Revisiting Past Writing: Unpacking the Complexity of Circumstance & Context
Analysis of the Writing Produced by Josephine Mo
Part 1:
As a spring admit, I have written for institutions other than USC. Although I no longer have access to those old works, I find that the experience of writing for my community college courses contains no fond memories, as the writing was bland and unmotivated, containing the bare minimum of what was required to pass the course. I got away with that clinical, lackluster style of writing because basic structure and information regurgitation was accepted at the community college level. Coming into USC I found myself thinking more deeply about what I was writing and submitting, which became a writing curve my first semesters at USC. Certainly, the work I have produced at USC contains more interesting diction which is a sign of growth, but the structure for my essays remained the same or changed immensely depending on the class, leading me to believe that while there is a higher standard for language used, all professors have their own specific ways of teaching structure rather than following one standard. This made it quite interesting to go through my old writing as I found that pieces written at the same time were vastly different because of the varying ways we were required to assemble our pieces.
All of my writing-with the exception of my SCA application-has been required of me for classes with the threat of a grade looming over my head. I believe this is why I do not have any fond memories of writing any of my chosen pieces, and would rather not read them ever again. The only exception to these circumstances is the SCA application I wrote this February; two pieces of writing that allowed creative and expressive freedom, without the threat of negative consequences. This is not to say that I enjoyed the process of writing my “cinematic arts personal statement”; I still felt the pressure to write in a way that would be enjoyable for a professor or staff member to read, and was under a harsh time constraint. However, the end product is, in my opinion, more engaging and genuine than any of my other works.
With all of my pieces, I never engage with others when writing (unless it is a requirement such as the peer editing sessions we had during WRIT 150). I find that peer editing actually causes more issues in clarity or structure compared to when I write alone, even if their feedback seems helpful in the moment, so I find that I try to avoid situations where I am forced to share my writing with others. Instead, I write, and reread my own work after a period of time, and find that I am able to fix major flaws of my own accord. This may be an issue in future endeavors of writing as it is often stated that writing is supposed to be a collaborative effort, but I seem to be a lone wolf writer who likes the pieces they write by themselves, and likes writing FOR themselves as well (as can be seen with the personal statement). I just don’t take time outside of class to write, as I am busy writing FOR class.
I also find myself consistently writing in quiet spaces (most commonly my dorm room) with the intention of creating a noisy background myself. I believe that I’m a picky writer because I work best in a place where I am isolated from any distractions or other people (which may also be part of why I cannot work well in peer editing sessions) but it must be a space where I can play music or a video in the background as I work. This way I can control the type of noise in the background, or lower the audio levels to match my concentration, but am not distracted by anything else around me.
As a theatre major, I understand that compared to my peers I have not written as many research-driven essays, and therefore may be weak in logical, fact-based writing. Rather, I find that most of my pieces are about plays or movies and media, and rely on the playwrights, film critics, scripts, articles and visual elements to guide the writing. Many of my pieces compile that information and then elaborate on quotes or add on my own thoughts to ideas that already exist, rather than creating and arguing for an original idea. The exception to this are my WRIT 150 pieces, specifically my last essay where I had to come up with an original issue in sustainability (to which I chose to research sustainability in film) and build an argument from conducting my own research.
WRIT 150 is also the course with the strictest writing rubric, and therefore my pieces for this class have the most organized and rigid writing. Although we were free to choose our topic within the larger idea of sustainability, I found myself struggling to finish my WRIT 150 assignments because of the high expectations we were given in class. This is a common theme throughout the rest of my writing as all of these pieces were almost transactional in nature (in exchange for good grades). The final essay above was also written while dealing with trying to figure out how to fly back home as well as dealing with other finals, so I think this is one of the major factors as to why I associate WRIT 150 with such a negative emotion. The last impression is the strongest for me, and therefore with this mess of a final piece I decided that I never wanted to take another writing course ever again.
In contrast, my other courses had more lax requirements for the writing we were to submit, and THTR 424, THTR 125, and CTAN 432 all assigned reading responses (including dramaturgy) or journals; they all required similar styles of information extraction. However, because there were different styles of structure for each class the pieces look very different when compared side by side.
