Anya: Hello and welcome to Red Penned: a podcast on writing across the disciplines! I’m your host Anya Ricketson, a third-year English major at UGA. This season is called Intro, Body, Conclusion and I’ll be focusing on writing assignments. This week, I’m talking to Lauren Mattson.

Lauren: My name is Lauren Mattson. I am a third year English major at the University of Georgia. I’m a Film minor, Film Studies minor technically, and then I’m going for two certificates on my degree, the Digital Humanities Certificate and a Creative Writing Certificate.

Anya: This past semester, Lauren wrote a series of two short essays for her 20th-Century British and Irish Poetry class with Professor Wasley. The essays look at many of the works of the poets that Lauren’s class examined throughout their semester, including T.S. Elliot, Isaac Rosenburg, and Mina Loy. Right off the bat, Lauren’s professor set some expectations for Lauren and her class when writing this paper.

Lauren: Well, obviously there was a word count, there was a sort of page limit there was… My professor wanted it to be roughly five pages per essay of the two to eventually make up sort of a ten page bulk essay that we would turn in as a culmination of a lot of our talkings in class, a lot of what we had discussed in terms of interpreting poetry as to what it is and like the historical context of things that were going on in all of this sort of like 20th century British poetry, you know? So a lot of political things, a lot of wars,  a lot of very emotional stuff, and that leads for good poetry but you know it’s not exactly the easiest thing to get through a lot of the time. Approximately each essay was supposed to be like 1000 words at least and it was encouraged that we would go over them. We had to include three poets in each poem, not poem (laughs) essay, and it had to be three specific examples from each of those poets, so like sort of nine examples in total under the umbrella of three different poets.

Anya: Of the two essays the first is titled Location and overviews,

Lauren: How the physical space in which poets discuss their work and write in can influence what exactly it is they’re writing about and what they’re trying to say. As well as how physical space can lead to a sense of like nationalism and like pride in environment and pride in like personal identity and how those play off of each other.

Anya: The second is Identity, which Lauren defines as,

Lauren: Who are you? Like what’s going on? Who are you? What makes up the person that you are? What do you hold in great esteem? What do you not hold in great esteem? Basically, how does poetry reflect a sort of deeper sense of self? That is shown either by the poet themselves or by the speaker of the poem which is not always the poet themselves.

Anya: After overviewing what each of her papers was about, I asked Lauren to define what genre these essays were in her opinion, were they rhetorical, argumentative..?

Lauren: I wouldn’t really say argumentative per-say. I would say probably rhetorical is the best way to describe it. I’m not really trying to argue a point one way or the other, in either of them. It’s just kind of, “this is what I believe from the poetry that I have read and interpreted.” Sort of like comparing and contrasting, because it was multiple poets, multiple poems in the essay. (I wouldn’t) consider it to be particularly argumentative, perhaps just kind of informative. 

Anya: Like Lauren said, instead of making a real argument about the poetry addressed in her papers, the two essays provide more of an overview of a given topic. In a survey course like 20th century British and Irish Poetry, this is something that a professor might assign to better understand a students comprehension of the works they have read and their connections to one another, since often in these kind of courses there isn’t much time to devote to any one author. Sometimes those of us who are accustomed to primarily writing argumentative essays might find something like this a little bit tricky. So, everyone’s process looks different when approaching a paper like this one, some people prefer to chart things out on paper, while others just like to start writing. I know in my personal experience, in my three years of an English major, I still use the essay writing chart my 6th grade social studies teacher taught us, boxes and all. Here’s what Lauren had to say on her process:

Lauren: My process is, do I know what I’m talking about? Because the thing I’ve found with writing essays is that if you don’t know what you’re talking about, no one else is gonna know what you’re talking about either. The fact of the matter is, when you write an essay it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, you want your reader to believe it, because they think that you believe it and you’re making a case for why that is the way that it is. So when I start writing essays like this: first you gotta make sure that you’ve got all of your resources, all of your um, all of your facts, all of your evidence that you’re gonna use to bring in as like textual citations. You’re going to want to make sure that you have all of those things readily available, and you know what you’re gonna take from them in order to make your sort of point that you are arguing. Um, so, my biggest piece of advice for that is just, make sure you’ve got your like ducks in a row. Like, make sure that you’ve got your stuff and you know what you’re talking about and what you’re going to bring in in order to very effectively write this essay and write it quickly too because time is such a fleeting concept isn’t it? (Laughs) Deadlines they be approaching, all the time. (Laughs) Every day. Have all your quotes, have all your authors, have all of your evidence that you’re bringing in right ready to go. Like written down, all of your quotes just keep them, keep them close to your heart.

