The View from Mars
by Michael Franklin | August 11, 2009
What is the place of life perspective in the writing process? In other words, how can contemplating the span of one’s life contextualize the writing process as both an accumulation of experience and an evolution of the writer’s abilities?
My earliest memory of writing a paper that required research takes me back to the fourth grade, in which I wrote a report about Mars. If I remember correctly, the report was five pages of information and images taken from encyclopedias and National Geographic. And yet at the time it was a challenge to compile this information, to select these images, to assemble all of this into a required format, and to submit the sum of these efforts for my teacher’s evaluation. The thought of this report brings to life for me one particularly strong memory of sitting at the kitchen table, my mother sitting next to me as we looked at my just-returned report, at this tangible object of knowledge I had created and on which I had received high marks. My mother’s praise and my thrill of accomplishment passed through me then just as the afternoon sunlight passed through the glass of the kitchen windows.
A graduate student in an interdisciplinary humanities department at a brick-and-mortar university, I now find myself writing a dissertation and nostalgic for such simpler days. And yet, it is precisely such memories that steel me against the anxieties of dissertation writing and encourage me to persist. For me, the affirmation I feel upon remembering my fourth-grade report about Mars is often as simple as: I have successfully written my way through previous projects as far back as I can remember. I will do the same with my dissertation.
Our memories of writing at different points in our lives can put into necessary perspective how far we’ve grown in our writing and critical thinking skills. They can help us realize that future time at which we have the Ph.D. in hand as proof of our hard efforts and our persistence. And they can help us imagine a life after graduate school, when new challenges arise that may or may not hinge on writing. As graduate learners and as writers, we must never lose sight of this process of growth in the shadow of the professional and personal demands of our everyday lives, in the gravitational pull of the dissertation. Under the stress of deadlines and in our haste to finish, we must not fool ourselves into forgetting how hard we have worked to get to this point. We should stop for a moment and appreciate how much we’ve grown as writers.
What is your earliest memory of writing? How might it make you think differently about the dissertation you are currently writing?
One Response to "The View from Mars"
steven says:
This is the area that is weak in my learnig process, I never look at writing as different stages of accomplishments; as far as I can Remember it was one strain after another. I will keep your words in mind as I once again challenge myself to a stronger standard.