​Abigail Kraus

 

Analyzing the Beginning

Ever since I was a child and knew how to write and read, I have always loved writing. I wrote short stories that I would illustrate, I wrote poetry about my favorite things, I even wrote scripts for television shows I enjoyed. From age five to age twelve, I was constantly using my imagination to write anything and everything. Once I was in high school though, my writing style changed. My prose became more matured and I started focusing more on writing literary analysis papers about various works we read for my English classes. Although these papers were certainly not creative writing, I liked writing them because I got to choose specific topics within books of my choice to write about. I enjoyed writing these and was so practiced in these literary analyses that I even decided to take two English classes, AP English and a course called College Writing, during my senior year of high school. This college writing course changed who I was as a writer completely; through this course I learned to really polish my prose, syntax, and overall style of writing. It was during this class that I had my first writing breakthrough: when I wrote about something I was interested in, my passion for writing came through more as well.

I had never been more excited in my writing career as when I won a contest for this high school writing class. The essay prompt for this paper was to write about the benefits of Plastics Engineering for a contest for the Society of Plastics Engineering. I remember thinking that this was the most boring assignment ever and that I had no clue what to write about. So I ended up writing aout the fashion industry, and somehow connected it to plastics by talking about how many materials like nylon and polyester need plastic to be made. Although I thought that I had sort of bent the rules of the assignment by not writing much about plastics, and instead about something I was personally more interested in, I somehow still ended up winning the contest. It was at this moment when I realized then that when I wrote about something I was passionate about, even if for a boring prompt, my writing style was a lot more in depth, interesting, and full of my own personal tone.

Due to this writing course in high school, my inspiring teacher, and my success from this project, I came into the University of Michigan planning on majoring in English in order to continue writing more. Yet through these English courses, I really lost my voice in my papers and interest in writing overall, as I often did not get to choose what I was writing about in my entry-level English courses. I often found myself bored, frustrated, and adding a lot of fluff to my writing. My writer’s voice seemed generic, dull, and like I was trying to hard when I look back upon these essays now. As I shifted my concentration from humanities’ based English to social science based Communications in my sophomore year, my focus in writing changed, but I realized that my style did not. Therefore throughout my college writing career, I have recognized that my writing has become strongly analytically based, as I have progressed from writing literary analysis, to media analysis, to recently, event analysis papers, which all focus on examining details of elements of a topic and then determining and describing their greater significance. I discovered that although I have been writing these analysis papers throughout my career as a writer, without a central subject that really interested me, my writing could only develop minimally. Eventually though when I found topics that I was passionate writing about, I realized that I change work around prompts and analyze anything in a way that would still relate back to my interests. It was though my ability to learn to do this that I became a better writer.

 

Analyzing Literature

Through the many literary analysis papers I did in high school and at the start of my experience at the University of Michigan, I learned how to write about a specific detailed subject and critically analyze that detail. Starting with my first English course at the University of Michigan, English 124, I wrote many of these styles of papers. For example, in my paper “Trying to Smile: The Characterization of Gabriel Conroy Through his Body Language” that I wrote about James Joyce’s short story The Dead, I broke down the piece by analyzing the specific details of the story, Gabriel’s body language, to argue that he was desperate for control. In this paper and other assignments that were similar, my argument was very upfront and not as in depth as they could have been. I realize now that my interest in the subject was lacking, so therefore my writing was not as fluid, my argument was not as cohesive, and my prose was very dull. As I look back upon this essay now, the words on the page seem forced, awkward, and not very me.

In two other English courses I took at the University of Michigan, English 297 and 298, I did many similar style papers, analyzing poetry and popular fiction. Although at the time I thought these writing pieces of mine were strong, looking back I definitely see their lack of depth and ultimately, my lack of imagination and interest. I realize that a common theme in these papers for my English classes is that although I often had the choice to write about a certain topic within a novel or poem, I was still always assigned a specific text to analyze in a specific way. It is through these works that I know my writing had become forced due the structure, guidelines, and requirements of prompts imposed on me.

 

Analyzing Media

I noticed a major shift in my style when I started writing about something I was much more interested in other than novels and characterization, which came as a result of my change in my concentration to a Communications major. Although I still enjoyed reading and English classes, I realized what I really enjoyed about them before was the writing. Luckily when I changed to the Communications concentration, I was able to continue doing a similar style of writing analytically, but this time focusing instead on media analysis. Media analysis was something that I was much more interested in since I have always been a huge movie, television, magazine, etc. fan. The first paper I wrote in this style I titled “Legally Anti-feminist” about the movie Legally Blonde, in which the assignment prompt was to critically analyze if the movie was feminist or anti-feminist. From here, I really started a theme in my writing: media analysis papers focusing on feminism. Each Communications course I took after this initial Communications 101 course, in which I wrote this paper, I was assigned to always write some sort of similar paper in which I focused on analyzing media looking for some specific theme. I loved that although I was still doing analysis papers, I had the freedom to choose what media text I analyzed and how.

