What Should I Write About?
- Lauren B
- 0
- on Nov 18, 2022
This week I was at a bit of a stalemate with my final essay. I had a broad topic picked out, that no one writes letters because they’re lazy even though we love seeing the physical reminder that someone cares about us but my research for it was lackluster. Every search option I tried always pulled up the same batch of articles and they’re not that much use to you after you read them for the first time. Even the information I got from the articles wasn’t that helpful, at most I was only pulling a few sentences from each that I thought would be applicable to my topic. This frustrated me heavily as it was the first time all semester I had really struggled finding sources and evidence I could use in essays. For the World War II Essay most of my evidence came from class sources with the rest of it being easily found through a quick google source or by looking at a few articles. The letters of note essay was the easiest one for me to research as I already knew a lot of the evidence and information I wanted to include, there wasn’t a lot of internet searching. Even when Tina went over the different sources we could use in class on Tuesday I was still at a loss as through my minimal exploration of the sources I didn’t find anything that could properly apply to my topic. I got worried that even though my topic was a good idea maybe it just wasn’t something that I write a whole essay about but this belief was proved false after I met with Tina, Tuesday after class. She told me about the book To the Letter by Simon Garfield and that there were certain sections that directly talked about how the email changed traditional letter writing. Later, I looked at the book and the relevant sections which really helped me figure out what exactly I wanted to write about and what quotes I could be using as evidence. This morning I narrowed what quotes I wanted to use as evidence and almost half of it came from this book. I’m excited to write this essay because it’s a topic that I understand both sides of. While I was at summer camp growing up no technology was allowed so I had to write letters and it was always so exciting getting some my friends and family. Even writing them back was therapeutic in a sense, putting my words down on paper. But I can’t deny how easy technology has made communication, I can talk to my friends and family within a matter of seconds not days. Still I love letters and I’ve kept a collection of every card or letter I’ve received in my life. It’s nice going back to them and getting the reminder of how much they care about me, which is the reason why people love letters. I think it’s important to keep writing them for that very reason, everyone deserves the ability to remind themselves that they’re loved and thought about. Sometimes seeing it written down makes it more heartfelt than just a short text and that’s exactly what I want to argue about. Just because something is easy doesn’t mean that’s the route you should always take.
