Me looking back at all my writing and asking ‘why’

To start with, my writing has always been particularly wordy and not too well thought out. Coming into this semester and class, my own objective goal was to polish my writing structure while keeping my tone and style of writing as best I could. And I think I accomplished that fairly well. Some of the more specific learning objectives the class had made, I developed along the way so it never felt forced. I’d say I hit some critical points, like learning the roles that language had, and developing strategies when reading and drafting writings based on readings, stuff like that. So we’ll be doing a court trial on how well I accomplished these goals, going over some evidence from my writing from the start of the semester vs now. 

So to start, let’s address my first essay. Looking back, I honestly could not read it. I sat there reading it over for my portfolio version and I said to myself, ‘Iris. You need to calm down, especially the horse part.’ So I cut out a good portion of the essay, essentially halving it. The old text was too wordy, got off topic, and didn’t really address the points I wanted to address. To be fair, the dramatics weren’t without reason, I was listening to a particularly depressing song while writing it, which in hindsight, not good, and I’ll link it at the end if you want to get a good cry in. But I’ve learned my lesson. Anyways, the new spiffy version of my L&L essay, I’m admittedly still not too satisfied with it. I think it’s definitely a topic I can pursue a little more, a little later when I’m more settled with what it is exactly I want to talk about. I think a lot of the struggle I have with this essay deals with building a proper topic based on the prompt, and I think I chose too broad a topic to really talk about it in depth without it getting out of hand. Definitely not my best work, but it did teach me a lot about restraint and what I should include vs what I want to. This is the assignment that taught me the most about the need to understand the end goal of your writing, and the importance in a third party revising your work.

Second is probably the piece I stressed most while writing, because I dove in head first with no safety. Not a single train of thought. I just kept typing until something made sense and I think it worked pretty well. I read it over and there wasn’t much I would have changed other than some minor adjustments. This assignment felt like someone shoving my brain into a textbook and forcing me to write about it and connect different chapters, which honestly, isn’t as bad as it sounds. It really forced me to analyze three different texts and explored different threads that may link the three together. Would I have ever connected James Baldwin to June Jordan to then Amy Tan if I hadn’t been sitting there and pulling out my hair? Probably not. This essay really taught me how to make a meal from inedia, that’s what it felt like. It taught me a lot about reading more into things than I normally would have, and I’m grateful for that. 

The third essay was my favorite while writing, despite my difficulty in finding a topic. I learned so much while researching it, honest to God I went down a rabbit hole finding the root of just the most random collection of words. I particularly loved exploring the idea that English is change as a language, and why it can never have untranslatable words. I think this is a topic I would gladly revisit in the future. What I enjoyed the most about this assignment was the learning process, I had just been stuck in such writer’s block that I’d forgotten that learning can actually be fun and interesting, instead of just tedious. This definitely brought back some of that, while also imparting that good objective learning. I need the most help during this, and it was like a lightbulb moment when I found out I can just draft things, but backwards. I always assumed I needed a plan before drafting and then revising. Now I know I can just word vomit onto a page and then clean it up afterwards, and then add and subtract as I go. I did have trouble with the conclusion, but that was due to life catching up with me unfortunately. 

I’m glad to report that with every writing assignment, it effectively kicked me butt into writing shape. There was a lot of course learning objectives that I managed to achieve, whether I was aware of it or not. My ability to understand and analyze language in all it’s wonderful meta-forms, as well as my strategy when it comes to writing and practicing those abilities became more refined. I’m comfortable with socially presenting my work as well as critiquing and discussing it in a collaborative setting. Research and citation are as familiar to me now as writing my name on the paper, I look at doing those things fondly. I have a document on my computer longer than 10 pages dedicated to just links and articles for all my classes so yes, I most definitely know how to properly use my sources. Composing texts that back up my stance and understanding prints to address my specific audience, all done and good. Obviously I’m still not perfect at these things but it’s a start, and I’m feeling more comfortable in being confident about being able to do all of these things. Thank you for showing me this, it’s been a great journey.