Reflective Essay Writing

Flannery O’Connor, a great American novelist, once said that she writes because “I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Writing is not just a torture device that English teachers bestow on students. We write for the ability to express ourselves and to set memories in stone for the future.

I’d always enjoyed writing but I’d never been so vocal about it. For me, it happened quietly. My notebooks lie scattered over my bedroom floor; they had no place at the lunch table. And my writing survived on my acknowledgments alone, I couldn’t even imagine letting some else read it. This was due in part to my own self-doubt: I was embarrassed of my poems that never rhymed and my short action stories that never seemed to have any plot. But I

Every great writer, whether it is a poet, novelist, journalist, or any other type will share a common beginning with every person, this I see. Where they take it from there is up to them, the choice is free. The common beginning is simple, even quite easy. It usually starts in kindergarten learning the ABC's. From there you learn to form and read words-the first step of literacy. In my opinion, writing can be fun, but it did not always seem that way to me. This paper will give a brief background on my steps in the writing experience; this is my writing history.

Through our life, ignorance is replaces by knowledge, and it is from that knowledge that we gain wisdom. Writing is an art from, one that has been developed and revised for over hundreds of years. History may teach us that we repeat are same mistakes, but that does not change the fact that life’s greatest teacher is experience, and it is experience that shapes a writing style and literacy understanding.

As a writer, I feel like I am in a constant maze. In the beginning I feel like there is more than one path to take. It can either lead me to success and/or great achievements or it can lead me to a dead end. Writing can be easy at times, but other times when I come to a stopping point I always tend to overthink things. I feel like my choices need to be made right away. I tend to think of it as temptations being called from every different direction. One path will lead me to the finish line and the other path will lead me directly back to where I started, the beginning. When I am given a writing assignment, I feel like the pressure is on. Although I believe writing is a maze and often troubling at times, my competitive nature is always ready to take on a challenge. Throughout my entire life I have been faced with personal challenges, personal obstacles to get over, self-doubt to overcome, as well as experiences that have all shaped me into the writer I am today.

The current pedagogical methods of teaching writing are not necessarily effective. A “formulaic” approach to writing limits the originality of the students, thus fomenting a peculiar form of censorship: self- censorship. The experience of the students in learning about writing must “create opportunities for students to engage in meaningful writing” rather than focusing on specific structure (Huntley-Johnson 4). Writing should be made a personal experience, completely contrasting with the teaching of math or science.

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

Life has thrown me a numerous amounts of obstacles when it comes to my writing flourishing and growing. One moment I will be typing out straight ‘A’ papers and other days my text resembles a children’s book, and not on purpose. My journey of writing is a giant roller coaster of ideas that take twist and turns at every second, I never know when the drop is going to happen.

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.

Tutorials necessitate that I begin work on assignments far earlier and make more progress than I normally would if I was not required to do so. I work best under pressure, so I usually do not begin assignments until immediately before they are due. I am thankful for tutorials for forcing me to change my behavior in some ways, yet I am still fundamentally the same: I don’t begin my work for tutorials until immediately beforehand. My essay writing process is just split between two instances of repeating the same habit. I find it very difficult to not write an essay all at once; stopping and starting work on it is jarring to me, and I often feel like I lose my momentum or train of thought. My writing can even alter depending on when I work on it, so I prefer to write assignments all at once, but this can be somewhat absurd when faced with longer or more elaborate assignments. I feel like the result of my procrastination is most evident in my A3, specifically page 3 and onward. The third page is a full page of text with no breaks. It is one paragraph, but it neither begins nor ends on the page. In my graded returned version, there are two suggestions for paragraph breaks. My procrastination leads me to become tangential and heedless of structure, yet it also forces me to write in sustained periods of time with my complete attention and dedication. My sustained writing in one sitting can often lead to my favorite discoveries and writing precisely because I become tangential and “heedless of structure,” focused instead on ideas--furthering my current ideas and developing new ones I would never have thought of otherwise. Because of my tangential propensity, in my A4 tutorial I had at least a page of paragraphs that were barely connected to my thesis which I ultimately scrapped. I could not include them in that specific essay because they were not relevant enough, yet they were interesting claims which I would have enjoyed exploring further. For my A5, I had the opportunity to do so, which led to what I consider my best written and most interesting claims (this is not a coincidence: they are my best written because they

Writing is hard. Writing is difficult. Writing is...laborious, burdensome, tiring, and, above all, a process. It is a long and tedious process that consumes time and energy. Personally, I despise this system but I have never given up. English has never been a particularly strong suit for me nor have I enjoyed it. I am aware of the fact, however, that one of the most important skills is writing, so I have pushed and strived to be better and more formal, more impressive and more engaging. That is where this class comes in. I need a push every now and then to become better, and I believe that is precisely what this class has offered me. I believe I have been challenged and I know I will continue to do so in the next semester.

“Writing an essay is not hard! I am so good at it.” This is a common thing that I used to say, and even believe. In the past, I had never felt the need to thoroughly revise my essays before. In all my past essays, I would work hard on my first draft and then just turn the essay in. I never spent too much time re-evaluating my writing decisions before turning it in. This process had worked well for me in the past, because each essay I turned it would be an easy “A”. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that it would be just like the other easy English class that I have taken. I assumed that I would work on an essay, turn it in, and then earn an A on it, but this was not the case. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that I could continue my previous essay writing methods, but that was quickly disproven. When I received my first graded essay, I was unsure why I earned anything but an “A” on it. It soon became clear to me that I was going to be required to change the way I formerly wrote my essays and spend more time with correcting them.

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.

I still have issues with placing my hands in the right position and remember exact signs, I feel like I’ve overcome a lot in it and have improved over the semester. So, while I’m not necessary satisfied with where I’m at, I’m satisfied with my development as a beginner.