For almost 40 years, our university's first year writing program has included a shared outcome: "Students will appreciate the capacity of writing to change oneself and the world." This outcome, unlike our more typical composition goals concerning writing processes, rhetorical acumen, and critical research abilities, had never been assessed. Based on survey data collected from first year writing students (n=145) during the Spring 2020 semester, this article offers a student-generated construct of what "writing to change oneself and the world" meant to students at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore how this nebulous outcome helps us better understand the ways students situate themselves in enacting change as well as the productively uncertain relationship between self and world for student writers. We also consider how the outcome's open-endedness creates space for meaningful, writing-adjacent learning.