Reflective Essay

What I wanted from this class was a change of pace. I was ready to try something new--to not write a commentary about a book. I was pleasantly surprised. The class was filled with opinionated pieces and freedom to write about topics that actually interested me. I was able to put a piece of myself on the page. That isn’t an easy feat for me: to put myself into my writing. Firstly because I was trained not to do it for the sake of academic, analytical writing. Secondly because I am a very private person and don’t share much with people. With prompts like “What is Your Obsession?” and “Why I [Blank]”, how could I not put pieces of myself into the writing? This class let me see what my strengths were as a writer (grammar, structure, third person, academic writing). But it also showed me my weaknesses(creativity, exigence) and gave me a chance to work on them.  

I chose My Writing Inventory because it was the first assignment for this class. I wanted to show my starting point in the “writing world”. For example, the fact that I have a background in analytical writing and that I know it. I know it takes over everything I write. It is ingrained in my head. Even in the writing I do for my own enjoyment, I have the analytical side of me exposed on the page. I can’t get rid of it. I wanted this piece to show that I have developed as a writer. I can write creatively and add my own style to my work.

I chose the 200 word sentence (Nicaragua) because it was a descriptive piece. I don’t do a lot of writing like that especially not for an English class. The piece gave me a chance to elaborate. The description was open ended; I had just described the gated courtyard. I had multiple routes that I could take with the piece. I could describe the interior of the pink house, the people, our week in that little surf town, or where we had been before. I decided to talk about the scenery of Nicaragua as a whole and the town of San Juan del Sur because it was gorgeous. That said, it also broke my heart. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The entire trip was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I was away from home longer than I had ever been and in a place where English isn’t the native language. There was adventure and something new at every turn and I wanted to show that in this piece. This specific memory stood out to me because there was so much detail. It was completely overwhelming and chaotic. It was the perfect place to describe.

I hated the script I wrote about my obsession. I absolutely despised it. It was just a bunch of monologues strung together. There was a lot of information but it was dull and boring. It even put me to sleep when I read it. It’s about my passion! I shouldn’t dread reading about it! This was my chance to change that-- to make it an actual dialogue between the characters and make it easier to read. I had the chance to be creative, put myself in the place of my characters, and find the words they would use to discuss Philadelphia. This piece connected two of my weaknesses (creativity and exigence) and let me work to strengthen them. This was one of that last pieces we wrote and, now that it is cleaned up, I think it shows the beginning of change in my writing. i am trying to be more creative. I am attempting to let new styles, structures, and ideas into my writing inventory. This class has been the impetus for that.

Nicaragua

It had been a two hour drive from Managua filled with new sights that broke my heart. Though gorgeous, the country was ravaged by poverty and you could tell no matter where you went. Shantytowns were set up on the side of the road--little shacks made of scrap metal, cinder blocks, wood, and black plastic. Each was built off the next, like a winding maze. With every turn, you entered someone else’s home. There was trash everywhere. It didn’t matter that you had a clear view of the tree covered mountains off in the distance. If you looked down near the road, there were piles and piles of trash. It was so different from home. Different in every way possible it seemed: the scenery, the rules of the road, the government and its corruption, the way of life. They were still family oriented; you lived with the family until you were dead. You raised your family with them and kept them in your everyday life. Family is what mattered--not wealth or material things (though this wasn’t true for the entirety of the Nicaraguan people).

We turned onto a dirt road that was cut off 50 yards down by a chain link fence. It was as though we were in a fortress made of the concrete walls of other homes. On the left was our home for the week. A squat, aqua-colored house. There was a concrete stoop out front with an old woman sitting in a plastic lawn chair; like the ones we sit in to watch fireworks on Fourth of July. She stared off into the distance; didn’t seem to notice our arrival. The scene was like every other one we had passed in the small surf town. They were brightly colored, made of cinder blocks, had few windows, and metal roofs that I knew would roar when the rain fell on them.

We seemed so out of place there. A bunch of white girls--foreigners--coming to a little town on the coast, rolling up in a new, white minivan while most of the cars were in disrepair and were rusted from the salty air. We were gringas. And you could tell. We got out of the car and were ushered to a intricate, black wrought-iron gate. Our guide swung it open and motioned for us to follow inside.

We walked into the gated courtyard, which connected the larger, aqua colored house to the one painted a bubblegum pink color making them into a single, cramped compound that the entire family lived in. We found what can only be described as a well organized junk yard--like a hoarder had decided to occupy the outdoor space between the two buildings and fill it with the miscellaneous things he or she found on the street. It was comprised of opaque, plastic barrels filled with unknown goods, beaten up metal tables and rust-covered chairs, a couple of random doors in varying colors and conditions leaning against the shack-like house, bright multicolored children's toys--reminiscent of my own childhood-- scattering the ground, a large, well-used wood burning stove with dirty pots and pans stewing on top, steam rising out of a few of them and curling up into the dense, humid air, and laundry hanging from twine set up in an intricate design overhead. And the people--all with smiling faces and excitement in their eyes--welcoming us into this place that made me long for home even more than before; but this was home to them, and now it was home for us as well.

