Introduction

When I was preparing to graduate eighth grade, I had to answer “fun facts” questions to be printed by my name in the school yearbook. One of these questions was “What is your dream job?” I was an inquisitive, imaginative young teen who had always enjoyed writing as a creative outlet, so I proudly answered that my dream job was to be a “Writer.”

I cringe a little bit now as I think about that title printed beside my yearbook photo, which, featuring braces and acne, is cringe-worthy to begin with. I don’t know why I thought that the angsty journal entries and outlandish stories I wrote in my free time could translate to a career. Truth be told, I probably wasn’t thinking much about a career in the first place; I just knew that I liked to write and I thought I was pretty good at it.

When I got to college, I signed up to be a writing minor for the same reason. Writing had always been a strong part of my academics and it felt right to keep practicing. Plus, I thought it would be a good idea to build writing skills that could be applicable to future endeavors.

I don’t think I quite realized how much writing I’d be doing regardless of my degree. Wake Forest’s liberal arts curriculum led me to take classes in a wide range of disciplines, from Biology to Statistics to English to Religion. All of them demanded writing. I discovered that good writing is valued and required in almost every discipline, even though what is considered “good” changes across departments. Each new class required that I explore different subjects and styles while meeting distinct expectations. Because of this, I had to develop a lot of breadth in my writing capabilities and learn how to transfer my skills from genre to genre. The range of my writing has increased immensely over the past four years. I’ve written reports of my own ethnographic research, personal memoirs, lab reports, environmental journalism features, analytical papers, and more. The sheer quantity of pages I’ve turned in is a little bit boggling.

Through all this writing, I learned a lot -- not just about the writing conventions of each discipline, but about the subjects themselves. In order to write about ecotourism in Chile, resource use of plants, community gardens in Winston-Salem, and Indigenous pipeline protests, I had to thoroughly research and understand all of these topics. Academic writing was a space to explore ideas that I was curious about and to build knowledge that went beyond my class lectures.

Eventually, I discovered what really interested me and what I wanted to pursue in the future. I chose an Anthropology major and an additional minor in Environmental Studies, which I hoped to use in a career at an environmental organization or national park. Contrary to what my thirteen-year-old self envisioned, none of my dream jobs had “writer” in the title. In fact, I considered dropping my writing minor because I didn’t have a clear idea of how writing would fit into my future.

Obviously, I decided to stick with it. The reason I chose to take more writing classes was not because they clearly translated to a future career path; it was because I enjoyed them. I took classes that led me to explore personal essays and creative writing, and through these genres I did a different sort of learning: learning how to process, remember, and make sense of the world around me. Encouraged by my writing professors, I started keeping a personal journal again and developed a consistent writing practice of putting my thoughts and feelings on paper. This made me realize how valuable it is to write for my own fulfillment and sanity rather than to prove myself to my professors and peers. Knowing that my journal was for my eyes only gave me the freedom to write imperfectly and spontaneously. It was a comfort in unfamiliar situations and a way to reflect upon both the highs and lows of my college experience. The release I felt from free-writing made me remember why I was compelled to pursue writing in the first place.

My journal has continued to be an important part of my writing development. I’ve even referenced some of my journal entries when developing personal narratives for my upper-level writing classes. I’ve written twenty-page papers on my original research for my major, but the writing I’m the most proud of over the last four years are the essays for my writing classes through which I got to tell a story from my own life, in which my own friends and family are the characters. So I guess it was worth it to be a writing minor after all.

This kind of reflective writing probably won’t be a part of my “dream job,” but I do think it will be important as I move to the next phase of my life. I am about to graduate, move across the country, try new things, and meet new people. I expect that writing will be an important way to find meaning in all of it.

I hope this portfolio gives you a glimpse into the many different types of writing I’ve engaged with at Wake Forest. These papers show not only what I’ve learned how to write, but what I’ve learned about my areas of discipline, the world, and myself. I’m excited to see what I learn next.