My Writing Experience

A person can read and write a great deal in one day whether they realize it or not. Whether it be texting a friend or reading a textbook for a certain class, you are reading and writing constantly and a daily basis. What surprised me the most about the reading and writing that I did on Sunday was how much I am reading and writing on my phone. Whether I am texting to coordinate plans with a friend for the night or reading a random article I saw while reading a Facebook news feed, I am constantly reading and writing on my phone. I never considered it reading and writing when I used my phone, I just saw it as looking at my phone. Just staring at this four-inch screen for some sort of entertainment. What also surprised me was how much we read without noticing it. You can walk down State Street and you will be constantly reading by looking at stores, posters, or even words on a bus that is passing by. Our eyes and brains are looking at and reading words all the time.

While writing might seem like a simple task, it can be a daunting task for a lot of people. Sometimes it can be hard to express the ideas in your mind in the words of a paper. This results in a disconnect with what a writer may actually think. A great writer is one that can transform his thoughts into words perfectly. This is a craft that takes many years to perfect, which is why writing is troublesome for a lot of us. Many students also have had bad experiences with writing. Maybe they had a teacher that didn’t try to support them and their writing. They might not have ever gotten the help they needed and may feel that they are in a hole where their writing can’t get better. At this point, they just accept that their writing will never get better.

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.

English has never been my strongest topic nor has the writing process been easy when faced with writer block. This challenge made writing difficult at times in where I was unable to think what should be written next. In this portfolio, I include a variety of pieces in the growth in my abilities of overcoming this challenge as a writer. As I reflect back at the end of the semester on my work in the writing 01 course, I am able to see clearly how much have improved as a writer and display my growth. I have learned about myself in term of weakness and strength and learned from them. In this portfolio , I tried to show the presence of the different style of work I completed and the peer editing of this semester. And how the feedback that I receive

I became the literate person I am today by mostly writing, I write all the time and I do a little reading. What made me love writing was the fact I found an escape, not on an emotional level, but writing is something to help ease in my opinion. My personal writing has influenced me more than the writing I was assigned in school, I continued it outside of school as a choice of my own, once I started I never stopped. My viewpoint on reading is different than my viewpoint on writing, reading is not that bad but it can get boring. What made me feel different about reading from writing, is probably the fact, reading just takes time, like when I write, I write any and everytthing however I want. But, to read a book, I have to read it a certain way

My experience have been good but not so good. I'm not the best writer I struggle to get my ideas down.

Lacking experience in writing and reading, English is my most feared subject. It is the one and only vulnerable spot in my in my mind. I hate writing and I hated reading, other than sports pages in the newspaper or sports books. My earliest time that I started reading and writing was extremely abhorrent for me. Sometimes, you could even say that some of these experiences bothered me. It was quite hard because I wasn’t able to focus on what I need to do. I was even struggling to write my own name. The young mind that I had, it was so easy to get distracted on what I need to learn and also accomplish, especially for the future ahead of me.

Reflecting on my peers work, I noticed a wide variety of writing quality, It varied in length and quality. Comparing it my own I can’t say that my personal writing is better. Since the people ranged differently. Some of my peers writing was better than mine and others were better. I did realize that most people put in a lot of effort and comparing my writing to that it shows that I need to put in more time to get the quality of writing. Furthermore, I was surprised when there was a minimum of 500 words some people went beyond the requirements while other did it. During the debates, some individuals did put in the effort to make a good argument and that showed through in their mid-term. And since it was a group debate assignment a lot of experience and levels of writing came together to come up with the best outcome.

I have always been pretty successful in school; however, writing has always been one of my greatest weaknesses. The overwhelming pressure of coming up with what to say and how to say it is extremely stressful for me, and I typically give up on perfecting whatever assignment I am working on. Up until high school, my writing had accomplished just enough to pass me on to the next course. My experience at Savannah Arts Academy, however, inspired me to approach writing in a completely new way.

Growing up I always knew I loved to read. There was a time when I thought reading was just for school not for anything else. When I started to get into sports I started to enjoy reading sports magazines online articles, and that made me enjoy reading about my favorite athletics their stories and how they became what they are and how they did it. Soon enough I saw myself finishing the whole article or the magazine. Part of that made enjoy reading more, and that made like to read other than sports so I started to read about history because I always was fascinated with what happened in the past, but I just never put the time to read about it. Which made me challenge myself to see if I can read a book or an article or something that I wanted to check it out and read about

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Lines like these were always running through my mind when I got involved with my school’s journalism program. It was my sophomore year, and I remember walking into school with my usual, and sometimes excessive, self-confidence. This inflation, I think, was rooted in my new position in the school’s newspaper, editor in training. Hitherto, I was just a reporter and I gained a lot of experience in journalism. “How can I make this story as interesting as possible for my reader?” I would ask myself. I wrote quite a few. From short stories about espionage, to a quick tip on how to heal a sports injury. My experience grew pretty broad, and I was eager to use it all in designing the newspaper as head editor. However, amidst my enthusiasm, there was a failure I didn’t see coming.

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

One of my most challenging experiences in writing was actually in Virginia Wesleyan College. During my last semester, I was taking Professor Ruh’s ENG 250 class called 19th Century American Women Writers, and we were required to write a few literary analytical essays on novels and short stories that were written by women during the 19th century. Even though the class was very interesting, I was having such a hard time writing my essays that I actually thought I would never be able to pass his class after I failed my first essay. I am usually the type of student that never asks for help because I would often feel intimidated by my teachers. However, I managed to speak up and ask for his help throughout the entire semester and because of that,

All throughout my years of schooling, I’ve had just about, one paper that was about one page long, due every year. My papers never had to be more than one page in length. Therefore, I did not have to do much writing or do many essays. Surely not enough to remember any of the assignments. Writing has never been something I enjoyed doing, so I never bothered to many any memories of my writing experiences. I did not think it was necessary to remember any of them since I only had to do them to get a grade. The only writing experience I remember was the first assignment I had in this English 100 class about a writing experience. All week long, I sat there thinking about what to write about, but nothing came to mind as a topic. Then, one thing came to mind, but it was so very vague, I could not write the length that was needed for the assignment. I could only think of a few sentences to write for it. After sitting for a few moments longer, I thought, how about I write about how difficult it was for me to write this essay before it was due.

As an academically mediocre student, I never learned very well from teachers, since nothing they were teaching me ever grabbed my attention, unless it was related to my immediate interests at the time. I spent years 1st to 5th grade never enjoyed the writing process, since my mind was always a inattentive place, because of this I never caught onto things like punctuation or proper grammar, causing most of my written assignments to be nothing more than linguistic vomit on paper. It was not until 6th grade rolled around, that my best friend at the time, Catalina, had sent me a link through text. It was to a website with too many words and not enough pictures, so it did not really occur to me what she had sent until I was lying in bed and I finally opened the message backup. I skipped the page, and I noticed it was piece written about characters from a show we both enjoyed, and as I read this story, I noticed how poorly written it was. In the back of my mind, I told myself “Even you could do better than this”, and I felt the slightest burn of confidence in the pit of my stomach, a feeling I had never felt before.