We use our voices to convey a message, to tell a story, or to make people side with our opinions. We have distinct voices, and yet they are not always singular or the same; they vary based on the situations we encounter. Professors often talk about the voice a student develops while writing—noting that this is one of the most crucial aspects in defining a writer. But what if a professor doesn’t like a student’s distinctive voice? What if a professor is looking for a checklist of elements and ideas in a paper? Why do students who can’t or won’t meet this rigid checklist fail to impress their grader?
As I look back at the many papers and projects I have completed throughout my college career, I am struck by the disconnect I feel with some of these pieces. I find that I don’t recognize myself in many of these paper assignments, and this ‘voice’ I have been trying to develop and refine over the past four years feels nonexistent. I call myself a writer, and yet I can find examples of my own writing that I am not proud of or I feel don’t show my skills as a writer. How did this happen without me realizing it?
As I compile key pieces of my college writing, I can see a divide between assignments that I love and ones that I hate. If I look more closely at why these two categories have developed, there is a multitude of reasons I can find for those that I hate: a lack of interest in the subject, I was crunched for time during its execution, I used bad organization, etc. There is one other reason I have found to be particularly interesting—how I altered my voice as a writer to fit the needs of my grader. Nearly all of my least favorite pieces of my writing have come from classes that I feared receiving a bad grade. I believe this fear of disappointing the grader forced me to lose my unique voice as a writer and create a piece that struggled to engage its reader. It is not so much that I am unable or unqualified to write in the specific way that follows a strict checklist. Rather, I seem to falter when I do not have the freedom to approach writing in the way that I am comfortable with. In fact, as I look back on some of my proudest work, many of those pieces would meet the qualifications of professors with high expectations. It is this fear of missing an item on the checklist and receiving a bad grade, this lack of my own freedom in writing, which results in my worst writing.
Some of the writing I am most proud of has been completely separate from my academic writing. My personal writing sounds much more like my normal cantor, and when I read it out loud, I don’t feel like I am stumbling over every word and sentence. During my junior year while I was studying in Florence, Italy, I attempted to record my experiences on a blog. Although I didn’t keep it up as much as I would have liked, these posts are some of my favorite examples of my writing. What I like the most about these are the multimedia elements I used to elaborate on my story; I originally had no intention of anyone reading these, so I explored other elements to add to these snap shots of my memory. The posts err on a more colloquial side which I think offers them a more personal and enjoyable dialect. When I use ellipses and exclamation points, I can hear myself saying it aloud just as I would if I were recanting the story at a dinner party. In my favorite blog post about a specialty food called lampredotto, I discussed my experience talking with a man whose family has been a part of this Florentine tradition for generations:
“Orazio seems like a very kind and happy man…breaking into a crooked smile whenever I turn to look at him but never making any unwanted remarks like I have experienced when walking down the street from other Italian men. When we began talking, he was respectful and seemed genuinely happy with his life- something I have found is not always recognizable in others.”
Although there really isn’t anything special about this passage, I like how the cadence and word choices come together in a natural but insightful way. I can remember writing this and trying desperately to get not only my thoughts but also my emotions onto the page so I wouldn’t forget any part of the experience.
This non-academic writing that I love so much has been inspired by things that truly intrigue me- things that have made me angry, sad, or truly happy. I think because I am so interested in what I am writing about, and because I never feel like I need to restrict my writing style to someone else’s demands, these writing pieces have a much higher quality. In a letter I wrote to a friend that has recently passed away, my words and sentence construction seem to very accurately explain and express my emotions. It isn’t a completely smooth letter as far as sentence construction, but then again my emotions are still rough and hard to explain at this point in my grieving process. This following sentence demonstrates some of these disjointed thoughts translated into my writing:
What scares me the most is that I can feel myself forgetting you- not in a way that I am too busy to remember, but when I am actively thinking about you, I can barely hear your voice anymore, remember what you look like without seeing a picture, or remember the moments we laughed and shared together. I’m confused and angry and I don’t know what to do to make you stay with me.
When I am not trying to write for someone else’s criticism, I see a trend of genuineness in my words. When I say genuine, I mean that I can recognize myself in the words on the page. They are pieces of my inner dialogue that I have been able to form into coherent phrases that make sense outside the abstract world of my brain. The process of my own reflection is evident through the words on the page. When I feel pressured to write a certain way, this reflection process often becomes jumbled and disjointed before it even reaches the page.
As I look over these ‘bad’ pieces of my academic writing, I find that my focus on trying to please someone with my writing rather than pleasing myself has altered this genuine voice I enjoy looking back at so much. When I think about these assignments that I hate re-reading, I need only to think about the teachers or graduate student instructors (GSI) that offered strict and inflexible grading guidelines for my papers. When I am trying to please a difficult grader or I am unconfident in my argument, it becomes clear in a paper because I tend to use hedging words and sound stiff and overly structured. While writing my Communications 101 final paper, I felt like I had finally grasped my GSI’s grading guidelines. My previous two papers for this class had been marked by stains of red, whose bloody trail concluded with a big fat C - hanging off of my conclusion paragraph. So, as I was writing this final paper, I kept the rubric checklist next to my laptop and the other marked up papers next to me at all times in hopes that this fear or failing would produce the perfect paper. As you might imagine, this did not happen. The paper reads almost entirely like this:
[The movie theme] implies that other women will see this film and recognize the pattern in society and thus follow in the footsteps of these women. Bride Wars follows the well-recognized script that other movies depicting women follow. Script is identified as the images or situations that people “grow familiar with and often preform in their own lives.
