My Writing Journey

     Over the course of the years my writing style has changed after learning new techniques and skills to implement. Writing was never one of my strengths in school and it started to impact my overall grades. Many moments of my life I felt defeated by the fact that even after multiple revisions and office hours nothing was helping me improve. Throughout school I began to see different writing styles from various writers to see which skills were connecting with me to put in my own writing. Writing is definitely a skill that some people are naturally born with but can develop over time with the right methods and activities. Although my writing skills improved over the course of the years, I wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of all my writing teachers. My writing journey in college has been very unique compared to any other classes I was enrolled in with more emphasis on connecting two themes into one essay with supporting evidence to persuade the readers to believe what the thesis is describing. 

     Furthermore, Elementary was the starting point for my writing journey. Everything started when I was in 6th grade. During that time period there was one teacher who would teach the students all 6 subjects and I would pass with flying colors every single one except writing. I started attending office hours during my own lunch time and recess to get additional support but even after all that trouble I still wasn't learning how to create a more meaningful piece of writing. Frustration was starting to build up in me because I was frustrated that even after many months of extra work to fix my writing problems nothing was working. Even my own sister would help me revise my work but after 6 long months I was starting to give up. My teacher assigned me some light reading activities to learn the writing styles of various authors and what kinds of vocabulary they use. Near the end of the year my teacher had a meeting with me to discuss that I was receiving a C+ in my writing but with all the hard work she raised my grade to a B. 

    Once I reached 8th grade, I started getting more interested in poetry and books about the 1700s time period. Even though I despised reading books I decided to give books another try. I started reading books by Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Although it may not seem like it, 99% of the books I enjoy reading are about tragic love or unrequited love. Books like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Lie with me" filled up my summer plans before reaching 8th grade. "Romeo and Juliet" was also a book that showed me how fun reading can be if the book is interesting. After reading books I would later see the film and now I understand why some people emphasize how the books are better interpretations of the story. In 8th grade I was enrolled in a history class with many written reports focused on accuracy and language. After a few months I noticed that my interest in writing and reading books helped my writing process improve significantly. The use of words and grammar increased drastically, and I began to improve my writing after every assignment. My writing assignments went from C- to being one of the top students in my class with an A+. In middle school we began reading more advanced novels and various kinds of writing styles. These kinds of divergent topics and forms of writing sparked interest in me and showed me the different kinds of works of art in form of writing. 

      High school was when my writing was at the max point it has ever been on. I was placed in AP Literature which helped a lot to master the skills in my writing that I was lacking. We began focusing the most on rhetorical devices to implement into our own writing. This is where I started to use ethos, logos, and pathos in my own writing. The focus point of writing is to persuade our readers to believe our thesis. Even though, the writing assignments assigned were all argumentative and we were not allowed to talk about our own life experiences it was helpful to disconnect from ourselves and write about something that does not involve us. AP Spanish was also very helpful to progress my writing journey because we would be assigned essays almost every week which increased my ability to use different words in another language leading me to feeling more confident about my writing in English. My interest in poetry all began in my Spanish class when we had to write a poem to our moms in Spanish about how much we cared about them. During this time, I also developed very strong feelings for a friend which made me write poems very often helping with my flow problems when writing essays. My most common problems I had in writing essays were the use of transition words and how to properly connect my topics so the flow in my essay is not disrupted. Writing poems helped me resolve this recurring conflict in my essays. 

        Once I reached college, I had the wonderful experience in Writing 39A of being able to write about my own personal experiences and connect them to the prompt of the essay. For example, we had to write an essay about the social environment during the release of a music album which we were able to connect to our own life. Writing 39B was a little bit different since we had to connect the prompt of the essay with the articles we read in class. But I enjoyed writing about the Suburban Gothic genre much more than music. When I am not as passionate about a topic, or the theme does not interest me I have a harder time writing an essay but with this class it was easy to relate my knowledge of horror into the assignments in this class.  My favorite part about this class was discussing unique works of the genre like film, music, or books to help emphasize our argument about the styles used to capture the audience.  Also, the annotate bibliography with proposal activity was a new experience for me but it showed me a new method I could use when writing essays in my future classes. Peer reviews in college are also much more useful compared to high school where your classmates would only read parts of your essay to finish quickly. In college the peer reviews are more in depth and my classmates provide clear instructions on what information I should remove or add to my essay. When we did the peer review activity for the genre analysis essay, I received a lot of feedback that was crucial to make my essay be better. For example, in my second draft of the genre analysis essay I was missing a thesis to present the readers with the topic. I also forgot to introduce IT in my introduction paragraph which was something the peer review helped me fix in my essay. 

     To conclude, my writing journey has influenced the way I perceive the world and how reading the same text as someone else may lead to different opinions and perceptions. The way I try to reach my goal of being a well-spoken person during my college career to present myself as professional in my future career. Reading and writing have a huge impact on what information affects us as human beings since a few misinterpretations could have either a very meaningful effect or a dangerous effect. Also, the way we express ourselves and how well-spoken we are influence what kinds of job opportunities we receive. Words are also how people interpret our behavior and how we come across is very important in the world of technology. It is crucial to learn from our mistakes and continue to progress our writing skills to help with communication skills.