A Reflection of my Writing

Before taking this course, I would have to admit that I had a negative, skewed view of

writing that stemmed from the countless writing assignments I was subjected to back in high

school and the strict deadlines that came along with it. Writing was just something that I had to

do in order to get a grade and it was nothing more than a chore for me––a hassle with no source

of enjoyment. What probably made writing more difficult than it had to be were the countless

rules for writing we were taught to follow throughout our education career (Reid, E. Shelley). I

was under the impression that because I disliked writing and had no interest in writing

whatsoever, I could never further the development of my writing skills. This course, however,

redefined writing for me and continued to positively impact my perspective on writing through

various writing projects, in-class activities, and readings.

Starting with the writing projects, translating between genres was an insightful process

that not only introduced how genres are defined and their conventions, but the importance of

adhering to conventions characteristic to those genres. Though unfamiliar, writing project 1 was

an enjoyable experience because we were able to choose a topic that pertained to our interests.

The reason why I decided to translate my academic article into a blog post was because the

conventions of a blog post, specifically the visual aspects and the eye-catching headings,

appealed to me. I didn’t encounter any significant problems during the translation as there was a

good deal of overlap between the genres, with the exception of finding a suitable tone and right

level of formality for a non-academic audience. In terms of revision, I did have to reconsider

whether or not I adapted an informal, conversational-style tone characteristic to blogs and

reworded some phrases/sentences within my writing. For the revisions, I really took into

consideration the feedback I received from my instructor and peers. These feedbacks were really

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insightful and motivated me to make changes that I would not have considered before myself.

For instance, a term I thought was on the more non-academic side–– “time interval,” came off as

academic to the readers, prompting me to simply change the term to “time.”

Moving onto writing project 2, this project was slightly more difficult than the first

writing project in terms of gathering resources and preparation materials. This was the first time I

was introduced to an entire library catalog and my unfamiliarity with how to utilize such a

diverse library imposed a challenge on me. Despite the difficulty of gathering plenty of academic

articles for our project, the instructor and the library staff played an important role in easing our

struggles with finding sources. My writing project 2 definitely needed more revisions than the

first as I struggled to condense the lengthy information and writing from an academic article into

an Instagram story infographic. During the revision process, I kept in mind Gile’s questions to

make sure I was headed towards the right path: “How did you narrow the assigned topic? What

kind of planning did you do? What steps did you go through, what changes did you make along

the way, what decisions did you face, and how did you make the decisions?” (Giles, Sandra). My

initial infographic draft was high in terms of complexity and packed with content, making it

unreadable at a glance by the audience. Taking my instructor’s feedback into consideration, I

spread out the content I was sharing over additional images along with changes to enhance the

visuals. To be specific, I revised the original writing on the infographics and simplified the main

points to make sure I didn’t flood the infographic with unreadable text. For the visual changes, I

tried to incorporate graphics and images that were more relevant to the topic, such as writing or

health graphics, while editing the text color to make it more visible to the audience. Overall, the

writing projects for this class were an eye-opening experience that made me realize what I didn’t

understand previously about writing. For example, despite already being familiar with many

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genres, I “didn’t know them as such [as my] knowledge of genres was limited to types of books,

whether mystery, horror, action, etc.” (Dirk, Kerry). The group activities we did in class, such as

the genre conventions analysis, further solidified my understanding of the countless genres

present in our everyday lives and helped me to explore the unique conventions characteristic of

each genre. In addition to redefining genre, the writing projects introduced me to library catalogs

and taught me how to distinguish between an academic article and other works, allowing me to

utilize the library search to gather resources.

Last but not least, going back to how my perspective of writing has changed, my

understanding of writing has truly changed for the better. In addition to furthering my writing

skills, new ideas I’ve learned about writing is that we as writers don’t necessarily need to follow

the “rules,” whether they be grammatical or conventional rules, that have been engraved in us.

One of the most common rules we’ve been taught throughout our education is to not use the

word “I” in writing. Contrary to such teachings, I agree with Kate McKinney Maddalena that “in

college, [we] should start using first-person pronouns in [our] formal academic writing, where

appropriate [since] first person has an important place—an irreplaceable place—in texts that

report research and engage scholarship” (Kate McKinney Maddalena). I’ve realized through this

course that the “rules” enforced upon us only hinder our learning process and impose limitations

to our creativity.

While writing is a subject I detest, this course has made my writing experience slightly

enjoyable and helped me to realize how vague the “writing” I detest truly was. It was

groundbreaking to learn a few of the countless subcategories of writings––genres, conventions,

rhetorics, etc., which ultimately helped me to develop more confidence in my writing. I now

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have the confidence to use the takeaways and tools I’ve learned from this course to be successful

in future writing classes.

Works Cited:

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 1, edited by

Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemlianksky, Parlor Press, 2010,146. Web.

Giles, Sandra. Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?”

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing . Volume 2. Eds Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky.

Parlor Press, 2010. 1C46. Web.

Maddalena, Y Kate McKinney. “‘I Need You to Say ‘I’’: Why First Person Is Important in

College Writing.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 1, Parlor Press, Anderson, SC,

2020.

Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing

Student.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Parlor Press, Anderson, SC, 2020.