MY PROJECT
As I began the second semester I realized it was time to reflect on the risks I take in my life. Maybe this reflection was overdue, but after I began reading and writing it seemed fitting to consolidate my thoughts into an essay. I spent two months working on this project. The first month was spent reading and investing myself in the ideas of others. With the information and insights I gleaned from this, I spent the next four weeks writing an essay. The final essay comes as a result of three previous drafts which I workshopped, consolidated and edited until they formed the final. Below is a more extensive look at each element of my project.
READING
Throughout this project I did a fair amount of reading. Prior to writing the essay I spent the first 4 weeks reading current climbing-based articles relating to risk. A large goal of this project was to support my own ideas though others. Reading various articles and essays which have already been published allowed me to frame and centralize my ideas before I went on to write. Additionally, reading these articles allowed me to add current and relevant ideas into my essay.
In addition to reading various articles and essays I also read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. With an essay written around the idea or risk in climbing, Into Thin Air an obvious choice for a book. At the start of the year I knew I wanted to read this book at one point in the year but I was unsure when it would be best to read it. When I came up with the idea of writing the risk essay, I knew this book would supplement my writing perfectly. |
NOTABLE QUOTATIONS
"In the midst of all the postmortem ratiocination, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that climbing mountains will never be a safe, predictable, rule-bound enterprise. This is an activity that idealizes risk taking; the sport's most celebrated figures have always been those who stick their necks out the farthest and manage to get away with it. Climbers, as a species, are simply not distinguished by an excess of Prudence. And that holds especially true for Everest climbers: when presented with a chance to reach the planet's highest summit, history shows, people are surprisingly quick to abandon good judgment" -Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
“There is this dual nature of sublime meaning and utter absurdity in climbing mountains. Sending harder, bigger, more badass routes won’t make you a better, more humble, more gracious or happier human—yet we often approach those mountains like they can. There is no glory, no real answers, in sending and summits, yet we organize our entire lives around the myth that there are.” -Hayden Kennedy, The Day We Sent
“No matter the risks we take, we always consider the end to be too soon, even though in life more than anything else quality should be more important than quantity.”
-Alex Honnold, What Risk Means After Dean Potter
“It’s about feeling like you are being held by something bigger. Climbing on that level is akin to love. It’s totally outside what we can describe with words, and it does make you feel small. When you do succeed—well, you never conquer a mountain. You are always its guest.” -Cory Richards, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Interview
Links to these articles, essays and interviews can be found in a document here.
“There is this dual nature of sublime meaning and utter absurdity in climbing mountains. Sending harder, bigger, more badass routes won’t make you a better, more humble, more gracious or happier human—yet we often approach those mountains like they can. There is no glory, no real answers, in sending and summits, yet we organize our entire lives around the myth that there are.” -Hayden Kennedy, The Day We Sent
“No matter the risks we take, we always consider the end to be too soon, even though in life more than anything else quality should be more important than quantity.”
-Alex Honnold, What Risk Means After Dean Potter
“It’s about feeling like you are being held by something bigger. Climbing on that level is akin to love. It’s totally outside what we can describe with words, and it does make you feel small. When you do succeed—well, you never conquer a mountain. You are always its guest.” -Cory Richards, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Interview
Links to these articles, essays and interviews can be found in a document here.
THE ESSAY
I wrote this essay over the course of 5 weeks. In that time I completed three full length drafts which included the final. Throughout the writing process I made sure to connect my own ideas with other stories and theories from professional climbers. After I completed each draft I met with Chris to review my work and to find ways it could be improved in the future. As I moved onto the following drafts I used my notes and his advice to produce another rendition of the essay. After completing the piece I decided to title it Grey. I chose this title because as I wrote the piece realized that our decisions surrounding risk are never black and white, they are in a grey area in our thought process. The final piece is below.