Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

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[edit] Bear With Me

[edit] My Identity essay doesn't entirely suck

My Identity essay sucks. It sucks in this really odd way; the part of it that sucks is how I view the essay in relation to my understanding of my identity. Thinking about it this way can be translated as – I am the writer, I am the reader, and I am the subject. A situation with special implications is thus apparent. Frankly, I’m not convinced. This is a personal limb to go out on, but the ‘part of me’ that constitutes the reader doesn’t feel that the author ‘part of me’ correctly explained ‘me.’ The limb I’m on promptly breaks because ethos, pathos, and logos are one.

My first draft was chock full of bullshit. My second draft was not rewritten. Instead I ‘revised’ it. I made some corrections, etc. Yes, yes, I should have taken your advice, Steph. I’m sorry I didn’t but I’m also used to being stupid about school. Writing 112 section fifty-whatever is not chock full of bullshit. It’s not a good idea to be stupid about it. I love using too many prepositions. Anyway, I actually re-wrote much of the third draft first final draft. On the fourth draft second final draft I had this gut feeling to can it, and write a totally new essay. Of course, there were corrections to be made. I wonder if these distractions are a tad too harsh?

My, what a beautiful day.

In the final drafts of my (my), my identity essay, everything said displays characteristics of yours truly. The first couple drafts displayed some of my identity as well. I will continue to show parts of myself in this essay. I also just changed tenses thrice. Regardless, you might be asking yourself why I think the final draft sucks if I furthermore think every draft conveys my personality. The answer lies in the title of the piece in question – Final Draft.

There’s no inkling of my intent to say the instructor expected us to describe every detail of our identities. The problem is that under the word “Identity” is housed every little detail. I feel like a crazed animal scampering around beneath this idea of an “Identity,” trying desperately to find the real core of it. The only reason, however, for such feelings was trying to write it. Technically I would say the real core of my identity would be when I was a cute little fertilized egg. Sounds reasonable, eh? But wait…as we’re all well aware of by this stage of our education, that fertilized egg came from somewhere. Perhaps my parents are the roots of my identity, since their genes make up my existence as a cell or two. But why stop there? (Great sentence structure). My grandparents, further family members, and ancestors have all impacted who I am.

Although I was saying before, in the essays, that I’m confident about my identity, it’s not totally true. Rather than bothering to precisely map an identity for myself, I settled into letting my identity just be what it was. In other words, I rejected the need for a description. Being assigned to describe something I believe is beyond words has obvious obstacles. Obviously, I didn’t realize them until it was too late. I just verbalized for the first draft. Second, I reworded. Third, I got worried. Oh shit, is this really my identity?

OF COURSE IT IS. That worry was half bad. It fueled my attempt to connect the bull to what I really wanted to say, which was half successful (Success/2 = Goodness/2). Unfortunately, if I had really gotten to what I really wanted to say, I would have said that even the ramblings going on in my first draft are “accurate” depictions of who I am. Everyone who reads it will view it differently, no matter how much I try to refine my speech or elaborate key points. People will also have different ideas of what the key points should regard. And, on top of all this, every time I write stuff down I’m a different person.

After digesting this hearty meal, I find the same thing I found before. There’s no way I can write an essay that informs readers of Who I Am. There is wide open room to convey oneself through writing, but these conveyances are fractions of a person. They are then fractions of a person viewed by another. As I instinctively said since the initial identity draft, I could write a couple hundred pages and invariably fail to totally recreate myself. Everyone who knows me could also write about me, adding to an anthology that still would not exact my being. On the same side of the same coin in the same hand, I have never felt truly able to describe any of my friends, family, or acquaintances. However! As explained in the Text Wrestler, writing is an ongoing conversation! Yes! Exactly!

When I read that in the Text Wrestler, I didn’t realize what it meant to me, but now I’m aware that it directly applies to my paradoxical problem with identity. Not only is my identity impossible to describe in one essay, it’s constantly growing and changing. For example, I’ve been having fun with improper grammar and syntax through this whole essay and my personality is behind that. You wouldn’t be seeing that, however, if I hadn’t been prompted by Steph’s sensitivity to the matter. Thus, this continuous process of writing shows more and more of my identity. I believe the most thorough way to get to know someone, is to participate in a wide range of interactions with them. The most important to me is physically being with them, but one cannot just leave out things like writing. Even talking on the phone is different than talking in person. Seeing their friends, their environment (or context), and how they react and interact with such aspects of life shows you what kind of person they are. In the meantime, each person is developing and changing, presenting the need to continue learning about the other and/or forming new analyses founded on one’s own growth. That’s life. All of us have been doing it forever. Because knowing things around you helps you survive. Being alive, we are indeed interested in survival. As a writing class, we are a body within which people are continuously learning about each other. Everything I write in ENG112, and everything I have written outside of it, show some of Who I Am.