Category Archives: News

News

Tortoise Tuesday: On Strong Coffee and Good Style

BY Writing Center

In my family, coffee is consumed hot, black, and eye-wateringly strong, or not at all, which in my view, is exactly as it should be. Well before I was old enough to appreciate the pleasures of a bitterly flavorful, palette-burning mouthful of coffee, I knew what strong coffee smelled like, and more important, looked like: in a cream-colored porcelain cup placed in the full slantwise sunbeams of a winter morning, the sides should scarcely be visible even through the top few millimeters of coffee, and the bottom, needless to say, not at all. If it was so pale when I poured it as to be even slightly honey-colored in the sunlight, the coffee was too weak, and I could be sure it would be remarked upon when I brought the cups to the table. Of course, to a fifteen year-old with a bottomless sweet tooth, the bitterness of over-strong black coffee held little appeal; but knowing how to make it was important, and the first step was being able to tell the strong coffee from the weak.

The same thing can be said about recognizing good writing. It is impossible to know how to write well if you don’t know what good writing looks like, and even when a piece of writing is not to your taste, you can usually tell, with practice, whether or not it is well put together. In some cases, this means being able to identify the purpose of the piece, but there are other cases in which a piece of writing has no clear purpose, or driving argument — and, in particular, is not meant to have one — and these can be even more important for the development of good style than pieces in which the author’s argument is the central focus. In such pieces, which lack the frantic rush to get to the main point before the audience’s wandering gaze veers elsewhere, we are at far greater liberty to see the thread of a narrative unspooled at length, complete with digressions, tangents, and a periodic returns to the central theme. Well-written pieces which diverge from the terse style with which we are all so familiar reminds us of the possibilities within our own writing, and while tastes change, good style is universal. An essay which is not to my taste on a first reading might move me to tears in three years time; and the converse might just as easily hold true. The only way to learn what suits you is to read obsessively, and widely, from things which seem like complete rubbish to essays and novels and everything in between. Then all these bits and pieces will flap around in your head like bats in a cave, and turn up at the oddest moments — even the ones you didn’t think you liked at the time. Strong, scalding, black coffee might not be to your taste this year, but good coffee is good coffee, and who knows what you might think three years hence.

— Isabella Khan, ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: From Evidence to Argument in Haircutting

BY Writing Center

One unexpected perk of quarantine is that I’ve been able to live my alternative career fantasy of cutting hair. It started sometime in October when my bangs grew past my eyes and I decided I was less afraid of trimming them myself than of going to a hair salon in the middle of a pandemic. I studied a series of online how-to articles, picked up the right kind of scissors from CVS, and gingerly set to work over the bathroom sink. A few weeks after the (relative) success of this endeavor, one of my housemates asked if I would cut her hair, too. We set up shop in the kitchen (the plastic bar stool we picked up on the side of the road made an excellent impromptu salon chair!) Thirty minutes of careful cutting later, my housemate had a perfectly acceptable bob. 

I’ve always thought that if I were to decide against higher education and take my life in a completely different direction, I would want to be a hairdresser. Maybe it’s the attention to detail that appeals to me, or maybe it’s the idea of getting to share brief but meaningful moments of connection with so many people, and to watch them leave feeling even just a little bit more confident. More than anything, though, I think it’s this idea I have that hairdressers have vision, and that they get to realize that vision on a daily basis.

Of course, my current skills are nothing like this romantic fantasy I have of what haircutting could be— I’m just happy if I manage to get a relatively straight line.  But when I imagine how a master stylist gets from before to after, I wonder if it’s similar to the way I get from evidence to argument when writing a paper. Looking at a mountain of evidence with all its tensions and contradictions can be overwhelming, as can looking at a head of hair filled with tangles and split ends. But a good stylist like a good writer can also discern potential within all the messiness.

