My bedroom in the house at 1522 Geddes Avenue is small and square, measuring only twelve feet by eleven feet. There is a large window facing the road that serves as the primary source of light. The walls are white and the carpet is white, but it’s hard to know that the carpet is white because clothes are spewed across it like confetti after a New Year’s party. In fact, the entire room is clustered with clothes and trinkets, including a large 2001: A Space Odyssey poster; a few dusty pictures of my girlfriend and I; a collection of sour-beer bottles drank, at one point in time, to inspire thinking (but mostly because they tasted good); and forty-nine books lined perpendicularly on a wooden shelf above my desk (less than half have actually been read, but, upon quick observation, one would not infer that). The assorted books include everything from The Selfish Gene to Breakfast at Tiffany’s to The Lotus Sutra—a book of Buddhist scriptures (I’m not really sure why I have this one). The desk itself is littered with note cards, pencils, and papers scrawled with ideas for essays. The wall adjacent to the desk is covered with essay drafts stapled to it for quick visitation. The room is clearly a place for thinking and not a place for cleaning. While I would not go so far as to say it looks like the bedroom of a writer (in fact, it looks more like the bedroom of a compulsive hoarder), I can assure you it looks a hell of a lot more like one than it did before I pursued a Minor in Writing.

Back then, the room was bare and clean. The posters and pictures of my girlfriend and I were still there, but the idea of a bookshelf would have been laughable. Writing and reading were not in my repertoire of daily concerns. Other than 1984 and On the Road, I hated reading books. I especially hated writing. I hated five-paragraph papers and transition sentences and thesis statements and all the other bullshit my English teachers could come up with. I particularly hated the idea of doing something that didn’t pertain to science or medicine.  Writing was nothing more than a boring, monotonous, constrained, irrelevant ordeal that I was forced to engaged in by devilish teachers with sinister ways.

Science, on the other hand, felt like my purpose in life. A devilish, sinister teacher could tell me to do some science, and I would happily oblige—then do more! With science, I could understand people. I could talk to friends and imagine their Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas lighting up like fireworks. I could envision the action of every neuron and muscle conducting their gait as we walked side-by-side to class. I could practically see the dopamine molecules bounce around their effervescent bodies as we prepared to head to house parties on Saturday nights, where beer and booze awaited us. Science was how I understood the people around me.

But science is limited, and it’s something I didn’t realize at the time. Science will tell you what is going on, but does that really mean you understand it? Consider this: If you know what led your sister to be depressed, does that mean you understand what she is going through? If you know why your parents are getting a divorce, does that mean you know what life will be like in the future? If you know that your friend’s dad died from cancer, does that mean you will be able to comfort her? No—of course not.

And that’s where writing comes into play. Through writing, we can share our experiences and we can hear each other’s voice. But again, does that mean we truly understand their situations? No—of course not.

It has taken me a while, but I’ve finally learned to use writing and science together to make sense of the people around me. I will never truly be able to understand what people go through, but, with the interplay of science and writing, at least I can try.

The purpose that I found in writing did not come as a sudden realization. There is no drastic turning point in which I found my purpose in writing. Rather, I arrived at the purpose via a pathway of experience, and I’m not even sure if this pathway is linear (I don’t think it is—each essay is not more aligned with my purpose than the next. Some fit the purpose; others do not. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is.) But the shape of my evolutionary pathway is irrelevant. What is important, however, is that I once hated writing and now I find it integral to my experience of life. What happened?

It’s the summer of 2012, and I am set attend the University of Michigan in the fall where I will be studying neuroscience in preparation for medical school. Within weeks of graduating from high school, I get my first taste of the college experience: an essay assigned by the University in which I am to analyze and respond to Jonah Lehrer’s “Groupthink,” a terribly boring essay about brainstorming published in The New Yorker. How ironic. I am finally free from high-school paternalism, and I immediately have an assigned essay. I am in no mood to put up with restrictions and requirements, let alone write an assigned essay. Nonetheless, I take it quite seriously so as to prevent any undesired ramifications—I have no idea what this essay will be used for.

It takes me about three or four days (of non-continuous work) to read “Groupthink” and write the essay; it is a painstaking, arduous task. I focus on making a logical argument and avoid any stylistic effort—admittedly because I don’t know how to write with style: my prior education has regimentally restricted my writing. I email it to my dad, my primary revisionary source, who makes a few grammatical and lexical suggestions. (Given that he learned English as a second language while at the University of Michigan, I trust his suggestions, as they are always academically correct.) I make his corrections and submit the essay.

