Reflective Essay Writing

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

     One of the techniques I am going to use through out college is talking to

If there is anything that this class has taught me, it is that writing is more complex than I ever imagined. I have concluded that writing is like a cake- the good ones are creative with many layers. Coming from a small public school, I was raised on the five paragraph essay style. If you were to get a pile of my senior classes final research papers, it would be hard to tell them apart. We all wrote the same, and our style hardly changed from second grade on. Metaphorically speaking, we all created the same plain vanilla cake.

Imagine writing a ten-page essay on something you feel very strongly about, then being told you have to reduce the size of your essay to only two pages. While this may seem like an easy task, I have learned from experience that while writing is difficult, taking away from my writing is much more complicated. I have spent hours writing, my brain is tired, but I read my completed project, and am proud of what I have accomplished. Then, out of nowhere, I realize that I am only allowed two pages out of the ten I have just completed. At first, I panic, thinking, “What am I going to do? I have worked so hard on this and now I must delete most of it!” I reluctantly trudge forward, reading my essay and trying to figure out what to remove and what

I want to improve my focus on my main topic when writing to make sure my key idea is clear and to the point. Many people have the problem when writing essays or any information with sticking to their main points. They tend to trail off and lose focus on what their main topic is and they lose their audiences attention. I found out that this is my weakness in writing and I found some ways how to improve and fix it.

Preparing for my final year of high school, relief and enthusiasm poured over for the idea of the pain and suffering of assignments ending in one hundred and eighty days. However, I never would have imagined growing academically, especially in my writing, over the course of just one semester. Reflecting back on the first few assignments in Expository Writing, they were tragic. A mess is the easiest explanation of their composition. Entering this course, a goal of simply wishing to finish each paper was sadly set, but it became evident that if I put my heart into the writing and took my time that some wonderful pieces could be produced. Over the course of the semester, I learned how to make my writing more formal, how to integrate and embed quotes, as well as learning how to writing multiple drafts with self and peer editing.

Do you have the habit of waiting tell the last minute to write a paper? Well this is what I would do when I would dread writing a paper for a class. I would start the night before the paper was due and I would write a draft, then proofread then print it off. Since gaining knowledge from taking ICW, I have gained experiences and ways to overcome my writing problems. My major problem was procrastinating, and overall just starting the paper. This was due to not having a process and an outline for the paper which was an effect of procrastinating.

William Wordsworth once said, “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” Writing is not just about picking out words that sound good together to form a sentence. I believe the philosophy of writing is to allow people to freely express themselves. Writing gives people a freedom within themselves and grants the room to grow and discover character. I have always loved to write. Before my high school career I would use my free time to write poems and short stories, along with school essays. I have always enjoyed the way the words seem to fall out of your brain and onto the paper. During high school, my essay writing has made a drastic improvement. This first semester in Comp 110 is where I feel my writing has been at its best. I have learned many new things about my writing and writing as a whole. I believe I had the room and time to grow as a writer during Comp 110. My main focus when trying to improve my writing are my strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses also lead me to set new goals for Comp 210.

I don’t know if my writing is good. I don’t know if I have a role as a writer. I don’t know if my writing reflects seventeen years’ worth of worldly experiences. What I do know is that writing is…fun. Not fun like spending an entire day at Disney World, but in a cathartic way that makes you grow as a person. Writing is a necessity to me in that it grounds me and helps me figure out not only who I am, but who I want to be. Writing makes me connect with deep roots and relationships that define my very being, it keeps my dreams from decaying and it shines a light on precious memories. These connections give my writing a shape and improves it every day.

Writing wasn’t exactly my strongest subject. In fact, compared to the more technical subjects that I often excelled at, writing was a relatively weak subject. Rarely would I score very well on my essays in high school. However, my approach to writing changed forever after taking College Writing R1A. One semester of writing several essays over a myriad of topics was all I needed to refine my writing techniques. Although numerous prior habits I had with writing changed over the span of fifteen weeks, there was one reform that was absolutely monumental: Altering my approach to revision. In high school, my approach to revision was just completely off. I took writing too mathematically and logically; my writing seemed fine unless pointed out otherwise, and I never made changes to the essays unless a comment was explicitly written in that section. As a result, I could never understand why I scored so consistently low on my essays in High School Language Arts class. There was obviously something wrong with my writing, but that problem would not be rectified until my first semester of college.

Talking is an organized activity. Talking may lead to friendship, and friendship may lead to another type of relationship. Building relationships with other human beings is, in most cases, a fundamental necessity. However, these relationships, no matter how natural and organized they may seem, do not always end up the way I would like them to.

Coming straight out of high school and being thrown into a college-level English course can be very frightening; much like a mother leaving her child on the first day of school. Except, this time we are on our own. It is almost like we are blindly being thrown into this big pool without knowing how to swim. We are scared and almost unprepared as much of what we did in high school is nothing compared to of what college professors expect from us.

As a settled immigrant in the United States, fluent in multiple local languages in Kenya, I ambitiously attended various colleges to pursue a career in Nursing. Although different areas such as punctuation, sentence structure, paraphrasing and grammar to mention the least, aimed to strengthen scholarly writing this quarter, writing in English still pose a challenge.

Writing this essay is difficult. As I sit in class gripping my pencil, pondering what I could possibly tell these college admissions officers about myself that I really want them to know. I look around and within just minutes, I notice most of my classmates have already decided exactly what they want people to know about them and what stories they are going to tell.

Every day, I make sure to take time out to reflect upon how grateful I feel to be put in the situation I am today. There are so many instances I can recall of throughout high school when I felt very uncertain about myself and my family’s future, however, we learned to persevere and overcome these many obstacles which unexpectedly set me up and prepared me for the many opportunities I now have today at Gonzaga University.