Lauren Guldan

I used to write one page in a journal every day. I started writing when I was in middle school. The first entry read, “I got to have a blueberry muffin for snack at school today,” and that sentence alone was riddled with misspellings. I got more serious about writing once I had graduated from the simplicity of learning to write full sentences, and I kept meticulous journals cataloging the goings-on of each day. I mentioned this habit once in an essay recently only to have my professor caution me against such hyperbole – he didn’t want me to mislead my audience into thinking that I was writing exactly one page in a journal every night, but I had to explain to him that when I said one page, that was exactly what I meant. For some unknown reason, my younger self seemed to think that each day deserved exactly one page. No more, no less. I have no idea why.

​

The whole journal saga seemed to align perfectly with my identity as a student. I really did love all of my subjects, but Language Arts was always the zenith of the academic experience. I was a writer because I was articulate, not to mention I quickly picked up on the subtleties of the five-paragraph essay (surprisingly complex when we first learned of the format that would follow us all through high school in the fourth grade). From that point on, I became a master at articulating an argument and using three main pieces of evidence for support. As most veterans of middle school Language Arts will probably remember, it rarely got more complex that than basic format. Even better was that I always seemed to be perfectly in tune with the expectations of my teachers. And should an unfavorable grade arise, I was equally adept at respectfully defending my argument to the point that my grade would be subject to improvement if necessary.

​

The first semester of university unsurprisingly brought along a number of changes, and I knew my days of defending my A-status honor would likely be over. These expectations of the student-teacher relationship shifted slowly as I worked through the first four classes of my college experience. It was about to be the typical world of shock and awe experienced by most first-years. Around this time, I also stopped writing in journals after moving into the dorms. It just seemed too risky to leave a daily account of my actions lying around in a place where friends and non-friends were often traipsing around. So the one-page account of my life died, and with it, the routine of sitting down to write every day. That was probably the first mistake.

​

The second was English 125, which was actually the very first class I ever attended at a college level. I should have hightailed it out of that stuffy, bland room the second the GSI hid a scoff behind some kind of highbrow monologue and said she “didn’t believe in awarding A’s.” That’s a direct quote, supported by some of the stranger teaching philosophies I’ve ever heard, including a belief that an A represented a level of perfection that was unreachable in our lowly undergraduate lives. It still irks me that I didn’t take that first day more seriously – switching into a different section would have saved me a lot of trouble.

​

The first of a series of essays on the topic of Dystopian society prompted us to discuss a major theme in Dystopian literature. Having spent many high school English courses dissecting Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and The Handmaiden’s Tale (and let’s be honest, The Hunger Games series), I was excited to take what I had already learned about the concept of Dystopia and apply it to my first serious university assignment. The guidelines for the assignment were clear; the GSI’s expectations, not so much. My argument was labeled unsupported and sporadic, and I later buried the graded paper deep in my bag (somewhere near that side-dish of academic shame).

​

What I had hoped would be a one-time misunderstanding – an occurrence from which I might actually learn something – was more like the first domino, the start of pattern. The misery continued. The comments I received during weekly conferences with the GSI were confounding at best, and often utterly contradictory. The comments written in purple ink on the finished essays, even more so. Whenever I was interacting with teachers, I used to pride myself on asking questions more precise than simply What should I be doing?, but as my questions were met with less and less clarity, I began to lose faith in my own ability to solicit specific and constructive feedback during office hours.

​

Suffice it to say that I have no idea whether the first major writing assignments I was producing at university were any good. I harbored very few positive feelings towards this person, and my frustration at the curriculum reached its peak with the final thoughtless essay we churned out. I dragged the irritation of my final grade around my parents’ house that whole holiday break, somehow surprised that the GSI’s initial words had not been said in jest. The defeat was worse as I confronted the possibility that the complexity of college writing, so vastly different from the uniformity of my daily journal entries, was too much for me, the writer.

​

The whole of my second year at university passed with plenty of writing, but none that I cared to remember. In the midst of learning computer programming and data visualization, I still excelled at the essays I produced for non-writing courses. I even started a new job as a copywriter for the yearbook. But even then each new piece I wrote tugged at that smallest corner of my brain where I had stored the humiliation that GSI had instilled in my psyche. Even worse was when I finally got up the nerve to apply to the Minor in Writing program. The applications I wrote nagged at me. Fraud, they said.

