I can only imagine what it would be like to have your source of communication cut off as a soldier. There is only one way to communicate with your family and friends back home: writing letters. They first prepare the soldier of the lack of communication when they go to Basic (Boot Camp). My best friend left of Basic October 2008; she was my friend that I was in constant communication with. No cell phone and no computer, only a few letters. Her letters were short and sporadic; my letters were long and detailed. I was told that is what got her through Boot Camp. Her mother just left for Kuwait; she will be gone about a year. Communication for her is a little different, she may write a few letters, but mostly she will be able to e-mail. However, her e-mails will be short and sporadic, much like the letters, because she won’t have the time to send long ones, nor will she have as much computer access as she would like.
Mandy and her mother are one of the main reasons why I chose to write on war. I didn’t know anyone in the army until I met them. Mandy’s mother has been in the Army since she was about 18; she thought she would never get deployed. Eighteen years later, they called her for a year of service in Kuwait. Right before she found that out, her daughter, Mandy, decided that she was also going to join the army. It was the first time that a war would affect my life, or at least that I thought about it affecting my life. To be completely honest, it still took me a while to figure out that the war is affecting me.
As part of English 102, our teacher had us blog. I was doubtful at first; slowly I started to enjoy it more. Oddly enough one of our blog assignments helped me decide the topic of my research paper. We had to choose a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s book Cat’s Cradle. There was one quote that stuck out to me; “‘I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men…But they are murdered children all the same’” (254). The ambassador of a small island said that quote at a ceremony for the “Hundred Martyrs to Democracy” (253). It was that quote that got me to think about how many soldiers are still children.
They may be of legal age to enlist in the army and they may legally be declared an adult; but to their family, that soldier will always be a child. Their family still thinks of the little boy that took his first step or played his first football game; their memories tell them their soldier is still their little child.
After I decided that I wanted my broad topic to be on war and soldiers, I was able to narrow it down as the semester went on. I think of it as a domino effect, I knocked down the first domino when I chose research war and soldiers. As class went on another domino would fall leading me to my topic. I ended up looking at the effects that war has on children too.
I thought the idea of the war having effects on children and children that are soldiers fit pretty well. They are affected differently, but yet they are both considered children. I also enjoy researching things that interest me. I hope to become a Pediatrician, so when I was able to incorporate children into this paper, it felt like the perfect fit.
Last semester in English 101 we focused on the course goals a lot. Much like English 102 we would pick one goal and focus on fulfilling that goal in the paper we were working on. Later we would go back and work on incorporating the other goals too. I think that processed helped a great deal when it came to writing in English 102. I felt that I understood the course goals, instead of looking at them as if they were in a different language. While I was trying to fulfill the course goals my writing style changed a little bit. In grade school and high school we always have to hand in an outline of our paper to the teacher. The concept of it was so that we would know what we wanted to write about and have some structure to our paper. When I started college and had to write my first paper, I sat down and told myself what I was going to write about. After an hour, I did not have much of that paper done. So I switched my style.
Most people go from unorganized writing to organize writing, however in a way I did the exact opposite. When I was working on my research paper, I focused my self to sit down and read my sources and then when I found a quote that I like or that I thought would work well in my paper I put a sticky note there so I could come back to it. Then I would type out one quote. I ended up rereading the quotes over and over until something came to me that I liked. Once I had the quote typed and my own opinion of the quote or my own interpretation of it I would work on incorporating it into a paragraph. I kept on doing that through my paper, sometimes the quote/ paragraph wouldn’t work and sometimes I needed to move it around in my paper; but that style of writing made it very easy to get my paper done.
Revising papers was something that I was never very fond of. I always found it hard to revise my papers mainly because I would have the comments my teacher gave me, but when it came to peer reviews I felt like I got the same comment every time. “It’s a good paper, maybe just add one more quote,” it was a comment that meant nothing to me I didn’t know where I should add that quote. In English 102, we did online peer editing sessions. I was very skeptical when I heard that we were going to edit papers that way. I figured I would get the same pathetic and useless comments. The online editing helped me a lot because people actually left useful comments. Some would be multiple paragraphs long. At first, I was slightly taken back because I liked to think that my paper was perfect and that I didn’t need to improve anything, then I read the comments and they made a lot of sense.
When I started to actually work on revising my paper, I relied heavily on my peer’s comments. It was nice to know how your paper was being read, so if they weren’t reading it how you wanted your paper to be read, then you had that chance to fix it. It also helped to know that they thought I was on the right track with my paper, because a few times I wasn’t sure if what I was writing really worked. As a writer it is possible to run out of ideas, so it is extremely nice to get another pair of eyes looking at your work. They have the ability to think outside of what you were working on, it brings another level to your paper; whether that is another stakeholder, another example, or working on better incorporating your audience into the paper.
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