Love of Writing
Writing is understood as a mode of self-expression and communication in our society. It is often responsible for shaping our communities to look at things in a certain way. People have always had different perspectives about writing. To some, it probably does not have much importance, and to others, it could mean everything. In life, many times people struggle to understand their feelings and suffer from a lack of self-awareness, which could be the ultimate reason behind their unhappy life. On the other hand, self-aware people make their lives meaningful by taking charge of their lives because most of them always have a purpose. For me, writing is a mode of self-exploration and expression because it always helps me learn new things about myself and sometimes helps me in chaotic situations by letting me know my wants.
During my high school days, my writing was not good because I suffered from weak vocabulary and grammatical errors. Before, I believed that my first draft should be flawless, otherwise I would be considered a bad writer. For that reason, I never used to write a rough draft. Such a poor writing strategy was likely one of the reasons behind my lack of self-awareness, which always resulted in poor decision making. However, during the last year of my high school, I took an English class, which helped me learn more about myself by doing a free write. When I came to college, I was a decent writer who could express himself, but not in the best possible way.
Here at college, I took this writing class, which I think contributed to help me further discover myself and learn some valuable writing skills. During this course, I had to complete some major assignments like art literacy narrative, analytical essay, and two genre proposal. It feels like this course played a valuable role in shaping me as a person. All my writings were like steps of a ladder, which I believe took me higher than my expectations. Before taking this class, my theory of writing was just limited inside the classroom, and I did not often use my skills outside the classroom. But now writing feels more comfortable, and I use this skill wherever needed.
To write the art literacy narrative, I had to look back in my past and write about an experience that I had with arts. I was lost at first because I was not able to remember any useful story. To start this assignment, I used a new technique that was suggested by my Professor. I jotted down some important stories on a piece of paper without caring about any grammatical errors. By doing this, I finally came up with a beautiful memory from my childhood about my experience with dance. Then after the free write, I organized my information by putting numbers in front of sentences. After this, I wrote a new draft on my laptop in which I rearranged sentences and focused more on grammatical errors and format. I discovered a beautiful memory from my childhood, came to learn about proper writing format, and identify most of my grammatical mistakes.
After gaining some important skills from the literacy narrative, I used them to write an analytical essay. This essay was based on describing a piece of artwork by using our own ideas and CUNY database. To write this assignment, I followed the same pattern that I used to write the art literacy narrative. The most important and new thing that I learned from this assignment was to find information from CUNY databases and doing citation. My Professor told us about some useful websites like Purdue Owl (for citation) and JSTOR (to find resources). This essay required a lot of effort because it was not based on my own life, but about an artwork that I had to describe. I learned to cite properly, find resources, describe an artwork and improved my vocabulary.
During the last days of this course, I was working on the two-genre assignment, which was based on using rhetorical situation by finding an audience, purpose, and genre. This writing project had three parts finding two genres, writing a proposal and a reflection. I consider this project highly creative since to complete this I used my favorite skills of coloring, acting and movie editing. This experience taught me one of the most valuable strategy of narrowing my information to a certain audience, purpose by using a specific genre. Other than this, I discovered my abilities to make video and timeline.
My love for self-change, passion and the efforts of my Professor are the most significant things that contributed to make this theory of writing. I personally think, if someone takes this course and commits to learning from each of the assignment, he could learn some of the amazing skills that reside in oneself but are undiscovered. Taking this class made me more of a self-aware person, which I think is highly beneficial for me, as it would help me grow and achieve my future goals to be a doctor, a designer, an artist, and a writer.
I think my writing theory would impact huge part of my life since it would help me grow and learn about my hidden abilities. Practically it would help me get better grades and get into a medical school because MCAT exam and most college classes require high standards of writing. If I put this external world aside, then I would say my theory would keep contributing to give me a better sense of myself and help me live a happy peaceful life. I consider writing to be a tool that would always be by my side even in my hardest times.