Throughout this semester, I’ve learned a lot in this English class. In my last semester English class, I had a professor that strictly taught us the standard writing conventions and didn’t stress how important the process of writing is. I was there worrying about every little grammatical error ranging from punctuations to sentence structure to creating titles… However in this course, I learned to not be nervous or afraid to spill out all my ideas on my first draft. I learned that writing and ideas just came more naturally when I didn’t worry about every little detail. Instead, I wrote down every idea I had, no matter how random it was. At first, I struggled with this writing strategy as editing always consisted of making sure to have all the right ideas down on the first draft, so that editing was only fixing grammatical errors or organizational problems. During my first assignment with the cultural artifacts, I kept worrying that I wouldn’t have time to finish all my thoughts and fix all my grammar mistakes. However, as I moved onto my second draft I realized ideas just came more easily while grammar and structure wasn’t that big of a deal. By the final draft, I was more proud of how I ended up there rather than the piece itself. I started with a messy essay with half ideas to a second draft where I became more comfortable in just brainstorming on paper rather than just keeping it in my head. And finally to a product where the ideas are mostly fulfilled with evidence and analysis while having a structure that still flowed nicely.
When we were about to start writing our research paper, I was worried since I always never know what to write about or what to include in such a long paper. Writing the research proposal was helpful as they always are, but the fact that we spent time making an extended research proposal helped a lot. Usually after the proposal, I would jump straight into developing a full first draft, which was problematic as I was still trying to figure out what to include in the essay. However, working on that extended research proposal helped me flesh out my ideas and gave me an idea on how to start my writing. We then moved onto creating 20 research questions which was also useful as I now had a game plan. I felt that my first draft was relatively strong due to the process leading up to it.
This class taught me how important the revision process was whereas my other English classes haven’t stressed it enough. The conferences were probably the most pivotal part of my writing process. While I did have my ideas down and game plan in my head, the conference helped push my writing in the right direction and I received much needed criticism. Working as a group was helpful as hearing feedback from all of them kept helping me improve my writing. I would also run ideas by them and they would either politely shoot them down or push me to keep writing about it. Although I benefited from working in a group, there were also downsides as people sometimes didn’t do their work or didn’t communicate as effectively as I hoped for. For example, the presentation we did was poorly planned out as all of us did our own thing without consulting with others and someone did wrote their part minutes before we had to present. There were also two in the group that continuously disagreed and made work much more difficult.
When I was doing my labor logs, editing was much easier since I knew what to edit. Previously I would go into editing by just rereading my whole essay without a goal, other than to just improve my grammar and see if my ideas needed to be developed more. With the revision tasks, I knew exactly what I was looking for, which made editing more satisfying than tedious.
I’m honestly most proud of how much I’ve grown as a writer in this class. My thought process of writing has changed and in turn, I think it has made me a better writer. I’m also proud at my research paper and how much I’ve covered in it and how nicely it flowed. When I did research papers last semester, they were organized differently. The paper was divided into abstract, introduction, literature review, methods, discussion, and conclusion, which ultimately led me to just copy and paste a lot of information in a way that diminished my voice. Writing the research paper in this class allowed me to be more creative with how my ideas flowed, which in turn made my essay stronger.
However, there also many challenges that I face as a writer. For one, I don’t really enjoy writing as much as I want to. I just find them tedious and especially longer pieces like research papers require so much energy, time, and resources. I wish to overcome this distaste since my intended major and future career entails me to write business reports and summaries. This would force me to keep practicing my writing, particularly my analytical skills. I would have to keep the writing process I’ve learned in this class in mind as my first drafts will never be my final product. Another challenge I face is simply writer’s block. Whenever I start writing it takes hours if not days to come up with solid ideas for an essay. For that reason, I always find myself finishing my writing assignments last minute, not because I put them off last minute, but the thinking process just takes me forever. However, this class has definitely helped me spend less time stuck as I’ve learned to just use the first draft as a place to brainstorm rather than trying to write my first draft as if it was the final draft.