In a Tortoiseshell: After establishing her thesis, Akhila moves towards orienting. Tasked with the tricky dilemma of introducing the reader to both the general subject area and the scholarly conversation that surrounds her work, Akhila deftly sets a foundation that allows a compelling argument to follow. Continue reading
In any piece of writing—academic or otherwise—orienting information is not a mere prelude to what follows. Providing just the right amount of context is crucial if the reader is to understand the argument. Both pieces in this section contain strong examples of narrative that rely on orienting for their emotional and argumentative impact. Akhila Bandlora’s paper orients readers in the theoretical literature surrounding racialized bodies to add to the reader’s “understanding of Black pain.” In her commentary, editor Diane Yang emphasizes Bandlora’s skillful differentiation of an array of scholarly sources. Similarly, in her essay, Meryl Liu provides relevant historical context to orient her argument in the larger narrative surrounding the non-reformist prison abolition movement. According to editor Owen Travis, Liu’s treatment of key terms in her orienting section provides a strong framework for her subsequent analysis.
— Frances Mangina, ’22
In a Tortoiseshell: In these first three paragraphs of her essay on revolutionary action in prison abolition, Meryl Liu provides powerful and efficient orienting for her readers. She introduces relevant historical events, gives context for the scholarly discussion, and defines her own key term that acts as a framework for the remainder of the piece. By illuminating a “unique and intriguing tension” Meryl captures the reader’s interest and primes them for the thesis of her paper, which follows immediately after the excerpt published here. Continue reading
Call me a geek, but since last summer, I’ve become steadily more obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. Yes, that’s the role-playing game of Stranger Things fame. Over the course of a campaign, D&D players narrate actions to their DM (Dungeon Master) and roll dice to see if the actions succeed; DMs narrate the results and shape a story. Since 1974, the game’s been through five editions and millions of players. Naturally, then, it’s accumulated quite a lot of jargon.[1] I won’t subject you to a detailed explanation of why metagaming is bad or how you should choose a dump stat. But I do think that this kind of D&D jargon—and the process of habituating players to it—can teach one a lot about effectively using key terms. I have in mind three particular lessons from my first campaign
1. Start with the basics—and only the basics.
Say that you’re a brand-new D&D player, like me. When you build your first character, you need to understand a select few terms: for instance, class[2] and ability score[3]. These, after all, are terms that are directly relevant to building your character. At this early stage, you don’t need to know what a luck check is or what DC stands for. If your DM tries to explain these terms to you now, you’ll likely forget. The terms have nothing to do with building your character, so your focus is elsewhere.
Introducing key terms in a paper is much the same. When you decide what to define in your introduction, think about what the reader absolutely needs to know. If you’re a philosopher arguing that a diagnostic interpretation of the Florentine Codex is wrong, you’ll likely want to explain what the Florentine Codex is and what a diagnostic interpretation might say. You don’t need to define the key term that supports the second premise of your argument and only shows up three pages in. Doing so will make your introduction overly lengthy and probably confuse your reader.
2. Add in subsidiary key terms as needed.
Of course, this isn’t to say that you, a new D&D player, will never need to know what a DC[4] is. In fact, you’ll need to know almost as soon as you roll your first die! Throughout the game, a good DM will anticipate your confusion and define new terms when they become relevant.
Unsurprisingly, you should do the same in your papers. Since you often won’t define all your key terms in your introduction, you’ll likely have to explain some at the start of a section or a paragraph. When you get to the second premise in your Florentine Codex argument, for instance, you might want your reader to know the Nahuatl word tlazolmiquitzli. While the term wasn’t necessary for the reader to understand the broad gist of your argument, it will be necessary for them to comprehend your specific analysis.
3. Consider the evolution of your key terms.
As you progress through your D&D campaign, some terms will take on meaning beyond your DM’s original definition. For example, when you chose to play as a bard, your DM might have explained that bards were performers who had access to magic. Through your rolls and your DM’s narration, though, you’ve realized that bards are also very bad at close combat—they get hurt very easily. Because they are great at performing, persuading, and deceiving, they often serve as the “face” of the party. Over the course of the story, then, the term “bard” has gained additional meaning for you.
Likewise, key terms can (and often should) take on new meaning over the course of an argument. Admittedly, some key terms are static: your reader won’t get much more out of “Florentine Codex” at the end of your essay than at the beginning. Others, however, are dynamic; this is especially true for key words that are crucial to your thesis. Your reader’s understanding of “diagnostic interpretation” at the start of your paper should progress as you explain what would be necessary to support such an interpretation and why those conditions do not obtain. An effective argumentative arc will make this key term evolution clear—no luck check[5]necessary.
-Natalia Zorrilla, ’23
[1] Seriously, a lot. Check out this glossary for some examples: https://dicecove.com/dnd-glossary/. Or just read the paragraph above!
[2] Your character’s main job, like being a bard or a cleric. Some classes use magic, and others are just really good at fighting.
[3] A number that determines what your character adds or subtracts from dice rolls. For instance, if you have a Charisma ability score of 8 (very low), your character will subtract a lot from rolls that determine whether people like them.
[4] Short for Difficulty Class, this is the dice roll you need to succeed in an action. A DC 15, for example, means you need a roll of 15.
[5] A dice roll that determines how lucky your character is. With a high roll, good things happen.
I have played a lot of Pokémon.
Not just as a little kid, but also as a middle schooler. And maybe also as a high schooler. And then possibly again during freshman year of college—hell, my entire R3 was about Pokémon! And now as a second-semester post-secondary school sophomore, I’ll probably ask my parents to ship me my old 3DS from home so I can play some more Pokémon over spring break instead of speedrunning all of the internship applications that I’ve been neglecting for the past few months.
