Who are we, o' fellows writing consultants?

Sometimes I still can't believe I've made it into this class.

Dr. Essid's visit on Monday was so inspiring and motivating, if not intimidating. After that I was firmly assured that I was now in a community of serious writers who weren't just successful in writing, but were also determined to help people improving their writing. Such is a cause I didn't know exist...until now.

English is my third language, and I've been learning it for a mere 3 years. Not too long for me to forget much, yet I can't recall being taught any thing about composition or writing, during the course of my education in Vietnam. All we learned were grammar, grammar and more grammar. For the Vietnamese educators, learning a new language was simply a matter of putting words together so that they "coincide" into something barely understandable. Even the "5 paragraphs essays" that most American college students take for granted is alien to me. Guess I am lucky then, for I won't need to forget it. Nevertheless, such was the extent of my ignorance of English composition.

When I was accepted into this school, I told people that I would major in Sociology and Psychology, neither of which was popular in my country. The responses I received were rolling eyes and mocking silence. All Asians who would go abroad will study Economics, Accounting, Business and the Natural Sciences. No one but a minuscule minority would even bother with the Social Sciences, for they considered those subjects, along with the skills associated with them-writing especially-,useless and impractical.

Last summer I came back to Vietnam and helped hosting the biggest study abroad conference there as a representative of UR. When asked about the college essay, I tried to stress the importance of "being yourself" in the essay, for I knew it was what got me here. Yet I felt like I was speaking a different language to my own people, though I was sure I haven't forgotten a bit of my Vietnamese. In return, the only concern of the applicants was "what should I put into the essays that would make them like me?". The essay drafts they sent me were a showpiece of grammar and vocabulary that looked like they had been pieced together from different sources, completely devoid of personality or the "writer's presence". I felt frustrated for I couldn't find any way to help them, but my frustration was only as half as theirs.

After a meticulous search through my data drives, I finally found the old drafts of my college application essay. The final draft still sounded familiar, but my first draft completely shocked me. I read it again and again while kept telling myself: "There's no way I wrote this piece of crap". How I changed from the student who wrote that crappy essay into a writing consultant trainee, I will never know.

That begs the question: how does one become a good writer? My people used to think that writing is like singing, some are born to do it and some will just fail no matter what. My intellectual journey at UR has shown me that almost everything, including good writers, can be made and don't have to be born. Nevertheless, convincing others so will be a challenging process, both to us as writing consultants and to the writers. Isn't that a noble job we are doing? Finding talents in people and telling them how to use it. It feels like an explorer who discovers hidden treasures, unearth them and sharing them with the world. Though none of that treasure is ours to keep, the sheer excitement of discovery and the joy of success are enough to carry us on.

That's why I'm taking this class. In the end, I look forward to the day when I can go back to my country and start uncovering treasures. I have confidence that they will not be in short supply.