Anya: Then, once you have all of your quotes ready to go, a by the book essay writer might begin laying out their intro, body, and conclusion, but Lauren has other ideas.

Lauren: Well, I don’t love intro, body, conclusions. I understand why it’s taught and like why people do it. It makes sense, you gotta like know the conventions of writing before you’re able to successfully break them and tweak them to how you want to present your information. Um, so, I guess you kind of take that approach. I mostly just start with a thesis and I like center my thing around my thesis and I work to sort of not use like, “point, point, point, conclusion.” I try to sort of tie things in as much as I can.

Anya: When I first read Lauren’s papers, I first noticed that her introductory paragraphs tend to be quite short, taking only 3, maybe 4 sentences to succinctly lay out her thesis and background.

Lauren: My thought process on that whole thing is that, um, I don’t love a long winded introduction. Because, my thought process is, if you’re reading my essay, you know what I’m talking about. You are either a professor for a class, so you’ve taught the material and you know, you’ve assigned the essay essentially, or you’re like sort of an academic that has actively sought it out in an academic journal, so most likely you’re a peer or you’re someone who knows a little bit about what I’m talking about. And, you should never assume, obviously, that your reader is stupid, so you always want to be like, “okay this person is informed,” but you never want to like talk over the readers head and be like “oh well this is for the very high brow commentary, this is high brow commentary for a very high academic mind.” But no it’s just like, I don’t know, I feel like you should get to the point of an essay you don’t need long winded sort of descriptions or general historical context. It’s good to have like, “this is who the person was, this is why they were writing, this is why it was interesting, here is my thesis.” Obviously not as like short and to the point as that but generally people are there to read about what you think, they aren’t usually there to get like vague plot or vague historical context in things, you know?

Anya: When it comes to my body paragraphs, the part I tend to struggle with the most is analysis. I know I often have a lot of quotes and information that I feel lends itself to my thesis, but I just don’t know what to do with it. I asked Lauren what she does to break down her quotes.

Lauren: That is a phenomenal question and I feel like something that everyone is like, “oh God what do I do with these quotes that I have found.” Um, okay so, the best way I think to break down a quote is to take it very slow, like sort of step by step being like, “okay, this is the quote.” You don’t have to include all of that, in your essay of course and when you pick quotes you are using them to support what you are trying to say so obviously they’re going to be a bit more tailored to what you as the writer of this essay are attempting to convey to other people. Um, I, well for one thing I will never ever ever ever ever end a body paragraph on a quote you always have to like analyze that. And that is something that I am neurotic about, to the point that I will add unnecessary sentences to make sure that I’m not ending on a quote. But, just because like raw quotes in the middle of an essay don’t really mean anything, you know? Like, you want to break down exactly why you’ve picked that particular quote, and what of the authors words in that quote you are looking to like point out and say like, “this is important, this is important to my point and I’m calling attention to it so you, reader of this essay, also know it’s important.” And breaking it down is just sort of, you know the best way to be like, “and this is why it’s important.” I’m using these words specifically and not like, I don’t know, the twenty words that were before it, because these words specifically are what drew me to this quote they are what I want to talk about they are important to me, important to the meaning of what I’m trying to say, important to the meaning of this essay, important to what I believe the meaning of this poem is, like what I believe the author was trying to say.

Anya: Another sticking place that occurs in the middle of papers like this one is transitions.