My Writing Inventory

I have been a writer my entire life--though I have mixed feelings about it. Writing for middle and high school classes was always a requirement that never linked with my love for the written word. These classes always criticized my grammar and diction. I was never given the opportunity to write what I wanted. I was trained in the art of essays but not in writing something that had meaning behind it. I was in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme for my junior and senior years of high school. It caused me great pain at the time, but made me an expert at writing analytical essays. IB wants students to think independently and see every perspective of a situation. If you are looking at a book written in Europe in the 17th Century, they want you to see the connections that it has with Asian History or the sciences or how people think. They want you to make connections between various subjects. IB taught me that things are never black and white and never affect only one aspect of life. It’s more than just knowing the facts. It’s knowing the facts, taking them, and drawing conclusions from them. Even so, the classes are all about being analytical. In IB English you focus simply on analyzing other people’s work. It is not creative writing. It’s appreciating someone else’s work--not creating your own art. This has caused me to automatically analyze any book I read, looking for the author’s intent or the use of motifs to move the plot along. Those two years of writing commentaries has ingrained that style into my head--I feel as though I am unable to escape it.

Even when a creative writing class was thrown into the mix, it never interested me and it made me nervous. When the time came to write a short story or a poem, I felt inadequate. I created something I absolutely despised. With that said, I write personal narratives all the time. I write in a journal about my daily life and thoughts. I write for my own benefit. It isn’t necessarily creative writing nor is it all analytical. It is just something that defines me. If I find a quote or a line in a book that speaks to me, I write it down. For example: “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain). It makes me think. I wonder if I agree with the statement; I connect it to my own life and how I think about death.

I dissect these quotes, connect them to my life, and keep them forever in my journals. If I have a good day, or a bad day, I write it all down. Whether I am in love or in complete disarray, I write. When I got a turtle, when I go on a great run, when my parents have another petty fight, when I think about dying--I write. I write in a journal for the sake of my sanity, so I don't lose my feelings and my thoughts in the jumble that is my life. Everything I write about influences me. They change my perspectives and work to calm my racing mind. Some of this was gained from my time in IB. Part of it is because I keep my emotions bottled up and this was a release. Writing has become part of who I am.

What writing has done--in every setting-- is make me who I am today. It has shaped me to become this analytical person. I search and think about something until it is absolutely exhausted. It has shaped me to put my life into written words in order to find clarity. I have despised writing. I have loved it, been drawn to it, and been moved by it. It is such a large part of my life--even if I don’t want it to be.

The Making of a Place And a Lasting Memory (Script)

The Making of a Place And a Lasting Memory

SETTING

The scene takes place in a construction site in west Philadelphia. Yet another new project is in  the works. Three people stand on uneven dirt that’s been plowed out of the ground to make space for the foundation. There is concrete being poured, jack hammers buzzing, and various materials being shuffled all around the work site. There is constant noise, the type of noise that is constant and deafening.  The three stand among burly men. The men yell over the noise of the construction site and talk into walkie-talkies. They wear the usual construction work outfits: neon vests, work boots, jeans, sunglasses, and hard hats. The characters are looking at the floorplan for the new structure. It is to be a 27-story structure with crystal-clear glass all around. It looks industrial with steel bars mixing with the glass. It is like all modern architecture. It is beautiful, but seems out of place next to the Victorian houses that fill the streets. Each character is dressed like the men who surround them. They look like they are ready to jump in and help build this magnificent structure.

CHARACTERS

Inga Saffron: An architecture critic and journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her focus is on buildings and spaces encountered by Philadelphians on a daily basis. Before writing the architectural criticism column, Saffron was a correspondent in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Witnessing the destruction and fates of cities there, she began to write about architecture. In 2010, Saffron won the Gene Burd Urban Journalism Award. In 2014 she won the Pulitzer Prize “for her criticism of architecture that blends expertise, civic passion and sheer readability into arguments that consistently stimulate and surprise” (Pulitzer Prize).

Paul Goldberger: A former architecture critic and journalist for The New Yorker. Goldberger has published multiple books and articles. He has won several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Goldberger has taught at several institutions and now lectures all around the country. He now works for Vanity Fair as a Contributing Editor. He has been called “the leading figure in architecture criticism” (Paul Goldberger).  

