Personal Narrative: My Transition From High School To College Writing

I have truly enjoyed writing for most of my life and after this class I will continue to enjoy writing hopefully with more skill. I have always viewed myself as a fairly strong writer and this class has reaffirmed that for me, but it has also shown weaknesses in my writing. As an introduction level class this has been one of my favorites; at some point I will take a higher level, even though it is not required for my major. Even though this class is almost over I am continuing to learn. I also love that this class will help me with literally ever other class in my college career. I am not a particularly strong reader, but as my writing skills improve so do the reading skills. While in this class I have learned a lot about everything from what I can improve, to subjects that interest me, and constructing a successful paper.

How can I become a better writer? Throughout my writing experiences, I have learned I have many weaknesses along with strengths. My experiences with writing has not always been the best, but over time, with lots of practice and instructions from my instructors, I can proudly say that I have gained a better understanding on the layout of essays and papers. As well as understanding how to write correctly my goal as a writer is to learn how to overcome my weaknesses and use my strengths to my highest ability. I have many strengths, weaknesses and goals that I plan to achieve and overcome in my college career.

Well for me writing is my weak point. Although it is my weak point I have still been learning and I am up for more opinions on how to better my writing skills. I can say that my writing skills have gone up some since I have been enrolled Bethel University. When I first started here I was terrified, especially when I found out that Bethel is a writing based college. I still get nervous and scared at the beginning of every class and I stay nervous till I see how I am doing in the class. There has been many teachers that have helped inspire me and those that have taught me to never give up no matter what. So the advice I would give to my boss or family is to never give up. We all face hard times and we all have things we are not so good at. It

At 11:15 on Monday, August 17, 2015, my first official college class, English 1101, began. In general, I had no idea what college classes would be like let alone how college English would be. Even though this class taught me a great deal in one semester, it took a large amount of time and effort to make the adjustment from high school. The simplistic writing style of high school was put to rest the moment the first college English class began. As a result, I learned quickly that college writing is complex and less systematic than high school writing. Five paragraph essays with three strict body paragraphs were no longer the norm for writing. Even though my professor helped guide my writing, I was no longer coddled through the whole writing

I feel like my middle school writing career has improved with every writing project I have completed. As a writer I have changed over the years and have used many different tactiques in my essays. I have had strength in the ability to connect my idea with my evidence but I wish I could write a lot longer and more descriptive essays. I feel like my middle school writing careers has changed over the months.

My writing journey has been pretty remarkable over the years. A lot of trial and error was utilized in discovering the writing style and techniques that would give me the most sense of accomplishment. I’ve been learning through the unit learning activities so far as College Composition II will be a bit more challenging due to the expectation of being able to write an effective academic piece from a formal perspective. There is always room for improvement which is why this semester I want to work on three aspects of my writing: sentence structure, grammar, and learning how to effectively grab my audience’s attention. Sentence structure and grammar have been difficult aspects for me to grasp in my writing due to the lack of frequency in writing academic papers.

First of all I would like to express my great heartfelt thanks for the time we had passed throughout the course and semester. It was interesting and nice because learning in funny way is among one of the best methodology teaching method to make students feel free rather than being annexed by professors.

During this semester, I learned more about writing than I have throughout my whole high school career. The first thing we really covered was parallelism and that was probably the most used topic in all of our writing. To be completely honest I think this was the first time I had ever heard about parallelism and I still have no idea how to use it. We really focused on comma placement because in the beginning we were all just putting commas in random places, but now I feel as a whole we learned how to use them much more efficiently. We covered semicolons and where to place them, but still do not know how to use them either. During this semester I definitely improved my writing based on the fact that we wrote a ton, but I do not think my writing techniques have improved as much as I would’ve liked them to.

My past writing experience has ranged from writing one paragraph free flowing writing, to having a prompt to write about and typing about 4 or 5 pages. In high school, I do not think I have typed more than 5 pages on one topic. When I first started to learn to write, my teachers mainly looked at my grammer or just simple spelling errors or other simple mistakes. However, as I've progressed through school my teachers started to look at paragraph structure, thesis statement, conclusion, citations along with other improtant details that I will be using when I write papers. I did not take compostion in high school as I just took English I, English II, English III, and English IV.

Throughout my high school career, I have been exposed to many different elements of writing and, although some teachers have emphasized certain areas more than others, I feel I have come a long way as a writer. Despite this I also know I have much further to go. This fact became very clear to me as I was taking my previous course of English, Accelerated English Three. Within this course I was introduced to the MLA method of citation, I experienced disappointment due to receiving a lower grade than I had desired, and I discovered difficulties such as my impatient tendencies to look over errors and mistakes during the editing processes.

My experience with writing has been very up and down because I have a hard time focusing on the topic. I would say that’s something I need to honestly work on because my attitude is if I'm not into it then I'm not doing it simple. Some of my past teachers in high school said that I could write but I honestly don’t know about now. I'll admit that I've gotten lazy in the sense that if I'm not into the work then I'll just pass it with a D or just retake it. I need to get out of that and just suck it up and get it over and done with.

I can still remember my heart pounding out of my chest. It was my first time in Writing 1, and my nerves were mostly the result of a friend’s advice. Winter quarter, my friend told me about her struggles in her writing class and she advised me not to take Professor Bernstein for Writing because as she said “he is really tough and a very hard grader.” However, I had no other option but to take writing with Professor Bernstein because all the other writing 1 classes conflicted with my schedule. Nevertheless, nine weeks have past since I first stepped foot in Writing 1, and I can certainly say that I have learned more than I ever expected. Yes, it is true, this class has been a challenge like no other, especially for me, being that English is

My growth as a writer was evident in my second peer review. In contrast to the first review, I offered comments concerning sentence structure, grammar, parallelism, APA style, and clarity as well (C. Twyman, personal communication, May 2015). It was obvious that my understanding of scholarly writing had improved. I was starting to see how the conventions of writing worked together to form a complete paper, however I was still unsure about my ability to analyze competent scholarly writing. Although my comments had increased in variety, I still found myself unsure about how to give appropriate directives. In communication with Cheryl, I wrote, “maybe reword this” (C. Twyman, personal communication, May 2015). This short but sweet comment

The transition from high school to college writing can be frustrating, for it can come easily to some, but difficult to others. In high school, writing was a mere chore-students would only write what the teacher wanted to hear. They wrote between the lines, saying only what was necessary for a grade. As opposed to high school, a writer in college is expected to have a voice. They are expected to have a strong stance on the topic given to them and be able to efficiently express their opinions with their writing. In college, there are more expectations on how students perceive certain topics and what kind of vocabulary they decide to use, but most importantly, how they decide execute their ideas. Powerful evidence to support their writing is

Writing had always seemed so calculated. Since fourth grade I was taught that when you write a paper for school it should be a five paragraph essay with an opening paragraph, three supporting paragraphs, and then a closing paragraph. If you wrote in this exact format then you were sure to get a good grade. Up until college writing had always lacked creativity for me and seemed more like formula that was to be followed. Writing had always seemed dull to me and more like a chore rather than a chance to express or research ideas that I truly cared about. It was not until I was in my college writing classes that I began to realize that writing involves a lot more than just following a formula and that writing can be in all different forms with various purposes. College Writing I and II has expanded my knowledge on the different forms writing can come in, what are some of the process steps that can be taken, and that overall writing does not have to be a chore.