Foreword

You may remember being asked to write an Orientation Essay at the beginning of your time at Evergreen. You were provided with two prompts to choose from, which essentially boiled down to “reflect on your past and what brought you to this point in your education” or “reflect on your future and where your education could take you.” This assignment is the first of many reflective writing processes asked of Evergreen students.

When I first started at Evergreen, I did not understand how fundamental the process of reflective writing would be for my education. I approached the Orientation Essay how I approached every assignment at the time: just get it done the way it’s supposed to be done. It had not occurred to me that no one cared exactly what I wrote.

I wrote the Orientation Essay because I was told to do so, not understanding that the process of reflective writing was setting me up to be engaged in and accountable for my education. Writing the Orientation Essay was a process ultimately designed to serve me. Now, as I begin my final year, I am looking back at my younger self for clarity and realizing that, while all these years have felt like grappling in the dark, I have had intentionality in my education.

I conceptualize my education as a blackberry bush. I started out with a small root system that over time has expanded and changed. Branches die, and new ones grow out. Sometimes, the plant fruits. The brambles appear to be contained—a bush here and one there—but if you’ve ever tried to pull up a blackberry bush, you know that they are anything but contained. The vines weave in and out of the ground, tangling and expanding in ways that are unimaginable. Yet, they are all connected as one plant and one structure.

This tangled mess has been my experience at Evergreen. I started out with a root system, an idea of what I wanted to learn, and a sense of exploration. The more I learned, the more I grew. The longer I was here, the more entwined my growth became.

The vines of my education weave in and out of the ground, popping up here and there. It’s hard—almost impossible in some places—to understand how it all connects. I know it always intersects; as I contemplate my final Academic Statement, I recognize that all of my experiences at Evergreen have contributed to changing the person I was when I wrote my Orientation Essay into the person I am today. For me, the goal of the Academic Statement is to make sense of that mess, extracting the pieces that are most important and explaining how they are all connected.

For you, the Academic Statement may be something different. But, whatever it is and wherever you are in the process of writing it, I hope that you can let yourself pause. Remember to take the time to notice yourself. Notice the ways that you think and feel about your education. Notice what you’ve learned and how it’s changed you. Let yourself acknowledge all the ways that you’ve grown, because you definitely have. Remember that the Academic Statement is yours. It’s not just some piece of writing that will open doors for you later. It’s a document that represents you and your learning, and writing it is a process that is just as vibrant. Let yourself make the process meaningful, whatever that looks like for you.

I wish you the best, and hope that you can use this guide to make the most of your experience with the Academic Statement.

—Writing Center tutor, ‘21