Adam Hoffman

When Adam Hoffman retired from the military, he was looking forward to pursuing graduate school—but first, he sought out a short-term program to act as a bridge. Penn’s Certificate in Professional Writing opened the door for Adam to reacquaint himself with the college classroom—and skills he could use at work as well as to prepare for his next academic step. “The certificate offered academic-style writing classes, so that’s what caught my eye,” he recalls. “It seemed like a good training program for the interim.”

As a teacher himself, Adam was surprised and satisfied by the online learning experience. “I felt that you would miss out on the social component of education and learning, but there was constant interaction between the instructor and the student and also classmates,” he recalls. “It was collaborative in a different way than an in-person mode of learning. That changed my mind on the whole online learning concept.” Adam also felt that the asynchronous structure worked well for his writing-intensive assignments, and the accelerated 8-week courses meant that Adam could balance his coursework with his full-time teaching load: “I was able to focus on one class at a time, and also balance that with work, so it never became too overwhelming,” he says. “It’s good to see a great example of a knowledge management format that has all the information you need for reference and then has the curriculum right there as well.”

Although the Certificate in Professional Writing offers a range of courses with specific professional applications, Adam was looking for a more generalized approach, focusing on the craft of writing. Starting with PROW 1000: Fundamentals of Professional Writing (a prerequisite for other courses in the certificate), Adam found that the short, focused exercises were beneficial to his day-to-day work communications. PROW 1020: The Elements of Style: Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics was a surprise, he says; “I thought it would be more like drudgery, and it ended up being the class I liked the most,” he recalls. “We did a lot of imitation, where you write your own piece in the style of a specific author who had done a really good job with that style or concept. I still carry that forward in a lot of ways.” He was particularly interested in PROW 1030: Introduction to College Writing, which helped him revisit his academic writing skills from previous college experience and advance them for his next academic step. “There were a lot of the smaller exercises that led up to the larger research paper, and that helped me to navigate ideas or concepts that I can then build into an argument,” he reflects. “We could play with these ideas, bounce them off of one another, and display how each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. I thought that was a more mature way of writing an academic essay or making a point.”

As Adam completed the certificate, he continued to research options for graduate school—and came across the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts at St. John’s College in Annapolis. “It’s one of the few colleges that is still using a Great Books curriculum,” he explains. “I’ve always been drawn to the classics, and wanted to get into a broader liberal arts education before potentially pursuing a doctoral program. This graduate program will offer me plenty of ways to see if I’m suited for a life in full-time academics.” His practical writing experience was beneficial even in the application process, since the application for this program required two long open-ended essays to showcase a candidate’s critical thinking and writing skills. “I was able to draw on different techniques that I picked up in different classes within the certificate, so that was super helpful,” says Adam. “The first essay was essentially a statement of purpose, but they wanted a more in-depth evaluation of your academic strengths and weaknesses, and your personal background with regard to the classics.” To tell the story of his academic journey, Adam leaned on the narrative methodologies he learned in PROW 3010: The Power of Storytelling. The second essay required an analysis of a great work of the Western canon, which drew directly on Adam’s experience constructing arguments in Introduction to College Writing.

Adam was accepted to the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program, which opened with an immersive segment on theology and philosophy. “We’re focusing on the great works—Plato, St. Augustine, then moving onto Kant, Hume, and Nietzsche,” he reports happily. “We’re literally reading entire works by Aristotle and then discussing them in two sessions. You really do have to absorb a lot, think a lot, and write a lot.” Adam is considering a future doctoral degree focused on history, but in the meantime, is enjoying the rigorous classical education with newfound confidence. “I found that the workflow I developed through the professional writing courses has helped me keep on top of annotating and organizing my notes and thoughts on the many works I’m reading,” he adds.