Throughout my academic career I have been assigned to do various types of writing assignments. These assignments have ranged from factual, researched based writing to creative fictional stories. In my senior year of highschool I was in an environmental research class. For this class, the major assignment was to write a 20 page research paper on a topic related to the environment. The assignment was very daunting, for I had never written a paper even close to 20 pages, so in order to do the assignment efficiently and correctly, I had to organize my thoughts and ideas. First I had to find a topic which had enough research and content so I would be able to expand on it in order to meet the parameters of the assignment. I also had to do extensive research to back up my paper with evidence and statistics because this was a scientific paper. Another challenge was incorporating the research into the paper in a manner that made sense. I wrote the paper by organizing the information into cause and effect and then placing the data afterwards to strengthen my points. Also because of the sheer length of the assignment, I had to elaborate and go deeper on my main ideas. As for my creative writing paper, I had to take a completely different approach. I found that choosing a topic to write about to be more difficult because there was no outside sources to incorporate into the paper. Rather than facts and research, the content had to come from my own imagination. The organization of the paper was very different as well. The assignment was to write a fictional story, so the content would be organized chronologically. Due to the radically different natures of both assignments, I had to make different preparations and take different approaches in order to meet the goal.
As for this semester, I will be needing to write an analysis paper which compares and contrasts to texts to one another. My purpose is to analyze and point out the similarities and differences of the ideas in each text. I will be using the psychology documents that we have been studying in class. This assignment is very relevant to our writing in class because the purpose of both writings is to analyze and understand the text at a deeper and more concise level.
The two most influential and arguably most important papers I have written in my career as a student so far would the eleventh grade interdisciplinary research paper and my personal college essay. Both are incredibly different at their essence; however they do share meager similarities. The predominant similarity in both of these exalted works was that I needed to provide endless examples and evidence of claims that I made in order prove a point to my reader/audience. I recall being told that both of these works were interesting and engaging, however they were pervaded with many arbitrary claims and not enough support. This was a recurring theme in both pieces, however they were augmented to the point they were solidified claims. Since these papers; from the core, are so different from each other, it would be easier to explain the disparity between them. Since one is an “interdisciplinary paper” which is based upon factual occurrences and historical events while the other is more of a personal anecdote with emotions and feelings, the primary contrast between the two would be the tone in which they are written. The research paper was about World War 1, so it was very informative yet apathetic. It had no excitement or reaction; it was just a factual paper used to educate readers. The college essay however, was an otherworldly experience, feelings and thoughts that a person cannot really explain but only experience firsthand.
An event I’m actually looking forward to writing about would be a concert I must attend for my music class. I’ve only been to one previously and I really enjoyed it. My audience would be my music professor, Mr. Menillo. The context would be a musical analysis on what I hear during the concert. My message and/or purpose would be how the composition of many different instruments from completely different families all contribute and make one harmonious and melodic noise. The document that will be used will be whatever I hear that night. Personally, I don’t see a major difference between the writing that will be done after the concert in comparison to the writing we do in this class. Primarily in this English class we do a lot of analyzing and critical thinking about essays and pieces of literature. The same will be done in music (various instruments.) However some can say the real difference between the two is that the concert is aural while the writing in this class is not.