Narrative
Topics in Applied Writing
Dr. Sarah Hart Micke
Dr. Angela Sowa
Winter Quarter 2018
In the Topics of Applied Writing course, I focused on improving my rhetorical strategies by applying them to a new genre of community-engaged, non-profit writing. This class helped me meld my interests in writing and community engagement by connecting me with Indian Hills Fire and Rescue, a non-profit volunteer fire department just outside of Denver. As I worked with this community, I interviewed different members to determine and clarify their needs. Through my interviews, I assessed the specific needs of the community, I identified their motivation for their work, and I connected with the passion of these volunteers and their drive to support their community. I took this knowledge in conjunction with my formal writing education and wrote them a grant for medical supplies. In this grant, I incorporated rhetorical strategies and focused on narrative, assessment of needs, and the implications of granting this community new medical supplies in order to create a compelling argument and increase chances of grant approval.
THE DEALERSHIP
Columbia, Missouri
Memoirs and Personal Writing
Dr. Doug Hesse
Spring Quarter 2018
In Memoirs and Personal Writing, Dr. Hesse encourages students to make decisions about their writing and then question them. How could you start a piece differently? What effect would changing the beginning or ending have on the reader and the rest of the piece? Dr. Hesse is constantly asking his students to reconsider elements of their personal writing. Through this class, I have learned to look at my stories through a creative nonfiction lens, which allows me to take more stylistic approaches when writing. In this genre, I have more control over the story and the reader’s experience. Understanding and implementing varying stylistic and practical elements allows me to guide readers towards my intended interpretation; I compel readers to feel, see, touch, smell, and hear as many or few elements of my stories as I want. By using these strategies, I can make my creative nonfiction pieces intense or relaxed depending on the scene and what I’m trying to convey. This class helped me identify the function of these strategies in my writing, exposed me to more rhetorical choices, and encouraged me to take risks and keep trying new elements to find what is most effective for different pieces.
Before engaging in my literary experience at Indian Hills Fire and Rescue, I was first tasked with assessing my own interactions with literacy throughout my life. As I recounted my experiences with literacy, I found that writing enabled me to interact with others in my life. As a child, that meant having parents read me stories and as a student, that means communicating with my peers and professors about how my pieces are working to create and share meaning. Assessing my own interactions with literacy allowed me to include more human elements in my approach to writing for Indian Hills Fire and Rescue. By understanding my own literacy narrative, I asked better questions during my interviews, and I found that members of IHFR wanted to share their experience with others through writing. Empathizing with their motivations encouraged me to incorporate more ethos and narrative in the writing I did for this community.
MY BACKYARD
Columbia, Missouri
For this memoir project, I knew I wanted to write about the place I grew up: my dad’s car dealership. But, I didn’t know how to tell the story of me finding home on a show floor rather than a living room, so Dr. Hesse encouraged me to choose one tradition or memory to expand. I landed on the dealership’s annual company Christmas party as my focus. The story became more manageable to me as a writer because I could incorporate details that embody my past 20 years of experience growing up in a car dealership in the time span of one night. Rather than telling readers, “I love being here,” I found success with dialogue and detailed descriptions of the setting and my interactions throughout the evening to convey my sense of home in this space and with these people.