Dee Dee Strohl: A freshman at Drexel University studying architectural engineering. Strohl is an ametur writer specializing in analytical essays about classic books and Modern East Asian history. She also enjoys writing for herself about anything going on in life. Since childhood, she has appreciated buildings. Strohl finds wonder in the facades and hopes to work with the structures in her future. Besides an obsession with architecture, she has little expertise in the subject.

INGA SAFFRON: “Was it only [five] years ago that Radar Magazine crowned Drexel University the ‘ugliest campus’ in a roundup of American colleges? The charge seemed a bit unfair then, even if Market Street was still ablaze with Drexel's orange-brick relics” (Saffron 12 August 2014).

DEE DEE STROHL: Ponders Drexel’s campus. She thinks of all the buildings she passes for each class. You’re right. We still have a slew of orange buildings on campus. I didn’t really think of it until you pointed it out. I have no clue why they thought that was a good idea. The bricks are ugly, dull, boring. I would agree that we have one of the ugliest campuses in America if the mundane, orange-brick buildings continued to rule. There’s no creativity in that. There’s nothing awe-inspiring about orange boxes. I understand the want for the campus to be uniform and cohesive. That’s how college campuses around the country are. But that’s not the way to do it.

SAFFRON:  Drexel does continue to update their campus and add modern architecture into the mix. Just think about Millennium Hall and the new Sciences building. Both are incredibly modern in design and material.  That’s why this new building will fit in nicely. She gestures to the construction site. It follows the modern feel that the school favors now.

STROHL: I love the new constructions. I love the mix of modern and traditional buildings. Having both buildings like University Crossings and Millennium makes our campus different. I find it wonderful and eclectic, and honestly, I feel like it makes Drexel cohesive with the changing style that makes up Philadelphia as a whole.

SAFFRON: “You could argue that Philadelphia already has an architecture museum: itself. The city boasts an architectural lineage longer and more varied than that of almost any other place in America, ranging from the Lilliputian colonial-era houses along Elfreth's Alley to the gargantuan, newly minted Comcast Center, the country's tallest green skyscraper” (Saffron 6 June 2008). Philadelphia is ever-changing. New constructions are added on. The old rowhouses are refurbished. The old establishments are kept because “Philadelphia [is] so irrationally attached to their old, low-rise, inefficient rowhouses that they protect them with a Byzantine web of preservation laws” (Saffron 3 June 2011). “It's no accident that Philadelphia's strongest neighborhoods are those with the most intact historic fabric. The city's comeback has been built on old foundations” (Saffron 3 June 2011). She looks down at the plans. Begins to say something into a walkie-talkie. She turns back to the others.

GOLDBERGER: I agree that Philadelphia is constantly growing in the scheme of architecture. But are the new, glass-and-metal giants crushing the history that makes up Philadelphia? “The last few years, have brought a surge of growth to Philadelphia, and the possibility is very real that this city's genuinely urbane downtown may lose its feel. [Years ago] construction was completed on One Liberty Place, the 61-story tower by the architect Helmut Jahn that broke the city's traditional 491-foot height limit, becoming the first building ever in Philadelphia to rise higher than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall” (Goldberger 12 June 1988). People feared that this was going to crush Philadelphia’s skyline; like the old architecture would not matter anymore.

SAFFRON: But that isn’t what happened. The skyline--and the entire architectural make-up of Philly was solidified. People loved it and more buildings followed in its footsteps.

STROHL: I think that the building does add to the skyline and add to the urban order of the city. It has had a positive effect. It allowed for change to occur. One Liberty Place gave Philadelphia an actual skyline--and a beautiful one at that. It has continued to allow for changes in the architecture styles that fill our city.

SAFFRON:  “What if the celebrated urban planner Edmund Bacon had embraced the prevailing ideology of the 1960s and leveled Society Hill, replacing its blocks of outmoded, colonial-era townhouses with sleek modern high-rises for middle-class families? Would Philadelphia be a livelier, more successful place today? We are once again living in a time of pulse-quickening civic visions...The future Philadelphia that appears in the planners' crystal ball is a place where people bike to work, shop at neighborhood farmer's markets, dine at the corner brewpub, tap at laptops in the park at the end of the block, and regularly compost their food waste. It sounds like a shinier version of today's Philadelphia, one without the poverty and blight” (Saffron 10 June 2011).