For anyone who’s ever watched Queer Eye, there’s something distinctly satisfying about watching Jonathan Van Ness come up with the perfect haircut for each episode’s hero. In creating a style for someone, he always takes into consideration their own preferences and comfort, the amount of time they want or are able to spend on grooming, how they want their appearance to help them meet their goals in life (whether that be by boosting their confidence or helping them look professional for job interviews), etc. As a result, it seems that Jonathan manages to find a style that not only looks fantastic, but that genuinely suits and feels authentic to that particular person. Even better than seeing the dramatic difference in their hairstyle is seeing the difference in the way they look at themselves in the mirror. It’s like Jonathan can see something in them that the rest of us can’t— and oftentimes that they can’t even see in themselves— and bring it to light.

I think a strong argument in an academic paper does something quite similar. To write a strong argument, you need to start by carefully examining the source texts, taking the time and care to get to know them and understand what they want to say rather than forcing your own interpretation of what they “should” say.  In writing as in haircutting, it’s not about making something up; it’s about seeing something in what’s already there and presenting it in such a way that everyone else can see it too.

— Meigan Clark ’23

News

Tortoise Tuesday: How Netflix’s Bridgerton Highlights the Importance of Conventions

BY Writing Center

As I relax and enjoy the remaining days of winter break, I have admittedly fallen into the trap of binge-watching Netflix shows. I’ve watched The Queen’s Gambit, New Girl, The Great British Baking Show, and Derry Girls, but one has stood out from the rest — Bridgerton. The show can be described as an early-19th century version of Gossip Girl that follows the lives of the eight children of the elite Bridgerton family. An anonymous writer under the pseudonym “Lady Whistledown” releases pamphlets divulging the gossip of London’s high society during the social season and reports the highs and lows of its many balls, promenades, and afternoon teas.

As someone who has taken on the pandemic uniform of sweatpants, slippers, and unwashed hair, Bridgerton is the perfect escapist show. The beautiful, sparkling gowns and carefully constructed hairstyles remind me of the fun of dressing up for social events and meeting new people. The show’s 19th century setting is particularly entertaining and convincing because of its adherence to 19th century social conventions (as far as I’m aware of them).

            From the costumes to the dialogue to the social rules that control the lives of the characters, these conventions provide some structure and consistency to the show. For example, the young women in the show carry “dance cards” to the balls, which their potential partners must write their names on to secure a dance that night. The suitors come to the women’s homes, bringing flowers and gifts to express their interest. The whole process of proposals, engagements, and weddings also follow 19th century customs and are organized by the couples’ parents. These customs, while antiquated and often sexist, create opportunities for drama — who is dancing with whom, what gifts do the suitors bring and whom are they visiting, how and when are the weddings arranged? In this way, the conventions in Bridgerton are the template upon which the excitement of the show builds. They might not be the most obviously important part of Bridgerton, but the conventions of the social season guide the events of the characters’ lives.

            Similarly, the conventions of a paper play an important role in guiding the writer, although they might not seem as vital as thesis, evidence, or analysis. Just as the different social events, customary language, clothing, and backdrops in Bridgerton must be historically accurate, the sections of a paper, the tone and voice, the formatting, and citation style must follow the discipline-specific conventions. A history paper that used APA citations or a scientific article without a detailed methods section would stick out like a scene in Bridgerton in which the costumes suddenly became skinny jeans and tank tops or the characters decided to meet each other on dating apps instead of in ballrooms. The conventions of a certain field might seem tedious or unnecessary, but a well-crafted paper and a well-crafted period piece must both be consistent in their customs.

            The next time you find yourself cursing the process of checking citations, confirming that you’re using the correct voice, or redoing your paper’s format, try thinking of yourself as the director of a period piece like Bridgerton, where the details make a difference. Ultimately, adherence to proper conventions make your paper consistent and ensure that all the important information gets to your reader.

— Annabelle Duval ’23

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Tortoise Tuesday: Motive in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

BY Writing Center

One of the most popular video games of quarantine so far is Nintendo’s latest installment of the Animal Crossing franchise, titled Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH). Like its predecessors, ACNH is a slow-paced simulation game where players are moved into a new community and tasked with developing it by cultivating relationships with other residents, stimulating the local economy, and enriching cultural institutions. Unlike previous games, ACNG is set on a deserted island in order for the player to “create [their] own paradise” and “escape” the real world, according to the Nintendo official website.

