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Stephan Jaksch

Writing Introduction

George Orwell, in his essay “Why I Write,” details the four reasons why authors write—

“sheer egoism,” “aesthetic enthusiasm,” “historical impulse,” and “political purpose.”1 Even

though I am unable to systematically describe the reasons for which I write, I have begun to

understand the importance and significance of writing in my own life through reflection over this

past semester. I have been a large fan of Orwell and his writing throughout high school and

college. In my IB English class, we conducted a full portion of the syllabus to Orwell and read

many of his works including: “A Hanging,” “Anti-Semitism in Britain,” “Decline of the English

Murder,” “Down the Mine,” “Politics and the English Language,” “Shooting an Elephant,”

“Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” and of course “Why I Write.” Reading Orwell’s essays

over the years has influenced and challenged me to think about the choices that I make in my

own writing. Unlike Orwell, I am still learning how to position myself as a writer and learning

the best methods to convey my messages to the audience. I hope that the examination of his texts

have brushed off onto my own writing while in high school and at Wake Forest.

Entering Wake Forest University, I never thought that I would eventually have an

Interdisciplinary Writing minor attached to my name. I had not thought of myself as a writer. All

throughout elementary to high school, I was not incredibly interested in English or writing,

preferring the courses in science and history. It was in my English class that students prepared

for statewide writing tests. The dreaded FCAT was administered in fourth grade and tested our

ability to write in one of three genres—expository, persuasive, and narrative. My ability to

remember these three genres demonstrates how much students prepped for this examination.

1
George Orwell, "Why I Write," The Complete Works of George Orwell, http://www.george-
orwell.org/Why_I_Write/0.html
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When I progressed to high school, I enrolled in the IB program and also enrolled in some AP

classes. All of these college level classes stressed certain requirements and many of these

requirements included papers and essays of all sorts. I still remember some of the formats as they

were burned into my brain over these year-long courses. The formats of these papers were just as

important as the content they contained. Intense preparation was put into each of these papers as

they constituted such a large portion of the grade. High school writing emphasized “correctness.”

My AP and IB teachers demanded a certain format or certain style and there could be no straying

from it. This writing was bleak and boring. It was not until college that I truly grasped how

writing could be used in a variety of circumstances and for different purposes. My first encounter

with college writing was in Writing 212: The Art of the Essay. This was a new experience for me

and a wake up call for what writing could convey to the reader. It was here that I first

encountered personal and creative writing, a genre that I had never experienced before I entered

college. After this class in college, I then began writing in a variety of academic disciplines.

With time, my focus in writing narrowed to history and political science. Within these disciplines

I began to write for distinct purposes. I wrote to argue, to uncover, and to synthesize sources. I

enjoy writing for these purposes, as I am able to add to a scholarly conversation. In these

discourse communities, authors are motivated to influence readers and inform them of the

importance of political and historical perspectives. I hope that my writing accomplishes this

same purpose, even if on a smaller scale. In all of the pieces that I have written over the past few

years, I hope my knowledge and arguments contributed, in some small part, to the corresponding

discourse community.

Why I write will always be changing and shifting as my circumstances change. As I enter

into this next phase of my life, into law school, I am confident that the reasons that I write will
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also shift. And as I finish law school and enter the workforce, the reasons for which I write will

also be drastically different. I write in order to communicate ideas to my audience and, in each

stage of my life, that audience will change and expect different components in my writing.

Over the course of four years at Wake Forest University, my writing has substantially

improved. This is likely because my two majors and my one minor focus extensively on writing.

Most of this writing has been academic and very little, with the exception of WRI 212, has been

personal or creative. Most of the skills and abilities that I have developed in writing have been

through trial and error and through imitation of examples from professors. Few professors have

explicitly stated how to write in their discipline, and instead give broad advice. Usually phrases

like “construct a well-supported argument” or “well organized paper” would appear in

instructions for research papers assigned to me. As a freshman and even a sophomore (and still

as a senior), I have had to grapple with the ambiguity in directions assigned to students. What is

“well organized” and what is a “well supported argument”? Not only have I learned that these

definitions vary from discipline to discipline, but also from professor to professor. Through my

classes I have learned that this vague terminology only becomes clear when practiced over time

in that certain discipline. Luckily, I chose two majors which are fairly similar in writing styles

and have picked up several abilities (such as precise writing, the ability to complete research

effectively) through writing in my two majors and minor.

