I am Mariela Barragan and I am in your Tuesdays and Thursdays Freshman Composition class. To me a writer is someone who is creative, who really loves to write, and someone that can express ideas and feelings into words and puts it out there for others to read about. I don't consider myself to be a writer because first of all I don’t like writing and second of all I have a lot of difficulty expressing my ideas into words.
I don’t like writing. I never did and to be honest I don't think that I’ll ever will. I am more of a math person because I like numbers not words. I don’t write at all unless I absolutely have to write. I find writing to be a lot of tedious work and I try to avoid it. When you write, for the most part you have to make outlines,
I don’t really like writing because whenever my teacher tells me to write about something I start to get confused on what to say then I start to get mad at myself and start to cry.The best thing I have ever written is when I had to wrote about legos, it was a nine pages and alot idioms and more.
Distant, cold, and non-existent describes my relationship with writing. My relationship with writing has never been a close relationship. Writing has always been difficult for me. I have never hated writing, but it has been a constant challenge for me. I will be discussing my fears of writing, the value of being able to express your ideas through writing, and what excites me about writing more and more.
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,
First, I write to show my thoughts and my personality. It helps me show who i am and what i can set my mind to do. I constantly overthink when i’m writing and always think “this is not good enough, erase it,
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.
The best writing I’ve ever produced is from last semester I wrote a paper for Sociology on how the movie “Selma” related to what we were learning in class. This is the best writing I’ve produced because I thought long and hard about what I was going to write and ended up making a 100 on the paper which I was very excited about. Another reason is that I’m not particularly exceptional at writing I struggle with what words to use and how to really make my writing mean something to the person reading it, and my teacher left me a comment saying how I had thought outside the box and done very well. When I’m writing, my only fear is that I could be using better words so that’s why after I write a paper I always like to continuously edit it until I’m satisfied. Challenges for me are thinking of what to write I guess you could say that I get writers block and I must take breaks and really think about what I want my paper to convey, but once I get an idea usually I’m and can come up with more ideas it’s just really that first few sentences in a paragraph that get me.
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.
Thinking about our first writing assignment, one of the suggestions focuses on the comparison of writing to running, it became apparent to me that this is something I would enjoy writing about. I am a long time running advocate, competing in marathons, and a neophyte writing student, and I find many similarities in both endeavors.
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?
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.
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.