Lauren: It’s awful, it’s so bad, because people think that they can just throw in a, “additionally,” “as a second point,” “furthermore,” “in conclusion.” (gagging noise)

Anya: Though they may be bleh, those “additionally” or ”in conclusion”s can be useful to get your brain flowing.

Lauren: I will say, in a first draft of an essay, it’s not terrible, like I don’t think it’s terrible to include a transition as long as you know you’re gonna get rid of it. (Laughs) And you know that like you are just moving between thoughts, it should kind of flow. I think that the goal of an essay is a flowing of information, a flow of thoughts, like not necessarily stream of consciousness writing but your points should move naturally in progression. And you can move points that you feel like make sense earlier on and lead them into points that you feel like make sense later on. It’s very like fluid in the way that you can set up an argument, or set up an essay so that it flows well.

Anya: Now I am a little bit in love with the way that Lauren does her conclusions, and I had to figure out how she did it. 

Lauren: I feel like conclusions are so often the unlovable end of an essay. It’s like, “ugh, this essay, it’s gone on forever, and here were done, in conclusion, bleh,” you know? No one loves conclusions and um you should love conclusions, because they’re a great way to sort of bring in a little bit of outside context or like further expound. Like this is how my thesis relates to things that are currently going on or things that are happening or a greater theme outside of the textual evidence of this essay. Uh, conclusions are great, and you shouldn’t just stop. You should actually have a point to wrap it up. Usually I will, and this is a silly little thing that I do, is that I will split my thesis. I will put my thesis, I’ll write a little bit after my thesis that continues to talk about my thesis a little bit, and then I move it to the end, and then I put my points sort of after the thesis and um, go all this stuff, but then I still have my original little points to kind of tie it back, because that’s the point of a conclusion is to tie things up, to, you know, add little nuggets. Um, basically make sure that you’re like, “this is my point! This is why I’m saying what I’m saying! You’ve just read this whole essay that is me talking about what I am saying and this is why, like this is how I am bringing it back to what I was talking about. Because you know, sometimes with essays you get a little, you get off the path a little bit, you get a little distracted sometimes, you’re like, “how does this relate?” Boom! Conclusion, that’s how you relate it. That’s how you tie it back to exactly what you were talking about previously. This is why it matters and this is why you should care, doesn’t matter if I don’t care, you should care, because you think I care, and I’ve written this because I think that I care, you know what I mean?

Anya: Stay tuned after the break to hear more about Lauren’s writing style, her love-hate relationship with poetry as a whole, and her controversial opinion on the use of the first person in formal essay writing.

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Anya: Something that would stick out to any trained reader when reading Lauren’s papers is her use of the first person. Though it is not constant, the word “I” pops up throughout each of the essays, she even uses the phrase, “there are three poets that I will be discussing today.”

Lauren: Okay, I was actually thinking about this earlier because, up until I got to college I would never have considered using the first person in an essay. I know, I know, shock and gasps. Um, but as I’ve sort of thought about it more and like kind of ruminated on why I suddenly have this new-found appreciation for using the first person in an academic paper that I’m going to turn in for a grade, the more I was like, why can’t you? Like, why not? You are saying, no reader of any essay is under the impression that you aren’t the one who wrote this. Your name is on it, they know that these are your thoughts. So why not use I? Like I understand why they don’t teach it in sort of like K through twelve, because, once again it kind of goes back to you have to know the conventions of writing in order to break them. But, these are your thoughts, and these are arguments and points that you are making. Why can’t you use I? Always ask your professor what their preferences on the use of the first person is, that is the best advice I can give! Ask your professor if you’re confused. If you’re confused, go to office hours, or, go to the writing, the writing, like the writing program… right?

