Searching for Passionate Writing. two other sports, football and golf, I knew I wanted to spend much of my life competing against others.

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1 Mac Thoreson English 111 Final Portfolio Self-Reflective Essay Searching for Passionate Writing When I turned the age of eight, I began to pick up the game of baseball. Along with baseball and two other sports, football and golf, I knew I wanted to spend much of my life competing against others. I was not sure which one I wanted to pursue yet, for I was young and, I might add, not very successful at either sport. As I continued to grow up into a teenager, middle school and high school sports began to emerge as a realistic goal, and I needed to make a decision on which sport to continue with. When the dust settled, I chose to pursue baseball for Farragut High School. When I entered my freshmen year, I struggled to contribute on the varsity team and the junior varsity team as well. After struggling in my first debut in a varsity intrasquad, my father and I serious talked about taking on a different sport, such as football or golf for the remainder of high school. With determination and hard work, I continued baseball and became successful at one of the best high schools in the nation and have an opportunity to continue my career at a Division 1 program. My career with writing is unmistakably similar to my career with baseball. In my first years of education, when writing became a significant part of school, I was not a sufficient writer by any means. I struggled to put together coherent ideas and construct supporting ideas to the main ideas of my paper. Even with these construction problems, the main reason I struggled with my papers was because I had no direction or purpose for them. Teachers often handed out prompts for essays and I just completed the assignment and was convincing with fluff and other meaningless material in my papers. Without purpose in the paper writing became exceeding more difficult. After

2 Thoreson 2 repeated bad grades and no signs of gaining any ground in the writing field, I quickly began to despise writing all together and had to rely on other aspects of English to hold my grade in an acceptable place. Many of these problems still haunt me today. Being a competitive person throughout high school, I took my writing issues into my own hands and attempted to become a better writer. As the years progressed, my grades continued to increase due to better writing performances. By the time my senior year arrived, I began to actually enjoy writing papers and could effectively put together complete thoughts in essay and most of my assignments in class. Consistent A s and high B s were expected of me and I considered myself to be a good writer. The purpose problem was solved easily for me. I needed good grades to get into a good college. That was the purpose for almost all of my papers and I developed the skill of adding meaningless material into my essays and disguising it as pertinent information to the paper. Almost all of my teachers rewarded me for adding this information and I was certain that I could continue with this throughout college courses. I was mistakenly ready to take on college English class and the many papers I heard student were required to write. My first day in college with Stephanie Weaver for English 111 was an eye opener. When our first paper was issued to us, we were able to write about a topic which we chose. I was used to prompts being handed to us and just completing the assignment for the sake of a good grade. Also, when describing the assignment, Ms. Weaver entertained the idea of fluff in papers. She clearly stated fluff would not be accepted and we would have to work to construct solid ideas and supporting sentences. I knew I would be reverting to my old ways of writing and the problems would come to life once more. I found myself searching for the same answers writing as I was searching for in my earlier years. This time the answer was not adding meaningless content, but finding a certain passion in writing that

3 Thoreson 3 would propel my ideas and thoughts into a great paper. Much like approaching my success in baseball, I had to work hard and dig deep to reach some success in writing. I coincidentally chose my baseball aspect of college to write about for my first paper. I thought to myself that this topic would be easy to reach the word requirement and to gather sufficient information. Sure, I had passion for the game of baseball, but not for writing and I believed my passion for baseball would translate over and jump start my passion for writing. As I looked at the subculture of student-athletes, I realized how different this culture was from the remaining student body. Time, effort, and difficulty all increased for student athletes, and I was responsible for showing this life style. Even though I was extremely knowledgeable about baseball and all the activities that took place on the team, I still struggled to put together the meaning of relationships in the subculture as a result of my lack of actually understanding the assignment. Ms. Weaver guided us through the steps of creating passionate writing through our topics and ideas. Finally, I began to understand how to correlate my passion for sports into passion for writing as well. After receiving a much lower grade than expected, I have progressively excelled on my papers in class. While attempting to write an ethnography paper, Ms. Weaver brought my lack of analysis of my subculture to my attention. I knew I needed to change my writing and to develop passion for my writing. As the sequences continued, I chose topics that were closely related to my life and based my improvement on ideas I was familiar with. During the next sequences, I took the pre-writing exercises more seriously in order to get the job done. The next sequence came too quickly and I began to think about the problems I had in my first paper. The second sequence was a rhetorical analysis on the many forms of advertising. Again, I saw an opportunity to write on a topic that I could be familiar with and passionate about. I carried over my passion for athletics and wrote on the clever and complex marketing

4 Thoreson 4 strategies of Gatorade. The class assignments helped me strategize for the paper, such as constructing analytic views on many different types of advertising. Commercials, paper ads, magazine ads, and billboard ads are a few important forms of advertising we looked at. Acquiring the skills to be able write about these marketing forms objectively has turned into an extremely helpful skill. Being a finance major, writing about advertising and writing to marketing representatives is an important aspect of the finance career. This sequence taught me how to look at a piece of work, such as advertising, and analyze ethos, logos, and pathos. This course taught me how to be able to view these aspects and better understand the meaning of writing or advertising. Now, when I read a piece of work, I can better understand the purpose of the author and the passion demonstrated. These skills allowed me to better develop my ideas by being able to identify how to portray the passion I feel about the topic, and overall, about writing. I began to effectively demonstrate this by understanding where Gatorade was coming from. Understanding why Gatorade chose famous athletes for their commercials and advertisements was not the most important aspect. Most importantly, when they issued these ads and where. What audience Gatorade was trying to reach and what the words said meant. This is applicable to all my writing and analysis. Not only has my grade in English been on the up rise, but my grades in my other class that require some writing have been increasing as well. I have seen a direct correlation in my Business 102 course as well as in my History 121 class, the study of Western Civilization. Western Civilization 121 requires us to look at history objectively and understand the context of the material, not just the factual aspects. My first paper in HST 121 required us to address many themes such as justice systems, socioeconomic status, gender relations, and religion. In order to achieve a successful paper, I knew I had to develop solid, persuasive evidence supporting my argument. This paper was assigned around the same

5 Thoreson 5 time as I was learning from Ms. Weaver that fluff was not going to work in college papers. Much like my first English paper, I tried to push through this one with meaningless information. History teacher Zach Hoffman said, I need to work on providing a clearer and more detailed discussion of the text.spend much more of your essay examining specific points and organizing them more precisely to support your argument. Obviously, I was experiencing much of the same problems with detailing my ideas and putting sufficient ideas in the paper. The problem was I thought this was considered good writing. In many of my courses in the past, I felt I could contribute with good writing. I did not actually understand what good writing meant. Looking at a piece of work, I would have constituted good writing by what words were used, how many of these complicated words were used, and how entertaining the topic was. The idea of good writing has changed dramatically. Currently, I see good writing as a piece of literature that efficiently explains a certain ideal or view point. Sure, the type of quality of words used is important, but not nearly as important as the meaning behind the words. My grades have consistently improved in English 111 as well as History 121. Without the knowledge received here, my writing would have continued to flounder. This new style of writing is much more effective than the writing I have been used to throughout most of my life. Meaningless writing supported by fluff is not good writing. Simple, concise, and passionate writing is the most important concept of writing I have learned over the past semester and I expect it to help me throughout my career, as a writer and as a businessman.