Essay Contest Winners
Excerpt from Keynote Address
Essay Contest Winners
We congratulate the essay contest winners, and commend the participants for giving us an outstanding pool of essays. It was truly a pleasure to read you, and hear your oral presentations.
College AwardsAnalytical Essay
- 3rd Place: Paulo de Almeida, "The Politics of Writing"
- 2nd Place: Leif Waller, "Chasing a Girl"
- 1st Place: Mary Michelle Kim, "Grasping Time"
- 3rd Place: Kristen Wong, "A Step Closer to the Cancer Cure"
- 2nd Place: Ashley Gragg, "The Addition of Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors to the Drug Treatment Plans of Tourette's Syndrome Plus Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and the Etiology of Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder"
- 1st Place: Margaret Ren, "The Progress of Sexual Variance in India"
- 3rd Place: Christopher Edling, "Political Party Affiliation: Instruction Manual"
- 2nd Place: Asha Best, "Untitled/Dear John"
- 1st Place: Jeremy Benjamin, "Downstream"
Professional Ethics
- 3rd Place: Juan-Pablo Ramirez, "Ethics of Animal Research in Biomedical Engineering"
- 2nd Place: Fiona Torrance, "The Impact of Disney's Boardroom Business Ethics"
- 1st Place: Crystal Dizol, "BOSTON'S BIG DIG: The Central Artery/Tunnel Project Epitomizes Engineering as a Problem-Solver"
Excerpt from Keynote Address
Given by Steve Burkow,partner at Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie & Stiffelman, LLP
Delivered at the Undergraduate Writers' Conference, USC University Club, 2 March 2005
Here are my three rules of writing:
- Writing for an audience doesn't mean that you're selling out; it means learning how to write for others in addition to yourself: You can still deliver a forceful message, you can still convey a point of view, you can still be creative or provide brilliant business analysis, but you have to write in a way that the person reading your work will understand and will take an action that you want. Think about it: if you're working in an ad agency and you're pitching a client or you're working on a political campaign, or you're trying to get Equifax to remove negative information from your Credit Report, you need to put yourself on the other side of the computer screen or behind the desk of the person reading your fax or letter. What's going to appeal to them?
- You're always narrating a conflict: Whether it's the client having to choose a particular ad campaign, the candidate having to take a position, your boss having to make a decision, or getting the person to whom you're complaining to help you - you're going to want to tell them what happened in a way that shades the facts in your favor. You're not going to write a memo to your boss the same way you would a complaint letter to the airline that bumped you off the flight you were supposed to take to see your family for Thanksgiving. If you know your client has a short attention span, you're not going to overwhelm him or her with facts. If you know whoever you're writing to considers themselves "cutting edge", your prose can't be dry or clichéd.
- You're always trying to solve a problem: No matter what you choose to do with your life, your job will involve solving problems. Doing what I do, especially because of litigation risks, I always have to be mindful of the words I choose. I can't tell you how many times I find myself wishing I had expressed something differently, wanting to take back the email or letter I just sent and change a word or 2 here or there. I am mindful of the power words have from seeing how they can be used to solve problems.
