May 19, 2022
Writing essays, creating outlines, and making drafts are all a part of developing writing skills. I’ve never really cared for the academic formatting of writing; I wouldn’t do it unless it was for school purposes. Writing is one of the many activities I like to indulge in. Especially if it had to do with mystery, crime, or young adult romance. I never really took the time or thought into what I’m writing. My theory of writing entering this course was not development nor really thought to worry about.
My way of writing is more of jotting down what I’m thinking and just putting it on paper. Being able to be free with my words and thoughts, without worrying about other’s opinions. When this course began it was constructed around properly formatting my writing and putting my ideas into sections while making it clean, cut, and clear to whatever audience you wanted it to be retained. Since I’m so used to going with my own flow, my pace of writing adjusting to a constructive way took some time to get used to. I had the opportunity to see a different construct of writing within this class.
Throughout this course, I got outside of my comfort way of writing in an academic setting. Although I have effortless time doing writing in my own style and for personal entertainment, I learned to outline, draft, edit and finalize an essay. Amongst many things that were taught, there were key terms such as rhetorical situation, audience, author, tone, and purpose that helped my writing develop. At the beginning of the semester an assignment called “ technical description” was given. At first, I had no idea what a technical description was or what it entailed. When it came down to complete the assignment I honestly had some complications with how the technical description was supposed to be constructed. Furthermore, I want to make it sound understandable and not too difficult to digest, not overbearing with words.
As the class went further on to other more advanced assignments such as the “Rhetorical analysis of two lab reports” I had no clue to what this analysis was pertaining to; I was still adjusting to the more academic writing and still trying to understand the purpose of writing in this style and stepping away of the more free way of writing. In analyzing two lab reports I had to find lab reports on certain websites or by using the ccny database at the library. When looking for the lab reports through the library database it was very confusing and had a lot of documents written by authors, professors, or even students. It was a bit overwhelming but in the end, I used google scholar or a website that ends in org in their links since it was coming from organizations. It became more clear to me how I should be writing during the process of my rhetorical analysis of two lab reports, but I felt I was overcomplicating the writing process. In addition, coming towards the conclusion of the class we got to do a project. The technical innovation project was a learning experience. First off I usually like working solo and coming up with a composition of my ideas and being able to do the project at my own pace. But this project gave me the opportunity to come together with others and be a part of a team. We collected each other and got to bounce information off of each other. Working in a group you get to improve how you work with others and see how everyone thinks differently from one another.
I truly don’t know if I have progressed as much as I wanted to. My grammar, editing, and revising skills still need improvement. It has been only a few months within this semester so I’m not expecting a large improvement in a matter of months. To be truthful I still don’t really know what my writing theory is, I’ve not come that far in my writing to say what it is yet. But hopefully, as time goes on and the more writing I do I will finally come to a conclusion on what my writing theory is.
Best of Wishes,
