Semester Narrative

In this assignment, you will reflect on your past semester and your writing career using the work you did this semester—assignments, discussions, weekly exercises and more—and potentially work you did in other classes. You will discuss what things you’ve learned about writing, what things you have not learned, what experiences you remember etc.

I hated writing but I loved reading. Isn’t that ironic? But as I grew older from being an adolescent to a teenager, my choice of reading changed my view on writing. I started reading books like Dear Dumb Diary, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Dork Diaries, all of which were forms of journals that inspired me to make my own diary. So, for my birthday, the only thing I asked for was to get a diary so I could be just like the characters I have read. I received a small, pocket mini mouse themed journal to start and I was ecstatic. My first ever short story was about a redhead female that hide her ‘superpowers’ from her family only to find out that her parents knew the whole time after a home invasion. My imagination ran wild, and I use to bounce between reading and writing my own personal short sorties during the summer to pass time.

When high school came, my writing changed drastically. It became more analytical and followed a rule to make sure students were ready to ace the regent exams. I believe that is where my creative writing died out just a little, and I zoned in more to proving points on a seven-page paper. Honestly, I believed I did well in high school; I got high grades and always good remarks.  Coming into college and taking both of my FIQWS classes showed how mediocre my writing really is.

For this FIQWS 10103 class, it started great. I was doing my homework assignment keeping on track watching my lectures and taking notes. However, when it came to our first major assignment, my results were horrible. So, our first assignment was to implicate what was “Rhetorical Analysis’ to our choice of speech or any form of writing. I chose the situation that was recent regarding representatives Cortez and Yoho. I thought I did well, I explained and implemented everything I knew but I got a 75. While looking at the comments made by Professor Hunter, I did not understand why I got such a ‘low grade’.  I was used to like at least getting like maybe 90s on my assignments, so I made a meeting regarding my comments and trying to find what I did wrong. After the meeting, I totally understood why I got the grade I did and pay attention to my writing.

For the first major assignment, I still was stuck in that mindset of trying to explain an answer by being very analytical by using hard evidence. Professor Hunter mentioned that I used too many quotes and not enough explanations. I believe the reason I thought that it was an analytical piece instead of a DBQ response and I did not grab fully grab the concept of rhetorical analysis. For example, my introduction was very vague, my body paragraphs were too much incorporated with evidence that it lacked substance, and towards the conclusion was where I started explaining and implementing a rhetorical analysis structure. My mistake I’m still in the mindset of like I’m supposed to follow making a vague introduction, explain in the body, and then wrap up while having last thoughts in my conclusion. This first assignment really showed me that writing is not ABC but it’s a flow of ideas and deeper than what the author says but what you have to say regarding the writing.

The second major assignment that we have worked on was a research paper. For this research paper, we must essentially make questions and deeper analyze our findings. I chose a topic regarding generational differences which came from one of my other classes which is a sociology class. In my sociology class, we learned about socialization which means people learn from others and create subcultures/translations of it. This got me thinking about generations in general and how we are totally different however some are close in age. I chose generational differences because I wanted to go deeper and find out more for myself. For that assignment, I got an 80 including extra credit. In my comments from Professor Hunter, again, is the same running conflicts that I have with my writing which are grammar, not going in-depth with what I’m trying to say, or trying to convey to readers. From this second assignment, it taught me something new.  Now I had to be analytical and try to connect ideas with other ideas and have evidence to go in-depth, but I just lacked to overall complete my thoughts in a way that did not need to fall back on analytical evidence that I found.

So now from both of those assignments, it shows that I am a mediocre writer I honestly do not know what I’m doing.  I need to reframe my thinking on what writing is. I love creative writing; I love being able to write out things from my own creations but using other people’s pieces and trying to translate their ideas to my ideas by using record rhetorical analysis and having my own questions and answering them seems hard for me.

The third major assignment was a creative group assignment. The assignment was to choose two leaders of our choice and implement their ideas that may be different or similar. My group decided to choose Sun Tzu and Socrates and the form of writing we chose was a script. We chose a script because we wanted to be more creative and in the scene that was not like a normal storyline. We wanted to stick with the idea that they were both dead and so we made the characters talk in heaven. The situation was that they were looking down at the human earth in the current issues that we have been facing. I believe that the assignment was very creative, my group worked very efficiently together, and everybody had equal parts.  We did not receive a grade for that assignment yet however I think we did well. Lastly, our final assignment is what you are reading right now. The 4th and final assignment are a personal reflection of this whole class and our assignments in general.

This class had taught me a lot and the constructive criticism and notes from the professor have brought me into a new perspective. That college writing is writing pieces for other people to understand is totally different from what high school taught me and what I believe writing was. As for right now, I am done with prepping for Regents exams.  I am done prepping for DBQ’s or thematic essays. In my new form of writing have I must personally train myself to not write the way I use to. But I am very happy that I went through this process with Professor Hunter and these different types of writing I learned, I can always to go back on to make sure that I’m able to become the writer that I want to be and a better writer than before.

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