At the beginning of the game, players must take a plane to their island, during which the player is subject to in-flight entertainment courtesy of Nook Inc. This movie consists of scenic videos and snapshots of other players enjoying their own idealized, fully developed islands, as in Image 1 below. These scenes prepare the player to land in an immaculate, tropical landscape.

A picture containing cake, decorated, table, grass Description automatically generated
Image 1 One of the scenes presented to the player before they arrive on their island. Screenshot from game.

However, when the player starts the game, the island they arrive at is far from paradise. It is overrun with weeds, and the town consists of only a handful of small tents, illustrated in Image 2 below. As it turns out, the player is expected to deplete the island’s natural resources in order to literally build their town from the ground up, all while facing debt at the hands of a Nook Inc. executive, Tom Nook. So much for escaping the real world…

A picture containing cake, birthday, decorated, table Description automatically generated
Image 2 The island as it is visible from the airplane for the first time. Screenshot from game.

The tension between the game’s presentation of an idyllic island in the airplane movie and the reality of the undeveloped island is meant to inspire players to complete the game’s tasks. The game promises that if players follow the orders of Tom Nook, then their islands will be just as beautiful as the photos they viewed prior to landing. By presenting this drastic visual tension at the point when the player’s island is at its least appealing (and thus potentially the point when players might feel discouraged at the prospect of having to clean it up), the game motivates its own playthrough.

Motive in academic writing operates similarly, since it can manifest itself as a tension beckoning the reader to follow along in the author’s reasoning. Like in academic writing, ACNH uses this tension to support its premise or thesis of escapism, since the promise of what could be is ultimately what drives the player to escape to the game again and again (that is, if they ever put it down at all).

If you are struggling to motivate your own writing, consider whether there are any tensions, puzzles, or surprises in your sources which might compel your readers to follow your argument. Think to yourself, “What would Tom Nook do?”

— Leina Thurn ’20

Works Cited

Nintendo. “Animal Crossing™: New Horizons.” Nintendo.com. Accessed May 9, 2020. https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/animal-crossing-new-horizons-switch/.

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Structure in Quarantine and in Writing

BY Writing Center

It’s been over a month since Kentucky officially shut all nonessential businesses and ordered everyone to shelter in place.  Even though everything has burst into bloom here, I spend my days in my room in the basement, writing papers, zooming into seminars, and fighting against a rising feeling of desperation and fear. It’s hard to feel anything other than resignation when the days bleed into one another. The markers of time that used to rule my life are meaningless now. No matter what day it is or what hour of the day, my life looks pretty much the same. 

For me, a control freak, the unpredictability of this pandemic is terrifying. It’s impossible to know when this will end, when the world will return to normalcy, when days will again be differentiated from one another. But something that’s been helping me feel in control of my days and my life is that I’ve started making extremely detailed schedules. Every morning when I wake up I sit down and write down a plan for my day. I schedule in everything from zoom classes to helping my brother practice lacrosse. Being able to look down and see the plan for my day makes me feel better. For at least the next eight hours, I can predict the future.

When writing, this kind of structured plan is also helpful. Both when preparing to write a paper and in the final draft, it’s useful to be able to communicate to yourself and the reader what the plan is for the duration of the paper. Articulating ideas in an outline can make it so much easier to understand what you’re trying to say in a paper. Often when I’m writing, I get lost in sentence structure or word choice. In those moments, I look back at my outline to remember what I’m trying to say. Having the plan for my paper helps reorient me and feel that, rather than being a daunting impossible task, writing this paper is totally doable. 

Clearly articulating the structure of your argument to a reader is also helpful. Making sure to include a roadmapping paragraph, where you explain to a reader what sources you’re planning to examine in the course of your argument and what subarguments you plan to make, help a reader feel secure as they read your paper. I know that especially when I read long papers, roadmapping paragraphs in the introduction help orient me and keep me from getting confused. Such paragraphs remind me that the author has a plan for the paper and that I, as a reader, can relax and just follow the argument. 

