Introductory Reading Assignment

I apologize for the late post, as I just enrolled in this class! I am looking forward to meeting you all. That being said however, I would most likely have not taken a writing course such as this one if it weren't for the fact that this class is a requirement for graduation as an engineer. Even though I would associate engineering more with STEM than with writing, I do appreciate the need for engineers to be well versed in written communication of ideas. I feel as though my writing skills are already proficient enough for a college level and thus I should not have to take this course, but this can easily be refuted in that I might be overestimating my writing abilities based on good high school grades.

The authors of the NHR claim that writing is “a way of thinking new thoughts” (Miller, Spellmeyer xviii). The goal of a writer is to take existing material and combine them in a new and unexpected way. During the process of research and drafting, a writer will discover connections between topics, and in the end produce an essay documenting the discoveries they made.

The authors of the NHR are promoting the theme of broad and connective education. Education is most useful not within the confines of a single classroom or subject, but rather “beyond the reach of what we know here and now […] when we shift our focus from one reality to another” (Miller, Spellmeyer xxv). Many disciplines of study are isolated from each other and the real world; it would take a truly learned person to establish the underlying commonalities beneath them all. The annoying student who constantly asks “When will we ever use this in real life?” to their math teacher has a valid point. Knowledge without an understanding of how it connects to the surrounding world is useless. Of course, it is impractical for a single person to be well versed in everything on Earth, which is where a “shared horizon” comes into play. This shared horizon is the source from which one can pull from the experiences of others through the texts they write.

One term that the others seem to use in an unusual way is “formal education”. The talk about “formal education” in a disapproving tone, citing how it tends to keep disciplines separate. This seems to suggest that this textbook will be anything but “formal education” and we will be reading unconventional texts and analyzing them in ways we are not used to.

All in all, I am excited to improve my writing and broaden my horizons in this class.