Writing with fire: English, honors and Bree Muske

Muske was determined to study English and encounter new challenges at UW-Eau Claire. That drive reads to some, she thinks, as an “aggressive” intensity.

“I think passionate,” she clarifies. Fiery works, too.

Intellectually, Muske feels that characteristic passion was not only welcomed but focused through the Cosby Honors College, where her fire was fueled by inventive, rigorous coursework. Her zest for life and its many facets has pushed her to graduate with honors and a major in English (with a critical studies in literatures, cultures and film emphasis) as well as a minor in creative writing — in just 2 1/2 years.

Early English embers

In her early years in St. Joseph, Minnesota, Muske recalls being reluctant to engage in any class activity involving English or writing, since most assigned readings felt confining to her creative, independent spirit.

Then, in middle school, an English teacher recommended to her a novel — and she became hooked on the sway of the pages beneath her fingertips. She read, and wrote, and read and wrote more, and by the time she finished secondary school, she had discovered a holistic motivation as a writer, to say nothing of a fine-tuned sense of advanced grammar.

Her trek toward college followed a similar path. She took suggestions from parents and family members, toured various schools, but never found the “right fit.” Muske decided to visit UW-Eau Claire on a whim, and she was in awe — a university with not one or two, but five different English pathways understood the gravity of words.

“It just proves that it is taken seriously because there is a difference between all the categories. I didn’t have to do creative writing, or I didn’t have to become a teacher. It was a different emphasis on English here.”

Accelerated into the Center for Writing Excellence

During her time at UW-Eau Claire, Muske has developed a keen sense of how to cultivate rich, meaningful experiences with everyone she encounters. It’s a fierce desire to help others kindle the grounded sense of belonging she found through writing.

In service of that mission, Muske works as a mentor in the Center for Writing Excellence (CWE), where she guides students during any stage of the writing process, from planning to polishing. The CWE, she insists, is not a “human Grammarly,” like many students first imagine; rather, CWE staff aim to grow students’ senses of self-expression through writing, often by way of personal exploration.

One student, Muske recalls, booked a short appointment with her to look over a paper. That turned into a 30-minute discussion on what defined a thesis, and how to construct one, and what the purpose of this student’s writing was — not for this assignment, but for their broader intellectual goals. Muske thinks writing doesn’t merely represent formal argument or communication; it provides a tool for the future that can expand how we see and describe our lives.

It’s that perspective that earned Muske the title of vice president of English Fest, a tight-knit community of organizers that plans English events for all students. She designs advertisements, collaborates on activity-planning and runs multifaceted affairs that people can attend. From faculty panels to game nights to book swaps, Muske admires English Fest’s ability to bring people together across English and humanities disciplines and to join them in a shared love of the written word.

Her expansive vision for writing led Muske to take an internship in UW-Eau Claire’s Learning and Technology Services (LTS), where she worked as a technical writer, composing instructional sheets for classroom equipment. Muske enjoys this sort of technical writing — a focus on clarity, process and purpose — but entered the position without a clear view of how her time in LTS would serve her graduate school ambitions. Now, Muske thinks back gratefully for the opportunity to try something new and to use her writing to help others learn.

“I always wanted to take tech writing here, and it was just never going to fit in my schedule. So, I was like, you know what? This is the next best thing. So, I did that.”

Honors fans the flames

Muske admits candidly that she will “try anything,” and she had to, in order to graduate in a short 2 1/2 years while making every moment count.

So, Muske completed multiple honors contracts during her time at UW-Eau Claire, self-designed extracurricular projects that allowed traditional courses to count for honors credit. The most notable, she describes, was the contract attached to her class required to work in the CWE, for which she wrote a dozen-page research paper on writing center theory.

“I wrote on the difference between meaningfulness in writing and writing meaningfully,” she details. “Basically, the difference between being able to write well, understand punctuation and structure, as opposed to actually caring what you’re writing about.”

Muske notes that being involved in the honors college helped her find herself, a process of self-discovery common to the creative, interdisciplinary honors curriculum. From contracts to courses to topics like “resilience blooming from broken homes,” Muske found a place among the new ideas of enthralled professors and multifaceted students — people with fiery passion quite familiar to her.

When asked about her most memorable honors experience, Muske spoke at length about Dr. Sean Weidman’s course on “Vibes: Affect and the Politics of Feeling.” Students explored preconscious sensation, feelings before feelings, and tried, she says, to recognize emotional labor as serious intellectual work.

Muske felt a personal connection to the theoretically dense content from an English perspective, but she also left in awe of the way “vibes” naturally followed the open, active, discussion-rich honors coursework that put peers together to study across disciplines. She describes these new perspectives as being a “healthy roadblock” that shifted her thinking — and maybe her feeling, too.

Eyes on the horizon

As Muske’s time at UW-Eau Claire nears its end, she continues to wonder about the embers of her future. English still has a productive hold on her imagination, and she hopes one day to work in publishing or editing, perhaps after attending a graduate writing program, or taking some time off to explore her interests. Her professors have been supportive of every option.

“Everything that I have listed off that I’ve done here, that I’ve accomplished in my time here, is because a professor led me that way, told me to do it, in like a ‘I see potential in you, go for it!’ kind of way.”

Her biggest accomplishment, according to Muske, is not a tangible award or experience, but the connections she has fostered at UW-Eau Claire — peers, friends, professors and mentors alike — and how they’ve helped her blaze new paths and write new dreams.

Written by Zoe Eineichner, a third-year junior at UW-Eau Claire, double-majoring in psychology and organizational communication and pursuing a graduate degree in industrial-organizational psychology. Her hometown is Mukwonago.