Personal Narrative: Myself As A Writer

When I was younger, middle school aged, is when I did most of my formal writing. I remember a time, in particular, I had an assignment to write a paper on someone that I looked up to and that inspired me. That person has always been my Grandma Mary. She is the best person I know. I believe I was in the 8th grade when I wrote that essay about her, it gave me good experience in formal writing. Formal writing hasn’t always been something I feel I’ve been very at and something I feel I’ve improved in quite a bit . I’d like to tell about my experience with writing formal papers when I was younger, and how much I’ve learned since my younger days in writing. I’m going to tell of my experiences in using online databases for research, and formatting a paper in MLA.

Need for MLA formatting reflection and improvement. In her brief feedback the professor highlighted a need for MLA formatting improvement. This is an admitted weakness of mine as the format is rarely used in my chosen profession. This task is even more difficult due to years of professional writing in Army correspondence style. The old adage of “practice makes perfect” is the best course of action to improve this skill for academic improvement. The AMU library as well as the provided course materials will likely be the best locations for demonstrated works with proper formatting. These resources will be instrumental in my continued improvement and renovation as a writer.

I learned a lot by taking the MLA quiz. I found out that the books were italicized when cited. I knew that if I was writing about a particular book to underline, but this was good advice. I also learned that you do not write all the names of the authors in a citation only the first and then add an "et al." after it. I learned how to limit the database because databases are so scary since it has so much information. I now know how to restrict the search to what I want. I realized that the last name of the author should be stated either in the sentence or the parenthesis. I also understand now that you do not write the word page in the parenthesis is already implied. I knew that an ellipsis was used to omit a sentence or words that are not needed

I wanted to improve my writing skills, make my writing pieces stronger, learn how to keep readers engaged in my writing pieces, and work on my MLA formatting coming into the class. When I took English 113, I discovered that MLA formatting was something that I needed to work on. There were certain elements of MLA formatting that I would forget to incorporate into my papers such as putting my last name in the right hand corner of my paper, not double spacing my header, and remembering to not underline nor bold the title of my papers.

Throughout high school my English teachers all had different opinions on how I was supposed to write rather than allowing me to adapt a style of my own. The four years I was there contained a research paper annually followed by many minor papers. There were many differences on the structure of which each paper was meant to be written. One thing that always remained the same was “cite all your sources” and “include an MLA style bibliography as your last page.”

My writing has greatly changed since the first day of this class, in a positive way. Before I took this course, I would write essays full of punctuation errors and improper sentence structure. One of my greatest weaknesses was writing conclusions, and through this English class and its assignments, I have improved my grammar and overall writing. Moreover, I have learned how important it is to write drafts and proofread them before settling on the final paper. I am not the same writer I was when I began this class, since my strengths have expanded to include a higher vocabulary and a more focused writing style. However, I can still do more to improve my skills – focusing on wrapping up my essays better – and become an even better writer.

Today, I have higher expectations from myself. In the past, I had a tough time beginning my papers, therefore leading to procrastination. Now, I take my time in constructing an outline and organizing my thoughts. This class has also taught me a better understanding of the revision process. I have improved my writing with the help of others. Constructive criticism has played a vital role in improving my writing. I learned that my writing needs major improvement but as I receive feedback, I will become a better writer. In the beginning, I did not feel any pressure when it came to turning in papers because I thought my writing exceeded expectations. I came to realize that I needed to take my time in order to organize my thoughts and use better

While in high school some teachers required MLA, while others insist in APA Style Paper. Some of my time in college included taking writing courses, where I learned to use in-text citations and to research reliable sources. I enjoyed every minute of writing and researching information for my papers. The downfall for me when it comes to writing is having to ask someone to proofread your paper. If you are confident about your paper and the proofreader ends up making changes, it can ruin your confidence. It is never fun to get marked down or to have peers tell you how to do something. This is a feeling that is very hard to explain for those who haven’t experienced it. "One of their participants captured the fear by describing it as being 'like an intellectual striptease (275)'." To be judged and ridiculed by peers about your writing can feel like a striptease. It makes you uncomfortable, puts you in an awkward situation, and makes you question all that you have done. Unfortunately, there are people who feel like a “striptease” anytime they have to write because they aren’t comfortable with expressing themselves or some have writers block. Writing is a great tool for those who want to express what they feel and share their opinions on certain subjects. However, there are some who are not comfortable with the task. It is always important not to push it on anyone. It