Anya: The Writing Center.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, like ask advice. Essays can be vague, if you are confused, ask somebody before you commit an obscene amount of time into something that you can’t turn in. Please, no one wants you to waste that time! It hurts, it like physically hurts to be like, no, I can’t turn that in, I spent seven hours on it, and I cannot turn it in, because I didn’t, I did something wrong. And, I don’t know, just ask, please please, that’s something I’ve gotten better about recently is like, professors don’t want you to fail, like they genuinely, nothing sucks worse than grading a failed paper I am sure. Because it’s, it is the time thing, right? It’s not like a test where you have like an allotted amount of time and whether you prepared for it or not is on you. An essay is something that is gradual. Like it is something that you have to spend a ton of time on, in order for it to be like good, you know what I mean? Um, so, it’s just like, it just kinda sucks, it’s really like not, and no one wants to fail you, so, as much as it might be scary professors are people too, just ask them for help.

Anya: In a big survey course like this one, it can be hard to choose what exactly to write about, especially when the subject isn’t your favorite.

Lauren: Well, okay, and here’s the confession, is that I don’t love poetry. I never have. It’s not a thing that I particularly enjoy reading, but as any sort of english major will tell you, you can’t really go your academic career in english literature without having to A: Read things you don’t want to, and B: break down poetry. And, um, I initially took the class because I was like, “okay, well, I don’t like poetry, maybe I could like some poetry. You don’t have to love a thing in order to take a class on it and sort of gain an appreciation for it. And, uh, the reason I picked the ones that I did, for this essay was, I couldn’t have talked about them before, I had to sort of branch out and talk about new poets. So like even though I really like Auden, and we talked a lot about Auden, I had already written an essay on Auden and could not do it. Even though I would consider Auden to be one of the poets I actually do like. Um, so I sort of had to work with things that I hadn’t worked with before and branch out and pick different poets of the ones we had talked about in class, because we talked about all of these poets, we broke down a lot of their stuff in class. Like their history and who they were as people. And obviously, as anyone who’s into twentieth century works of fiction and poetry will tell you, they aren’t necessarily the greatest people a lot of the time. So, I basically it was just a fun challenge to work with what I hadn’t worked with before and find some sort of interesting thing I could talk about, and I definitely gained new appreciations for one of them: Seamus Heaney, the bog king himself. I, yeah I actually really like his work and I have actually read more of his stuff outside of the class.

Anya: In the paper on location, Lauren even begins a paragraph “There is not a person alive who likes bogs more than Seamus Heaney.”

Lauren: Mans loves a bog, what can I say! He loves a bog! He writes about them so much. And like what it would be like to submerge yourself in a bog and just lay there and die. And, I feel like that says something right? I think Seamus Heaney would be really popular with the Gen-Z crowd on Tumblr, I think that they could also want to relate to the idea of just sinking into a bog and laying there until you just perish.

Anya: It is, of course, not just the idea of dying in a bog that has made Lauren take a second glance at poetry recently, writing this paper has made her rethink the unique ability of poetry to convey personal identity.

Lauren: Well, okay, and this is a little deep. This is a little like uh, we’re getting into my personal philosophies on life. Um, I feel like the human experience is best expressed in personal things, because that, like, the human experience is wanting to share your personal life experiences with other people. And that’s why art has the meaning that it does, that’s why music has the meaning that it does, that’s why literature has the meaning that it does. It’s because it’s your thoughts and your experiences shared with other people. And that’s sort of, in my opinion at least, the truest way to know a person, the truest way to know, who they are, what they’re about, what they’re trying to say. And in poetry, which is such a personal, like, medium. It’s such a very personal and deeply connective way to tell stories, to tell your experiences, to talk about who you are as a person. It made sense to me that I wanted to break down specifically what these poets are saying about personal identity. Who do they think they are based on the words that they have given? How do they think that their physical location has shaped who they are? And their past experiences and present experiences in that like specific space. It’s just like really interesting, I think, to sort of understand these people that are sort of memorialized in their words a lot of them. To understand who they are, or who they were at the time of writing these things, because we can’t ask them. A lot of them are dead. (laughs) All they have is the words that they left behind. So it just was a very interesting, it was a very interesting way that I could think to try and find deeper meaning and understand like, why? Why would you do this? Like who are you and why would you do this? 

Anya: I thought it was strange that Lauren thought so deeply about the poetry she read when she herself claimed to not really like poetry, but Lauren didn’t see it as a contradiction.

