My thoughts on Writing...

I always thought writing was easy. Whatever was inside of my head I put on to paper and that was my writing for the day. I also enjoyed writing; writing what I felt inside and being able to express it was good for me. It was not until this class I realized writing is so much more than “just writing”. The majority of the writing I have been doing was in reflective form. I would write what I thought and felt, and I thought that’s all there was to writing. Taking this course however led me to see the different aspects and styles of writing and showed me what true writing is all about.

One of the new styles of writing I encountered through the course was the observational writing. As I wrote the work, I often caught myself making remarks and opinions on the concert. I found out that it was actually difficult for me to write a straight observational paper. My simple mindset on writing led me to believe it was all about self-expression; yet this observational essay was all about thorough examination. I was bewildered! Even as I wrote, my head was telling me to write just on observation, but my heart wanted to reflect and comment. A similar happening occurred with the rhetoric essay as well. Taking on the professor’s advice to choose a topic of some interest, I chose to write on a picture regarding Columbine. Once again, my heart chose to reflect and express on the picture when I should’ve been analyzing the different styles. In honesty, my first rhetoric essay I had to throw away in whole because it was all reflective and none rhetoric. I even considered doing another media; something less interesting so that I wouldn’t be as tempted to turn the paper into a reflective essay (Even towards the end of the essay, I ened on a reflective note "'Disregarding how the collage was made and how it was effective seems to be put aside within the simplicity of the message:Where have all the Children gone! Across our land – COLUMBINE AND ALL THE OTHERS LOST'"). As people say ‘old habits die hard’, I still caught myself even towards the end of the course often reflecting on everything, but this eye opening experience to new styles of writing truly gave me new insight to what writing was capable of. Not only were we able to express what we thought, through writing we were able to break down anything to its purest, simplest form. From there we were able to analyze, evaluate and assess on the topic from the basics of the basics. Writing wasn’t a tool for expression; writing was a tool to open up eyes and ears to new gateways of thought.

As difficult for me as it was for me to make this transition (a new change in writing), I can’t help but think how precious this opportunity has been for me. As business major and a current banker, I am led to many situations where I have to write. If something goes wrong within the branch, I have to either correct the matter, or write a nice little letter explaining why it went wrong. I always knew that my reflective form of writing was going to run into its limit. Simply writing what I felt on a situation was not going to take me far when it’s an issue dealing with money. This English course gave me the tool to fix this problem. Now I was able to write with these different strategies in mind. I found the letters that I write more professional and much more persuasive than how it had been before.

This new sense of writing would not have been possible without the help from my peers and my professor. Because of my tendency to write reflections, what I considered rhetorical or observational was often reflective. I wouldn’t find out how confused I was, until I peer reviewed other’s work. Out of everything in this course, the most valuable tool of ‘learning to write’ was to work with other peers. Each writer has their strengths and weaknesses. People usually discover their strengths with ease, but their weaknesses are rarely found. Working with other writers allowed all of us to compare and improve. More than once, I found work that was very different with mine. From there, the two of us were able to progress as better writers by seeing what the other person does and how they do it. Even from this point, working with the professor gave us even more room to grow. As novice writers, we would run into walls and hit our limits on whatever we write. The professor for this course read our work before submission and showed us how to improve. Getting help from peers and the professor alike; there was no way I couldn’t improve as a writer.

All in all, this English course was very worthwhile. I discovered a new writer within and I’m very satisfied with the result. I hope to continue to strive as a writer. I’m always going to write throughout my life whether it’s my major or not. Why not write well when you have to write anyway?