Graduation Speech : My Writing

Throughout the course of this semester, I have continuously grown as a writer. Prior to taking this course, I had little experience or knowledge when it came to writing. I used to struggle with forming my thoughts into writing, let alone a paper. I was never confident with what I wrote. My writing had no greater purpose other than the assignment. My writing process included: writing my paper, proofreading it, and turning it in. Once the paper left my hands, it also left my mind. Throughout this course we worked with others, visited the writing lab, wrote critiques, and we were able to revise our papers. I believe that all of this is has caused me to grow greatly as a writer.

Nine years ago, I never could have imagined I’d be writing this essay. I was a senior in high school, and, like the rest of my classmates, I was apprehensive about the future. Unlike my classmates, I felt like I had missed the proverbial “you need to get your life together” message. I watched my classmates apply to colleges, their majors already decided and their future careers mapped out. While I was an above average student, I felt I lacked the decisiveness my classmates seemed to have. I did not feel passionate about a career or even a field of study. I felt defective. This was compounded by the financial strain I knew attending college would have on my family. It seemed wasteful to try to “find my passion” at school while squandering

With this being my first year in college I expect my skills and relationship with writing to improve drastically this semester. Along with improving my skills I hope to accomplish my goals of being more confident in my writing because I tend to second guess myself. Also I have a habit of worrying that my words wont come out the way I would like them to. I hope to

The first day I walked into Freshman Composition I had the idea that everything assigned was going to be extremely frustrating and difficult, as this is a college class. Equally important, my expectations for the class was to earn at least a B, further my writing abilities, and learn more about college. As the semester started, I noticed that my writing was not at the college level and I needed to learn how to improve it. Along with improving my writing, I was also able to learn about college life. With this essay turned in and handed back, I began to realize my writing needed practice and critiquing. Furthermore, I gave myself goals to achieve in Freshman Composition, I have learned useful tools to improve my writing, and I have learned more

In previous years, at my high school, we were given the opportunity to be present in an elementary school classroom. For an hour each day, a group of us would ride to the elementary school to help out teachers that needed an extra hand in regards to maintaining their classroom, and allowing them focus more on their lessons instead of housekeeping responsibilities. Being surrounded by elementary age students for these few years really helped me develop deep love and passion for teaching young children. Life set me on a different career path as I attended Georgia Tech last year in pursue of a Business Degree. Throughout the year, as I sat in my business classes, doing my best to pay attention, but I could just tell that my heart was not into all that the business world had to offer. All along, I knew that my heart belonged in the classroom, and after careful consideration, I decided to transfer to the University of North Georgia at Dahlonega. Education 2130, was the first education class I had the opportunity to take, and it required 20 hours of field experience. My first collegiate field experience was nothing short of enlightening, and allowed me to immerse and expand my knowledge in the education world.

When I look back at my writing before having any college experience, I can see that I had a lot to work on. I can say that I was never really a big fan of writing anything much less essays. Even when I was younger, I just did not have a great big interest in writing. This was because I felt that I could not elaborate as well as others. I was not use to having to write anything really, but I now feel that I have a better grasp on the steps that I need to take to get my writing on the level that it needs to be.

Over the course of this semester I have became a much better writer. One area specifically where I have improved my writing skills is my approach to each paper. In the beginning of the semester, I knew what I wanted to say in my papers, but I didn't know how to state them in words on paper. This made me very frustrated and often caused me to procrastinate my papers until that last minute. As the semester progressed I learned from my past mistakes and ended up getting a better grade on every single one of my papers. This gave me confidence in myself, and made approaching my papers a lot easier.

During this past semester in senior composition, I have learned how to properly write an essay. In the first semester of my senior year, I took creative writing with Mrs. Leese; I learned how to write stories and how to find books that I would actually like to read. That class got me to enjoy writing and when I found out this class was going to be all essays, I was not very ecstatic. In reality, I loved this class and everything I was taught in it because now I am able to use it for the better. In senior composition, I believe that my writing improved greatly because of the vocabulary I learned, the topics that I picked, and the punctuation/grammar I used.

Throughout life, writing has been one of the major struggles I faced in order to succeed as well as others. Growing up, I would envy success from others, and I would wonder why I wasn’t better than them and why I couldn’t accomplish as much. Therefore knowing my weakness, I worked hard all of middle school to avoid the image that others placed me in, based on the fact that I didn’t do better than others. In high school I tried to avoid it, and it became easier to do as well, but as I arrived to college I wasn’t ready to all of the new expectations that surrounded me. Therefore, I have begun by taking classes that were the perquisites to help my writing improve. The first class I took was English 60B. That class wasn’t as difficult as I imagined and it taught the skills I would need for English 50. After I took English 50, I challenged myself by actually doing research and having to improve my organizational skills. Now being in English 1A, and although it is

I believe my writing has improved to a certain degree. As look, at where I first started. I have to say that, this course has really been a challenge for me. My time management has been completely off, however, I know that working on written assignments requires time. If there is something that I need to improve on, in order to further my writing abilities, it's definitely understanding the time is takes to write an essay, how to prepare and organized my assignments. I look at new ways now to organize my drafts, thoughts and the whole writing process itself. Brainstorming has definitely been beneficial as well as using bullet points to break down my essay. I notice that I tend to over write my paragraphs. A classmate of mine had suggested

Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.

I believe I have achieved most of the course learning objectives as I pass this class with a c or higher. I undertook the writing process we learned in class and it has helped me become a better writer. Before I entered my freshman year of college I didn’t know how to write. But as I undertook the writing process I was taught in class I now know how to write. First when it came to writing my assignment papers for my class I grabbed a notebook and did prewriting . I brainstormed a list of ideas for my papers. I then had a plan on everything I was going to write about. I then sit down and write my first draft. I make sure my first paragraph is a strong

It does not matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop. -Confucius

At the beginning of this class I was nervous on how this semester will go and whether or not I will succeed to my fullest potential in English. With that in my mind I still was trying my best to work at getting better, despite how much it made me cringe at the thought of it. My perspective of writing began to change as time went on, the assignments were based on interesting topics which made it a bit bearable for me. I’ve learned that you have to make the steps to get to the perfect paper. A paper requires you to brainstorm, make an outline, and writing your rough draft to get that feedback you need before finishing up that final draft. During this class I have also learned where to put my thesis and that I don’t need to have that three point subtopics of what you should talk about. The writing length started getting longer and I was a bit skeptical on how I can get to the word count or what will I talk about within my papers, but I have