I trace the foundation of my writing ability to the seventh grade. My language arts teacher that year, Mrs. Miller, ensured that her students developed the proper tools for written communication. We spent considerable time learning to diagram sentences—an exercise in breaking down a sentence into the subject, verb, and other parts of speech that I do not believe is part of the language arts curriculum anywhere these days. It most certainly is not taught in the various school districts through which my kids have passed. Diagramming sentences was tedious work, but I learned early on that I had a certain aptitude for it, much in the way my math-oriented classmates had an aptitude for solving challenging equations. Understanding sentence construction is a critical part of learning how to write, and I credit Mrs. Miller with helping me achieve this understanding at an early age. 

As a way of testing our understanding of sentence structure, Mrs. Miller assigned weekly written compositions. Early each week, she would post several quotations in the classroom. Each student had to pick a quotation and write a five-paragraph essay on the what the quotation meant to him or her. This exercise was my introduction to how to write an argument. Start with an opening paragraph that states the main idea. Support your main idea in the next three paragraphs. Then, conclude with a paragraph synthesizing the main idea and the supporting argument. Every Monday, students brought their completed essays to class. Mrs. Miller would select a few students to read their work in front of the class. After grading the essays, she would display some she deemed outstanding in the classroom for all to read. I found that writing these essays came naturally to me, and I enjoyed doing them—definitely more than I enjoyed solving math problems or studying for science tests. Little did I know then that mastering grammar and learning how to write a five-paragraph essay would prove beneficial for years to come.

In high school, my teachers exposed me to some of the great works of English literature—To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlett Letter, The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, and the works of Shakespeare among them. These teachers encouraged me to think deeply about what I was reading and to use the foundation of writing I had developed in elementary school to express my thoughts coherently. I found that this writing process came naturally to me, and that I had developed a fondness for it.

I went to college at West Point, where I decided to major in literature. My grade school and high school teachers had prepared me well for this experience. While I found myself unprepared for West Point’s rigorous math and science curriculum compared to many of my peers, I recognized early on that I was very well prepared for the literature curriculum. I had several excellent professors who helped me hone my skills at constructing written arguments. The most challenging writing assignments were the shortest. A common exercise, for example, would be to read one of Shakespeare’s plays and write a two-page essay on a specific aspect of the play. This type of assignment was challenging because it required being thrifty with words. Every sentence had to have a specific relationship to the main idea. Completing these assignments developed a keen editing ability. I still remember first drafts of these assignments being almost three pages and having to write—and re-write—until I had pared my argument down to the two-page limit with not one wasted word. 

West Point has a core curriculum English course during the third year, the purpose of which was to prepare Cadets to write effectively as future Army officers. The final exam—actually the only graded work—for this course was a timed essay, which we had to write in a five-paragraph format. Mrs. Miller would have been proud of me, as I breezed through the essay and earned one the easiest A’s I ever received. I might have even snickered a bit at some of my classmates, who could run circles around me in physics class, but struggled to pass this writing exam. 

The highlight of my West Point career was winning the Thompson Memorial Award, which recognizes outstanding writing across the curriculum. A faculty panel chose my submitted writing portfolio as the best among dozens of my classmates. I still have my notification letter, signed by the head of the English department, explaining that “[t]he evaluators were particularly impressed with [my] clear and direct style,” just the style I had worked so hard to perfect. Winning this award was my greatest accomplishment at West Point, and I graduated with supreme confidence in my aptitude for written communication. I felt prepared to be an Army leader.

In my first Army assignments, I began to hone the skill of Army writing. This meant being succinct with the main point up front—leaders do not want to waste their valuable time reading any more words than necessary. I found this style fairly easy to adapt, as it was very similar to the clear, concise style I had mastered at West Point. Also, as an admirer of the minimalist writing style of Ernest Hemingway, I found that writing in the preferred Army style came to me rather easily. My bosses also seemed to appreciate my short and to-the-point emails, when some of my peers insisted on writing volumes. At military schools that expect thinking and writing at a graduate level, and where many of my peers struggled, I always excelled. 

Upon retirement from the Army in 2019, I vowed to write more. That is why I opened this space. I have a talent, and I want to use that talent to tell my story. I will use this space to continue what Mrs. Miller taught me all those years ago—to express myself in a clear and positive way. I hope we all can learn something from the experience.