At the start of the semester, I thought I was a great writer. Throughout high school, I received near perfect grades on all of my essays because I rarely made spelling and grammar mistakes, I used formal and sophisticated phrasing, and was able to use evidence to support my thesis. Now I see that I was only proficient in writing formal research papers that asked me to defend a thesis. When it came to personal writing, I realize that I was lost.
My first few pieces of writing this semester were general, unclear, and truly boring to read. I limited myself to only writing in the third person and did not want to hypothesize or interject my personal feelings and opinions because I was scared I would be marked down like I would have been in high school. As the semester progressed, however, I started seeing my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Slowly, my writing began to improve.
I was first able to identify my greatest flaws in writing through feedback from others. For the first few assignments, I just fixed whatever the feedback said to fix and nothing more. However, the most helpful part of receiving feedback is that I learned how to see my writing in a different perspective and therefore learned how to identify the areas of most needed improvement on my own. For example, when others repeatedly pointed out to me parts of my writing that was unclear, I eventually started to notice patterns in my writing that led to an unclear message. I started catching these mistakes before others point them out to me. Without a doubt, the most important skill I learned this semester is how to notice the weak areas of my own writing.
From this skill, I can now see that my clarity and thoroughness as a writer are still areas that need improvement. However, I have been getting better at making my writing clearer, providing context for my ideas, and explaining my thoughts and feelings more in-depth. As seen on the next two pages, most of my revisions this semester revolved around making my writing clearer and more personal. Not only does this make for a more easily understood and personal essay, it makes for a more interesting essay to read. When you can’t understand the point of what you’re reading, the writing becomes boring. After revising and making my writing clearer and more personal, I feel as though my essays have become more enjoyable to read. If the point of writing is that someone else will read it, it only makes sense that the best writing is the most interesting to the reader. As I continue to grow as a writer in the future, I need to focus on how interesting my writing is to read. To do this, I still need to get better at being clear and fully explaining my ideas. After this semester, however, I can see that I am at a much better place as a writer than I was at the beginning of the semester. I aim to be at an even better place next semester.
Growing as a Writer 