March 23, 2015

Dear Sweetland Admissions Committee,

I greatly appreciate your consideration for my admission into the Sweetland Minor in Writing
program. While I cannot say I was born a poet or novelist, I can certainly cite a select few
experiences in my life that have lead to my interest in this opportunity. I must begin by noting
my AP English Language and Composition class in high school. By way of enthusiastic teaching
and thought-provoking material, I progressively generated an appreciation for the literature we
were studying. Additionally, I began to realize the skill and intuition all great writers have for
conveying both emotion and reasoning in their texts. It was not until my English 125 course that
I was challenged to write papers involving more complex thought, such as debating the
philosophical problem of absolute vs. relative truth (see attached sample). Despite initial
apprehension, I found that working through the challenges of abstract thought provided me a
surprising amount of freedom and, ultimately, an improved sense of satisfaction. Finally, my
involvement in the Craniofacial Research Laboratory demonstrated the practicality, and even
necessity, of communication through writing. Researchers are writers. If scientific discovery
cannot be conveyed effectively to other researchers, doctors, or patients, such breakthroughs will
never have the level of clinical impact that they should. My previous exposure to literature and
writing, both in the classroom and the laboratory, have motivated me to improve my control over
stylistic techniques such as word usage in order to more clearly express both concrete and
abstract material. My principal goal for involvement in the Minor in Writing is to better
understand writing at the rudimentary, technical level. Such mastery will allow for holistic
improvement, which I will be able to enlist in a variety of applications
As a researcher and future medical clinician, I aim to improve our society though direct
individual patient care. Additionally, I place great value in developing my ability to contribute
academically to medicine, via the publication of scientific research, in order to have impact at the
population level. In order to succeed in these aspirations, I must understand the science behind
human medicine and disease and effectively communicate such information through writing. My
time spent in research has opened my eyes to the overwhelming importance of knowing your
audience; biomolecular researchers will be reading publications with a very different eye than
casual readers. By offering guidance and demanding excellence, the Minor in Writing program
will allow me to develop rudimentary writing skills while also fostering an added focus on
formal and informal communication of scientific and medical related information. These skills
established through the Minor in Writing in the coming years will then translate into my
professional career, allowing me to become more qualified for any number of positions in the
medical field.
Furthermore, effective physicians are constantly changing their angle of attack on any given
illness or injury in order to best meet the needs of the patient. There exists no silver bullet
answer to combat cancer or step-by-step instructions when performing emergency surgery.
Likewise, an effective writer must constantly be open to altering the tone or focus of a paper to
best connect with the audience. No worksheet or documents has ever been compiled that offer
exact directions to writing an argumentative essay. Surely protocols exist both in medicine and in

writing. However, good surgeons and writers alike are intuitive in their actions and words.
During the course of the minor, I look forward to exploring new and alternative methods of
achieving similarly successful results. Specifically, I hope to learn how to convey research
information in varying degrees of analytical complexity in order to best meet the needs of the
reader, or even patient.
All in all, I am very excited about this opportunity to increase my communication skills and
professionalism through participation in the Sweetland Minor in Writing program. I feel this
minor complements my study of biochemistry by adding a new dimension, a more humanitarian
dimension, to my current academic studies. This powerful combination of hard science with
humanities will equip me with a well-rounded foundation, greatly expanding my future career
options.
Sincerely,

Jeremy Lynn