Planet Rhetoric: A Speech

WRD 201: Style for Writers Spring 2025

As a combined Computer Science + Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse major, it’s hard not to notice how different my classes are. Most of us Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse majors struggle to imagine a class that isn’t discussion-based and participation-heavy. So, it’s understandably jarring for me when I step back into the world of Computer Science, where hands are only raised in dire circumstances and many students flat-out refuse to attend lectures if they aren’t on test and quiz days.

It’s weird; the humanities students might bash on the STEM majors, and the sciences may bash on the humanities, but rarely does anyone see how the other works. Between what their classes look like, what they learn, and how they learn it, CS and WRD classes feel like they exist on totally different planets, and I, the astronaut, shuttle spaceships between the two. Honestly, I prefer the world of WRD and its inhabitants: the teachers and peers that I’ve befriended over my first year here at DePaul University.

As an academic astronaut, I don my spacesuit and brave the final frontiers of these two contrasting planets.  

We first touchdown on the desolate, subzero terrain of CS. Take the course I’m currently enrolled in: Math 130, Mathematical Functions and Models. Simply put, it’s an extrovert’s nightmare; you exist, the teacher exists, and everyone else sitting around you is either competition or room décor. I’ve passed papers to students who refuse to say a simple “thank you”. One guy seriously gave me the judgmental “down-up” look when I tried to hand him the attendance sheet. Students refuse to sit next to one another, keeping at least a two-chair distance from the peer next to them. Try talking to the locals—say, try to crack a dry joke about how you don’t understand what’s going on and that you have absolutely no idea what a peace-wise function is—and you’re met with blank, annoyed stares. In Math 130, I keep my head down. Responses are not tacked onto smiles, but instead tight-lipped frowns. It’s a race to the back row, against students whom I don’t know their names, their majors, or their years.

Then, we have WRD. This planet’s climate is warm and floral. When I enter a classroom, I am greeted by encouraging smiles. Conversations are engaging and frequent, and when I see a classmate floating in the vast cosmos of stars (or, in simple terms, outside of the WRD department), I beam and wave, because these are faces I recognize and names I know. Last quarter, a classmate stopped me outside of my dorm to enthusiastically rave about my drafted paper on Cultural Rhetorics; she insisted I email her the final copy when I submitted it to our professor.

When I depart from the cosmodrome of the WRD department and set course for CS, I can’t help but yearn for the warmth of the planet that has so quickly become my home here at DePaul. Don’t get me wrong; I love learning about CS. I’ve been coding since I was a kid, and I love ranting and raving about the state of AI, an industry I look forward to entering upon my graduation. But I wish that the Jarvis College felt just a little more like home, like the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

I wish the Jarvis students weren’t all so intimidated by each other. Because right now, CS feels anything but hospitable; instead of a planet, it feels like a collection of isolated moons, or some vaporous form, like the Milky Way. Of course, I understand that it’s hard to get excited about something as bleak as math models, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bond over common interests and help each other work out math problems. I suppose us WRD students are lucky in that regard. Even in our core classes, our projects feel like they hold weight. We write speeches and op-eds, and manifestos about real-world issues, and it’s hard to find similar purpose in graphing quadratic functions or studying scatter plots.

Maybe this is just an issue with the beginner-level courses in CS. I’m early in my academic track, and I hope that with the completion of my CS cores, some of my upper-level courses will attract more collaborative personalities.  

But that’s just a hope. Regardless of whether it comes to fruition, I still have my home planet here in the WRD department. Every time my spaceship touches down on Planet Rhetoric, I feel relief as the warmth of WRD’s tropical climate washes over me. I brush the frost off my shoulders, and I enter my classes knowing that there is a community of supportive peers behind these third-floor classroom doors. This planet is my home, and I’m lucky enough to get to visit it so often.

Thank you.