Author: Kaitlyn Byrne

My blogging style started out essay-like, and this made the first few posts difficult to write for me. In English 125, I had a lecturer who emphasized “building” arguments throughout essays, and “building” in English 125 required pacing the argument over the course of 10 pages. So when I began attempting to blog like an essayist, I struggled to pace my arguments because the length of the posts was so much shorter than the ten-page writing assignments with which I was familiar. What I hadn’t yet mastered was how to pace my arguments for assignments this short (i.e. speed them up), and this resulted in my arguments developing late in my first few posts.

I’ve tried to focus on evolving my blogging style this semester to more to-the-point writing. I think, with blogging, the shorter medium requires that arguments be made within the first few lines or so. To me, a good post communicates clearly and quickly, so that readers receive lots of information in little time.

I’d like to work on using what I’ve learned with blog writing and pairing it with my initial goal to blog like an essayist as I complete my e-Portfolio. Within the portfolio, I’d like to include short “blog” pieces (maybe even some revised versions of my Minor blog posts), so that I can continue working on this practice of pacing with my writing- I’ll think of them like miniature essays. I do think it’s possible to “build” and to blog like an essayist, but in order to do that, you have to pace effectively—blog posts are a sprint and not a marathon.

The writing I have on my mind today is, in the spirit of finals, Blue Book exam writing. I cannot stand Blue Book exams. I think they’re so destructive for several reasons. First of all, every time I take a Blue Book exam, I leave feeling like I have carpal tunnel. Second, I always run out of time.

Thinking of ways to address this issue, though, I have to give credit to two sources: (1.) Joe’s post, the one on which I just commented; and (2.) my Econ 466 professor, the one who issues all my Blue Book exams this semester. Both of these sources offered similar advice for effective (and timely) essay writing. Plan. Planning out what to write before you write it on a Blue Book exam saves so much eraser, time, stress, deducted essay points, the list goes on. It’s advice I learned when I was probably in second grade, but I resist it often because I think of it as pure poison to my creative juices.

What I need to remember for Blue Book exam writing is this: not every essay is a creative piece. Some essays are meant for answering specific questions and answering those questions only, and that means they must stick to a strict structure. Some essays aren’t about process; they’re about product, and that’s just the way it goes. Planning ensures the product.

It nearly kills me every time I take a Blue Book exam because there is no space for the revolutionary final prosaic moment and no time for the fifteen-minute contemplation of the golden opening sentence. But that’s the Blue Book essay, and that’s a lot of things: either you answer the question the way in which you’re expected, or you fail.

And so the numbing begins to the carpal tunnel, to the essays without shimmering rhetoric, and to the answers woven solely with the purpose of pleasing their inquirer. Product over process, I’m learning.

I spent the morning trying to creatively incorporate my Repurposing paper onto the portfolio, and this led me to the exploration of a few ideas.

First of all, I tried just embedding the PDF on my WordPress site. I looked up several Youtube tutorials to do it. One misled me and made me think I could make my PDF itself show up on my WordPress page nicely. This was frustrating because after playing around with my portfolio for an hour and half trying to make it work, I was still failing to get the same results as the video showed. So I searched for other tutorials and found a counterargument. In combination with Aaron’s comment on Katie Koziara’s post explaining how it isn’t possible to make the PDF show up in its original form on the actual WordPress site, this video explained to me that WordPress can only embed PDFs using a hyperlink to the PDF itself. So one idea I have for adding my Repurposing piece to the portfolio is to just write my introduction to and explanation of the project on its designated page and then including the link at the bottom.

Second, I considered displaying my Repurposing piece in a booklet like Alyssa Lopez did since my essay is supposed to be a magazine article. In addition, my Remediation is the magazine’s cover, so I thought it would be cool to have a display of the entire magazine- that is, my Repurposing and Remediation combined- on my WordPress site. I explored FlipSnack like Alyssa mentioned, made an account, and played around with trying to embed it on my site using one of her commenter’s advice. From what I found, though, it isn’t free to embed the code- you have to pay a Premium fee for that service. So I looked up making booklets on a different site and found Flipgorilla. The booklet I made on that site is pictured above, but still, I couldn’t find a way to embed it. I’m continuing to play around with this and try to make it work, but if anyone has suggestions on embedding the booklets for free, please share!