Students are expected to comprehend the one-hundred-and-sixty-page handbook, which uses not only an idiosyncratic language but also a convoluted syntax. Leading literary analyst and writer John Smith explains: “The MLA Handbook is quite a cryptic bewildering written work that rivals James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in terms of incomprehensibility” (27). As the MLA is composed of some of the most experienced writers in the nation, it is not difficult for the MLA to craft a handbook that students will find strenuous to analyze. Often, students remark that analyzing and understanding the MLA style is considerably more difficult than comprehending and closely reading the texts that they were assigned to write about. Even the renowned website Purdue HAWK, which aims to simplify the MLA Handbook, struggles to grasp every nuance in the complex style guide. The Purdue HAWK’s sample MLA paper, for instance, strives to follow the thousands of rules put forth by the MLA, but is unable to do so: it indents a block quote an extra half inch and adds extra spacing between the date and title, not to mention a myriad of other errors

Everything I did was to improve my writing skills and critical thinking and writing. And yes, I do believe all this assignment helped me to become a better writer at the end of this course, which was my initial goal for this semester. Sure, I did have done many writings previous of this course in High school and other courses of college and I will do many more writings and critical thinking/writing assignments in future for undergraduate and graduate school. I believe each paper written is a practice paper for the next paper. Thus, no paper can be perfect; it just keeps getting better with more papers written. Analyzing my works through the entire of this course made me realized, there are no patterns in my work whatsoever. But, I believe, I gave my best for each assignment, and compare to my pervious works I did a lot better. From now on, I know I should practice more. One of my initial goals was to be better at English grammar, and unfortunately, I do not think I improved as much as I would have liked. Luckily, I do not give up easily, so I signed up for an online course that is provided by edx.org, called “Write 101x English Grammar and Style” and hope this will improve my grammar and mechanical issues. One of my life long goal is to become a very impressive writer and be able to write my autobiography at age

I am pleased to declare that I have learned much that I did not know prior to taking this course. Throughout my high school years, the standard format of research papers was MLA. Although different classes reiterated how to properly format resources used and in-text citations, I unfortunately cannot seem to remember any of it, albeit the basic font restriction of Times New Roman in 12 point size (of course). What I can recall is the countless hours spent trying to figure out how to properly list my references for research papers, a frequent occurrence that frustrated me to no end. Fortunately, I have found that English Composition I has been the opposite. With the rules and guidelines set forth by the professor, I can foresee no subsequent issues properly executing in-text citations and reference lists necessary in the papers I will surely write in the near future. This new knowledge will undoubtedly calm my stressed mind in the weeks to follow, though I fear that it cannot quiet my qualms with this present piece.

At the beginning of this semester, I was very uneducated when it came to writing. I was unsure of how to write essays, summaries, or reading responses because of the lack of writing I have had in high school. Since it was this way, I was very nervous when I started this class and was not sure how well I would do. Now it is the end of the year and I feel that I have improved my writing skills in a tremendous way.

As my first semester of college is coming to an end, I have received a lot of helpful information. More importantly, I’ve learned how to become a better and more efficient student and writer. This first semester in English, allowed me to view the subject differently than I did before. There are so many details about English that never caught my attention. This class has helped me bring those things to light, and has also taught me that simple mistakes are made everyday in a paper. In addition, this class has educated me that there are no “perfect papers,” as my professor would say. Above all, there is always room for improving, which I have accomplished by doing so with my reading, writing, and editing.

I would also say that I have grown as a writer but I was expecting more from this class, in my opinion. I would have liked to write more papers because we only learned how to write a few papers and there are so many more kinds of papers I would like to learn how to write. If we would have wrote about history, our future plans, or even our dreams. I feel like that would’ve helped us a lot with our future and opened some gates to see what was out in the world for us.

So there I sat in my seat, either looked outside the window, or stared at my watch, watched the second hand running around and around, hoped that the moment that I have waited so long for will actually become a reality. I lay in my bed the night before we received the grade for our paper, stared at the ceiling feeling not only excited but also nervous about how I had done on a paper that I worked so hard on. I began talking out loud to myself “I know I did very well on it, I had to, maybe 54 points out of 60? Yeah, that sounds great.” I had spent countless hours working on that essay, I had been collecting many materials to support my topic and sorted them carefully, and then I spent a whole day to finish it. So I was confident about my paper and believed that this time I would have my highest paper score in my student life.