Conclusion

The Sweet Shop has cultivated a nonrestrictive environment throughout the decades. It has created a place where individuals are called to express themselves and memorialize their experiences of their times on Florida State University's campus. This establishment's popularity is partly due to the culture that it has cultivated and the connections that one can find on its walls. Heidi Estrem talks about how writing is a knowledge-making activity that can be put into action beyond a classroom setting as "people can employ exploratory, inquiry-based writing tasks like freewriting, planning, and mapping-sometimes individual and often collaborative. These strategies can help all writers increase their comprehension of subject material while also practicing with textual conventions in new genres" (20). This widening of the definition of "what is valuable writing" opens a whole new world where everyday writings can be analyzed and find substantial meaning. Such as these are found in The Sweet Shop. The possibilities are endless for the individual that takes up a pen or marker inside this building as there are no bounds to what they could create. While there are common messages created, they are in no way the standard for what one should write. It is the normalized conceptions of a genre that limit what can be created as "we make assumptions not only about the form but also about the text's purposes, its subject matter, its writer, and its expected reader" (Devitt 575). These assumptions are what close the doors to the exploration of creativity and knowledge.

While the writings within The Sweet Shop hold similarities, the purpose is to create an opportunity to highlight individual acts of expression and meaning-making created by the writer. The individual takes it upon themselves to make the text as they see fit and partake in the self-sponsored text they see as valuable. This can be in commemorating their college years, quick notes and messages to other college students, encouragements, remembering romances, or simple drawings. Each writing's intention is present and valuable while appearing casual and not adhering to traditional academic style, tone, or voice. Through which one can view a text as valuable in its part of playing into a larger narrative of a university's history and one of human connection.

Works Cited

Devitt, Amy. “Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 44, no. 4, 1993, pp. 573-586.

Estrem, Heidi. “Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity.” Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, 2015, pp. 19-20.

Lillis, Theresa. “Writing as Everyday Practice.” The Sociolinguistics of Writing, 2013, pp. 75-99.

Lunsford, Andrea. “Writing Addresses, Invokes, and/or Creates Audiences.” Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, 2015, pp. 20-21.