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A Metaphorically Unfinished Critical Essay

Introduction
I am going to set something straight right from the beginning, I never dreamed of being a
professional writer. Before college I did not even realize that it was even a viable career path. I
did not choose to go onto the professional writing path out of passion, I have done so out of
necessity.

Before college, I knew I was decent at writing. Now what type of writing? Just writing, it was
just general writing skill since the public school I went to did not really separate creative writing
and essay writing into separate categories. This led to me just generally going into the English
major during my first 2 years of college, the courses I was taking primarily being about creative
writing rather than professional writing. It was mostly literature classes and various classes
which all ended up talking about the worthless form of writing that people call poetry, I really
hate poetry.

However, after 2 years I got advice from my uncle who had already gone through UC’s
professional writing program. He basically said that if you want to make money in a writing job,
switch to professional writing. Since he makes a lot of money, I took his advice and joined the
RPW program.

Now while I had written various research papers in the past for various classes, the reason I liked
writing was because I liked writing stories. Now did this cause me any hesitation when joining
RPW? No. Why? Because creative writing does not get you a steady job with a good wage
unless you write something that makes it big. So, I chose to dive into a field that I had no love
for since the skills it required were relatively adjacent to my existing skill set.

Actually Starting
I would begin the program on my 3rd year in college and when I began, I did not care about what
classes I was going to take, I just picked whatever was available for me to enroll in at the time.
The classes I ended up taking for my first semester in RPW were Desktop Publishing,
Multimedia Writing, and Intro to Professional writing. While my memory is slightly foggy, I do
not recall these classes being too difficult, though I do recall there being some overlap with
certain assignments.

I think some of the beginning parts of intro was just introducing terms to things I was already
doing in some of my previous bits of essay writing. However, through these 3 classes I was
presented with the fact that writing was not just about words on the page, it was also about the
design of the page itself and visuals which may accompany the writing.
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However, despite this I would not say I was unfamiliar with some of what they were teaching,
specifically the CRAP principles were nothing new to me since I had taken art classes in the past.
What was more unfamiliar in these classes was the actual exact composition that makes a
document like a poster or a website look professional, as most similar images that I had made
were entirely recreational. Because of this I feel I ended up having a few screw ups where I was
uncertain as to how much stuff I should have put on certain assignments. I remember there was a
club poster assignment in Desktop Publishing that I screwed up on because I felt I needed to
have something in the background besides a white void and ended up using a crap looking
gradient.

Something else I became very acquainted with during intro was memo format. Every week there
was an analysis that needed to be done in memo format. I am going to admit it right now, I hate
memo format. Even though I should now how to do it by now, I am never certain when to start
putting things into subheadings. I still need to have a reference open whenever I try and write
one, and even with that I still screw it up a bit.

While there were some hang ups, I would say that overall, I did okay during my first semester in
the RPW program. I hovered around an A and B the whole time so I think I was doing well and
producing adequate work.

The 2nd semester, otherwise known as right now as of the time of writing this.
This semester has so far not gone as smoothly as my first semester. I have had major screw ups
and I think that maybe my selection of classes was not the best. As evidenced by the fact that I
am writing this essay, right now, I decided to take Capstone this semester. Now I would have had
to take this class eventually, but in hindsight I think it would have probably been better to take it
after having done a couple more classes in RPW rather than having taken it the semester
following taking intro. I feel as though currently I don’t have the proper attention to detail to
weed out some of the errors I’ve made during some of my assignments for this class. Taking it
during a busy junior year also was probably a terrible idea as I sometimes found myself unable to
dedicate time to my work for Capstone.

However, Capstone is not the only RPW course I’m taking this semester, the other is Social
Media and Society, which I have been doing relatively fine in. The course feels like a natural
extension of some of what I was learning during the Multimedia Writing Course. Assignment 5
has required me to remember a lot of what I learned from my previous class to make bits of
mock content. Analyzing the posting history of a company was interesting, though in hindsight
my choice of client could have been better. I picked a restaurant, so trying to think of ways to
improve their tiny presence on social media was a little hard. What the hell was I going to tell
them to do to improve their posting without just becoming an irritant? Just post more pictures of
food?
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I have one last course that counts for RPW, though I am not exactly sure whether it fits within
this journey. Writing With Style has felt like one of the standard English courses I was taking
before going on the RPW track. I think ironically that some of the things I’m currently learning
in that class contradict some of the stuff I’m learning in all my other RPW classes. Though that
should be expected as the type of writing in there has an entirely different purpose to the type
found in my other classes. Specifically, it contrasts with business a lot of the stuff I have been
learning in business writing, mostly about conciseness and being impersonal. Honestly though it
simultaneously feels like the class I’ve somehow gotten both the least and the most out of this
semester.

I’ve had to analyze the literary devices in several texts throughout the writing with style course,
and while I haven’t really gotten much out of their literary devices, I did start actually analyzing
certain theming in the texts that I was looking at in my own time and start analyzing a bit of my
own works.

A Lackluster conclusion
I currently feel as though in its current state, this journey is highly incomplete. I have not even
been on the RPW track for one year so I can’t help but think that I don’t have enough in here yet.
I have 2-3 more semesters after this current one before I even complete my undergraduate
degree. I feel like it would almost be better for me to do this essay over in a year once I am
through more classes and have probably gotten a bit more experience outside of class.

I also do not want to over expand on my previous sections. To be honest I don’t really think that
much about my work or my switch to RPW, like I’m looking at the example essays and it sounds
like it changed their life or that they got a real passion for what they’re doing. But personally, I
don’t find any passion in what I do, I do things because I have to. I do it because it is expected
that I do it and that I succeed. As I said at the beginning, I joined RPW because I wanted to get
jobs. Even beyond just RPW, I don’t think I’ve ever had much of any interest for work I’ve done
for school.

As I write these final portions, I am in a different mental state from when I began this essay. It
has been at least a month since I began writing this and I have accumulated far more stress than I
had before. My hatred of formatting papers in specific ways has become internalized and I can’t
help but look at my own work with nothing but contempt. Everything feels like a clunky
unfinished outline, because that is just how I think about things. A smattering of bullet points
with little elaboration because the information is so simple that your brain should easily be able
to fill in the rest. But your brain also demands that it have more text, redundant, paraphrased and
paraphrased and paraphrased text that only serves to fill out an expectation in your brain that
what you’re writing isn’t enough. It demands that you speak in an inhuman tone, it demands to
keep going even though it should already be over.
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Now that the stylistic defeatist conclusion is done, I’m going to restate what I said a paragraph
ago. I just want a job; I want to make money using what little skills I have and RPW is just what
I have been told will allow me to make money. I’m not going to say “I don’t care” because that
would sound like shit, though you could probably interpret my words that way. As I write this, I
realize what it really is that I’ve been doing throughout my entire time in schooling, I’ve been
going through the motions. To me the work basically has never mattered, its about the number at
the end. Even when I leave school and enter the work place it will still just be about the number
at the end. And right now, this essay should have long since met it’s end.