I want to take this opportunity to welcome all students, faculty, and staff to the new fall term. I am serving this year as the new Coordinator of Composition within the Department of English and look forward to promoting writing across our campus. Taking on a new position and climbing a learning curve always take extra time, so I find myself at the office working this weekend before classes begin.
My consolation for a sunny day in the office rather than at the State Fair was that I would eat sourdough hotcakes and fresh raspberries for breakfast and then ride my bike across town. As is often the case, I get good ideas while exercising. I had pedaled past Lake Hood and didn't even get to Earthquake Park before I felt the urge to write down the thoughts running through my head. I had packed light but had a pencil. I scrounged through my bag for a slip of paper and was almost desperate enough to rummage through the trash can before I realized that I was carrying a cell phone and could type my thoughts into the cell phone. Relief.
Once I captured my thoughts for later review, I began to ponder that urge we have to write. What is it? I see it in very small children who write their names on the wall (as if no one will know who did it), and I know I've felt it many times when caught without the tools to write. In this case, I needed to write so that I could hold my swirling thoughts still long enough to reflect on what they mean. So we write to remember and to reflect. But we also write to tell stories, to share our perspectives with others, in the hope that they will empathize with our experience and see the world from our position. We write to argue--to persuade others about what exists, what is good, and what is prudent when it comes time to act. We write because we care. In sum, we write because we want to render the world meaningful to ourselves and to others. Academic, personal, and professional writing all share these urges to make sense and to advocate for a particular view.
As I write this, I am reminded of an opinion column in the Sunday paper that I read while eating my hotcakes and raspberries--it urged readers to care, to speak up about the issues that matter to them in their communities:
Your interests may be predator control or music in schools or traffic calming on your street. It doesn't matter. Just identify the biggest problem in your community -- however you define that community -- and start trying to fix it.
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2011/08/27/2035113/politics-quite-personal-as-it.html#ixzz1WMII6ZM5
