I enjoyed our class’s theme: Identity and Transformation. The vagueness of it is perfect for someone who believes the more personal a piece is, the more relatable it is to it’s audience (thanks, Alok Vaid-Menon). Given the freedom to choose whatever topics I wanted was exciting and made me push myself more, because I truly cared about the work I was putting out. Starting the semester with writing a paper on Yiddish, a passion I want to take into my career, invigorated me to work harder on my writing in other courses.

My first paper – “Yiddish Ain’t Dead” – taught me about organization in writing. I had been working with the concepts in this paper so much, it was difficult to step back and look at it from a reader’s perspective. Thinking logically about what information should be introduced first brought the paper together by adding flow and clarity. I had to think about organization while writing my other papers for Writing and Rhetoric, as well as other assignments.

In all my assignments for this class, I was reminded to use concise language. I learned to honor simplicity over “sounding smart”. Everything does not have to be complicated. Using simpler words and less words makes a text more readable, and eliminates unnecessary confusion.