​

It wasn’t until my third year that I fell into a combination of two classes that changed the premise of my education. They were Global IT & Technology and the famous Gateway Writing course. Gateway Writing taught us to unravel the technical teachings we had been following (think five-paragraph essay and other monstrosities of the sort). In that class I dissected some of the work that hadn’t quite made par in my eyes; I put the pieces back together of an essay that had served its purpose but fallen flat in the creative field. I took what I learned and applied it to a new project – a mini-thesis we had been developing in the IT & Technology class. I was producing work that could earn a place proudly in my portfolio, and I suddenly had an immense desire to keep up the momentum I had unearthed under the guidance of these classes. I confronted the challenges of thinking around complex problems and found myself presenting solutions more succinctly than my words had been capable of before. Not to mention I was finally enjoying the helpful criticisms of mentors who knew what I needed to do to improve and were willing to take me through the learning curve. In that sense, the Gateway course proved to be everything it had promised. My creativity flourished in the excitement of the whatever adversity had hopped up onto my plate.

​

I kept this creative energy going by rediscovering a previous love affair – reading. My library card for the district library had practically shriveled up in some drawer in my desk, but I pulled it out and brought it back to life. Unimaginatively as ever, I was hooked on a few Netflix series, but now I was throwing in a book or two each week in the rest of my spare time, returning a few and picking up new material nearly every time I passed by the library. In the search for voice, I have felt my own voice ring most true in times after reading other authors whose voices stayed firmly planted in my head. There are pieces I’ve written and been proud of, and then there are the pieces that I plowed my way through for the sake of the work it had taken to get that far. The best come after reading a really good book. I read a how-to book of sorts by Mary Karr, a memoirist who wrote about – what else? – the process of writing a memoir. The piece of advice I have not yet forgotten implored her readers to read poetry. Ok. I will, even if I have to labor through my understanding of whatever I read.

​

Enter Comparative Literature and English, two classes required of the Writing Minor. I wrote a memoir-style piece about a former high school teacher of mine that my professor loved and I loved even more. And that CompLit class, The Art of Translation, was a wonder. There are theorists who posit that a translator, in his or her endeavor to translate, brings forth a new body of work; some, much like me I suspect, are only poets when they’re translating. I translated a collection of poems by Jorge Luis Borges, and in the process decided I was as much of a poet as anybody. I wouldn’t be recognized for this newfound status, and wouldn’t expect to be, but I could acknowledge some element of excitement in my newfound endeavor. I was translating and I was writing about the process. My thesis arguing in favor of the translation method I used was well-organized and well-supported, but didn’t reek of academic monotony. I hadn’t even forced a voice into those pages, but it had almost certainly snuck in there on its own, totally unnoticed. So that’s what I was trying to do these past few years.

​

Funnily enough, some good may have come out of that very first freshman English class. I am a glass half full person, sure, the thing is, I don’t really harbor one of those borderline irritating sunny dispositions that can automatically see the growth or good coming out of a bad situation. (I do try though, being borderline irritatingly sunny around some people is just too much fun.) So when I say that I did learn something during that ghastly English 125 experience, I am being completely frank. In the face of the thoughtless commentary I often received, I would often go back to the drawing board wondering how to tailor my essay to someone else’s standards for authorship. But following in the wake of professors who encouraged my writing, gave critical yet coherent commentary, and above all, acknowledged that what I wrote was first and foremost my own, I thought back to the GSI and wondered how I could have been so credulous. My writing has changed drastically in these four years, not so much because I “found my voice” or “learned how to construct and argument” or some other flowery and wonderful snippet of that sort. I strapped on the classic notion of entitlement and decided that while I would never stoop to the level of pride that separated me from the wise, I was entitled to write what I wanted. It wasn’t a simple process by any means, but it boiled down to the simplicity of giving myself permission to open my door only to the selective advice that I could be sure was in service to the voice I worked so hard to unearth.

​

​

​

​