STROHL: But would that really be better? I love the old architecture. I love it with every fiber of my being. That speaks more to me than Millennium or One Liberty Place or any of the other high-rises in our city. The old architecture is history. It is character. It adds to the beauty of this city. The Victorian houses, the cramped rowhouses, the exquisite City Hall, all provoke awe in me. They fill my head with ideas. The make me want to revive the crumbling buildings. That said, modern buildings provoke emotion in me as well. I find the use of metal and glass so interesting. I love the shapes created with the modern buildings--things you couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do with rowhouses. In 40 years these buildings will be what the Victorian houses are now. They will be a part of history and will have meaning. It is the mix between the old and the new that makes Philadelphia what it is. If they flattened Society Hill then we would lose a piece of history. If they opted to not build One Liberty Place, Philadelphia’s history would be different. The ever-changing skyline, and the city as a whole, is what Philadelphia is all about. It’s why I have fallen in love with the place. It’s what keeps me drawn to this school and this city.

GOLDBERGER: You picked a great place to live. “If buildings...didn’t represent their time, they would not have the iconic status that they do for us today” (Goldberger 213), and that’s what Philadelphia does. “Architecture has always reflected its time, and must do so. But it has traditionally emerged from a sense of place as well as of time, reflecting the materials, the needs, the particular sensibilities and choices of individual cities and communities” (Goldberger 226). “[It] never exists in isolation. Every building has some connection to the buildings beside it, behind it, around the corner, or up the street, whether its architect intended it or not. And if there are no buildings near it, a building has a connection to its natural surroundings that may be just as telling… If buildings are too much the same, the result can be oppressively dull” (Goldberger, 213). Like Drexel’s campus if still filled with orange-brick. “Architecture is the making of place and the making of memory” (Goldberger, 234), and that is what Philadelphia's architecture has done. That is what it will continue to do.

The three stare up at the massive building being created before their eyes. Then they get back to work.

Works Cited:

Goldberger, Paul. Why Architecture Matters. London: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.

Inga Saffron. The Philadelphia Inquirer Inga Saffron Column: Changing Skyline: Architecture

institute finally adds gallery. McClatchy-Tribune Business News 6 June 2008. Proquest.

Web. 1 November 2014.

Inga Saffron. The Philadelphia Inquirer Inga Saffron Column. McClatchy-Tribune Business

News 3 June 2011. Proquest. Web. 1 November 2014.

Inga Saffron. The Philadelphia Inquirer Inga Saffron Column. McClatchy-Tribune Business

News 10 June 2011. Proquest. Web. 1 November 2014.

Inga Saffron. The Philadelphia Inquirer Inga Saffron Column. McClatchy-Tribune Business

News 12 August 2011. Proquest. Web. 1 November 2014.

“Inga Saffron”. The 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners.  The Pulitzer Prize, n.d. Web. 8 November

2014. <http://www.pulitzer.org/biography/2014-Criticism>

Paul Goldberger. Architecture View; Philadelphia’s Master Plan Rests on Its Streets. New York

Times 12 June 1988. Proquest. Web. 7 November 2014.

Paul Goldberger. “Biography”. Paul Goldberger. n.p, n.d. Web. 8 November 2014.

<http://www.paulgoldberger.com/biography/>

Contents

I chose two discussion board posts for this project. In the first introduction, I discuss the content of the piece and how that has led me to a new path with my writing. In the second, I rewrite the post because of structural issues. This also shows me what I have to work on. Finally, I revised my essay. From these three pieces of writing, I can see a path to follow in my writing life. I see what I want to change and the beginnings of how to get there.

Order of Works:

Your Writing Life (discussion board)

Our Obsessions (discussion board)

Architecture is Prose (essay)

An Introduction to Your Writing Life

I wrote this in response to a post by Allyson Louie about writing and how it is a part of her life. I think as a whole it is (mostly) well written. There are definitely grammatical errors and fragments (I always use fragments in my personal writing. I forget to write complete thoughts for works that other people will read). It is clear on my thoughts of her writing. I loved how she put the piece together and that basically said we are our own masters. I had never really thought about it that way. She discussed creating her own world through writing and I want to be able to do that. So far, I write about the present and what is happening in the real world. I haven't yet found a way to create somewhere else to go with my writing. This idea seems to be a theme for me so far in this class. My essay is about creating my own structure and filling it with my own decorations. This response delves into the idea of creating your own world through writing. What this class has showed me so far is that there is more to the writing world than analytical essays. What I want to do moving forward is to discover the other options.

Your Writing Life

I love that when I read this, I feel all of the passion you feel for writing. I understand how important it is to you. I completely understand how writing goes with your mood. I write in a journal and have found that what and how I write is all based on the mood I'm in. Do you feel like you have gained something from reading so much? Do you feel like your own writing has changed because of what you read? For me, I hope that the style and art that the authors I read use does rub off on me. I want that not only so I am a better writer for classes but also a stronger writer for myself. But maybe you think differently. I love the idea you've come up with that you are the master of your own world. Nothing has to matter to you because you are the creator. It's nice to get away from this world and travel to your own place and I love that we share that desire to find our worlds in the written word.