WP1

Part 1: 

I started USC majoring in Political Science and wanted to go to law school. However, I quickly realized that I did not particularly like writing or extensive reading, and I was much better at math and problem-solving. I switched to Marshall my sophomore year and I’m now majoring in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing and have zero aspirations of going to law school. The types of writing I did as a political science major were very different from the types of writing I’ve done in Marshall. Now that I think about it, the only papers I’ve written for business were when I was studying abroad last semester at Copenhagen Business School. 

The writing I produced freshman year consisted of WRIT 150 essays, essays for my Law, Politics, and Public Policy class, and my Seminar in Humanistic Inquiry GESM. I found WRIT 150 frustrating because I was used to writing essays that had clear guidelines of what was expected, how many sources I needed to include, what readings from class I had to cite, and what question(s) I needed to answer. The writing assignments for WRIT 150 were very ambiguous and gave me the freedom to choose what to write about. However, this freedom in writing was new to me and stressed me out because I did not know what my professor wanted and how I could get a good grade. The pieces I chose to write about for WRIT 150 were always about current events, politics, or women’s rights. No matter what the prompt was I was able to write a paper that clearly showed what I believed in. The final paper I wrote for WRIT 150 was about the myth of meritocracy specifically for women in business. 

Most of the writing I did in my freshman year Political Science class was analyzing supreme court cases and using concepts and readings from class to dissect the case and argue a position. This political science class was unique because my professor came up with his own vocabulary words used in class. If a person not in the class read my essay, they would have no idea what I was talking about so the only audience for those writings were my professor and TA. 

Growing up my dad would always review and edit my writing. He is a lawyer and a very good writer. However, when I asked him to read my essays for that political science class it was the first time I heard him say he would be no help because he has no clue what I’m writing about. That was the first class I turned in essays without having someone edit or review my work. Luckily, I did well in my political science class and got A’s on all of my essays. Although I did well on those essays, I do not think they were particularly good papers. I was writing with the sole purpose of getting a good grade. I would go during office hours and ask my professor and TA questions, so I knew exactly what they wanted from me. I tried to mimic the tone and voice of my professor in my essays, and I would even take notes of phrases he used frequently to include them in my writing. I know this seems extreme, but I have been conditioned throughout school that getting a good grade in the number one priority.  

The writing I did after I switched to Marshall were few and far between. The only essay I had to write in Marshall was to apply to study abroad. However, once I was abroad at Copenhagen Business School my final exams were all essays and oral exams. It was odd to me that a business class would have an essay as the final exam instead of a test. While I was abroad, I took Retail Marketing, International Marketing, Sustainable Business, and Negotiations and Conflict Management and the final for each class were a 10-page essay worth 50% and an oral exam worth 50%. 

My final for Retail Marketing was to pick any brand I wanted and relate it to the principles we learned in class. I chose the American makeup brand Glossier because I thought it would be easier to pick a brand my professors would not know about. In addition to the 10-page essay, I had an oral exam where I would present to the professors and explain my paper and then they would ask me questions to see how well I knew the material. This was the first time I ever explained and talked about a paper I wrote to a professor, and it would count towards my grade. 

I noticed the teaching styles abroad were very different than in the US. Most Marshall professors explain the grading process during the first day of class and what distinguishes A students from B students. However, the professors I had abroad never explained what it takes to get a good grade or stressed grades at all, they wanted us to be passionate about learning and engage in their class. My sustainable business professor abroad told us the first day in class that if we are only going to university to get a job and not because we are passionate about learning then we should leave. As much as I wanted to agree with her, I think she forgot that US exchange students were in her class paying $80,000 a year to attend University whereas the Danes have the luxury of free education and monthly stipends for attending school. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the teaching styles abroad much more than in the US and I thought the essays I produced abroad were much more meaningful and sounded like me instead of trying to mimic a professor or TA to get a good grade. 

Part 2:

The document I chose to write about was a paper I did in my Critical Issues in Law and Public Policy class I took my sophomore year. I took this class during Spring 2020 and the course focused on the 2020 election. The prompt for this essay was to write a “long paper comment” about topics we discussed in class and relate it to current events. I wrote an 8-page paper called “Polarization in America” and it touches on polarization over the years and how ideology has changed. The genre of my paper was a position paper and I attempted to answer why polarization has increased significantly since COVID-19, how partisan predispositions and the spread of misinformation impacted the efficacy of health campaigns and public policies, and if personality and cognitive behavior correlate to political orientation. I was not required to take a position or make an argument, but I chose to write a position paper because I had strong opinions on the topic. Most papers I write are position papers, so I am used to writing in that genre. 

