I could skip his third paper and write the final paper for double the weight instead. It felt like a huge relief and a lot of pressure at the same time, and when it came time to write that paper, I just couldn’t live up. At the last possible second, I turned in a short, stilted analysis of Kanye West’s apologies that felt very unacademic and poorly written, and I pulled out a C in the class. It sat in a folder on my computer marked “COM 225,” inside another folder titled “Spring 2016,” a folder that was full of folders full of assignments I didn’t take pride in, several of which were unfinished, overwhelming undertakings I just couldn’t accomplish, a folder of my failures I couldn’t bear to open. Until one day, two semesters later, after I’d finally started to feel like myself, like I’d found my place here and had finally gotten the hang of balancing my school work with other commitments, I was retaking your course, so I opened up that dreaded folder to look back at the work I’d done. And I opened this paper, one of the ones I’d always written off in my head as the worst. And, well … it wasn’t that bad. In fact, as I read over it, my overall review of the paper was that it was decent and some parts were good. Some parts were a little awkwardly worded, and it ended a little abruptly, but it was not only on par with how I wrote as a first-year student, but to me, it sounded like genuinely good college writing. I’ll always remember that moment, because I finally realized how high my own standards for myself were and how that shame about not meeting them had been one of the biggest challenges I’d faced. It was self-created, self-imposed! I am a writer, and I’m a good one, and it’s taken a long time to build up that self-confidence, but it all started with this paper, because I realized that one of my worst wasn’t all that bad after all.
“Field Exercise Number Two.” LIN 333 Language and Gender, Professor Margaret Bender: Spring, 2016.I wanted to include this field exercise for a linguistics course I did, because the formatting of the report and the way I had to analyze phonetic patterns and linguistic markers in speech of two of my friends was unlike anything I’d had to do before. While interviews became a regular part of my work in writing classes and numerous others, and I’d already had to conduct interviews all the time for my writing for the Old Gold & Black, I never had to code or review them in this way, where I was focused on the words and sounds and speech patterns of the interviews, rather than their themes and content. I felt like I was kind of doing a close reading of a text, a rhetorical analysis, but of their speech rather than of literature. While I didn’t continue studying linguistics, I think it’s important to reflect on this piece as part of my review of my work for the interdisciplinary minor, as this exemplifies writing for an entirely different discourse community and genre, with a totally different lexicon. Looking at this piece reminds me that my writing skills are diverse and adaptable.
“Major Paper 2 & 3: Memoir” WRI 212 The Art of the Essay, Professor Eric Ekstrand: Spring, 2017.
This paper is from spring 2017, the spring semester one year after my most challenging one, when I finally pieced together pieces of my identity. I started treating my mental health challenges in better and more consistent ways, found a life balance that allowed me to feel more confident in approaching and completing my schoolwork, and I found friends and a queer community I’d always wanted. On top of all of those changes and shifts, this paper was a huge part of my healing process. As someone who’s never had a diary or notebook and who’s never really been one to write personal essays, I’d never thought of writing as something that would allow me to process my own experiences. Earlier this semester, one of my classmates made a joke about the essay you have to write over and over, because your body and your mind won’t let you write anything else until you’ve done it justice, and that was exactly what this assignment was to me. For a long time, I couldn’t even bring myself to tell anyone around me, even closest friends, about my mother’s alcoholism and the way it had permeated my life and that of my family, making me emotional and fearful around drinking throughout my first year here, where drinking happens a lot. But once I started writing about it, I couldn’t stop. It became central to so many of my writing assignments, and as I wrote them, I found a natural inclination to be really vulnerable and authentic in writing in ways I can’t be otherwise, and I wrote everything out, and I healed. I’ve revisited and repurposed and rewritten numerous pieces of this essay, and I think there’s a lot to be proud of, but in a lot of ways, this essay was just a beginning. It was the beginning of a new chapter of writing in my life, and it was the beginning of the end of a huge secret I’d been carrying around for so long. There’s one line at the end of the letter portion of this essay where after writing intensely about the problems in my relationship with my mother, I joke that I was drinking a beer when I wrote it, and at the time, I hadn’t really been able to drink or be around drinking without being upset. It seems somewhat silly now, but I’ll also never forget how important that particular moment was to me.
“Marketing intern cover letter.” Go Fish Digital: Spring, 2018.
I wanted to pair this cover letter with my earlier application materials that I also included in this bibliography to compare and contrast them and showcase how my comfort with my own voice in my writing has grown. I was applying for a social media marketing internship with Go Fish Digital, and at the very end of the job posting, the company asked that applicants write a nontraditional cover letter, one that showcases their personality and the way marketing skills are a central part of their lives, and one that proves that they read all the way through the job posting to find this specific prompt. It felt interesting to break out of the OPCD’s cover letter templates and writing something that was so unique and very me. I wanted spark excitement in my readers and let my bubbly and extroverted personality shine through—I wanted them to feel that not only was I qualified for the job and excited to learn, but also that I’d be a good fit for their company culture and fun to work with. And it worked—even though they’d interviewed someone else and offered them the position just before I’d applied, the email response I received gushing over my cover letter was surprising and so, so affirming when I’d faced rejection after rejection throughout my internship search process last spring, and I was able to ask for more extensive feedback on my other materials and build a relationship with their hiring manager that I still have today. I did eventually find an awesome internship last summer at Winton Starts, and I loved both the work I did and the people I worked with. After I’d built a relationship with my supervisors there, I asked them for feedback on my application materials and interview so that I could better approach the job search this year. I was surprised that both of my supervisors said that I didn’t inspire them, and while they could see that I was a fantastic writer and had done good work, they worried I’d be too boring and uptight to fit into the startup culture there. I recognized why that might’ve been the case — after being rejected numerous times during my internship search, I entered my interview with them in May feeling dejected and with little confidence and low morale, and Winston Starts was extremely intimidating, so I wanted to come across as impressive and professional as possible. This was to the detriment of letting my personality shine, though, and it took them far too long to get to see and know the real me. During my application for the Fellows process, I was determined to be me, just like I had for Go Fish Digital’s cover letter. I reread this cover letter and the hiring manager’s response to it, to remind myself the kind of impression I made when I wrote and acted like truly myself, and I decided to learn from my work and take a risk with a more informal cover letter for the Fellows positions. This is what she wrote: “Specifically, you should know that your cover letter was AMAZING! We were all hungry for a Crunch Wrap after reading about your Taco Bell evangelism. … You were able to convey your passion and give us a sense of your personality. So many people's applications (and interview styles) are just to throw out as many “businessy” words as possible. It's refreshing to get an application that's actually sounds like a person. … Although we don't have any more open internships for this summer, we would love to hear from you again in the future. In the meantime, we hope you have an absolutely dynamite summer with all the bean burritos you can handle.”
“DART application essay prompts.” Direct Action & Research Training Network: Spring, 2018.
I selected this artifact to compare and contrast it with one from my first year here (number four on this list). Both prompts asked me to write personal essay kind of responses that showcased my passion for the work I’d be doing in each opportunity. In both, I explored my personal and academic connections to social justice issues, and it’s interesting to see how my writing on these subjects has grown, evolved, and changed, both in composition and content, from my first year here, when was a WGSS minor but unsure about anything else and when many social justice ideas were new to me, to now, when I’m a senior sociology major who’s made social justice central to my academic and extracurricular pursuits. There are many differences, but just as many similarities, and I found that very interesting.