The main thing I was able to take away from this class was that all writing should served a purpose.  Having that purpose makes your writing more coherent, while making it easier to fill a designated word count.  For me, It used to always be about filling that word count no matter what.  I’ve always known what I was capable of writing, yet I never found myself writing like myself when it came to papers for school.  That was one of the habits I had to break if I wanted to properly convey what I was trying to say.  Looking back at what I had produced for this class, I can see that I had to omit a lot of what I wanted to say due to the restrictions placed on time and length.

For the topics I chose to write about, I was never really able to get across everything I had in my mind.  Whether that is attributed to fear of being judged, or simply due to a lack of motivation, what I ended up with was deemed good enough for this class, so I just went with it.   The more I looked back on it, the writing seemed to get more wordy with each time.  My writing style is inherently wordy, but that first project was something else.   I know for a fact the reason I got off to a rough start on the Rhetorical Analysis project was due to rust and falling back on bad habits.  Having to get back into the habits of going to school made me focus on fulfilling the word count which took away from the main purpose of what I was supposed to do.  Not only was it my first time really analyzing something in a rhetorical manner, but it was also the first time I really fell short of what I wanted to do.  If there was anything I took away from writing that first paper, it would have to be that it was a wake-up call.

Going into the Narrative argument, I knew I had to do better.  Everything was set up in a manner that would allow me to succeed.  There was a portion that would allow me to write like how I would want, and let me argue a side to something I have always believed in.  Writing narratives have always been something that came easy to me, but having it paired with a research part of it made me feel a little uneasy.  Transitioning was probably the hardest part in the whole piece.  Going from narrative, to research, and one point to another was definitely the most time consuming part. This part of my writing was what I really wanted to focus on improving since it has always been something I have struggled with.  While I ended up getting the grade that I did, I never really felt like I was fully into it for the reasons I provided in my writing.

As much as I enjoy writing narratives, I’ve never embraced writing non-fiction.  I’ve always enjoyed writing fiction, but always lacked the same level of excitement when writing non-fiction.  When it comes to fiction, I have the ability to write whatever I want and not have to worry about any external factors like fact-checking and properly citing my sources.  If given the chance, I would never write non-fiction again.

Control is something that I value a lot.  Not only in my writing, but how I carry myself outside of it.  I’ve never embraced the process of peer editing because I would have to relinquish a lot of the control I had on what I written.  It was now to be judged by someone who may take what I had written in a different light than what I had intended, but it was never really as bad as I thought it would be.  If going through the process in this class has done anything, it would have to be changing my opinion about it.  All the years of revision in my education prior have really been mediocre at best.  I never really gained anything from putting myself out there since all I would get back are these underlines and scattered words that had no meaning behind them.  I’ve learned to value the opinions of others more.  They are able to provide a perspective to things I would otherwise be unable to see.

I’ve seen myself become more fearless when it comes to my writing.  I no longer cared about what people really thought about my writing.  I still valued their criticism, but other than that, I couldn’t have cared less as to what their opinions were.  That may still be an area I need to work on, but for now, it should suffice.  I also saw myself being more willing to showcase how I really want to write.  If my feelings toward a topic were that strong that it might shed me in a negative light, then I would only try to tone it back until it sounded less like an emotional rant.  While I’m still not ready to take that leap of fully being myself in my writing, I’ve definitely seen myself make strides in doing so.