My name is Jacob Coughlin and I am a writer. This portfolio contains work from my academic studies at Wake Forest University in Philosophy, Political Science, and Creative Writing, as well as pieces I’ve written on my own time.

Writing is both my favorite way to spend time and a miserable process. For anyone who has spent time writing or around writers, this observation is probably a cliche. I love to start my mornings with coffee and “morning pages,” a routine I’ve developed of filling three pages of a legal pad with stream of consciousness thoughts about my dreams, plans for the day, petty frustrations, and occasionally a sentence worth keeping for later. I also enjoy journaling at night, a practice I started when I was seventeen and realized I’d forgotten so many important moments from my childhood. Sometimes I read through my old journals and relive days I never would have remembered. One of my favorite memories of college was hiking deep into Reynolda trails, setting up my hammock, taking a nap, and writing a story when I woke up. During the spring of my junior year, I had two free hours in the afternoon between my classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. When it was warm, I spent that time on the balcony of my dorm room drinking red wine and writing poems.

I’m also tortured by writing. I’ve written a total of five two-page journal entries in 2020, as most nights I look at the brown journal sitting on my desk and decide that I’m too tired to write. Some of the worst nights of my life have been spent in the Philosophy Library of Tribble Hall crumpling up sheets of paper filled with dogshit writing that’s due the next day and throwing them in the trash. I have gotten pretty good at writing emails asking for extensions, though. Right now I’m writing both of my senior thesis, a final essay for a philosophy class I didn’t attend much, and of course this final portfolio assignment. Tomorrow is Friday May 8th, the day all final assignments are due. What an appropriate way to end my undergraduate writing career!

I have a binge writing problem. I also have some of the healthiest, most mature writing practices of anyone I know my age. Maybe that’s because most of my friends are finance majors, but I still give myself some credit. The only way I know how to reconcile these two objective, contradictory truths is on the page, and the collective contents of this portfolio is the result. Maybe when I’ve left college and adopted more mature living habits, I’ll strengthen my writing routines and out-grow the binging. But maybe when I have a difficult job and bills to pay and god forbid kids, I’ll have even less time to write every day than I do now. After I’ve fulfilled my current work contract of two years, I plan to enter an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing. I’m excited and scared to death. Consider this portfolio my application.