Every year, I notice a slight change in my reading and writing skills. Upon reflecting on all my previous assignments this year, there’s a growth in my writing ability from my very first assignment to my most recent.  

Every writing class I’ve ever taken has been a shortcoming for me. I was never gifted with the skills of writing. My writing style is very cookie-cutter and generic. Before this class, I had problems expanding my sentences or even identifying what type of sentences I was writing. This would hurt the clarity of my paper and it made it even harder for me to reach the number of pages required for the assignment. With help from my professors and my tutor, I would learn how to use my sentences effectively and how I can expand my ideas to reach any writing goal or requirement.

My main issue was always getting a paper started. It seems like such a small issue, but this problem affects me on every single assignment, no matter what class I take. It would usually take me until a day or two before the due date to get started. I learned many new techniques that helped me combat this and make well-needed changes in the quality of my papers. One thing that I learned from all my papers is that it is difficult to get to the root of what you want to discuss. You might know what you want to talk about in your paper but going deep and pulling more points and topics is very difficult. This is apparent in both my drafts for my exploratory essay and critical analysis essay. 

The very first essay for this class was the exploratory essay. This was the first opportunity to showcase my writing abilities. When I started brainstorming this essay, I tried to do as much outline as possible. This photo showcases my original outline for the essay. Some topics made it onto the essay, but others were left on the drawing board. The main topic I chose for this essay was society, but I narrowed it down to serial killers and how murder affects society. I think I initially hit the mark, but towards the end, it is clear I was not able to expand my ideas anymore.

The sentences I highlighted below are examples of ideas that were abruptly finished. I also could not figure out a conclusion to wrap up my ideas for the end of my draft. So, I finished the draft with an idea that I wanted to expand on in the final draft. This idea was statistics on homicides and cold cases. Submitting the first draft felt good, but there were still tons of things I had to change or improve. The final two images are some slight changes that I wanted to make to the essay.

The final draft of my exploratory essay still did not feel like my greatest piece of work. There were some elements that I experienced for the first time. I’ve never done an assignment in MLA format, so it was very new to me. I never did this format in high school. So, I had to learn how to format this essay correctly while trying to hit every requirement. Another thing I had to learn was to create my bibliography with citations. For all my previous writings, I’ve always cited my sources in the text, so I never used a reference page. I’ve made countless revisions from start to finish. I’ve received feedback from my tutor, my professors, and some of my classmates. 

My critical analysis essay focused on the story Owl Creek Bridge and the death penalty. This draft was very difficult to expand on towards the end. I used what I learned from the critical analysis essay and used the supplementary reading as a source to further my ideas. It started well, but I got lost in the material. One of the main “do not” aspects of this paper was to not summarize the story. This essay was supposed to be written assuming the reading knows exactly what story I am discussing. This was harder than I expected. I learned that diving straight into my ideas was a great way to avoid summarizing. 

The draft is the foundation of every writing, but feedback is essential to help strengthen it. Without revision and feedback, there is no way that anyone’s paper would be as good as it is. I would like to thank everyone who has peer-reviewed, read over, and left a comment on my writings. One of the feedback comments I have always received from my work is that it feels rushed. After reading those papers back, it’s clear that it does. I’m always working while on a time constraint and it hinders the quality of my writing. I also struggled to grasp more information from my source text or topic. I worked to fix this in my most recent essay, my narrative.

When I learned that I would be doing a narrative, I was relieved. In my academic history, I always saw my narrative writings as one of my strongest types of writing. I’ve done many narratives in my middle school. I credit this style for helping me develop my writing skills. It showed me that I can talk about myself or an experience in my life and it doesn’t have to be boring. When I read the prompt for this assignment, I was a bit stunned. This narrative required an event where I’ve experienced some sort of death and how it has changed me. For the first week, I couldn’t think of any deaths ever occurring around me. So, I started my draft with the substitute prompt; what event has changed your life, or what moment in time did you feel you were reborn? every account that I could possibly pull from my memory that would be relevant and useful for the paper. 

When I composed my narrative draft, I had one goal I wanted to hit. This goal was to make the narrative as vivid as possible. It was one of the requirements, but I wanted to make sure the reader felt like they were experiencing the event with me. I’ve highlighted some vivid imagery I used to help the story feel more alive. After a couple of reads, I believed I accomplished my goal for the draft. After receiving feedback and reading it again with a fresh mind, I thought to myself that I might have gone a little heavy with the imagery. It was good throughout the draft, but I gave imagery to scenes that were already vivid. This made the narrative get drowned in sensory details and not enough story details. I made sure to cut this down in my final version.

The final draft of my narrative was not without any bumps along the road. When I opened my document draft, I struggled with how to expand on the story. I later realized that I was struggling because this event did not affect me in a way that would allow me to write five pages about it. So, I decided to just scrap the paper and start over. Then right before I opened a new document, it hit me. I did experience a death around me. So, I used my draft, which was an experience that connected to my new story, and used it as my ending. Now, all that was left for me to do was write about it. My fingers could not stop typing. I went over the required pages because I had so much to talk about. 

Every essay I’ve written in this class has taught me something that I can use for the rest of my papers in the future. Thank you for reading this far and watching my growth as a writer in this class!