The Pokémon video game series is great. From its first release in 1996 to its most recent in January 2022, the franchise has been blessing the world with generations of entertainment for people of all ages. Each game has its own storyline, characters, settings, and Pokémon, which are creatures with mythical powers that inhabit the world. But one of the mechanics that is always central to and consistent across each and every Pokémon game is catching Pokémon.
That’s why every Pokémon game will give you a tutorial for it.
So every time I start another game, I always get pawned off to some unmemorable NPC1 who holds my hand through the process of catching Pokémon even though I’ve been (metaphorically) kicking ass and taking names and doing exactly what the tutorial is ‘teaching’ me before the NPC was probably coded into existence. The tutorial doesn’t even take that long—maybe a minute at max, with all the button-mashing I’m doing to get it over with. But it’s boring, repetitive, and unnecessary, and it gives me a window during which I have the time to contemplate whether or not I should just go fill out those internship applications.
I can only feel relief when the NPC is done with their spiel and I’m finally free to frolic around and create chaos and save the world. To me, having an unskippable tutorial for catching Pokémon seems more like an inconvenience than anything remotely helpful. But then again, I’ve been playing Pokémon for years. The tutorial certainly seems useful for a person who is completely new to Pokémon; after all, catching Pokémon is a necessary tool for players to progress in the game.
In a way, this Pokémon catching tutorial is reminiscent of orienting. Imagine: you’re an author. You’ve been in the weeds for weeks, months, digging your hands into the dirt and bringing your discoveries to light. You’ve been analyzing your evidence, stringing connections and bridges like no one has ever seen, and you’re ready to share what you’ve learned with the rest of the world. Your audience wasn’t with you when you were picking out a topic. They weren’t with you when you were getting acquaintanced with your scholarly sources. They weren’t with you when you were trying to parse out and piece together definitions of key terms.
It might seem boring and repetitive to you to provide orienting. But it’s important to remember that your audience is as unfamiliar with your work as you were when you first started, and they didn’t have the weeks or months of experience to get to know your topic like you do. Orienting doesn’t have to give everything away, but it should at least provide readers with the necessary knowledge that is required to understand and engage with your work.
1a non-player character, or any character in a game that is not controlled by a real person
–Emily Wu, ’24
In a Tortoiseshell: In his essay, Jayaditya “Jojo” Deep analyzes conflicting research about the psychology of conspiracy theorists. In his introduction, Jojo details a hypothetical scenario that immediately captivates a reader’s attention and creates an understanding of how conspiracy theories propagate. Continuing, Jojo uses this hypothetical scenario to lay the context of his main conspiracy of study—Ong’s Hat—before explaining how this case sheds light on the related psychological literature. Continue reading
As a PTL project, I’ve finally started properly studying German, and by that I mean watching Babylon Berlin. I’m a diligent student, so I’ve already made it through most of the third and final season. The show, which follows detectives investigating political conspiracies and crimes in late 1920s Germany, gives a fascinating (and, as far as I can tell, fairly accurate) view of the Weimar Republic, but it’s also an excellent example of orienting evidence—in this case, physical evidence in the detectives’ investigations.
Just like in a good paper, pieces of evidence that will be important later in the show are introduced early on, left alone until a point in the structure where they become relevant, and then fully analyzed to demonstrate their relationship to the overarching thesis (or plot). Early in season three, for example, I knew there had to be a reason for the huge bottle of insulin a diabetic character keeps on hand. Sure enough, in the climactic episode, the main characters narrowly escape a hypoglycemic coma after the villain injects them both with a lethal dose of insulin. (The fact that this is one of the series’ more realistic plot twists says a lot about the show.) That the bottle was introduced—oriented—and defined in an early episode makes it easy for the viewer to understand its role when it reappears later. It also avoids the necessity of orienting and defining at the same time that the piece of evidence is actually being used (analyzed, in a writing context), which could come across as clumsy and poorly planned. Instead, the bottle is already in the back of the viewer’s mind, and when its purpose in the show becomes clear, everything falls neatly into place.
When I’m reading other students’ essays at the Writing Center, people sometimes say they’re concerned that orienting a source but not fully unpacking it until later in the paper might lead their reader to think they’re just doing a bad job of analyzing the material. Actually, I find it very helpful as a reader when sources are briefly introduced and key terms are succinctly defined at the start of a paper, so I have some idea of the analysis that’s coming. It would have seemed (even more?) ridiculous if the bad guy in Babylon Berlin had whipped out a bottle of insulin with no previous orienting, as if the show’s writers had thought of this plot development while they were writing but then hadn’t bothered to go back to earlier episodes and adequately set up their plot (thesis). Just setting up the sources that you’re planning to use and trusting your reader to understand that you’ll come back to them later is orienting enough, and it usually won’t kill you.
— Ro van Wingerden, ’21
In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay, Julia Zhou uses an unconventional primary source to argue that while male-led Chinese TikTok dances engage in gender subversion, they do so by operating within an artistic framework that welcomes innovation. To help readers engage with her analysis, Julia carefully describes key choreographic techniques, then orients readers to the significance of each technique. Having made the dances legible to her readers, she then engages in a rewarding close reading of their choreography.
In a Tortoiseshell: In a paper for the Humanities Sequence, Noori Zubieta strikes a balance between carefully working through her evidence, orienting her reader, and building to a nuanced thesis in a close reading of a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
In a Tortoiseshell: In her essay, Ariadni Kertsikof weaves together evidence from several ethnographic works to argue that ethnography allows us to discover truths about the world through attending to relationships. The following excerpt focuses on the importance of relationships in Savannah Shange’s ethnography Progressive Dystopia. Through exceptional source orientation, Ariadni contextualizes her evidence in light of Shange’s argument. She then selects and summarizes a specific example from Shange’s work, effectively illustrating not only the author’s point but her own.
