Four Years of Progress​​

Writing has always been my strength.  Ever since grade school, math and science were a struggle while my English classes were practically guaranteed “A”s.  This initial realization came to be in sixth grade when, after my class’ four-day field trip to Camp Y-Noah, my teacher, Ms. Quien, asked me if she could keep the writings I had done so she could show her future students what an excellent project and exceptional writing looked like.  Later that year, my personal D.A.R.E essay was one of the three selected by my peers, out of over 100 submissions, to be read in front of the entire elementary school.  Fast-forwarding to middle school, I was part of my school’s highly selective “Power of the Pen” team and placed in nearly every meet.  High school was no different as I excelled in all of my honors and AP English classes while learning the basics of the 5-page essay and 10-page research paper.  When it came time to write my admissions essays for college during my senior year and all of my classmates’ papers were being covered in red ink, my essays were given a sticker and approved for submission with no advised edits.       

     
While I was gifted with a natural prowess for writing, I ironically have come to dislike it.  It isn’t that I grew tired of receiving high marks on my papers or that I found solace in my writing being more advanced than that of my peers, it was simply that I became obsessed with the minute details of the process so much so that I burnt out.  My level of obsession—compulsion you could even call it—made me mull over every word, period, comma, and hyphen to the point that by the time my paper was finished, I never wanted to see it again.  I came to believe that my writing was an extension of myself—a reflection of who I was, my work ethic, and what I stood for.  Any grammatical error, misspelling, or flaw in logic I believed to show negatively upon me as an academic as if my entire argument and credibility would be shot if I made a mistake.  Though I had been taught and learned to do so, I was never one to brainstorm ideas, write out an extensive outline, compose an initial “shitty first draft,” or look to my peers for writing advice.  Contrarily, I write one draft, one time, and edit it as I go.  That being said, however, though I loathe the writing process, I have come to discover that I love having written. 

My final capstone portfolio, therefore, is not a rags to riches story in which you will find a dramatic, earthshaking difference between my freshman and senior year writing.  Alternatively, the story to be told is one of growth, nuance, and subtle change over time.  As I navigated the likes of English 125, 223, 225, 229, 297, and countless Linguistics and Communication courses, my writing adopted a fuller, richer persona in regards to content, thoroughness and flow.  In fact, I would liken the maturation of my writing to the aging of wine; as time went on, my writing slowly transformed from a well-crafted product to a refined, polished, final result that I could be proud of.  Though the grades my writing received seldom wavered, my interpretation of what an “A” paper would encompass did.  Through this revised outlook, I started to push myself to make my writing as good as it could possibly be for the sake of my advancement and progression.
 

This shift, I believe, is visible between my early college writing in English 125 and the Comm. and Linguistics papers I wrote during my junior year.  In my portfolio, I have ordered my writing chronologically by year so as to show a progression of style and nuance from semester to semester.  In reading my English 125 satire paper through the lens of a seasoned, second semester senior, it becomes evident that though the ideas are clear and well thought-out, the paragraphs are short and too concise.  There is plenty of room and opportunity to add detail, further explain my reasoning, and lengthen the overall paper by at least a few more pages.  With that being said, if you were to then read one of my papers from junior year including the ones from Linguistics 375, Writing 200, or Communication 488, you would quickly come to see how my writing has improved since my high school (DSP) and English 125 days. 

In conclusion, I have come to appreciate that as college students, we all have different starting points, different strengths and weakness, and different goals we wish to achieve.  For me, my next step is going to law school—a writing-intensive career path that complements my literary skills and personal interests.  Through my experience as an undergraduate and a minor in Writing, I am proud of the writer I have grown to be.  Though I could not possibly quantify the number of hours I have spent writing, researching, editing, procrastinating, and searching for literary inspiration throughout my undergraduate career, what I can say is that, at the end of the day, it was worth it.