Looking back on it, the essay is actually not that bad—honestly. Rather than supporting Lehrer’s argument, as most students would, I claimed that he didn’t provide enough evidence to properly assert his claims. As I say it in the essay, “Lehrer makes the point that brainstorming is not the perfect method to spawn creativity, but he fails to prove that it ‘doesn’t work.’” To support my thesis, I point out all the areas in which his argument is inconclusive. Frankly, it’s unexpected and unique. That, in itself, gives my writing “style”—to this day, I take pride in my ability to approach an essay from unique angles. Still, I absolutely hated writing that essay. No part of it was enjoyable for me. In retrospect, I likely hated it because it came with a prompt and required that I read a boring essay. But that, for me, was what all writing was by nature: boring and restricted. I didn’t know any differently.

A few months pass, and it’s now the second semester of my freshmen year. I’m taking a bunch of science classes and an English course, English 125—a course required for every first year student at the University of Michigan. My expectations for the course are quite low, given that I’ve hated all of my previous English courses. But from the start, this one is different. There are requirements, sure, but they’re more relaxed in nature than anything I’ve experienced in an English course before. For one assignment, I’m asked to choose a song that defines me and to explain why. For another, I’m asked to write a research paper about anything I want. This last one is particularly surprising. Anything I want? You mean I don’t have to write about Abraham Lincoln or Transcendentalism? I can choose something I’m actually interested in? My god, this teacher is progressive. Either the concept is novel or my previous English teachers were all shitty teachers. Still, the concept of a research paper without restrictions is completely new to me.

Ironically, I choose a topic that I have almost no interest in: horror films. While I love watching movies, particularly those with high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (I was, at the time, a sucker for anything deemed “critically acclaimed”), I have never been able to stand horror films. In fact, I hate them. I cannot understand why anyone would consciously choose to watch a horror film over, say, a drama or a comedy. Where is the beauty? I hate them so much that I choose to write my research paper on why people enjoy watching horror films.

I dig through the library stacks for essays and books that may provide some answer to my preposterous question. Surprisingly, I find many—some from the likes of famous writers like Stephen King. The more I read, the more confused and curious I get. I learn that some people reported cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after witnessing The Exorcism in 1973. How can some people enjoy something that gives others PTSD? That’s akin to enjoying getting shot at while in battle or loving the aftermath of a deathly plane accident. It makes no sense. I am completely absorbed. Feeling that my newfound passion for the subject could not be expressed using the traditional style guidelines I have been taught in high school (those seemed more fit for mundane subjects), I decide to take a chance and explore a new style. I directly question the reader and force them to engage with the material as I have, I frequently use analogies, and I loosen the structure of my paragraphs (I know that these are all commonplace techniques, but trust me when I say that they were drastic changes for me, stylistically). The end result is my best and most personally enjoyable essay to date.

It’s true. Up to that point in time, The Flirtatiously Sadistic Horror Film had been my very best essay (aside from its awfully pretentious title—what the hell does it even mean?). It is witty, engaging, comprehensive, and—most importantly—fun. It is evident that I, as a writer, was very engaged in the material and that I wanted to share it. That is key. This is the first essay that I wanted to write.

But why did I choose to write about horror films? Why did I not, instead, choose to write about something related to medicine? Honestly, I am not sure. But, nonetheless, I did choose to write about something that allowed me to understand people better, and I absolutely loved it. With this essay, I felt as if I had finally found some sort of enjoyment in writing. Retrospectively, I know that that is because I used the essay as a method of understanding the people around me.

Stimulated by my English 125 course, I am now pursuing a Minor in Writing through the Sweetland Center for Writing. I am currently taking the Gateway course, an introductory course for all students in the minor. I’m not sure exactly why I love writing all of the sudden; I suspect it has a lot to do with the lessons I learned in English 125: that writing is, in fact, an unrestricted endeavor and that it doesn’t have to be irrelevant and forced—I can actually write about things I love.

