Growth as a Writer - End of Semester One

           This semester in College Comp has really affected my writing. After cranking out four essays and a language presentation, along with five critical analyses, a reader/writer profile, various journal entries, a cultural event review, and other miscellaneous free writing, I have learned a lot about my writing and myself.

            After reviewing my Reader/ Writer Profile from August, I realized that my strength is most certainly NOT being able to write a presentable paper in a pinch. I need revision time! The one paper I had to write in a pinch (the culture essay), I got a C on. I don’t know what I was thinking. I now think my biggest strength is getting down to the bottom of things in research; I will dig and dig and dig until I find what the truth is. My weakness is exactly what I said was my strength: speedwriting.

            I think my writing has best improved by making my writing more interesting to read, I think my persuasive essay is much more interesting than my personal narrative from the beginning of the semester. However, this might be because I think just really find sex education interesting, but I have really made an effort to make my writing more interesting for the reader, and not just for me. I feel like the biggest mistake I find myself repeating is trying to write last minute, often either because I’m busy or don’t take advantage of time I have earlier in the assignment.

            I use most steps of the writing process, especially various drafts, sometimes up to three separate documents basically saying the same thing but with different wording. I do need to spend more time on revision, and let go of the fact that not all of my first drafts are perfect, because most of them are really, really bad and need serious overhauling before they get turned in.       

            Showing versus telling is continuing to be difficult for me, but I think I did it best in the personal narrative in my descriptions of Venice and the Right-Angled Woman. I tried to put the reader on the islands, actually looking at this woman, instead of just having a sketchy mental image from my not-so-great telling. I think I didn’t do this very well in my culture essay, and that probably contributes to why I didn’t get a fabulous grade: I basically just described my views on death and burial practices. I didn’t really know how to put the reader into a position of being dead, but I think if I was given the opportunity to re-do this, I would definitely give it a better shot.

1.     I think my very best piece of writing was my personal narrative, and not just because I got a 94% (of which I am very proud, thank you Mrs. Brownlee), but because I had a lot of emotion going into it. I felt sorrow for the woman and her physical predicament, guilt for not helping her, and a decent amount of confusion. How could this poor woman be almost immobile and begging for coins in one of the most beautiful places on earth? I went about writing this piece to looking at the pictures my mom and I took while there, to trigger some memories of the actual city itself. The best paragraph is where I describe the poor and use her as the main example and focal point of the essay, and the worst paragraph is probably the super short conclusion. I needed to find a way to wrap up my feelings about the woman.

2.     The most difficult piece was probably the persuasive, because I had such a hard time finding information on sex education in LPS, which I needed to able to persuade the district to change their policy to include a more comprehensive approach. I couldn’t persuade them to change it if I didn’t know what they already did. While I eventually found enough information to write my dang paper, I had very little time left before it was due. Whoops.

3.     I would do some serious overhauling of the culture essay. It wasn’t put together well, needed more information, and the intro (“death is like a casserole”) was weird and strange. At the time, I thought it would grab the reader, but now I think it would just make them go: “What the heck. NOT reading this.”

While I’ve put a lot of time into this class and have missed countless hours of watching television and relaxing, I am very proud of all I’ve accomplished this semester, and I’m really glad I decided to take the class. I think I would have perished of boredom in anything else. I’ve really learned about myself as well. I learned I couldn’t crank quality things out at the last minute (which is what I’m still trying to do now, writing this in 3^rd hour before it’s due. Not my fault though, I had to work all weekend. (Okay, it’s totally my fault. Should have worked on it Friday.)) I’ve also learned I work best when I don’t have distractions such as everything on my computer…. I need to turn off the wifi when I work, or else I’ll never get anything done on time!