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I've compiled throughout college. I allowed myself to feel vulnerable, the vulnerability they all would feel at some point that weekend, and that connected us. It made me feel human, that sense of nakedness that comes when you cry in front of a friend or when you ask your sister for a loan or tell someone you're in love with them. It is that feeling that brings me back to writing, which, in turn, brings me back to humanity, to community. The mindset I left that retreat with moved my life; it brought me to realize that writing could be my skill. If I could connect with my peers, I could learn to write better for them, while at the same time keeping my own style and point-of-view in mind. Basically, I discovered that writing is just one of many threads connecting humans together.

When it comes to writing the ending of a story, I imagine what my roommate will think, or what my teacher will be criticizing. When I make a character grab a huge bong and suck in a massive cloud of smoke, I wonder, will my girlfriend's dad think twice about this part? Will he even respond? Will he think something about me as a person? This mental interaction between myself and the possible reactions of those who will read my piece is, in itself, a form of collaboration. Again, as Thrall states, "the writer's sense of anticipated audience constitutes a form of collaboration" (Howard 55). This idea provides even more evidence for the concept that everything, almost anything that isn't completely natural, is a product of collaboration.
Even when you are sitting in a silent room, when the walls are falling in on you as words escape through little cracks, you are stressing because you want the diction to make sense, the prose to be clear and precise, and the details to be appropriate. These things are not found, however, in your own opinions, but in those of others, even if it is their fabricated responses in your head. Collaboration is necessary in writing; it is not only a professional ideal, but one of human emotion and connection, one with strength in creativity and the infinite power to develop concepts. Only a week ago, a friend of mine suggested that we write a story together through Instant Messenger. It was the middle of the night, but we did it; I would write a paragraph, then he would write a paragraph. We went back and forth and came up with something that could never have existed without our combined work. By collaborating, we are not only tightening and expanding our ideas; we are simply being human.

Works Cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda. "Ownership Revisited: An Exploration of Progressive Era and
Expressivist Composition Scholarship." College Compsition and Communication 49.2 (1998): 208-233. 20 March 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.ez proxy.library.arizona.edu.

Burn ham, Christopher. "Expressive Pedagogy: Practice/Theory, Theory/Practice." A
Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Rupiper, Amy, Kurt Schick, and Gary
Tate. Oxford University Press: New York, 2001. 19-33.

Connors, Robert, Cheryl Glenn, and Melissa A. Goldthwaite. The St. Martin's Guide to
Teaching Writing. Boston: Bedford, 2003. 192-196.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Collaborative Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition
Pedagogies. Ed. Rupiper, Amy, Kurt Schick, and Gary Tate. Oxford University
Press: New York, 2001. 55-61.

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