Regardless of whether you’re a control freak like me or not, in the next week, when writing your papers and studying for exams, give outlining and roadmapping a try. Maybe in this bananas time, making a clear plan will help propel you across the finish line at the end of this wacky semester.

— Malka Himelhoch ’21

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Tortoise Tuesday: Practicing Writing with Marchesi’s Vocal Methods

BY Writing Center

Learning to sing is a bit like learning to write: time-intensive, often discouraging, ultimately rewarding—and based on a foundation of technique that you’ll need before you can move on to the more exciting stuff. Scales come before arias, just as D1s come before dissertations. Where writers have writing seminars and thesis bootcamps, singers have books like Mathilde Marchesi’s Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method. In her introduction, Marchesi, a 19th-century teacher who trained many of her era’s great singers, lays out her foundational principles. These prove to be useful guidance for aspiring musicians, but they’re also applicable to writers—at any stage.  

“In order to obtain a speedy and satisfactory result,” Marchesi writes, “pupils should never be burdened with more than one difficulty at a time, and they should be assisted in overcoming obstacles by having them presented in a natural and progressive order.” Thinking about only one issue at a time might sound impossible when you’re juggling what feels like a dozen lexicon terms in writing sem, but breaking your assignment down into pieces can make a paper feel much more manageable. Instead of trying to get from a prompt to a 12-page paper in one go, it can be helpful to think about one step of the process at a time. What question are you trying to answer in your paper? What sources do you need to find? How will you select useful evidence, and what conclusion can you draw from it?

Taking the writing process one step at a time also makes it easier to identify the place where you’re getting stuck. Just as when you’re learning a new piece and find that you keep stumbling over the same passage, it helps to take a step back and return to the basics. In her Vocal Method, Marchesi notes that she’s included “special Exercises and Vocalises for each particular difficulty,” and a glance at the table of contents confirms this: there are exercises for flexiblity, exercises for singing appoggiaturas, exercises for blending vocal registers. By focusing on one skill at a time, the student builds the technique needed to approach each challenge in the context of a full piece of music. In the same way, when you feel stuck on a particular aspect of your writing, it can help to pull out exercises that isolate one lexicon term. The Magic Thesis Statement is a personal favorite, but there are many more: cartoons to help you take a position in the scholarly conversation, highlighting exercises to reveal the ratio of evidence to analysis, reverse outlines to check that the structure of your draft makes sense. Once you’ve built the technical skills that are fundamental to any piece of writing, you’ll be ready to take on even the most complicated projects. Whether you’re writing your dissertation or singing Brünnhilde, having basic skills to fall back on makes for a more secure—and much less stressful—performance.

–Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Source: Marchesi, Mathilde. Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method, Op. 31 (via IMSLP).

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When in Quarantine: Key Terms in Netflix’s Tiger King

BY Writing Center

During such unprecedented times like these, I have found that people have taken to passing the time allocated indoors to catch up on more productive hobbies like cooking, or perhaps even reading novels. However I, like so many other evicted college students, have not quite lived up to the tranquil dreams I had imagined before beginning self-isolation procedures. Indeed, instead of reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, I have been scrolling through TikTok and meme pages, comforting myself in the collective frustration that can only be illustrated through the Facebook page “Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens.” Over the past week, a new addition has joined the ranks: Netflix’s Tiger King. My best friends and I have been streaming it over group video calls, and I think it is safe to say that the docu-series, which follows the big-cat business in America, is peak self-isolation entertainment. 

Let’s face it: a lot of us are binging Netflix and other streaming platforms. So, when brainstorming ideas of plausible topics to write about for this edition of Tortoise Tuesday, I wanted to attempt to make our binging habits a tad more constructive. While reflecting back on my time spent in utter disbelief over the range of topics explored in Tiger King (which in addition to the inner workings of the big-cat enterprise also deals with murder and polygamy), I couldn’t help but notice how the manner in which the show is constructed can illuminate the significance of using key terms. 