Now, I’m tasked with crafting a final project for the Gateway course. I’ve been torn between a news article on my fragile-X syndrome research and a podcast on the loss of my father’s first language, Farsi (he is an immigrant from Iran). The first project idea seems more pertinent, but pertinence doesn’t necessarily correlate with interest. The second idea is much more interesting: I can actually explore a curiosity I’ve held since childhood—why my father switches between Farsi and English when speaking with his relatives—and I can learn more about my family in the process. Plus, I can model it off of Radiolab—the NPR science podcast I’ve been obsessed with.

I choose to pursue the second topic idea via a podcast titled “The Language Forgotten: A Father’s Tale.” (The title is inspired by A Hobbit’s Tale—the book that Bilbo Baggins writes in the first Lord of the Rings installment. Please do not ask why I titled it that; I suppose I’m just weird, and I needed a source of inspiration.)

After a few weeks of scientific research and interviews with my father, I’ve come to an interesting conclusion: My father hasn’t lost his first language because of infrequent opportunities to use it in America (as many psycholinguists suggest), he has, rather, actively given up his language because, when he moved to America, he didn’t want to be seen as an Iranian immigrant. He didn’t want to be associated with the nation in charge of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and other acts of terrorism; he made little conscious effort to preserve his Iranian heritage. This finding comes as a surprise to me, but I feel like it explains my father quite well—he has never bothered to teach me Farsi or Iranian culture.

“The Language Forgotten: A Father’s Tale” was an exhilarating project for me. Every bit of knowledge and understanding gained was stimulating. I felt as if I had truly taken an open-ended question about someone—my father—and created unique insight. It made me wonder if other immigrants felt similarly; it made me question the concept of identity and heritage. Using writing, multimedia techniques, and a bit of scientific evidence, I was actually able to better understand my family life and those around me. It was a great feeling.

By now, my preconceived notions about writing had been entirely broken down. No longer was writing a boring, monotonous, constrained, irrelevant ordeal; it was purposeful and limitless. Through the writing process I could research and investigate topics of interest to me. Through the act of writing itself, I could ponder and articulate my beliefs and understandings. If I had a question, I knew exactly how to go about answering it. And the answer would always be nuanced and unexpected.

Since then, many of my writing techniques have been refined and I have dabbled in new areas of writing. But still, I write to understand people. My capstone project for the Minor in Writing is no exception. “Adventure Calls” is an analytical/argumentative personal narrative (it seems to defy any one genre so I’ve had to come up with a descriptive genre title myself), pseudo-published in The Atlantic. The article uses personal narrative to introduce a typical question: Why do people crave outdoor adventure? The “adventurous” gene seems to be quite commonplace nowadays. But why? Why would anyone put themselves in situations of danger for no apparent reason? In many ways, this article is quite similar to “The Flirtatiously Sadistic Horror Film” because it seeks to understand why someone would do something that contradicts logic. But “Adventure Calls” is different in that it is not a structured argumentative essay. In fact, the argumentation here is quite subtle. This article answers the proposed questions by combing personal narrative with scientific reasoning to formulate a few hypotheses of why people would put themselves in these dangerous situations that defy logic. But hypotheses aside, there are personal reasons to consider as well, which are alluded to in the final section of the article.

And it is these personal reasons that make this article particularly engaging for me. With this article, I have come to understand something about myself. In “The Flirtatiously Sadistic Horror Film,” I was able to understand people who enjoy horror films. In “The Language Forgotten: A Father’s Tale,” I was able to understand a characteristic of my father. With this essay, I have now understood something about myself. I now understand that adventure doesn’t care about my sister’s eating disorder, or my depression, or my mediocre grades and test scores. Adventure doesn’t care if I’m a good brother, or a good friend, or an awkward conversationalist. Adventure only cares that I am present and performing in the moment. It demands my presence; it demands my energy; it demands my ability regardless of the worries and stresses that typically infiltrate my mind. For a short period of time, those things are irrelevant.

It is adventure that provides that cleansing comfort. It is writing that has provided me this realization.

I’m not sure where I would be without writing. I have learned that science isn’t enough to satisfy my longing desire to understand everything that I can about people and about myself. I need communication. I need to sit and think, write, then write and think again to really understand something. I need to fill my room with books pertaining to certain issues in order to understand the people discussed in them and their relation to myself. I need to stare at trinkets on my desk and around my room to gain new perspectives. I need writing in my life because without it, I would not fully understand. And I need to understand.