My experience as a writer before this semester of college writing one, was almost non-existent. The best training that I had before this class was an internship while I was preparing to separate from the Army. I had the opportunity to work for a marketing company in Fayetteville, NC called 219 group. My Army unit allowed me to do so, and ended up being a terrific experience. Most of my work involved social media marketing, but I was also able to write a few blogs that were posted on clients websites. The blogs were used to promote the websites Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The only basic requirement was to stress certain key words that I had to use repeatedly and since nobody read the blogs it was a perfect job for an intern. Besides the internship I did a little writing that was required for my job in the Army. The Army has a writing style that is very different from college writing or any essay writing. With very little experience and training in writing before my college writing class, what little writing I did was not the best quality. I had many faults and difficulties, too many to mention is a short essay. Although, I still have many difficulties as a writer, I have made significant improvements with just one semester of college writing. In the following paragraphs I will mention some of the writing projects that were completed during the semester and the revisions that I have made. I mention in this paper and provide in my Portfolio, three documents that show how
During my past writing experience, I have struggled with formulating and initiating interesting points of discussion, grammar, and transitions. I have often sat down to work on a paper and found myself completely drawing a blank on anything interesting to write about. Whether I am given a specific prompt or general topic to discuss, I constantly struggle with finding a starting point. Once I do, I become too focused on trying to create a poetic sounding paper, rather than focusing on the main discussion points. In some ways, focusing on making my papers poetic have added detail and depth to my writing. However, this frequently distracts me from my papers main theme. One of my biggest drawbacks with writing has always been proper grammar usage.
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe
Essay 1 was about a Mission Statement that I had to write for myself something personal which explains something that is truthful and explains who and what I am and what I am strving to achieve when searching my name “Brian Mamuyac”. What I did to prepare for this assignment was that our instructor gave us the prompt ahead of time and I created a rough draft and when we had to meet up in the computer room I just had to type up my essay and turn it in. The challenging part of this essay would be understanding the prompt because I had no idea what a Mission statement was and what I was supposed to do. For Essay 1 I was marked down for redundancy, repetition, grammar and spelling and also clutter. What I can do to prevent the errors in my next version would be to understand the prompt and directions more and have more ideas to write about myself.
College Composition has helped me grow tremendously as a writer. While I am still not where I want to be as a writer, Comp 1 has given me the push in the right direction that high school never did. When I was in high school I had about a month total of grammar over those 4 years so writing was not a big part of my life at that point. Due to that, I knew coming into Comp 1 that I would struggle to produce something worth reading at first. Through countless revisions and reflections on each paper I have learned so much about the process of writing in such a short time.
Can you consider myself to be a terrible writer? Most writers get inspiration from experiences, circumstance, or imaginations make a contribution in authors storyline. Each writers have their own style of writing since they all different messages, languages, and tone for the reader to actual take a position in the narrator’s writing. In a past even, when my grandfather is no longer with me, he has made a huge contribution in academic life.
Reading and writing has always created a sense of understanding for me in my art. Reading in the literal sense is a way that we understand text or symbols in our minds which in turn create meaning. Writing also in a literal sense is our way of communicating our knowledge and emotions to others through symbols in text. The human experience for all people includes communication and through reading and writing this experience is created. From the beginning of this course, my only prior experience with reading and writing were high school level course over literature and reading. I had an average level of rhetoric,reading,writing and language overall however, understanding the significance of these subjects was never put forth in such a way until I took this course. I discovered through this course that reading is a combination of not only our “visual information” but also our “nonvisual information”. My comprehension of reading has evolved from reading
English has always been an awkward subject for me. Growing up in a Russian speaking household, I always felt at a disadvantage compared to other students. Throughout high school and the start of college I chose to stray away from writing by pursuing a majority of math and science courses through engineering studies. I despised writing essays and I never enjoyed spending my time reading and writing. As someone who claims to be a logical thinker it was hard to translate my thoughts and opinions into writing. I tried escaping English any chance granted to me.
I’m a practiced freelance writer and editor, with experience working for numerous clients and sites. I have authored numerous blog posts, research papers, critiques, psychology and psychiatry, technical scientific articles, product descriptions, press releases, health articles and more.
My grandmother always told me that education was the key to all success. When I was a little girl, she taught me how to read bible stories and children books. She also taught me basic writing skills. When I was in elementary school, it was always easy for me to read and write, but that changed once I got in high school. Once I got in 10th grade, I always struggled with writing papers. I always felt that everyone could write essays with no problem, while it took me ten minutes to write one sentence. My mind would always go blank when it came to writing papers. I used to be confidence when it came to writing, but now I feel that I will never be able to write a good essay.
I have been in college for two years now, and I have been to two colleges. For my first semester of freshman year, I attended a college in North Carolina. I am not giving out the name of the college for obvious reasons but it was my dream school. Once I got there, I soon realized that being 19 hours away from home was not for me. I left after only one semester and now I am almost half way through my third semester at a community college in my town. In the fall, I will be transferring AGAIN to another four-year college, but this time it is only one hour away…18 hours closer than the first college I went to! Okay, okay…back on track. Although I had some awful times at the college in N.C., I did though, meet a wonderful human being. My
My first college writing experience consisted of several resumes and cover letters for the various work-study jobs that I applied to. Prior to that, I have constructed numerous essays where I primarily critiqued the literary works of many well-known authors. In junior year of high school, I critiqued the notable poetry of a unique author-- Wislawa Szymborska. The poetry Szymborska wrote was very intricate and rich in subliminal messages. Her poetry usually disregarded the use of rhyme, and instead focused on the sophisticated use of metaphors and allusions. In addition, I continued to evaluate other notable literary works in my senior year of high school. My English teacher instructed me to analyze the poetry of John Donne-- who focused on constructing short poems which reflected complex messages through the use of extended metaphors. I
I have written lots of stories and essays during my high school journey. I'm not an excellent writer, but I am a quick learner. The only time I write essays is for the school work. I seldom did anything out of school or writing for leisure. I am good at writing facts rather than essays. I always thought that writing is something that knowledgeable people with huge vocabulary do. And I am not, by any means, a Shakespear. I do not find writing to be natural, therefore find it very challenging.
The decision to return to college after a twenty year hiatus was a very intimidating one. Not only was I twenty years out of school and my study habits and routine long forgotten, but the world itself had changed enormously in terms of technology and everyday procedures. There were no such things as PC’s cell phones and yes the Internet back in the 1980’s. Having evolved with this technology made my return to college that much easier, yet I was still very apprehensive regarding the uncertainty of my success. I made the decision in an intuitive manner at this point and jumped in feet first not knowing what to expect and relying on my intelligence to get me through. The first semester I took extremely serious and managed to become a rational/linear
Throughout my middle school and high school years I have always been thinking about college; where I want to go, what I want to do, how I’m going to pay, etc. Something that I have never thought of has been the class work that I will be doing; I didn’t know there was a certain way to take notes in college, or a certain way to cite my sources, I didn’t even think about how I’m supposed to write essays.
After reading Chapters 1 and 2 in my textbook, I realized that completing this course would really take a lot of discipline and hard work. Additionally, I have become aware that I need to take a more serious step towards learning - especially time management - in order to achieve the goals of this program. Up until this moment, I have never thought I was in dire need of taking a composition course. I have always liked writing but apparently, college writing is a whole different arena. I feel slightly overwhelmed about what lies ahead; however, I do know that I have to carry on so I could have a better future.. In conclusion, realizing that I need to make a considerable amount of improvement in all aspects of learning - regardless of how anxious