According to our beloved Writing Lexicon, a key term is defined as “a paper’s main terms or concepts.” Despite being an important part of constructing a great paper, in the conference room I have often found students forgetting to establish key terms at the beginning of their papers. Forgetting to incorporate key terms is very much analogous to what would have occurred if Tiger King did not take the time to introduce the main actors that propel the documentary forward. It is exactly this that Tiger King does so well; if they hadn’t established the identities of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin along with their respective roles in the big-cat business during the first episode, the job of the audience member would have been even more difficult than it already is. 

When writing your paper, remind yourself that whoever ends up grading your work, whether it be your professor or preceptor, is looking for clarity. In this case, your professor reading your paper is like you watching Tiger King. So be like the makers of this documentary and establish your Joe Exotics – the main actors and concepts in your paper that you build a discourse around.

— Doruntina Fida ’21

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Tortoise Tuesday: What Poetry Can Teach Us About Orienting

BY Writing Center

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. It feels somehow that poetry is the perfect antidote to this bananas time: brief yet emotionally satisfying. For just one moment I get to slip into someone else’s experience, be it a queen or a wild iris, and feel those feelings alongside my own unruly ones. When I try to explain my deep love for poetry, I’m often met with blank stares. Poetry can seem daunting and overwhelming, and sometimes it is truly obscure. But a good poem is one that is able to orient a reader to its subject, emotional urgency, and argument without sacrificing beautiful language. The same qualities that are necessary in a good paper.

One of my favorite poems right now is “Minimum Wage” by Matthew Dickman. It begins:

My mother and I are on the front porch lighting each other’s 

cigarettes

as if we were on a ten-minute break from our jobs

at being a mother and son, just ten minutes

In these four lines, I, as a reader, already know so much both about the physical reality of this poem and the emotional landscape Dickman has created. With very few words, I can already imagine what this mother and son look like. I know that they are standing on a porch smoking cigarettes. I know that they are both adults, both old enough to be working and smoking. I know that the relationship between the mother and son feels the way working a minimum wage job feels: transactional, exhausting, unrewarding. This poem gives me just enough information to feel the full emotional reality of this relationship. There is nothing extraneous here, no rogue details about other family members or the shape of the cigarette smoke. The poem is about the fraught relationship between this mother and son, and Dickman communicates this in the first four words of the poem by narrowing the focus of the poem to these two characters. When writing a paper, it’s helpful to keep this in mind, to share enough information for the reader to understand why the argument you are making is important without oversharing.

Often in writing center conferences, students tell me that they just don’t have enough space within their page limit to do the kind of orienting work that I feel their paper needs. Truthfully, in my own work I sometimes share this worry: wouldn’t it be better to use my space to make my argument rather than wasting it on background information? But it doesn’t take much space, or many words, to provide a reader with enough information to make sense of your argument. It’s always worth the extra sentence or two to orient a reader to the relevant information that makes your paper relevant and worth reading. Without the first line of  “Minimum Wage,” I wouldn’t grasp the emotional reality of this kind of transactional relationship between a mother and son — I wouldn’t be able to imagine these characters as they smoke on their front porch — and without that understanding, this poem wouldn’t make me cry every time I read it. 

— Malka Himelhoch, ’21

—

Works Cited

Dickman, Matthew. “Minimum Wage.” American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, selected by Tracy K. Smith. Graywolf Press, 2017, pp. 56. 

