Letter Writing
Well, this is it. My first post on my blog. My first completed assignment for FYS-183. My first step toward a successful college career. Seeing that I’m here, in a course completely dedicated to writing letters, I should get to the fundamentals. This course interested me for a reason. That reason is no doubt epistolary related. So why this course? What does letter writing even mean to me?
I guess the easy answer is to give a dictionary definition, but that’s not in the spirit of this class. I need to look deep within myself and reflect. To me, letter writing is…
An Underrated Medium
It’s no mystery that letters have fallen out of fashion. We’ve brushed it aside for quicker yet more convenient writing methods, like emails and texting. In our quest to satiate our impatience, we’ve granted letters the title of “snail mail” (which, frankly, I hate that name). Emails and texting still serve their purpose, don’t get me wrong, but they still lack in some areas. Texting is more short-form; in general, long, detailed texts only appear when a person is mad. And emails, I think a good chunk of us dread replying to them.
You don’t really find these issues with letter writing. You can write more in detail than in a text, and you don’t have to stress about replying quickly, like with an email. Also, think about it: you still get mail every day. It’s usually bills and advertisements, though; nothing to get your hopes up about. If you spend money on stamps anyway, why not use them to update a friend or two about life? Wouldn’t it be a nice change of pace to get a heartfelt letter in the mail instead of taxes? I sure do.
Familiar yet Unacquainted With
Despite how much I advocated for letter writing earlier, my experience with it is… minimal. I know I had to write a letter once in 2nd grade. I’ve also had to write many essays in my Greek school that happened to be in the form of letters. However, if you told me to write a letter right now and send it, I’d have no idea what to do (which corner does a stamp go in again?).
I guess that makes me a bit hypocritical, but as my favorite author, Brandon Sanderson, once wrote, “Sometimes a hypocrite is a man in the process of changing.” And this first-year seminar is my ticket to change. I hope to further familiarize myself with letter writing in this course.
Personal
Writing a letter is more tactile. It’s your hand on the page that creates the words, not a cold emotionless keyboard or the bleak printer ink. There are hints of you in every aspect of the page: your unique handwriting, the voice in your words, the lingering scent of your home on the page, the crinkles, creases, and folds. You could even put a drawing in it, and it’d be an original, never-before-seen masterpiece made by you, not some stock photo attachment that thousands have already seen.
When we begin to read others’ letters in this course, we will be looking at pieces of someone’s life manifested on a page. We will see a vulnerable side of a stranger beyond our time. We will learn things about someone that we’d never know without their letters. Isn’t that just insane?
That’s what letter writing is to me. A medium rarely used in the modern world, yet so special and intimate. A form of expression, rhetoric, and creativity that I’m ecstatic to learn more about. I cannot wait to put my analytical skills, honed within my AP Language and Composition class, back into practice. I’ve written a few rhetorical analysis essays on letters too, back in the day.
The one thing I’m worried about, though? Burnout. In the said AP Lang class, we had an essay writing marathon to prepare for the exam. Four rhetorical analysis essays over four weeks. Then, argument essays. Then, synthesis essays. Smith, you were an amazing teacher and all that writing was a helpful push toward getting a good AP score, but boy, did I feel burnt out midway through that writing marathon. Seeing that our writing assignments are weekly, I hope that when burnout hits, I manage to soldier through it.