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Showing posts from January, 2011

Dear Reader

One of the first times I ever got really excited about writing was during high school. The assignment was a research paper for English class; my topic, the relationship between beauty and mortality in John Keats’ work. I still think I’m clever. I had uncovered an interest in collecting research and synthesizing it into a composition. Research papers would continue to be fun for me throughout college, and later I found the same concept in my work as a newspaper reporter. Now, in my second tour of duty through graduate school, writing papers has been the best part, making me wish it could somehow be a career. If you change the terms a little, it is a career to many — academic researcher, freelance writer, essayist. Oh wait, essayist is a little different. It was in the newspaper business that I discovered writing columns, a form akin to the essay. Writing about personal experiences is the most untethered of styles; research and interviews are totally optional. Of course, the tri