Writing is an art that takes time to master. I would not say I enjoy writing. In my academic career, I have always dreaded writing assignments. One thing that changes my perspective about writing is the topic that I am writing about and how much information I have to support it. In grade school, we focused our writing on narratives and persuasive papers. I for one do not have many stories to write about narratives gave me a hard time. Persuasive writing was dependent on how you understand the sources and how you can relate them to an argument. These are two of the most formative styles of writing I knew. My goal was always to write as much as I could and never rely on outlines. I learned quickly in high school and college that it simply was not going to work that way anymore.
When you are able to organize your points in one place, you have a good idea of how you are going to write a paper. In this writing for the sciences class, this was reinforced in our reverse outlines and a structural report. Each of these assignments required us to read our sources, understand what it is communicating, who the audience is, and dissect each part.
For our Op-Ed, we made a reverse outline for the New York Times article, “Scenes From a World on Fire.” For each paragraph, we looked for the author’s use of pathos, ethos, and logos. Like how I wrote, “Uses a pathos appeal to connect to the reader that this issue will affect them. Includes quotes from politicians and professors to show the diversity of people involved.” Taking the time to understand why we are writing something and knowing how to use our sources to support our uses of logos, pathos, and ethos helped me become a mindful writer. I grew to be more intentional when writing. Using sources to support my arguments helps me to become more meticulous about what sources I am looking for as well.
In the structural report for the technical memo, we focused on breaking down each of the main focuses of the report. A memo was provided to analyze the summary, purpose, background, discussion, community health concerns, conclusions, and supplementary data sets. The technical memo was a new kind of writing for me. I interpreted it as an extended research paper and required many sources. But what’s most important is that we remain neutral. It is a completely informative piece where I have to present an issue in an NYC community and associate it with a scientific or medical concern. I felt that a piece on climate change has the most research and sources to support it. I want to associate with the housing in the community I chose and how it has been affected by hurricanes.
Throughout writing the Op-Ed and technical memo report, I learned to write in small pieces and be more intentional. In the past, I would just present all the information but not have it structured by focus. Knowing that a paper needs to have a clear summary, purpose, audience, background, ethos, logos, or pathos. One thing I want to make clear is that writing about something you care about helps too. If you’re passionate about a certain topic, you’ll be able to know your focus and create the questions that help your argument. You can’t escape writing no matter where you go, but you can use different methods to lighten the load for yourself.