First, I would say that my writing is precise. I try not to bog myself down in complicated

word choice, lots of jargon, or complex sentence structures so that the reader can follow along

easily. I do not appreciate when a text is unnecessarily hard to understand due to word choice,

structure, or style and, thus, I try to make my writings easy for the reader to access. I have

adopted signposts into my writing, like structuring long research papers with subtitles, to guide
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the reader, explicitly stating what I will argue in the beginning of my paper, and including

appropriate quotations in my sentences. As a history and politics double major, I have had to sift

through many academic articles during my time at Wake Forest. I tend to use articles, which are

easier to access and are not difficult to understand. Thus, I believe my modeling of a simpler

style in regards to word choice and structure has originated from my frustration with reading

some articles that are hard to comprehend. Difficult comprehension leads to readers who may

find it difficult to understand the main conclusions of a piece. For me, the use of clear word

choice follows the advice that Orwell gives in his essay Politics and the English Language in

which he lays out rules to increase clarity in writing. Rule 5 states to “[n]ever use a foreign

phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”2 I

try to live by this rule in my writing so that the audience can read a text that is accessible and that

has a clear purpose and meaning. I want to persuade my readers through carefully constructed

ideas rather than bombard them with ambiguity and complex terminology.

Second, I have developed a more formal tone in many of my writings. The majority of

my writings consist of research papers and, thus, lend themselves to this tone. I rarely use the

word “I” in my papers as I feel that I have been taught that the use of the first person leads to

subjectivity, which is not wanted in academic research papers. Instead the writer should remain

unbiased and removed from the conversation to promote the idea of objectivity in research.

Thirdly, I have developed the ability to complete research in an effective manner in order

to suit the needs of the specific assignment. Since I am both a politics and history major, much of

my writing is steeped in gathering, synthesizing, and analyzing both primary and secondary

sources. With these sources I must verify their worth and determine if they are worthy to be

2
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," The Complete Works of George Orwell, http://www.george-
orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html
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placed into my own writings. I then must put them in conversation with other writings or my

own ideas so that there is a dialogue within the paper. Gathering research is one of the most

important and labor-intensive portions of the writing process. If I do not have the necessary

research for my academic papers, it becomes difficult or even impossible to write a paper on a

given topic, as I would not have the evidence to substantiate my claims. Gathering this

information can also take time as I try to acquire a wide variety of sources so that when I do

begin to outline I can determine which are most appropriate to use throughout.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I have learned about the process of writing. There

is not a cookie cutter manner in which to approach writing. Every person approaches writing

differently and sometimes I approach writing differently myself depending on the assignment.

Because I value clarity I have learned that I have to outline academic papers intensely before I

write them. Even when writing a short response to an in class exam question, I find myself using

a large portion of the time outlining my argument and evidence. Through my previous classes I

have developed my own writing processes so that I am able to work through my own ideas and

put them to paper, even though the path that I take for every writing piece is unique.

I hope that these characteristics shine through in the writing pieces that are in my

portfolio. Some of these texts reflect writings that peaked my interest while I included others

because of the intense work, preparation, and research that I put into it. As you read I hope you

are able to see some common themes throughout—topics that I am passionate about, certain

styles that are consistent. But I also hope differences between these pieces come through.

Although a majority of my writing at Wake Forest has been heavily academic, I have

incorporated several pieces that do not fit into that mold to show another side of me as a writer. I

have decided to group my writings based on their genre. I have several categories in my
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portfolio—extended research papers (20 pages and longer), shorter research papers (10 pages or

shorter), and papers that include my personal experiences. I decided to separate research papers

into two categories as the majority of my writing in my portfolio is research based. My personal

writings are mostly characterized by the inclusion of my personal experiences and are less

common in my undergraduate writing. I decided to separate my research papers by their page

length as I realized that most of my research papers were either 20 pages or longer or stopped at

10 pages. I hope that you enjoy reading through my pieces of writing, see distinctions between

the texts, but also see progress in my own writing throughout my years at Wake Forest.