Writing: It's a Collaboration

Last night I went to a friend's apartment in the hopes of getting help on my Jepson Leadership School application. By that point I had about 2/3 completed but needed a lot of help. My friend Carly, who is currently in the Leadership School, read through the first question and my response. At first I was nervous to have her read my writing because I tend to be rather sensitive when it comes to criticism (no matter how constructive it may be). Like any good consultant, Carly went over all of the positives in my answer. This helped to build my confidence and made it a lot easier to hear some of the suggestions she had. She could tell I had a few insecurities about my answer and decided to have me read it out loud. After reading through it I could see exactly what I wanted to change and what didn't work. We talked through the problems and without even going back to the writing, I had a much better understanding about what I wanted to write.

I had yet to start the last question which asked: "pick a book that we have read in a previous class and describe why it would be beneficial to implement it into the leadership curriculum". After initially reading the question I had no idea what I would write about. I had only taken a few classes where we read full books and I couldn't really remember what most of them were about. Carly had the suggestion that I go through the essays I wrote from last year to get ideas and refresh my memory. I read over an essay that I wrote in my Anthropology 101 course last fall and was pleasantly surprised. I forgot about an ethnography I read and wrote a paper on about the drug trade in East Harlem, New York. I was able to form a great answer to the question and ended up feeling very positive about my writing.

Overall, the whole experience of working with someone else on my writing was very beneficial. I don't normally have other people read over my work but I felt like if I want to be a good writing consultant, I have to understand what it is like to be in the writer's shoes. I now know the kind of sensitivity writer's harbor over their writing and how to help them simply by getting them to talk about their writing. Now I am very excited about being able to help someone else in the same way Carly helped me!