Conclusion

Hello everyone! For those of you who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, I am Claire

Korthuis-Smith. I have been working for Amazon for 15 years as a sales representative and have

been doing some writing on the side for enjoyment with the New York Times. I am so proud to

accept the yearly Writing Award. Trust me, it has been a long wait! I would love for each of you

to close your eyes and think of something that you believe you have excelled as much as you

possibly could in. Now, open your eyes and be ready to face dry-cut reality. Each and every one

of you have yet to meet your potential because your potential is never-ending! As humans, we

strive to do better, be better, and excel as much as we can, but when we hit a flat line in the

process, we believe we have done as much as we could. My freshman year of college, I believed

I had done everything I could to better myself in my writing. I foolishly walked into my English

course hardly willing to expand my knowledge any further. The truth came flying at me so

incredibly fast, that it felt like a slap in the face. My punctuation was mediocre (at best), my

vocabulary was limited to the words that I used to impress my high school teachers with, and my

writing was very repetitive on subjects and words. I was completely overwhelmed by my peer’s

knowledge and the advice they gave me. At my past high school, I was considered one of the few

“outstanding” writers in all my classes leading me to shimmy off any advice from my classmates

and make no improvements because I thought I was better. After coming to college, the mindset

that I had of approaching other student’s advice and corrections was completely flipped, listening

to my peers simply speak proved to expand every concept I thought I knew about writing. It was

absolutely inspirational. I was hearing words that I had yet to add to my personal vocabulary. I

remember searching up at least seven words that I had never heard before in the very first week.

Then I would challenge myself to utilize them within my next writing piece. I was being
introduced to more concepts in writing, giving me a deeper understanding of the literary works

that we were assigned during class. This inevitably assisted me with opening my mind to

different perceptions and be able to step back and see multiple viewpoints. I learned how to

better utilize ethos, pathos, and logos to make my own writing much more persuasive and

intriguing. I also was able to broaden my views throughout the course by taking note of my

peers’ successes when evaluating their works leading me also to expand my vocabulary. Every

chance that I was presented in class to learn and evaluate my own work or one of my peer’s

works, I gladly accepted because I knew that doing so, would help improve my writing in a

multitude of ways. My advice to all you aspiring writers out in the crowd is to not close your

mind yet, but instead, open it and digger a little deeper. There is always room to improve on any

talent, subject, task, and field. I hope that all of you have been inspired by these experiences in a

similar way to how I was. There is always a beginning to learning but there is no end as long as

you continue to push yourself to do better and never give up even when you believe that you

have reached the road’s end.