One thing I have always wanted to do is talk to my past self and give them advice, so this is an interview between me of the past and me now. I hope it clearly illustrates the transformative journey I have been through for FIQWS.

SHARON: Well, the semesters have been… interesting. College is challenging. It might be rocky at first, but you’ll get through.

SHARON: My favorite class was FIQWS. We learned all about narrative medicine.

SHARON: FIQWS stands for Freshman Writing Inquiry Seminar. It’s like an English class where we read literature, analyze it, and write essays on various topics. We had four major assignments throughout the year: The Outsider Narrative, the Metaphor Essay, the Critical Lens Essay, and the Research Paper and presentation at the end. As for narrative medicine, it’s a fascinating concept. The basic idea is that patients are more than just numbers on a chart—they are people with stories and lives. Physicians should consider that when treating patients.

SHARON: Okay, so the Outsider Narrative was one of the first assignments of the semester, and the first paper of your college career. It was about a moment in your past when you felt like an outsider. At the time, it hit close to home because starting college felt like the first time we came to America. In the essay, I wrote about wondering, “If I hadn’t been the outsider, would I have grown up differently? Would I be more confident?” The same kind of thoughts ran through my head at the start of college. Looking back now, though, I think it all went well. Some advice I would give for this particular essay is to focus on one story instead of two different ones. I chose two stories in my essay, and although they illustrated my experience well, it made the piece a bit confusing. Focus on one central story instead.

SHARON: Yeah, I think we did a good job for our first paper. The second one was probably one of our tougher assignments. We had to write an essay comparing a metaphor from pop culture—like a book, movie, or show—and compare it to a metaphor from two pieces of literature we read. We spent days trying to come up with a good metaphor, and suddenly it hit me: we used the trope of a found family and compared it to a part of Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, where she says, “a wanderer in endless search of the healthy place” (Sontag 33). Our whole line of reasoning was that a found family is lost until they find each other and heal. I thought it was a great idea, but when I tried to explain it in the essay, the connection felt weak. I’d recommend choosing a different metaphor to compare with the readings from class—something more direct and concrete. The essay itself wasn’t too bad, though.

SHARON: Good! The next essay was the Critical Lens one. I think this was one of our best essays because, unlike the Metaphor Essay, we found a really strong connection between the piece and pop culture. We wrote about an essay by Paul Farmer called On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below. He tells the story of a woman named Acéphie, who contracted HIV after sleeping with a married man. The context behind her getting HIV paints a broader story. We compared this to the TV show Squid Game. I genuinely think the connection we made was really cool, and it was one of my favorite essays. One of the best things we did for that essay was the editing. I specifically remember our teacher, Jarret Moran, leaving a comment saying how great the Squid Game connection was, and I was really proud of that. I wouldn’t change much about that essay.

SHARON: The class is great. One of my favorite parts is how much creative freedom we get. I got to see how the concepts we learned in class apply to the real world. Everything we’d done so far in the class was leading up to one thing: the final research paper. We got to pick any topic we wanted to research that connected to anything we read in class. The assignment was split into three parts: Part 1 was about our connection to our topic, Part 2 was the actual essay, and Part 3 was a reflection on what we learned. When I wrote Part 1, I had no idea what topic I wanted to choose, so I picked how immigrant communities are affected by medical misinformation. But then I read an article about how insurance companies use genetic discrimination to raise insurance rates, and I found that super interesting. So I switched my topic to Part 2.

SHARON: Yeah, well, the topic of genetics and public policy has always interested me, so I stuck with that. The research for the essay was fascinating. I learned so much about how genetics has so many laws and policies surrounding it, but also how insurance companies work and how they affect people’s everyday lives. However, now that I’ve submitted my final drafts for this paper, I doubt I will choose the same topic again. We made more of a persuasive essay, but the class was looking for a change in the stories around our topic over time. If I did it again, I’d focus on something that discusses a change over time or look at the topic from a different angle. But overall, the information I found while researching was incredible. One of the major lessons I learned while writing the paper is that “The real stories of these people demonstrate how even showing risk for a disease can result in discrimination and misuse by insurance companies” (Alex 4). This essay was my final chance to see how important it is to look at the stories of individuals, which is one of my favorite lessons I learned in FIQWS.

SHARON: I think the presentation went well. It was cool not only to present my topic but also to hear about the topics my classmates chose. In general, that’s one of the best parts of FIQWS—getting to talk to your friends and learning about their thought processes and reasoning behind various topics.

SHARON: Yes, focus on your grades. I feel like I spent too much time worrying about less important things, but if you focus on your grades, everything will work out. You’ll be fine—have fun with everything!

SHARON: Don’t worry, I will!