Preface

Preface

          As a writer, I never felt very strong, that was until this year.  It is quite remarkable how much you can discover about yourself and learn in one semester, defiantly more than I ever thought possible.  I grew up learning how to write in this structured format, typically writing formal essays for extremely strict teachers who mark you down if you don’t use enormous, educated words throughout your entire paper. I have gone back and read through high school papers that I have written and I don’t even recognize them as my own work! How sad is that?

          Professor Martin taught me how to explore my own ideas, styles, and formats to write my papers. I could finally write for me. I learned that speaking for myself is okay, and actually much preferred. I learned how to bring my paper to a strong focus, with an intended audience and establish a “so what?” Working in conference groups taught me how to spot these things in my own papers just by helping out others.  For me, conferences in high school were all about circling misspelled words and grammatical errors and sometimes I would honestly wonder if people were actually even reading what I had to say.  Working on these three papers was actually so much fun for me! I have never been able to write with the use of visual aids and for a visual learner like me that was a pretty neat thing to learn how to do.  When I first wrote my paper “It Started with a Bear” I wasn’t really sure where I was going with it at the beginning. I got a story down but it was just that, a story. After conferencing I learned that I needed to find a purpose for my paper, I got the “revealing the hidden story behind the pictures” part down sharp but I didn’t have a strong purpose, if even a purpose at all. So, during revision I reworked my story so that its purpose would be that there are lots of medical mysteries out there that doctors have solved which are miracles and that people should have faith in the medical profession. Just by doing that, I felt my story was much stronger, I found my “so what” and my audience.  

          Developing a blog that I could talk about material from class on and anything that I desired to talk about really helped me think about who I was and how I felt about things. It caused me to do a lot of critical thinking about pieces that we read in class. By blogging about these pieces of works and reading other peoples thoughts and opinions about them, it helped me to understand the content so much more. I’m not going to lie reading is my worst area. I am really bad with big words, my vocabulary is not very large, so I have a tough time getting through some of these harder readings. Professor Martin helped me to dig deep into these more complex readings and really figure out what the writer is trying to say and how I, as a new developing writer, can use what they have to say to improve my work.

          I believe that what helped me develop this semester the most was not having such strict rules on the assignments. I was able to be creative and explore with out having to many boundaries. I really liked that my professor didn’t tell me everything I had to do to make it better because if that was the case the paper wouldn’t be my own, I would be making it how she wanted it. If she told me exactly what I needed to do I wouldn’t be learning anything. By figuring out what needed to be done I was able to make my papers stronger with a more defined purpose. Instead of her telling me what to do, I could figure out a purpose of my own. In my drafts, “purpose” is what I felt I lacked most but as the semester went on I got better at reading my paper and seeing the general idea and picking out the strongest parts to draw one big picture versus a bunch of small ones. Also, with the readings, she helped me figure out what the writers were saying, she didn’t just tell me.  Normally teachers just say what the reading means and I don’t even have to think about it. Where is the learning there?

I believe that from here forward my writing will only get stronger. I am really happy I was able to be in this course with Professor Martin my first semester because I know everything I learned will help me with writing papers in the future. I feel more confident about my writing now and I am willing to take bigger risks and not hold back as much.  I intend to keep posting in my blog because this course has really made me enjoy writing so much more! Blogging is so fun; being able to use new technology and add in pictures and hyperlinks makes it easy to share my work, ideas and just fun stuff that I find.  This is exactly what I needed to start off my life in college strong, and with that said I give all my thanks to Professor Martin.