the godroach speaks or "up and moved to canada"

I'm working on my PhD proposal/statement of purpose, largely by cannibalising old proposals on a similar topic. My writing style has changed dramatically in the last year. Maybe it's just the effect of writing another, say, 30,000 words in the last year, or of marking (and thus reading critically) two or three times that amount of text, or even a sign of my concerted effort to damn well argue something in every essay i wrote last semester. Or maybe I'm becoming a pushy north American.