The Freedom to Write November 1, 2009
Posted by lundquistthe3rd in : CORE, Essay Planning, Getting started , trackbackBeginning an essay or paper where the professor encourages you to define your own topic, either with no restrictions or within a very very general framework, can be quite intimidating at first. I say “at first” because once you learn to channel your energy, writing can become an activity from which it is hard to pull yourself away.
Here I will address a few things that work for me. They are things that I was originally encouraged to do in high school and have stuck with me ever since. When I was a sophomore in high school, I hated writing. I cringed whenever we were given an assignment. It wasn’t until my teacher told me, “Write on any topic you choose. The topic does not have to be ‘academic’ per say or common at all. ” I went to her to get more specifics and she asked me a few questions:
- “What are you passionate about?” Music, I answered without hesitation.
- “What type of music?” Metal, I said.
- “Is there a specific band or aspect of this music you would like to learn/teach people about?” (This assignment was supposed to be a highly-detailed research paper.) I’m not interested in teaching others at this point, but I want to learn about several specific bands. That would be cool, I said.
- She then sent me off to narrow these bands in which I was interested down to one.
- I came back, having decided, and she sent me off to find articles, interviews, and other resources concerning the band.
From there on out, things went fairly well for the first major paper that I would call my own. I came to find out that the band I picked also happened to take very strong stands on different social and political issues. To top that off, I found that I agreed strongly with their stances on these issues. Before long I had too much information for the length of the paper we were supposed to do. Then I had to narrow things down, but too much is always better than not enough.
I think the key step is asking “What are you passionate about?” or “In what area do you have or want to have specific interest or knowledge?” These are questions which will quickly get you on a streamlined path towards finding your research and writing your paper.
Although not everyone is likely to fall into the category of ‘passionate,’ each of us has something that is very important to us. Even if your life philosophy is apathy, there is still something valuable to be said or to explore towards that end. There are others who can and will learn from your words and experiences. There are always new things to learn about your areas of interest. Almost always the process of this learning opens you up to even more.
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