“Making Sense: Decoding Gertrude Stein” was a labor of love. My prewriting process was erratic, to say the least, and I frequently found myself drowning in piles of shorthand, flowcharts, pizza boxes, and highlighted books trying desperately to piece together some semblance of an argument. What ultimately saved me, however, was my genuine interest and immersion in the topic. I read Stein on the train to work, on my walk to class, and before I went to bed at night. Obsessive as it may seem, this act of incorporating my topic into my everyday life was much more beneficial for me than any formal prewriting exercise.
My biggest struggle in dealing with a paper of this magnitude was definitely organization. With the guidance of my professor and peer reviewers, I was able to fit my concepts together in a coherent matter with the use of section headings. This format allowed me to explore topics that I felt were crucial to my argument without worrying about connecting them together with the traditional approach of transitional sentences.
CARLY SITRIN is a sophomore in Boston University’s College of Communication intending to major in Journalism with a concentration in International Relations. She was born and raised in a cornfield in Hillsborough, New Jersey two decades ago and wants to thank her writing professor Jason Tandon profusely for his support and guidance during her writing process.