Personal Narrative: My Writing Portfolio

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I can write well according to some of my peers; though this could just be from the fact that I seem like the quiet, studious, type who has spent most of her time with the straight "A" nerds who went on to top tier schools such as Stanford. Sometimes I am not too sure of my own writing abilities. On most essays, I get a little bit above average grades and every once in a while I get a few more points than usual. I have noticed that my writing is better when I have to write about a topic I am passionate or know a lot about. The more I have to work with the better. Otherwise, my writing seems poor, forced, and somewhat bland. It usually follows a poor or basic thesis statement and lazy paragraphs. I believe motivation helps me to write better,

My writing experiences have been minimal. So far I have only learned the basics of writing, like forming sentences and forming sentences to put into paragraphs. I can tell that my writing has improved throughout the years. I hope to improve in writing essays, paragraphs, stories, and speeches so that I have no errors with editing and creating the final product. I predict that I will be a well rounded writer when I graduate from Newman University.

During this spring semester, I have grown in many ways as a writer, and a student. I have started to realize, and accept the flaws that I have created in my writing. In the past, I never looked into my writings and saw my problems, and if I did, I did not accept that they were problems. In my writing pieces in the past, I was very hard-headed about what I thought was correct versus what was actually correct. I have also become More familiar with different formatting options on Microsoft Word to create a more professional piece or writing. However, figuring out all the parts of writing and making them work together is the most difficult part of writing.

Many people enjoy and have fun writing, but then again, many people dislike having to write, including me. Writing has always been something I was never really interested on for many reasons.

In my first “Who I am as a Writer” paper I stated how one of the areas that I needed to improve was writing. I went into more depth talking about how my writing is not descriptive enough and how I cannot grab the reader's attention. Even though I still need to continue making improvements, I have gotten better in both of these aspects. Compared to my papers in high school my introduction paragraphs have improved.

My writing has improved greatly over the years. Now, I am able to write much longer papers, my writing is more detailed, my writing is straight, I am able to write in different styles, and my letters aren't shaped weirdly anymore. All and all, my writing has improved a good amount. I still do not enjoy writing that much. I am really enjoying math and science right now. The writing that I do like, is writing about a subject that I choose with no guidelines. My past writing pieces that I have done, have been the personal narrative (in 6th grade), and the researched based writing project (also in 6th grade). Both of those projects I did not enjoy that much, because we worked on those two projects for a long time. Even thought I do not enjoy writing

Al, Alde, de, shon, deshon, and Al’Deshon my name takes on many forms. Kind of like my writing in a sense. I have never been a strong writing also being the reason, I took this class first semester I think. If I get it out of the way maybe I’ll have an easier chance of reaching the finish line happening to be graduation.

This semester involved many writings that challenged my process in ways big and small. The variety of prompts each had their own details that required me to change perspectives as well as research topics to test my abilities as a writer. The topic that I felt helped me grow as a writer the most was the Personal Narrative. This essays caused me to think in its own way and only after completion was I able to effectively use the methods it taught me in my other assignments.

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.

My identity as a writer comes from how I view a piece of writing. I view it as art. To create something that intrigues someone, that makes them angry, sad, or confused is my goal when I write. I want the audience to feel something. It just so happens that for most people, writing with the strategy of pathos in mind is always extremely effective. My environment growing up was that of complete creative freedom and I had the privilege to be able to explore my interests at such a young age. My experience with growing my skills as a writer I think started with my love for creating artsy things if you will, but after many years of being stuck as a novice, I developed exponentially during my high school years. I came into my own as a student and learned how to let my longing to stay creative creep into every project I could get my hands on. But I struggled where I perceived creativity wasn't needed i.e. math and history. I became uninterested and skated by in that aspect. Why would I put so much of my time into something that so strongly opposed who I am as a person?

Writing, when given a prompt or focus point, comes more naturally to me than some other things. I find writing and composing soothing and meditative, therefore I enjoy to write in a quiet environment such as my room, a classroom, or library. The room must be somewhat calm in order for me to process my thoughts in an effective, orderly manner that I can then write down. I do little writing outside of school and class work, so the majority of my writing is for academic purposes. Whenever I formally sit down to write an essay or prompt, I must have soft music or some type of noise playing because if the room is too quiet, I tend to become distracted. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if the room is too loud, it is impossible for me to focus

I previously attended Texas A&M University and received a degree in Political Science. I found myself writing many papers for this field but mostly research papers. Although I have this experience in writing, they were mostly just regurgitating information in an organized way.

I switched back and forth between tabs as I waited for something new to appear, so it could entertain my mind. Why was no one online at three in the morning? And why did I still have an incomplete book in front of myself?

Throughout my twenty two years of life I have had a love/hate relationship with writing. In school I’ve had English classes in which I enjoyed immensely. Then there were the classes I did not. Sadly a majority of the time it was the latter. Subsequently during my adolescence I was never really interested in writing. I cannot remember a time when I was angry or anxious while preparing to write a paper. I just wouldn’t go as far as to say I enjoyed writing papers. I viewed it as a chore that I wanted to be finished as quickly as possible. But at the same time I’ve always considered myself a average writer and viewed most of my work as well written papers with solid ideas. Yet I would still find myself receiving grades that were much lower than I expected.

It is my belief that through this class and the tools provided, that my growth as a writer has grown through leaps and bounds I would never have assumed possible. It is not so much the skill I refer to, although I would think skill has gone up in some levels as well, but more so the appreciation for the craft of writing itself. Intially, at the start of this class my sole goal was to further my understanding and appreciation of the writer's and books that I so love to read. Through further evaluation within the first week, a few other goals came to mind, of which were, making writing a habit, finishing what I start, stop second guess my writing skills and making effective use of detail and description. Through the use of the many articles, various reading materials, whether poems or short stories, and especially through the workshop, I feel I was able to really push myself to accomplishing these goals. I have thus far learned how important it is not to be skilled at writing per say, but to have the will to write, that poetry is as much about it's sound as it is about it's subject, just how important character development is, how the narration and point of view of a story is essential to the way the story is told, and just how much of a difference peer's critiques can make to your writing.