Arts and Sciences | Health Education and Human Sciences | News | StudentsAugust 07, 2024

Essays Uplift in Annual Writing Center Contest

Written By: Judith Hansen

The experience is so satisfying that people who judge the Writing Center’s annual writing contest routinely ask Dr. Mary Lutze to invite them to judge again.

Each year, writing prompts ask students – students in any major, students who use the Writing Center or don’t – to consider and write about their experiences at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith and the insights they have gained.

“It’s really an uplifting experience all around,” Lutze, Writing Center director, said. “It’s really heartwarming to hear from students how much they value UAFS and how much they value the community they formed here. … For the students, it’s uplifting to think back on their experiences here. It’s definitely uplifting for faculty and staff members who participate in judging to hear … what UAFS has meant to its students.”

The annual competition, now in its fourth year, was the brainchild of UAFS Chancellor Dr. Terisa Riley when the Writing Center opened in October 2020. Riley offered the prompt the first year. Since then, the Writing Center staff, including the student peer tutors, offered the topics.

This year, the panel of judges considered 15 essays written in response to the prompt: Describe the most transformative relationship you’ve made while at UAFS.

The Grand Prize winner is Sophia McLain, a senior rhetoric and writing major when she submitted her essay. Sophia wrote about how a chance meeting with a non-traditional student caused her to rethink her attitude about attending her hometown college. In “UAFS, said like Doofus,” Sophia acknowledges she was a “judgmental idiot” who came to understand that “UAFS itself was an opportunity; it wasn’t a limit.”

As a tutor at the Writing Center, Sophia had the opportunity to talk with many students and learn about the unique challenges each student faces.

“I’d leave these sessions thinking, what a wonderful thing it is to hear a perspective different from your own,” she wrote. “Then I’d pause and think how ironic it is that I’ve learned it from a small regional school in Arkansas, and that really, that is what UAFS is.”

Sophia won $500 for her grand prize-winning essay.

Mitchell Collins, a junior political science major, wrote the second-place essay. Mitchell wrote about his chaotic life as the son of a “soldier father” who moved the family from place to place far too quickly to learn how to develop friendships. Finally, Mitchell, his mother, and his brother landed in Fort Smith “in our 15^th move of the past decade.”

In Fort Smith and especially at UAFS, Mitchell learns to form connections, starting with the Bell Tower, which was under repair, the campus green, and the unchanging bricks of Lion Pride Square. From there, he learned to build human relationships, transforming people from “superficial conveniences to genuine friends.”

“My life has changed forever due to the relationships I’ve had the privilege to grow at UAFS, and these two years have taught me more than all the days that came before,” he wrote. “The mentors, friends, and colleagues I’ve found will remain with me always as I choose to fight ever-onward for both my family and for my new family at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith.”

Mitchell was awarded $250 for his entry.

A senior English major, Lyla Flint, wrote the third-place essay about her sometimes challenging but ultimately transformative relationship with literature.

Lyla admits that for years, if she didn’t like something or didn’t understand it, she would dismiss it, as she dismissed “Ethan Frome,” a work she “loathed” and considered “a ‘bad book.’” But now, she says, she has “adopted the idea of studying written works as an opportunity for growth, not an educational obligation.”

She talks about learning to value an author’s life, especially the environment in which they lived, how it is transformed into the book’s setting, and how the work’s characters define it.

She has undertaken this sea change because of her experiences as a university student.

“I’ll always be grateful for qualified educators that treat learning as an earned privilege instead of a monotonous burden by providing their students with relevant reading material in place of unwanted pieces that discourage readers from exploring all that the literary world has to offer.”

Lyla received $100 for her essay.

 

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