Throughout this semester I have seen my writing change in many ways. Looking back to last semester I wrote one continuous essay about a topic that was very personal and it was very hard to not write it in a personal sense. This semester I wrote about the same topic but in two different ways. Both were not supposed to be personal and that was the hardest part about writing them. Mental health is a very close topic to my heart and research so much information on it was very eye opening. As I wrote my first essay I discussed the show 13 reasons why and the song Here. Both had to do with mental health awareness and social platform trends. As I listen to the song and watch different episodes I tried to find parts that were connected to each other. When I started to write I did not realize how I could not add key details that I needed. Because I had already known the show and song so well, it was hard to add information. It seemed like I was just adding parts that everyone would know. After rereading and editing it became clear to me that those parts that I had missed were indeed very important. It was also very hard to not think about my essay from last semester. It had felt like I was just rewriting what I had already submitted and it took a while to forget about everything I wrote before. While writing my first assignment it was very clear to me that I struggled in writing something formal and fact based. This also came to light when I wrote my second assignment. The topic was the same but it was only fact based. In my first drafts I spent a lot of time on adding a personal touch and then going back to fix this. Doing all the research and reading the work that I was finding it was clear that there was no personality in their writings and it was almost always some kind of study and then the analysis. I tried to add some personal touched but keep the essay formal. I also noticed that I struggled when it came to introducing a quote and ending the quote. Even though in class we discussed and spent time on the quote sandwiches, it took me a while I formulate this so-called sandwich. I had to look at each quote separately and create the sandwich before I would add it into my essay. With time it became easier to introduce the quote and close it off, and it opened my eyes that I needed to spend time working on adding quotes. From last semester to this semester I do feel that my writing has gotten better but still requires work because formal and fact-based essays are not my strong suit. I started looking at my work closer and analyzed each sentence before I looked at the whole paragraph as a whole. This semesters peer review was also much more helpful then last semesters peer review because we had bigger groups and spent more time looking at each detail as a group and with Seth Graves. The feedback that was generated by Seth and my group helped me expand my thoughts and look at what I was writing from a different prospective rather than looking at it with my personal opinions. Assignment two was much more difficult more me to write because it was the first time I had to write an essay that had to be based off of research and little on prior knowledge. When gathering my research, it was difficult to find people writing specifically on social media effects on mental health rather than just technology. It took many attempts to find concrete evidence that would support my main question. Much of the information I had crossed was just people stating their opinions rather then research based information. The revision tasks that were given to me were very helpful to see where I lacked while I was writing. It helped me edit both of my assignments and add the information that I myself couldn’t not find missing. When working on the third assignment I saw that for me it was much easier to create content because I had done all the research for it before but I did not have to add this research. The creative process of the third assignment was interesting to me because through the semester I had read my groups writing and when we all came together to create this movie with such different plots it was evident that we all had a common theme and it was easy to write about. When I was deciding what to write for my plot I had looked back into my essays from this semester and last and tried to mix all three essays in the process. It was very simple for me to write something that was fictional yet fact based because I did not have to include any of the facts.
From last semester to this semester I have seen my writing skills excel in certain parts and lack in others, but with work and editing and great feedback I feel like I had gotten better but still lack in some fields. While I wrote both essays this semester it was easy to see I need a lot of work for the semesters to come in all of my classes but I have gained the knowledge I needed to make my writing better.