This submit was written by Kaden Nelson, a Humanities Middle scholar fellow.
It’s troublesome to search out goal in writing a paper when its composition sits towards the backdrop of what appears to be a progressively purposeless world. College students and students within the humanities have been pummeled relentlessly during the last 20 years with statistics outlining the loss of life of their very own discipline. Tenure-track jobs within the tutorial humanities proceed to drop off 12 months after 12 months and there appears to be an ever-growing angle of dismissiveness towards the humanities as a complete. Hosts of articles and authors have tackled this very phenomenon with their very own proposed options, making it an exceedingly drained dialog within the 12 months of 2025. Whereas the devaluation of the humanities is regarding in and of itself, it’s a microcosm of a higher disaster impacting the world at giant—we’re perpetually exhausted, more and more disconnected from our humanity, and clawing desperately for goal throughout a time when that very act feels futile.
One side of my life that has saved me grounded in a goal has been my campus job at BYU’s Analysis and Writing Middle. It doesn’t come with out its challenges, although. As a writing tutor, I usually get the dreaded appointment the place, with honest desperation, a scholar poses a query I’m hardly ever able to offering a satisfying response to. It’s a proverbial insecurity, one which all writers undergo from and which appears to transcend self-discipline and disposition altogether: what’s the “so what” of my paper? Resisting the urge to pivot to serving to with grammar or “stream” (a time period which, 4 semesters deep into this job, I’ve but to listen to a concrete definition for), I play the basic writing tutoring Uno reverse card as a substitute: what do you assume is the “so what” of your paper? A retort which instantly fixes the whole lot, clearly.
Jokes apart, I empathize with and expertise this battle myself. Developing with a “so what” is oftentimes essentially the most daunting however essential process of the author. It’s true that there are innumerable different tough components of the writing course of which repeatedly stump individuals, from writing introductions to growing a nuanced and particular thesis assertion, to not point out sticking the touchdown of an efficient conclusion. However I resonate with—and discover bottomless intrigue in—what I’d name the so-what battle. It’s a battle inseparably tied to the fleshy middle of a common human query, and one which my training within the humanities has given me quite a lot of instruments, together with writing, to barter with. It’s a query which I consider is a product of the felt purposelessness of our up to date world: what’s the “so what” of life?
College students within the humanities swim and drown in a continuing tide of paper-writing. Each semester, I’m wherever between ankles to neck deep in scholarly article analyses, literature critiques, annotated bibliographies, private narratives, analysis papers, and treatises of non-public dispute. Below no delusion that the world actually cares about what I write (it doesn’t), and beneath no assumption that the overall inhabitants reads the texts I write about (they don’t), I’ve nonetheless sometimes discovered myself finishing an article, stepping away from my laptop computer, taking a deep breath, and feeling a way of goal. This issues, I affirm to myself, even when nobody in addition to my professor reads it. For a quick second, I break the floor of the water and breathe.
This aid stems from understanding that it’s not the product itself that issues. Whereas it’s privileged and tone deaf to say that grades and outcomes are fully meaningless, it is usually a grave mistake to overemphasize the ultimate draft over the method of forming it. In my expertise, crucial a part of the writing course of is partaking with the so-what battle—it’s excavating out of the parched and stony floor of inquiry a goal to cling to and cherish. I skilled this just lately whereas writing a paper for a course on the American novel. Having simply completed studying Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, a literary tour de pressure within the gory ruthlessness of the nineteenth-century Western frontier, I used to be tasked with writing a quick, three- to four-page shut studying paper on a piece from the novel.
On the similar time this paper wanted to be written, my life felt as if it had been in full shambles. It was a type of perfect-storm weeks the place, with reckless abandon, the whole lot gave the impression to be failing me. I maybe might have dealt with every of the burdens I used to be coping with on their very own, however they compounded along with magnificent pressure, and, as one poet says, “life / [was] changing into second by second / insufferable.” [1] Worse but, I nonetheless wanted to put in writing a paper about McCarthy’s e-book, a novel which was hilariously removed from being a comfy, comforting bedtime story.
Once I sat down to stipulate, I used to be depleted of motivation and goal. I stared on the clean white doc for what felt like hours however what was seemingly mere minutes. With fleeting surges of vitality, I started to put in writing. Some concepts had been simply not good, or the best way I used to be expressing them was inarticulate. I typed out sentences which I then instantly highlighted and deleted. I bounced forwards and backwards between the phrases within the e-book and the phrases on my paper like an anxious, balding tennis ball zig-zagging between two vigorous, swat-happy racquets. I moved sections round, adjusted matter sentences to be extra exact, and reread my thesis extra instances than I might depend to make sure I wasn’t devolving into tangential non-sequiturs. In my conclusion, I had give you a reasonably considerate “so what” to attach my argument to a bigger goal. This was simply the toughest half—it felt unattainable to argue that any of this mattered when the problems in my private life felt a lot extra actual, extra urgent, and extra materials. However I made a decision it mattered, and it grew to become essential to me.
The paper was removed from excellent. It was on the shorter aspect, and, as my professor acknowledged in his suggestions, I had in-text citations however no works cited web page (an admission which feels far too embarrassing to put in writing right here, particularly as a senior in school, however I digress). Nonetheless, for 3 hours, I did the work of unpacking, organizing, and expressing an argument about one thing I had learn. All of my issues had been nonetheless ready for me once I closed my laptop computer, however after that three-hour writing blip in my day, I felt a way of goal. It wasn’t as a result of I had checked the field and submitted the paper simply minutes earlier than the deadline; it was as a result of I put cognitive, emotional, and non secular labor into the writing course of. I challenged myself, formulated an concept, and determined it was essential sufficient to materialize in phrases and provides to another person to be learn.
Upon returning to the very actual complexities of my life, I used to be reconnected to my very own humanity. I felt like I had extra to say, extra to put in writing, extra to assume, extra to offer. Discovering the “so what” in my paper illuminated the “so what” of my life, making it simpler to maneuver ahead by the whole lot ready for me on the opposite aspect of the task. I spotted by this expertise that writing isn’t merely escapism. In a world that wishes to inform us that our concepts and phrases don’t matter, I posit that writing one thing—something—is a robust type of activism. It’s resistance to oppression and unchecked nonchalance. It reminds us not solely that our language issues, however that the “so what” behind what we write issues much more. It offers us goal. So, when the listlessness of every day life and the crushing blows of mortality certain upon me mercilessly, I’ll let myself write. I’ll let myself interact with the so-what battle of that course of and, in flip, uncover particles of goal in myself and in my stunning, tiring life. I’ll let myself rediscover, time and again, my function on this all—as a result of this issues.
Reference
[1] Mary Oliver, “Beaver Moon – The Suicide of a Pal”
