Learning How to Think in Words
WRIT1E
Writing is not talent. Writing is revision, evidence, and discovery.
A final presentation website, a tribute to Professors Fontaine and Thompson, and a legacy resource for future students learning that strong prose is built through care.
WRIT1E
Learning How to Think in Words
What is WRIT1E?
WRIT1E is more than a writing class. It teaches students how to think carefully, read deeply, argue responsibly, and revise seriously.
Think Through Writing
Read Beyond Summary
Build Arguments with Evidence
Revise with Purpose
Write for Readers
Learn Through Struggle
Writing tools that became thinking tools
Each framework turned revision into something concrete, repeatable, and more intellectually honest.
SAFE Thesis Builder
Why does this claim matter?
Could a smart reader disagree?
Specific enough to prove clearly.
Can the paper support it with textual evidence?
Evidence Sandwich
What does the reader need to know before the quote?
Specific quotation, scene, or detail.
Why does this evidence matter? How does it prove the claim?
Revision Checklist
Office Hour Advice
Writing Center
Outside feedback matters. The Writing Center was one of the most useful resources for turning rough drafts into clearer arguments.
These are not just writing tools. They are thinking tools.
My Growth in WRIT1E
The course did not simply improve sentences. It changed how claims were made, how evidence was handled, and how revision became a form of deeper thought.
I entered this course thinking writing was expression. I leave believing writing is thinking.
“When reading Joyas Voladores conventionally... we can understand Joyas Voladores as a text that talks about the limitation and uncertainty of life...”
“Placed in the context of Behar’s standard of a ‘vulnerable observer’, Geertz appears only partially vulnerable.”
“This shows that Behar is not asking the ethnographer to constantly write about the self.”
Before discussing cockfighting itself, Geertz first describes entering the village as socially invisible:
“As we wandered around... people seemed to look right through us...”
This scene matters because it shows his later authority does not begin in mastery, but in exclusion and dependence on village recognition.
What the reader needs before the quotation arrives.
The quotation, scene, or precise textual detail.
The sentence where the claim becomes provable.
“Family is about continuous mutual choice.”
Strong instinct, but broad claim.
“His later analysis does not cancel the vulnerability of the beginning. Instead, it depends on the vulnerable foundation that the beginning of the essay built.”
Can explain tension, sequence, and layered relationships.
The grades mattered less than the skills that produced them.
Growth was gradual, but real.
Please add problem statement.
I began the semester wanting to sound smart.
I ended it wanting to be clear.
I learned that writing is not presenting finished thoughts.
Writing is the process that creates them.
Texts That Shaped the Course
These were the texts that kept returning in discussion, revision, and argument. They shaped how evidence was handled, how vulnerability was understood, and how style became part of ethics.
The People Behind WRIT1E
Both professors clearly rooted for student success.
Professor Thompson
Professor Fontaine
Different styles, same commitment: they wanted students to grow.
For Future Students
Bad first drafts are normal. Revision is where growth happens. Take the course seriously. It will give back more than it asks.
This website was built as gratitude for a course that mattered.
The deepest lesson was not simply how to polish sentences, but how to respect readers by making thought more precise.
Writing became a place where uncertainty could be examined, where evidence could be handled carefully, and where revision could make understanding visible.
Strong writing is a record of a mind willing to revise itself.
|Dedicated to future WRIT1E students.