Plagued by simple sentences, the entirety of this nine page paper offers very little flare to my writing: no sign of metaphors, alliteration, and only a few appearances of complex sentences. I tried to make sure I gave exactly what I thought would look like an “A” while ignoring how I wanted to explain these concepts in my own words. If I could approach this paper again without this fear of failing, I am confident that I could produce a piece that would please my grader as well as myself. It is not the subject or specific kind of writing that made this assignment difficult for me; instead, it was the lack of my own freedom with the assignment that altered my writing for the worst.
Although it may seem that maybe I just have a problem with academic writing, I have a few pieces from college classes that showcase the more reflective voice I prefer to write with; I am proud of these pieces not only because I can recognize the quality or work in them, but these papers were also recognized by my professors as exceptional. My interest in a topic becomes glaringly evident in my writing that examines the ways historical events and ideas make a connection to pop culture. Many papers from my history classes demonstrate this fascination of combining history and current study; I think this quest to understand how the past relates and influences me is responsible for this curiosity. When looking back at their prompts, I remember that the open-endedness instantly put me at ease. When people don’t place a great deal of pressure on me, I see that I am able to achieve a fluid and engaging writing structure that professors return with encouraging comments and high grades.
In my final paper for my History of Witchcraft class, the prompt had very little description other than: “Watch one of the following movies or TV shows*, and discuss it in light of everything that you have learned about witchcraft.” Because there were over forty different options to choose and the assignment was very vague, I was able to be more flexible with how I wanted to approach the paper and focus on a show I enjoy watching— “The Vampire Diaries”. I think this ultimately made the paper more engaging and my interest in the subject became evident through my writing:
Bonnie’s use of dark magic develops later in season four when it begins to transform her into a more dark and dangerous witch; she becomes fueled more by her own personal anger than her desire to help others. This association between a woman and an excess amount of power employing “bad” magic demonstrates the modern connotation and conceptions of witchcraft. In the scenes where she uses this black magic—coined as “expression” in the series—Bonnie’s veins turn liquid black, her eyes pool into depthless drops of onyx, and you can recognize the moment she drifts away from her humanity.
This particular passage shows my own interpretation of the witch known as Bonnie in this series and how I used more expressive language to convey my message. I felt the assignment prompted a more creative and open-ended response, and so I was less afraid to use my own descriptive thought processes here.
Although I am still learning and evolving as a writer, I can see a pattern of the way my voice sounds in both my writing and my own life. In a blog post I wrote about the revision process in writing, I saw connections in the way that I write and the way I talk to others:
I am constantly looking back at things and think “No, no, no. That looks all wrong—did I not see that HUGE spelling error?” or “This paper is literally the worst things I’ve ever written.” But the great thing about revisions in writing is that you CAN change. You can edit and resubmit, you can delete and re-write. When talking out loud to people, this idea doesn’t really work, and I’ve learned that the hard way.
What I realized in this post is the importance of my voice as a writer. I often have this sense that when I speak aloud, what I say holds a lot of weight and cannot be taken back and I think this fear of making a mistake actually leads to the mistake. I have too many memories to count where I have said something and didn’t mean it; I will think to myself, “if I had just written this down I could have gotten my thoughts more in order and it would make more sense to what I am trying to say.” I have a fear of speaking aloud, and I know that others notice this when my face becomes red hot and I start to stumble on every word I am saying. However, when I am better acquainted with my listeners, or I am more comfortable or feel more equal in the situation, I am a much better public speaker whose words and body stance takes on an air of poise and dignity.
This is why my voice as a writer is so important to me—no one is judging and I can ‘speak’ freely without the fear of people scrutinizing me. When I have tough graders, I have this sense of someone lurking over me and I freeze up and spit out whatever I think will please them. When I am comfortable in myself and I am alone with my thoughts, the words flow with ease and I can be more creative with how I want to organize the jumbled thoughts inside my head onto paper. I must learn to remove the lurking grader from my thoughts, even if the pressure and stakes are higher; putting pressure on myself does not help my writing and I need to just learn to relax. As I tackle my capstone project, the Gender Identi-Tree, I am seeking ways to explore my voice in forms outside of writing and how to overcome this “lurking grader”. Through this project, I want to show that I understand that there are many influences and things that try to overpower how I want to see myself and how I want to express myself as a woman. As with writing, it is so very important to me that I develop my own voice and create my own opinions despite pressure from outside influences. Regardless of what seems to be influencing me or making me feel inferior as a woman, I want to be able to recognize these factors. If I am able to see that I am afraid of criticism in my writing, if I can understand what is making me feel like I am the weaker sex, can I overcome it?