Lauren: It’s because I don’t like poetry that I have a lot of deep thoughts about poetry. Because, I’ve had to think about A: Why I don’t prefer it and B: why people would and what beauty is there to be found in something that you do not necessarily understand? And that’s sort of fuel for rumination if you will and what else am I gonna think about at four in the morning?

Anya: Lauren doesn’t only think writing is important for its metaphysical value, on a day to day level she believes that everyone needs writers.

Lauren: I feel like just sort of lumping in all of the work that English majors do with like, “silly little English paper,” is slightly… Well I don’t want to say it’s demoralizing, but it is. My thought process is, look man, no job in the future, unless I’m in like a particularly English driven field or academia, which I don’t necessarily want to be in, or like some sort of literary field, no job, no employer is going to ask me, “hey Lauren, uh, what do you think Auden was trying to say in this particular poem? Or what do you think Seamus Heaney is feeling when he talks about bogs?” Um, no one is gonna ask me that because the general populous don’t really either know or care. But, my thought process is, that everyone’s gotta read things, right, like in every single aspect of our lives as people going about our daily activities, you read all the time. And someone, usually someone in marketing or in communications, put those words there so that you would read them. Advertisements, like the TV, why do we see things? Why do we read things? Someone wrote those, someone planned out what that was specifically for you to read that and to either A: buy the product or like think about that sort of thing. And writing is a skill just like any other, and just like any other art form it requires practice and um, continued dedication in which to do it, so every essay that I write, every analysis I turn in, every discussion post that I include some textual evidence in, every single thing that I devote myself to writing is just practice. Because it’s just a skill that you get better at. Everyone needs people who can write, because the visual communication of everyday life requires people to have written things. For that visual communication. So even if I don’t work in like a literature field or a creative field, or even like an academic field, you still gotta learn how to write. You still have to write well, you have to learn how to communicate your point like concisely and with truth, with citations, with evidence a lot of the time. 

Anya: Finally, I asked Lauren what advice she would give someone writing an essay like this for the very first time.

Lauren: The thing about writing that I’ve also learned is that there is no set model for what works. So like what works for me is not necessarily gonna work for everybody. I am not a type of person who works very well with like written formats. I do a lot of thinking and a lot of my preplanning for essays in my head and in bullet points. Like it’s not, I’m not the type of person who does like a very detailed outline, but I know there are people who do and they do the same sort of outline thing every single time in order to organize their thoughts in a way that makes sense to them. So, my advice for this is, it’s not gonna be a perfect fit no matter what you do, so you just gotta try everything. If you think writing a detailed outline is gonna work for you and it doesn’t, that’s okay, there are a million other ways to go about writing essays. The most important part of writing an essay is sitting down and doing it though. That is I think the hardest thing too, because, it’s so easy to just wait until the last minute and you’re like “oh man I’ve got four hours to get this essay done, time to slam it all in four hours.” But it’s, essays will be so much better if you at least think about it three days in advance, like if you think about it three days in advance, at least you have an idea going into what you’re trying to write. And never ever ever ever ever overestimate your skills in writing things quickly, because I guarantee, it’s happened to me, it’s happened to a million people, deadlines sneak up on you so fast and you overestimate your ability to write things very quickly in a short amount of time and you don’t get it done in time. And then you have the very embarrassing, “hey I’m sorry this is like an hour late, uh, my internet went out.” (laughs) You know? Um, just be careful and be conscious of deadlines. Being organized is the best advice I can give is just do it and be organized, and think about things in advance so you’re not going in blind.

Anya: Lauren thank you so much for sitting down and talking to me and having this great interview.

Lauren: No problem, I had a fun time! (laughs) 

Anya: This podcast is sponsored by the Franklin College Writing Intensive Program, which gives faculty the opportunity to offer writing-intensive courses in all disciplines, including over 20 departments: from art history and women’s studies to genetics and anthropology. This podcast reexamines the way writing is taught and learned through all majors and programs of study—across the curriculum here at UGA. You can find episodes of Red Penned on Apple Music, Spotify and the Writing Intensive Program’s Website. Have a great day.