Reflective Essay
Throughout the year I have had many struggles when it comes to writing essays but ultimately I feel like the progress that I’ve made makes all those struggles worth it. Although I am not done progressing as a writer I feel as if I’ve came a long way and there’s only more room to go as the years go on. This essay will review my strengths and weakness throughout the year, how I feel about writing, which pieces are my best and which are my worst, my development of a writer, how an professional author influenced my writing, how I understand certain terms and how I view myself and the world.
My view of writing before beginning this term was that I did not like writing, I felt like it took a long time and I didn’t want to spend time writing a paper. I always wrote because I had to for class, I never wrote for fun. Although I still feel the same way as this term is coming to an end I do feel as If it’s become easier for me to write and it doesn’t take me as long as it used to. Throughout the term my view of writing has changed a little bit, I like to write when it’s on specific topics that I feel that I can relate to and enjoy writing about. It seems like when you’re writing on something you actually want to write about its easier to come up with ideas. My writing seems to flow easier and my thoughts are easier to put on paper. My work was influenced by the graphic novel Chew I feel like when writing the essay on this graphic novel and helped me analyze specific frames and to look for the details in picture that an author may provide. It also helped me develop the skills necessary to be able to look at a picture or a music video and be able to write an essay on specific topics based on the piece.
Although I feel like I improved on my writing a lot not all of these essay will show the best of my writing skills. The first few essays were not easy and came with a lot of learning. I think that my best work would have to be the research paper, which is one of the last papers we wrote. I feel like this is my best work because I spent a lot of time trying to make sure all the sources had a sufficient amount of information. I also spent the most time on this essay compared to the other ones. Since this is the last essay I also feel like this reflects my improvement throughout the course with grammar, mechanics, thesis, conclusion, and development of my body paragraphs. My weakest writing would have to be the diagnostic essay, because it was the first writing that I did as a college student and it really showed all my flaws as a writer. It shows how I need improvement on all the areas I feel like I conquered in the research paper.
On the other hand I feel like my strongest and weakest work go hand to hand with my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. My strengths as a writer is that I usually don’t have issues with my ideas flowing right onto the paper. A lot of writers might experience writers block but that hardly happens to me. Most of the time if I complete an outline and have a plan it’s easier for me to write. I also think one of my strengths is writing quickly, I usually don’t take long on a paper even with the research paper I had it done early. One of my weakness as a writer is that I need to work on my grammar and my mechanics. A lot of the grammar rules that I should know I don’t know. This weakness has cause me to lose a lot of points on certain essay. I think even after this term is over I still need great improvement on learning all the grammar rules and be able to write to my full potential. I do believe that I can trace my development as a writer this term, I think it’s obvious in each and every essay. As I wrote more often the more my writing skills improved.
Furthermore I feel that I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer by pushing myself to the limits. I learned that I can write at a college pace, I’ve never had to write that amount of essay in that amount of time. In high school that were more spread out over a longer time period. I also learned that when writing an outline for each paper I seem to be able to write at a better pace and my ideas flow right onto the paper. Before the term begin I knew these things could help me but in high school my teachers never made me think it was really that important, coming to college and learning the proper way to write a paper will help me be successful in the long run. I would define the term audience before coming to this class as the person or people your writing your essay for, who’s going to be reading the essay. I would define purpose as the reason why you’re writing the essay, to inform, educate, etc. I would define voice as your voice in the writing and are you writing in first person or otherwise. I feel like at the end of the term I still define those words the same, before the term began I had a pretty clear understanding of what those terms meant.
In fact this class has changed who I am when it comes to what I think about writing. This class changed my view on writing a lot, before this class I hated writing and I just did it because I had to not because I was interested in the topic. Now that I’ve taken this class I look at a lot of articles, videos, and books differently. This class also helped me improve on major areas in my writing.
Nonetheless even though throughout the year I’ve struggled in many different areas ultimately this class has opened my eyes to new ways to write and has helped me improve my writing skills in a major way. There is clear development in each essay the proves that I’m improving as a writer. This class has opened my eyes to getting to know how to write the proper way.
writing to share my voice 