Auditory Literary Essays

When it came to writing there is always one thing I absolutely hate…writing an essay. There’s just something about being given a specific topic, and specific guidelines and a specific deadline. It makes writing seem almost torturous. And this happens with a lot of people. There isn’t a high school or college student I have yet to meet who actually enjoys writing a research paper or even an argumentative essay, well very few ones that is. And I don’t think it’s because of the lack of liking the act of writing but the lack of liking restrictions. But I found watching and listening to these audio literary essays were really inspiring.

While going through the “This I Believe” essays, I chose “Peace Begins with One Person” and “Being Content with Myself”. I didn’t really find myself relating too much to these two stories. One is about a young waitress working at a Texan diner, who met a homeless woman who she loaned money to and three weeks later the woman returned the money. This experience made her come to the conclusion that everyone should try being nice to each other and the world would be a better place. I found the topic to be a bit clichéd, and reading the text without the audio, is not entirely enthralling. And I have to admit, the main reason I even chose to keep listening to the essay was because the author had a nice voice. Which brings us back to typing vs. writing vs. speaking. When it came to the text I was uninterested, but once I heard the author’s voice I became more engrossed. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/9527/

The second essay on “This I Believe” that I ended up listening to was “Being Content with Myself”. This essay was about a high school student who is black, but in “society’s eyes” did not act black. He goes on to explain how he never gave into the pressure to act in any other way than how he felt he wanted to act. This essay also can be relatable with people. Especially with me being a child from a mixed race couple. My situation was not quite the same, but similar in ways when it came to “fitting in”. This essay I found caught my interest, but what was more surprising was the voice of this author took this essay to the next level. When compared to his picture, I would never have pictured the author’s voice as it was, which added to the essay even more. His point of not fitting in was made even more powerful due to the fact that his voice had not quite fit what I pictured it to be. By just reading text I never would have gotten that minor detail which entirely changed the essay for me in a bigger way. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/10490/

For the DALN I chose to read “The Girls who don’t write at school keep journals” and “Running ASL”. The first essay was about this woman who observed these girls who didn’t exactly come from the best background and when asked to write for academic reasons would only write a few sentences, but then the author found out that the girls kept journals at home, and would write so much in them. With the DALN essays they weren’t as organized, and were more off the cuff. So what caught my attention with this essay is that it seemed as though I was just sitting around, talking story with some friends and relatives. The woman was obviously educated and although telling the story without being organized was able to put her thoughts in order without getting jumbled. http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/504

The second essay called “Running ASL” is about this girl who had a cousin who was deaf and she learned to sign by running. This time the essay wasn’t as organized, and you could tell that she was telling it off the cuff. This author was jittery and sort of nervous when telling her story and I found it sort of interesting just to listen to her being candid. And truthfully if the story was in print, verbatim how she told it, it would not be considered a well thought out or even organized paper, but the fact that she was candid and was speaking made it seem okay and right. http://daln.osu.edu/handle/2374.DALN/559

These essays are able to reach people in a more emotional way. We spoke in class how perhaps typing vs. physically writing something out can take away the emotion of the writing. It can change the whole delivery of it. Well I feel writing vs. speaking is the exact same way. There is more emotion when someone is speaking. You can pay attention to moments where they can stumble and stutter over their words from getting too excited. Or listen to them ramble only to find their way back to their original point. So why only limit the question to writing vs. typing, when speaking has just as much as an impact as either of the two.