When I first came to Wake, writing was not something that I thought about very much; it was ancillary to the other activities that I anticipated completing as a student but did not in itself take up too much of my mental energy. In high school I had always been successful—in terms of grades, at least—in my written assignments, but I never considered myself a “writer,” much less a “good writer.” All of the writing which I had completed prior to college felt more formulaic than expressive, probably because its primary purpose was to fulfill the requirements of standardized tests. Rather than learning how best to communicate my ideas or persuade a reader of an argument, it seemed like I was mostly learning how to insert phrases into pre-approved paragraph forms. I was only infrequently given the opportunity to chose subjects to write that I felt strongly about, much less that related to my own experiences, but rather typically wrote to prompts taken from old AP exams—a decidedly stale form of writing. Though this mode of writing instruction served its purpose at the time, I didn’t feel that it was a solid foundation on which to base all of my future writing. Because I had taken AP English in high school, I was exempted from taking WRI 111, but I regretted not having the chance to solidify my understanding of what would be expected of me in future writing assignments. This feeling of insecurity in my writing only deepened throughout my first semester as I was asked to write for disciplines and in genres which I had no experience with. I received enough instruction from my professors on writing philosophical arguments and art history essays that these assignments did not feel impossible to undertake. However, when it came to writing a research paper for my anthropology class, I was completely lost and my ineptitude was clear in my execution of this task. The mere task of writing a fifteen page paper was daunting, I was overwhelmed with sifting through databases to find appropriate sources, and I had no idea how to go about constructing an anthropological argument. I knew from this experience that I needed to improve my writing, but wasn’t sure how. Luckily, Dr. Laura Giovanelli recommended that I take WRI 210 and consider the writing minor. This course transformed not only how I wrote, but how I thought about writing. Learning to explicitly discuss the various aspects of academic writing, completing case studies, and putting my essays through a rigorous drafting process helped me to be more deliberate with my writing choices. I also gained a greater understanding of the breadth of academic writing; I learned that there was more than one type of paper and more than one way to write a paper. The exposure that I gained in this class to the ideas of scholars such as Swales and Hyland and to the different forms of writing that occur throughout the various departments at Wake helped me to form better habits in writing in addition to writing with greater attention to the moves I was making. More concretely, I learned how to use a semi-colon; this was a lesson I have put to good use ever since. Since that class, my knowledge of writing has continued to grow, both in depth and in breadth. I have gained greater insight into the genres of writing to which I am now well accustomed, such as literary analyses, but I have also gotten the chance to study areas of writing which I would not otherwise have experienced. Creative nonfiction and fiction writing are two such forms of writing. In studying writing which was creatively-oriented, rather than strictly academic, I was able to pay comprehensive attention to authorial voice and tone. These subjects seemed beside the point in a research paper, but they are absolutely necessary when writing a memoir or a short story. Having a greater sense of how I portray myself as a writer through my diction and other rhetorical moves has also improved my writing for non-creative purposes. The writing minor has given me the chance to study the history of rhetorics as well, from the theories of argumentation that originated in ancient Greece to modern ideas on writing, and this insight into what has historically made an argument “good” has influenced my own approach to argumentation. While there is much that I have learned about writing in the past four years, I believe that what has most fostered my development as a writer has been the opportunity to engage with writing as a process—often a collaborative one—rather than merely a finished product. By participating in workshops for creative writing and peer reviews for academic writing, I have been able to strengthen my ability to communicate effectively about writing through discussing what is effective in others’ writing and my own as well as ways to continue to improve a paper or other assignment. Writing in this collaborative environment with an emphasis on growth has encouraged me to take more time with my assignments and to write with intention, paying attention to my audience, the rhetorical situation in which I am writing, and my own positioning as speaker. As I continue to develop as a writer, I look forward to applying and expanding upon all that I have learned as a writing minor. I will enter the master’s program in English at Wake in the fall and it is my goal over the next few semesters to improve my ability to undertake a prolonged argumentative effort which engages seriously in the discourse of my discipline as I begin to prepare for writing my thesis. Writing to make a serious contribution to the field of literary studies will be an exciting and challenging experience which I believe the writing minor has prepared me for. For this website, I have collected a variety of examples of my writing from the past four years, organized into three categories: English writing, interdisciplinary writing, and creative writing. English writing includes writing done for my English classes and consists of literary analyses on novels and poems. In interdisciplinary writing, I have included a selection of papers I have written that do not analyze literature but focus on different aspects of writing. For my creative writing category, I collected short stories and personal essays I have written. Each section contains three essays and a short commentary, explaining the circumstances under which the essay was written.