What Do You Want to Say?

(Finding Your Own Argument)

When I teach my classes, during the semester I ask students to keep track of possible topics for a researched argument essay. If our best writing comes when we’re writing about subjects we’re passionate and knowledgeable about, I figure it makes sense to give my students as much leeway as possible to find a topic for themselves.

I’ve taught thousands of students, and they tend to come up with subjects I could never imagine myself.

Because the arguments are personal and unique, I can recall many of them even years later.

I remember one essay on how the use of profanity in hip-hop music is integral to the art form itself. Another essay argued for a law requiring veterinary hospitals to report instances of all suspected animal abuse to child and family services agencies because of a high correlation between animal abuse and domestic violence.

A student once argued for the benefits of having a midlife crisis. Another was so convincing about the negative psychological effects of Instagram that I’ve avoided ever signing up for the service. In that same vein, a student argued that magazines should publish uncorrected versions of every picture they digitally alter so people can see how bodies and faces really look. I don’t think it would be legal to compel such a thing, but it was a fascinating argument about the impact of seeing so many unrealistic portrayals of the human form in our media.

Not to get all sentimental, but because of the nature of my work teaching writing, it’s possible I’ve learned more from my students than they’ve learned from me.

For this experience, find your own argument. Write it for an audience.

AUDIENCE

Your audience can be whomever you want it to be, but it must be a specific audience. Your argument may appeal to people beyond your audience (many of my students’ efforts weren’t targeted at me), but it will be written with a particular group—with a particular set of needs, attitudes, and knowledge—in mind.

PROCESS

1. Brainstorm possible topics.

One way to do this is to consider the things you’re interested in, list them, and see what comes to mind as you think of them. An argument isn’t going to pop into your head. The student who wrote about the psychological dangers of Instagram listed all the things they did on a particular day and noticed the significant amount of time spent on the platform. This led to doing some initial research, which triggered a problem and argument.

Your reflections on some of the experiences in this book may be useful here. For example, the reflection on the ethical dilemma considers how difficult it may be to stand up to a boss or supervisor who is telling someone to do something ethically troubling. There could be a topic exploring whether or not employees need more rights and protections when it comes to blowing the whistle on their superiors.

The “Why Should I Trust This?” experience on understanding and evaluating sources raises a question as to whether social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter should seek to police content that is purposefully created to sow false information. If you completed the rhetorical analysis of a commercial, how do you feel about the culture that is being reinforced by the ad?

Personally, it bothers me that so many people expect their jobs to be generally miserable, and I suspect that’s at least in part because that’s the message promoted by ads for beer. There’s probably something in that feeling.

If nothing excites you on that front, go looking. Read other people’s arguments. Watch one of those television shows where people argue with each other. Figure out something you want to express to the world in a way that will get them to agree with you.

2. Develop your topic.

Once you have an area or topic of interest, do some research. Dig around and see what other people might be saying, in an effort to help you spur your own thinking.

I wanted to understand if people really hated their jobs or, even better, to understand the difference between people who like their work and those who don’t. This directed me to research by the Gallup polling organization about happiness among college graduates. The study showed that people who were “engaged” in their work were 4.6 times more likely to be defined as “thriving” in terms of their personal well-being.

In other words, if you like your job, you’re much more likely to be happy in life.

“Hmm . . . ,” I thought.

Dig around until you get to your own “hmm” moment.

3. Develop an organizing question.

One thing you may have noticed is that just about every writing experience in this book is organized around a question. If you can find an interesting question, you have an organizing idea around which to write.

My question regarding school and work became: What happens in college that leads to a future life of happiness at work and happiness with life in general?

The Gallup research provided an answer. The most important single experience associated with “engagement” in one’s job, according to their survey, is having “had a mentor who encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams.”

Double “hmm.”

Questions that drove some of my students’ topics were:

How do we reduce incidents of domestic violence?

Why does Instagram make me sad?

What is art?

Any question that keeps the thinking momentum going is a good one.

4. Do additional, more systematic research.

You’ve been researching this whole time, but once you have a good question, your focus will be improved as you go looking for specific sources to answer specific questions.

Your main question will spawn additional questions. For example, as part of my thinking about work and happiness, I wanted to find out what kind of impact money has on happiness. I discovered many studies saying that once income reaches a certain threshold, making more money does not increase happiness.

The student working on the domestic-violence topic found a study that connected domestic violence to violence against companion animals. Often animal abuse was a precursor to harming others in the home.

This stage is for gathering as much valid, reliable information that pertains to your question as possible. Resist judging whether it will be useful. You never know until you put the final polish on the final draft.

5. Refine your question into something answerable with an argument.

A question like “How do we reduce incidents of domestic violence?” points us more toward an informative piece of writing rather than an argument. The student altered the question to, “What should we be doing to prevent domestic violence that we’re not doing now?”

My question about college and happiness at work took a similar turn: “What should colleges do to increase the likelihood that students will one day be engaged in their jobs?”

6. Draft.

If you’ve gone through many of this book’s experiences so far, you’re probably expecting something about audience analysis in this spot, but I find this type of argument frequently first requires some drafting to help figure out who the audience should or could be.

You can choose your audience and try to write for them, but often too much thinking still needs to happen to have a firm idea of who you want to write for. Much of it depends on what you want your audience to do with your argument, which means figuring out what you can argue effectively.

In writing about what happens in college to affect future job engagement and overall well-being, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write for students, schools, parents, or even give my question a twist and write for employers, under the theory that they want to be on the lookout for students who have had particular experiences because they’ll be happier and therefore better employees.

7. Assess your draft and consider the audience.

Here’s where you can think about the intersection between your most convincing argument and the audience that can effect the kind of change you think will help improve the status quo.

The student working on domestic violence and animal abuse decided to write for police departments, to encourage better information sharing between animal control and the regular officers when animal abuse is suspected.

In my case, I had a key bit of research from that Gallup poll: according to the survey data, people are 4.6 times more likely to be “thriving” in terms of their overall well-being if they are “engaged” at work. Being fulfilled in one’s job apparently plays a huge role in being happy. The poll suggested that the single greatest individual factor for being engaged in future work is if a college graduate had a mentor in college who encouraged them to pursue their hopes and dreams while there.

Even after a draft, I was torn about whether I should write for students, encouraging them to seek out those experiences, or faculty, encouraging them to create more opportunities that correlate to future well-being for students.

Ultimately, I chose to write for faculty, both because I belong to that group and because I felt the bigger problem wasn’t student desire for these experiences but aspects of school structures that make it difficult to give students the kind of mentoring they benefit from and that faculty enjoy.

8. Revise.

Now that you have an answer to the question and an audience in mind, revise the argument. In some cases, this will mean starting over with a fresh document.

Regardless, now that you’ve done all this thinking and have the audience and argument in mind, this revision should be much more targeted.

9. Assess the new draft.

If you think outside readers will be helpful—they usually are—find some. Craft some questions you’d like them to answer about the draft. What are you still debating in terms of your own approach? What sorts of things do you want them to weigh in on? After they’ve had a chance to react to the piece, use your readers to help give you additional insight into what you’re trying to accomplish.

10. Edit and polish.

You know the drill by now.

11. Title.

Always important, but especially vital this time.

REFLECT

Take a minute to appreciate that you made something that didn’t exist before. This isn’t a research paper that repeats a bunch of stuff others have said previously. It’s a work by a unique intelligence that would not exist if you had not created it.

It’s kind of fun to think about.