After relooking over some of my papers though, I noticed that no matter what the assignment prompt was, I always focused on this same analytical theme of gender studies in media. Since this was a topic I was interested researching, learning about, analyzing, and ultimately writing about, choosing this theme repeatedly became my specific expertise in writing. I think that I really enjoyed writing about this topic as I learned more about it because it appalled me and then stuck with me about how certain gender roles were established in the media and continued over time. As soon as I realized this, some of my papers were: “1970’s Feminism and the Rise of Blended Families Reflected in The Brady Bunch,” in which I critically broke down the popular television show the Brady Bunch for it’s portrayals of feminism for my upper level writing communications course, “Sixty Years of Romanticized Sexual Violence and Male Dominance in the Media,” in which I discussed the themes of dominant males and submissive females in film for the past six decades for my Amcult Upper Level Writing course, and “It’s in the Math: Boys Aren’t really Better Than Girls,” in which I debated the common stereotype that males are inherently better at math than females for my English 225, Academic Argumentation course.

Although I started writing about this theme for my communications courses, I also began to use this subject for many of my other writing classes required for the writing minor as well, no matter what the prompt. Writing about this specific theme of feminism across all ranges of discipline and for all sorts of assignment prompts really helped to strengthen my writing as I almost became an expert on feminist ideas and gender roles in the media and therefore was able to make more in depth arguments and claims, as well as more coherently worded arguments because I could think about this theme in many contexts. I also began to hear my own voice again in my writing, as I started to lose my boring, robotic, and structured tone that I had developed so frequently through my literary analysis papers. For example, in the paper I wrote on the film A Streetcar Named Desire, I wrote:

“Blanche, an aging yet narcissist woman, is a single woman in a time period in the 1950’s where there was no good roles for single woman to have; all women in the media were expected to be wives or mothers. Thus, Blanche is characterized in a negative and disturbed archetypal role, because she is single and relatively old.”

In this quote my interest in the subject is more apparent to me as I do not generically string words together or paraphrase previously written ideas; instead I use my own imagination and creativity to emphasize my point of how this woman in a movie is unfairly stereotyped.

For the minor in writing gateway course, I continued writing with my interest in this gender theme for my repurposing paper and my remediation project. This repurposing and remediation assignment was a fun challenge though as I got to be more creative in my feminist analysis. I chose to write as a journalist for an entertainment magazine. Writing in this style was initially a challenge but was ultimately rewarding as I got to use a sarcastic, ironic, and often times light-hearted tone, even when discussing a meaningful topic for describing anti-feminism in Legally Blonde yet again. For example, I state:

“Elle exemplifies she is more than “just a dumb blonde” when she skips parties to study for the LSAT (which shockingly to her sorority sisters, is not a venereal disease), outsmarts store clerks who try to sell her last year’s designer dresses at full price (gasp!), and eventually even actuallygets into Harvard Law School.”

For the remediation project I took the same feminist topic and decided to turn it into a podcast, therefore writing a script. Ultimately, this experience in which I wrote about a the same topic, how a popular movie is actually anti-feminist despite supposed feminist undertones, in an initial analytical communications final paper, to a sarcastic and witty magazine article for mass audiences, to finally a podcast script written for feminist listeners, taught me how to write about the same topic for varying audiences. I believe this skill of varying writing for specific contexts and audiences was one of the most valuable I have learned thus far in my writing career. Through this experience, I had the same realization that I did in high school that when I was writing about something I was interested in, no matter what the prompt, format, or style, my writing experience and prose was far superior.

 

Analyzing an Interest

Yet recently, my writing prompts have changed again to another theme, in which I have been more consistently analyzing events based on this same critical detailed analysis. After studying abroad in Europe, I began to look into more detail about places, activities, and events that took place in my life. Although I always thought that in order to do perspective analysis writing pieces, that I had to be writing about something intellectual, scholarly, I recently realized that I can write about any subject analytically. Since I became so practiced in writing critical analysis papers, I now had the ability to write about a variety of subjects, rather than just novels or gender themes. Analytically breaking down events, whether major or minor, is something that I have really started to delve into more recently, which I think is an important writing skill of news reporting, and also personal writing. I wrote analytically about the event of the Papal Conclave for my media events class, and this writing piece was really strong as I used a variety of news sources to support my claims, all while writing about a topic I witnessed and therefore was really excited to write about. This paper inspired my next project, in which I am writing a guidebook for the capstone project. I am excited that through this project not only will my passion for writing be able to come out again as I write about one of my interests, but I am also excited that my skills of writing analytically will be able to be used for another subject.

 

Analyzing my Development as a Writer

Ultimately, the many different writing pieces I have done throughout my college writing career and before have had a theme of critical analysis. I have learned through writing these styles of papers how to write about varying topics, for varying audiences, and in various contexts for differing courses. My writing has changed as I have began to write more about topics I am interested in, and so therefore my passion for the subjects have been reflected in my writing. Although learning how to write analysis papers was beneficial, I really lost my voice and interest in writing as I was constantly assigned to write about things that I did not have particular interest in. When I found a specific subject to write about that was of interest to me, gender in the media, I was able to grow as a write more than ever, and learned that when writing about a topic of interest, writing is more enjoyable for me, and which is really true for anyone. I was lucky that through my major and minor at college I was able to write many papers about topics that inspired me, so therefore inspired my writing style. Therefore, as I developed as I writer, I realized that no matter what the prompt, purpose, and structure for writing, when one writes about a subject of their interest, the paper will be much stronger for both them to write and the reader to read.