10 Weeks

          In the past, I have never thought writing was my strongest skill. Throughout this course, I have been able to better identify why this is true. I have not only gotten feedback from my professor, but also from my peers. This, in addition my own reflections, has really made me more self aware of the mistakes, or the lacking necessities in my writing. I found that one of my biggest weaknesses in writing is my lack of specificity and examples. In my first essay for this course, which was about a piece of writing advice that I could apply to my own writing and life, I found it difficult to think of what specific evidence I needed right away. I now see that it was important to include information about what specifically needs to be cut out from my writing in order for my point to make sense to reader. Additionally, towards the end of the paper, I needed to include more personal experiences about why cutting out essentials was not a necessity for my life and why music, what type specifically, and entertainment is important to me. One of the challenges here, that I am trying to overcome but putting myself in the place of the reader and not myself, is figuring out what the reader needs to know in order for my writing to have clarity. I often skip over important details because it seems obvious to me, even though it would never cross the readers mind. 

          While I believe that I have made significant process with making sure to include details and personal information, I know that I still have a lot of work to do in the future. I think one thing that may help me with my writing, not only with evidence based writing, but also with stylistic writing, is pouring all of my thoughts onto the page without really thinking about how it is going to turn out. I tried to take this approach while writing and editing my pieces for the final portfolio. I find that it allows me to follow my train of thought, which is often more detailed and frankly more interesting than a lot of the work I am used to writing. Instead of the almost stiff, “academic” writing that I feel like I have been trained to do in preparation for AP English tests and research papers in my past. I have never felt free to, or even allowed to, write how I think or feel until this class. Adapting to the change was difficult, as my first paper, and even still in the first draft of my second paper had this almost rigid feeling, but I believe that I have opened up more as a writer during the process of working on my final portfolio. 

          For the final portfolio specifically, I chose to work on pieces that I thought I could develop the most, specifically in a stylistic way. I believe that by choosing the topics that were the most personal, like my obsessions and the six word sentence piece, where I wrote about a story from my life, I could write in a more passionate manner. The piece I am most proud of is the six word story, that I developed to be an introduction to the story of my trip to the Czech Republic. I enjoy this piece the most because I truly enjoy were I decide to take it, or rather how I include it in the final version seen in the portfolio. By putting the actual assignment as an introduction, it serves as a hook, without being one sentence that may or may not be substantial enough to actually draw attention. Keeping the reader in the dark in the beginning keeps them interested and hopefully sparks curiosity that will later be explained in the rest of the story. Additionally, I also believe that I did a good job at providing specific examples from my trip without actually citing any information, but rather by drawing from my personal experience. In my other work, the piece about obsessions, I tried to put in specifics by saying what exactly it was that I was obsessed with, instead of just the broad idea of that particular obsession. Each piece, including the revision of my second essay is what I believe to be the best examples of how I have grown as a writer throughout this course.