I also took CTAN 432 after WRIT 150, and because the sophistication of writing required is so vastly different, I feel as though I have lost some of the writing skill I had used the semester before, which is not a sign of growth but rather a sign of regression.
I think having this contrast of rigid, long essays and casual analysis pieces has scattered my writing style into a spectrum of different styles. I find that I am now more comfortable with writing bullet point lists or short responses involving my own feelings and thoughts. On the other hand, most of my classes (with the exception of WRIT 150) have not required long research driven essays, and therefore I am less well-equipped than some of my peers to write this style of writing. I also think that the information I got about writing from WRIT 150 versus previous writing classes versus my other, more fine art focused classes is highly contradictory, so I no longer know what style or rules of writing I need to follow. I have resorted to following whatever structure or requirements a professor lays out, which is why WRIT 340 is such a unique and daunting class for me; I have no guidance on what format to use, what style to cite my sources, and how to best structure my writing to tackle the topics provided. I believe that this confusion on “the best way to write” is a large detriment to my writing process, as I no longer feel comfortable writing (as compared to high school).
Part 2:
The writing sample I submitted as a part of my SCA application is currently my favorite piece of writing created during my time at USC. It is a recent analytical essay about a Studio Ghibli film called Princess Mononoke.
(source: https://summitpsnews.org/2021/04/29/princess-mononoke-is-still-relevant-2-decades-later/)
I was pleasantly surprised when going back through my old works, as after rereading it, I found that I quite enjoyed my past self’s analysis of the film. Filled with flowery language and flow, I don’t know if I would be able to replicate this writing to analyze a different film. The vocabulary of my writing for this piece was definitely influenced by the movie itself; it’s a beautiful and poetic movie, and therefore the only way for me to properly describe the movie was through language that was similarly poetic in description. The rhetoric was arranged in order to evoke a sense of elegance while still being informative and inquisitive, and I believe that this style of writing only worked and came naturally because of the subject: my favorite Ghibli film.
The intended audience was just the SCA admissions team who would be reviewing my application, but I think that this piece could be read by anyone interested in Studio Ghibli and the deep connections and morals they weave into their stories. I also think that a deeper intention behind writing this piece was simply to allow myself to gush over a movie I enjoyed watching since I was little, so in a way it felt like I was finally writing for myself rather than for grades. It made the process of writing this piece more engaging, natural and fun (even if I was worried about the quality of it because it was for an application).
(screenshots of the original document with all of my ideas and brainstorm for the writing sample)
This film is always less popular than some of the studio’s other works, so I get a little sad when the movie is disregarded by Studio Ghibli fans. That said, I believe that this piece could create more interest in Princess Mononoke by studying some of the hidden symbolism of the film, even if this text was originally created in order to try and appeal to SCA admissions that I was qualified to get into one of the top cinema schools in the country as a Cinema and Media Studies major; a major in which a large portion of the course load is writing about films.
Within the discursive context of my writing, I would say that it aligns with the essays of my CTCS 190 class as it is a film analysis, but the end product feels completely different to those written for my CTCS course. This is most likely because this Princess Mononoke analysis was written about a topic that I wanted with no set prompt. In contrast, all of my 190 papers were written about assigned films with prompts and a full rubric that we were required to follow.
This piece is a call for reflection because I am not trying to motivate my reader to take any action; in fact a majority of this piece is written for someone who has already seen the movie as it is a deeper dive into the details of Princess Mononoke. Therefore, I would like the reader to reflect on the intricacy of this film.
As stated earlier, I am surprised by how fond I am of this piece as I was quite stressed during the process of writing this essay and I thought it would end up like a hot pot of random ideas that would not flow well together. It was my first time writing so intensely in a short amount of time, and my first attempt at analyzing a film on my own with no guidance from articles, prompts, or rubrics. Rereading this piece had me surprised by the fact that I had written it, as I am not confident in my ability to write such an in-depth analysis for any other film.
I believe that I am always surprised by my actual writing ability versus my idea of my writing ability, and I believe a part of this discrepancy is that I am always writing about topics that don't interest me or I am always constrained by a specific set of guidelines for a grade rather than being allowed to just freely write my thoughts and ideas with no restraints as I did for this analysis piece. Therefore, I have realized that a large part of my writing barrier has to be mental, and my writing often depends on my mentality rather than my level of writing proficiency.