A Brief Summary of What the Portfolio Will Privilege:

I imagine my portfolio centered around the idea of a character (my pen name, Calypso) and the lenses through which she looks at things. “Calypso’s Bifocals,” it’s called. I’ve chosen this for two reasons. (1.) I needed a theme, and that meant finding a common denominator between my essays. And the common denominator is this: In my writing, I almost always hint at or describe things using the details, people, experiences, etc. that I’ve encountered in my day-to-day. It’s kind of like no matter what notion I’m writing about, my interpretations of things are always connected to the physical. I think I have to make sense of things that way. Anyway, that’s where my “lens” comes in: I tell stories (the essays in my portfolio) which are all compilations of the details that my bifocals pick up. (2.) I needed to make the portfolio a little less of a diary. Like I said, my essays usually reference real things happening in my life, and if everything’s spelled out exactly (i.e. theming my portfolio KAITLYN BYRNE’S INTERPRETATIONS OF ALL THINGS), it could be really uncomfortable when people I know Google me and find it. I feel like the character “Calypso” remains at least a little mysterious. This way, there’s room for me to be provocative in my writing since my reader hopefully remains unsure about what/who exactly I might be referencing, not to mention exactly who “I” is.

What I’m Most Excited About:

Writing. I want to make the portfolio’s prose gorgeous. I also want to finish remediating, so I can dedicate lots of time to it.

What I’m Still Struggling to Figure Out:

I think my Home page reads narcissistic, and I worry a lot about that with my portfolio idea. I fear I’m Hannah from “Girls,” writing personal essays and called way too self centered by Adam. So I need to be strategic about how I frame my Home page. If I’m going to have a blog, I don’t want my reader’s impression to be that I think I am so special and everyone’s so excited to read my life story. There has to be something engaging, something more than just a “THIS IS ME!” feel. It all begins with the prose and this idea of a character being exposed, so to avoid narcissism, I must blend these two strategies.

I wonder if this is as close as I’ll ever get to Ivy League.

It’s Wednesday, and the sun warms campus with a blanket. In several ways, here, it’s warm: in temperature, it’s near 60 Fahrenheit; in color, it’s an eruption of autumn’s hues piercing this town’s miniature skyline; in metaphysics, it’s my brain convincing me that I’m a grad student and that my walk to Rackham is a series of those yellow, antique flip book photographs.

Fast forward one week and four days, past Halloween’s shitshow, a week of midterms, and this weekend’s tragic football loss to Nebraska, and I sit studying far away from campus on Ann Arbor-Saline, reminiscing on all thoughts that led to the beginnings of this post. It has sat as a draft on the Sweetland blog site for twelve days now, yet I return to it with equal unrest and inability to articulate just what I want to say about it. But I attempt.

I dream of Harvard. I’ve dreamt of Harvard for just under a month now, ever since my friends and I roadtripped there in search of Ivy League husbands. Never has Ivy League existed as a physical being to me, as anything remotely within my reach, but it has existed nonetheless. I know Harvard only as an idea, as this faraway fantasy, this almost mystical land with magical properties and inhabitants whose eliteness exceeds my small-town-Midwestern capacity.

But then I consider Michigan and, more, the University of Michigan as the residence of my undergraduate career and how it has tastefully, academically elite qualities according to some who rank it. I didn’t know I would come here, and I didn’t know I was anything with which good schools and inevitably elite people wanted an association, but somehow I’m here and swimming in a pool with all of the above.

It’s a strange feeling to tell your newfound Ivy League husbands- graduate students at Harvard- where you attend undergrad and to have them respond with a level of respect for what you’re doing. “U of M? I have a few friends here who did Michigan undergrad,” they say, and I have to pretend like that’s not the most out-of-body exchange I’ve had in a decade. People with whom I attend undergrad will go to Harvard grad. I could go to Harvard grad.

I recall my visit a few weeks back to Harvard’s campus: I am dressed in scarves and last night’s makeup; I am walking in clicky shoes on Cambridge’s stone streets caffeinating myself; I am being given a tour of Harvard Square by a few of the institution’s rugby players. And I am falling hard and fast in love with a place that has a gorgeousness that I can only describe by its hues, its piercingly warming vibes that on those three to four perfect Midwestern, 60-degree days of autumn, the University of Michigan mimics for me.

So for the past few weeks, my goals have taken slight turns, and my projected 5-year-plan has transformed from “make it out of Michigan undergrad alive” to “neurotically apply and interview for some of the most elite internships in Corporate America, make plans to get an 800 on the GMAT, and start a charity or two along the way.” I’m addicted to the idea of Harvard, the shimmering image of me walking on its stone streets in the clicky shoes, carrying heavy emerald-colored books. “Life in Crimson,” I call it. I’m in love- perhaps hopelessly- with the books, the elite, the challenge, and the hues. I’m in love with Harvard.