Letters of Thanks

I decided to write letters of appreciation to my mother and my father for inspiring me through out my life. What wasn’t so easy was deciding in which form to write them. My mother communicates with family quite often through email and rarely ever through written “snail mail.” My father, however, spends a great deal of his life reading and responding to emails through work. He claims he receives around two hundred emails per day. That being said, I decided to write to him via handwritten snail mail. Unfortunately though, he is on his honeymoon in Canada and thus I will not receive a response for another week or so.

Knowing that my mom likes to communicate via email, I decided to send my letter of appreciation in the form of an email. In my Writing in Business course (WR 214) a great deal of time is spent discussing when and what forms of communication is appropriate. Email is generally viewed as an informal form of communication, so this route would generally be viewed as inappropriate; however, knowing my mother as I do, I am confident that an email would be equally accepted as a handwritten letter.

Sitting down to write my father’s letter reminded me of why I don’t hand write notes anymore. I am so accustomed to writing using some sort of technology (Microsoft Word, email, etc.) that in doing so I have sacrificed my handwriting abilities. It’s pretty horrendous and has caused me to write several drafts. My tone is somewhat less formal than if I were writing to him in an email. It takes more time for me write my thoughts out on paper and unlike email or Word, it is more difficult for me to correct my writing. Although, the informality of my letter created a tone much more sincere than had I wrote it through some sort of computer mediated communication.

My mother’s email of appreciation, compared to my father’s handwritten letter, was far less time consuming and much easier to write. Since I was able to write it using CMC, it was more detailed (and longer) and more formal. The tone and language was sincere but not as sincere as my father’s handwritten letter. Since it was sent as an email, she received it almost immediately. Her response was made definitely made the email worth it. She was extremely touched by it and, as expected, a little emotional. Thanks Dr. Goodnow for the months’ worth of brownie points I have now earned!

One area I ran into trouble with was recalling exact events which gave me inspiration. That is not to say my parents weren’t deserving of my appreciation or hadn’t inspired me but, sadly, my mind tends to work better in the here and now. Reflection is difficult for me at times; unless I have told a particular story often or been reminded of one recently, it is hard for me to recall. I anticipated this problem from the beginning. While reading chapter 5 of Postman’s Technopoly, one particular passage jumped off the page. “Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures” (72). Reading that sentence, I felt like he was writing specifically about me.