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Tortoise Tuesday: Motive in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

BY Writing Center

If you, like me, are finding that you have way too much time on your hands for the foreseeable future, you might be consoled just a little by finally having time to read all the books you never get around to on campus. In between baking, sleeping, and half-hearted thesis editing, I’ve been re-reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose – which, at over 500 pages, I wouldn’t have bothered starting at school. The book is a medieval murder mystery that purports to be a translation of an account by a medieval monk called Adso of Melk. As Eco brings Adso and his world to life, he also gives the monk an explicit, if incomplete, motive for his writing:

“Having reached the end of my poor sinner’s life, my hair now white, I grow old as the world does […] confined now with my heavy, ailing body in this cell in the dear monastery of Melk, I prepare to leave on this parchment my testimony as to the wondrous and terrible events that I happened to observe in my youth, now repeating all that I saw and heard, without venturing to seek a design, as if to leave to those who will come after (if the Antichrist has not come first) signs of signs, so that the prayer of deciphering may be exercised on them.” (Umberto Eco, translated by William Weaver)

Adso seems to be stuck at a stage that’s familiar to many of us: he knows that he has something interesting to talk about, but he hasn’t quite articulated what it is. Early in the writing process, developing a motive can feel like what Adso calls “the prayer of deciphering,” the step that he describes but leaves undone. He has his evidence (his eyewitness account of “wondrous and terrible events”), and throughout the novel, he even engages in analysis, but he stops short of connecting that analysis to a broader motive for his writing.

Humility might be a virtue for a medieval monk, but in your own writing, you don’t need to leave your motive “to those who will come after.” Once you have your text, your data, or, as in Adso’s case, your corpses of horribly murdered monks, the next step is often the hardest and most important in the writing process: asking yourself, “So what?” What new understanding does your analysis reveal? How do you shed light on a concept that was previously unexamined, incomplete, or incorrect? Once you’ve answered that question, you’ll know why your writing matters, and your reader will know why they should care enough to read it. Assuming, of course, that the Antichrist doesn’t come before your R3 is due.

— Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Works Cited

Eco, Umberto, and William Weaver. The Name of the Rose. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

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Tortoise Tuesday: Spring Air and Bottled Sunshine — From thesis to argument

BY Writing Center

            I never find it easy to work on the first days of Spring, especially when, as in the Pacific Northwest, Spring comes only after months of drizzly gloom. When the pale, wet sun comes out for the first time, all I really want to do is go outside, smell the still-wet pines and salt-breeze, and bask in the young Spring sunshine. In the midst of that over-bright euphoria, it feels impossible to do anything useful. On the rare occasions when I have been able to overcome the urge to shut my books, the results have been remarkable, but just as often, I have found myself unable to think straight, meandering from thing to thing and always ending by staring out the window. When I am able to make something of that Spring-day euphoria, it feels like bottled sunshine poured still-glowing on the page. When I am not — well, it doesn’t bear describing.

            There is a similar sensation when a thesis crystalizes in your mind. First, there is that golden moment when you finally say, “I have it! It makes sense!” You might even get to the point of writing it down, before you begin to ask yourself what “it” really is, how you got to “it”, and how you are possibly going to explain “it” to anyone else. The jump between “thesis” and “paper” is just as large as that between spring-day euphoria and warm bottled sunshine.

            How does one get from the first to the second? I am sure the precise answer varies by person, and by mood, and by day of the week. The closest I can come is that it requires both concentration and patience. A thesis, however brilliant, can only be a starting point. What seems natural to us must necessarily seem arcane to anyone else, unless we explain it to them first. Before we can make anyone understand why “it” makes sense, we have to state all our underlying assumptions, leading the reader through the leg-work we have already done. This is tedious, or it can seem so when you yourself are already basking in the bright sunshine of a sharp, clearly defined thesis, but when we cannot bring ourselves to walk backwards through our sources, that bright sunshine fades all too quickly into a sticky afterglow of indecision.

            Much as we would like to believe the paper is all but done as soon as we find a thesis, it is rarely so quick or so easy. The more difficult hours are usually still ahead of us, when we already have the warm sense of discovery and completion, and yet still have to get through the fussy business of making everything clear to someone else. But when we can translate that bright, euphoric moment when everything clicks into a cogent explanation, the results are extraordinary and lasting. Though the dripping trees and the spring air beckon, staying indoors is not always the worst thing in the world — after all, who would say no to bottled sunshine?

— Isabella Khan ’21