Once upon a time...

… I was assigned this keyword project and I wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, it took me the whole semester of Intro to Rhetoric to really understand some of those rhetoric and composition concepts like Foucault’s panopticon, so I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to teach anyone about any of it. I had a little

more faith once I found out the keyword I was assigned was “literacy.” I like to read and write, so I knew I would be able to put up a good argument about why doing those things is important.

I started by thinking about my audience. Freshmen. Do they really want to spend their first year (probably) away from home in their dorm room with a book? Or do they want to explore their new freedom somewhere on Tennessee St until 2 am? Probably the latter. Okay, so now I have to really come up with a strong and convincing piece. Something I kept in mind the whole time was The Wizarding World of Harry Potter [that is a link] because it's an awesome example of literacy producing great and unexpected things.

I drew from a few different sources at first. To begin with, I google-ed “literacy” to get a feel for what kind of information was out there, and I mainly found a bunch of dictionary definitions that repeated “the ability to read and write.” Then I looked up some literacy statistics about the United States, which gave me some interesting facts to go on. From there, I was able to come up with a substantial first draft. My draft introduced freshmen to literacy as, in summary, something that is everywhere and affects everyone. I didn’t have much scholarly background in this version, mainly persuasive sentences about why literacy is important and how to maximize yours. That wasn’t good enough, though. Too basic. So, I dug deeper, which only made things worse.

I sarched JSTOR a thousand times. Typical Goldilocks-type story:

first draft had way too little, and second had way too much. Now I had a paper full of different definitions for literacy and scholars arguing about which one is right. What a mess. Do I include computer literacy? Explain it? Talk about every definition of literacy? At this point my composition process was in full motion: type, delete, type, delete, type, delete. Even the research became frustrating, as all the information I was finding was so different.

This was the tough part: refining the piece enough to keep a clear focus, but leaving enough information in to keep the article smart. I made this easier for myself to do by using headers for each different idea about literacy I developed. For example, I had one about the US literacy rate, one about literacy in society, and a section encouraging readers to use their literacy to the fullest extent. So far, so good.

Even though I had an article that was informative and related to freshmen students (I mentioned FSU and local events like the Warehouse), I knew I needed to appeal to them in one other way: through a peer. I took a picture of my roommate reading on the couch and included it in my newsletter, along with a cutline stating her name and age and the fact that it was the weekend.

My final product was, in my opinion a success. I knew this in part because I asked a friend to read it without explaining to her the objective of the article or the project’s requirements. Doing research can sometimes feel like riding a rollercoaster (not in a fun way), but it is undeniably important.