Throughout the course, my writing has actually improved quite a bit. That being said, I am not the best writer and I procrastinate a lot. I am also a perfectionist so it is hard to be happy with my work, and I won’t submit it unless I’m happy. All of that combined is why some of my assignments have been late, but what I can promise is that is the best I am able to do at the moment. It has been hard to adapt this semester, but being able to take the time I need to write the assignments instead of rushing them and putting in half-effort has helped me tremendously in improving my skill. There are a few things that I am pretty confident in now: I am pretty good with grammar and punctuation in my essays and never have to worry about it too much. Additionally, I always make sure to relate the point I make or the evidence I use back to the main thesis. I think this class has definitely helped with that because it defined a good and specific thesis statement which helps me connect the evidence easily.
On the other hand, I definitely am not confident in my writing and have a long way to go, but I’m planning to get there at some point in the near future. A lot of my problems come from my being unsure of the connection to the prompt. For example, a lot of the time I get worried that my writing is choppy/incohesive and doesn’t make sense altogether. Thankfully this has a pretty easy fix, I just have to work on being focused on the topic and learn what is acceptable. I also want to be more engaging in my essays; I inform pretty well but it is obvious my writing is just a paper as opposed to something that is supposed to change people’s views on something. This applies to basically all of my essays, but I feel like my first essay about the fair was really static, especially since it was supposed to be a descriptive essay. Rewriting it, I would go more in-depth with the detail and try to fully emerge the reader in the writing. I still need to improve upon this skill and will do so by researching engaging essays and learning what I am missing.
My process in writing has changed a lot throughout the course, especially since it is a different style of writing than I’m used to. I enjoy the writing we’ve done this semester more because it has more variability and is not as limited by the evidence/elaboration you can use. Plus, it is closer to the research papers and things the real world requires. My writing process still starts out the same, I set a plan with a thesis and a few main ideas. If that didn’t work or I couldn’t think of anything, I used to just get stuck and not be able to continue for a while, but now I start to free-write for 5 minutes about anything I know about the topic and see where it goes from there. Free-writing has helped me a lot with starting off a writing piece, which is especially hard for me so just having that go-to is very comforting and beneficial. Since we have a writing portfolio with all our own article summaries, this class makes it easy to find evidence to advance the point I am trying to make, and I will try to do that for future classes in order to help make writing easier. My elaboration skills have also improved because I explain how the evidence connects to my current argument and then immediately connect it to my main point and the overall thesis, averaging out to about 50% evidence and 50% elaboration. Overall, my writing process has changed quite a bit and has helped me start my writing faster and easier than ever before.
In sum, this class has substantially improved my writing skills and I look forward to improving them more. The most important thing I will take away from this is the free-write method and the thesis statement template. With these, I will continue to work on my writing and connection to the piece, as well as my engagement with the readers. One major piece that I would want to rewrite is the creative writing assignment. I don’t necessarily do well with broad prompts and creativity so it wasn’t very engaging or focused. With the new skills I have and will gain, I would make this piece more transformative and appealing to the reader. But regardless of everything I need to work on, I guarantee that I put 100% effort into my writing submissions.
You are a good writer, Sofia, and putting in the good work to get better! I hope we’ll have the opportunity to work together again soon!