The context of this paper was very emotionally charged because I wrote this while living through these events, so I had lots of inspiration and influence guiding my writing. I was angry with Trump and conservatives for politicizing COVID-19 and spreading misinformation that was detrimental to everyone. I was angry at conservatives for believing the misinformation and creating an “anti-mask” and “anti-vax” movement. I was afraid about the upcoming election and worried that Trump would win. I had a month to write this essay and during the month there were so many changes and things happening in the world that influenced my writing.

There were personal events going on in my life that influenced my writing as well. I felt polarized by some of my family members for believing Fox News and not getting vaccinated. The majority of my family is very liberal but there are always a few nuts. Other than the normal arguments at Thanksgiving and Christmas about politics, my whole family got along well. However, COVID-19 changed my family dynamic completely. My family stopped talking to my uncle because he thought COVID was “fake news” and would not get vaccinated. My family has not seen my uncle since 2020 because he still refuses to get vaccinated. I could feel the US and my family become more and more polarized and I noticed the tone of my writing got increasingly more indignant as I got deeper into my essay.

The first part of my paper focused on principles I learned from class such as the dynamics of polarization and the difference between partisan polarization and ideological polarization. I cited definitions from the class readings and concepts I learned from the lecture. I cited a study from Abramowitz & Saunders which discusses why ideological consistency has increased and how politicians, social media, and news outlets have influenced public opinion by becoming more distinctive and conflicting. I cited a paper from Mullainathan and Shleifer that argued that the US views the world through a “partisan percentual screen” and the public gets their information (or misinformation) from outlets that align with their political views. I included quotes from Trump and Fox News showing the extreme rhetoric they use. I also wrote about misinformation my uncle shared on Facebook. I cited an article my uncle reposted that said that COVID is a hoax by Bill Gates to microchip everyone. This added humor to my essay but also made me feel to embarrassed be related to him. 

I then discussed the effects COVID-19 had on polarization in the US. In my essay, I pose the question “How did COVID-19 become so politicized, and partisan based if there is unbiased data and research on COVID-19 that is widely available?” The question I really wanted to ask was “How could conservatives be so stupid to believe the blatant lies and misinformation their party was spreading” but I had to phrase it more appropriately. The tone of my essay was clearly frustrated because I could not wrap my head around how so many people bought into the “fake news” “anti-mask “anti-vax” narrative and truly believed their “freedom” was being compromised. I could not understand why Trump did not use the pandemic to energize voters. All he had to do was tell his base that wearing a mask is “patriotic” and sell MAGA masks on his official merch website and it would have saved so many lives, made money, and united the country (somewhat) in stopping the spread of COVID. 

Another question I posed in my essay was if psychological constraints - personality and cognitive behavior - played a role in shaping one’s ideology. This question stemmed from a study read in class by Jost and Block called Nursery School Personality and Political Orientation Two Decades Later. This study looked at the personality attributes of 95 nursery school children and analyzed them over two decades to see if individual character, personality, and cognitive behavior played a factor in political orientation. The study found that the subjects who now identified as conservative were described by their preschool school teachers as, “feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable.” The liberal subjects were described as “self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient” (Block & Block 2005). I enjoyed writing about this study because the findings were funny and not too surprising. This study had extensive research that took decades to record, but even without the research all I had to do was picture Ted Cruz or Ben Shapiro in preschool and imagine what those poor teachers had to deal with. I agreed psychological constraints do play a role in one’s ideology, but I noted that many factors shape one’s ideology. 

I felt comfortable in this political science class writing what I was passionate about and not sugarcoating my writing for a few reasons. The first reason was that this paper was not a huge percentage of my grade. The second reason was that I got to know my professor very well and felt comfortable sharing what I thought. My class had only 12 students and everyone shared the same frustration and anxiety about the upcoming election and the overall state of America. My paper was very biased, but I knew I would not be penalized for it. That being said, if my professor was conservative the style and tone of my paper would have been very different. My class was very discussion based and interactive. My classmates and professor engaged in my writing process because each week we would go around the classroom and talk about how our paper was going and have a discussion. Hearing their thoughts and insights really expanded my paper and opened my mind to many different perspectives. Listening to my classmates' talk about their papers expanded my writing because each paper was so different but there were elements that I wanted to include or expand on in my paper.

I ended the paper by talking about the consequences of polarization. As we saw during COVID-19, there are many negative and deadly consequences of polarization, in addition to legislative gridlock and the inability to compromise. However, polarization has the power to energize voters and increase engagement. I just hope we energize the right voters. I did not have a clear conclusion or solution, it ended more along the lines of “I hope.” The tone in my paper shifted from frustrated and angry to sad and disappointed. My paper ended by saying unless the education gap among red states improves the partisan gap will continue to grow. 

I enjoyed writing this essay because I saw it evolve as society and culture changed around me. If I had written about the same topic today my paper would have been very different. That is because my paper was so dependent on the events happening around me, my feelings and reactions to those events, society, culture, engaging with my professor and classmates, and so many other interactions that shaped my writing and are continuously changing.