Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

In my thesis, I saw “writing with wonder” as the veritable
opposite of how I had learned and been expected to write
throughout all the years of school that followed my youth’s
visit with the “King of the Rocks.” It was writing trained,
like some twisted ornamental tree in a Medieval garden, by a
prescribed, and pervasive, set of rules and regulations
concerned with the thesis, the supporting evidence, the
introduction and conclusion, the transitions, the quotations,
the five paragraphs, and, last but not least, the grammar – an
outward appearance of propriety like aluminum siding upon a
prefabricated tract house of words. Although I had learned my
lessons well, very well in fact, from the first grade through
the twelfth and then, even more, later at university, and
although learning those lessons had brought me success with the
SATs, term papers, application personal statements, in-class
essays, the MCATs, and even laboratory reports, I did not truly
look upon it as “writing.”
While I cannot say this was always the case – as there were
essays and papers that asked me for more than what Linda
Brodkey, in her essay “Writing on the Bias,” had called “the
ritual performances of penmanship, spelling, grammar,
punctuation, organization, and […] thinking" (34) – the
“writing” assignments that were put before me, more often than
not, were nothing more than algebra equations, my job being to
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