My Writing Experience

I enjoy writing and am confident in my abilities as a writer, using proper grammar, being organized with my ideas and having a broad vocabulary. Writing is a practice, and although I am confident in my abilities, there are certain aspects with which I struggle. The biggest aspect that I struggle with is transitioning between either sentences or paragraphs. I find it difficult to find the right words to piece the sentences or paragraphs together. Another difficulty is my precision or my level of abstraction. I will write vaguely and repetitiously at times, most particularly when I am not in the mood for writing, or cannot get focused on the piece. My experiences, and the feedback provided, have led me to believe that these are my strengths

I received good marks in my English courses, with my essays being returned with little to no errors or corrections. I have been told that I am forthright with my information and that it is well articulated. I use the past tense because I have not written any essays or other pieces in several years, and when you stop practicing, there is a tendency to lose some of your skills.

One of my teachers in high school gave me a useful handout on organizational writing. As part of that handout, there was a page I was told to use for my essays. There were several blanks that needed to be filled in, but on the side told us what would go there. These labelled sections were called title, transition sentence number one, conclusion, thesis and so on. I have followed those guidelines throughout my high school years, and have received positive feedback on my essay organization and structure.

I wrote an essay last year for my Saint Mary’s professor about the meaning of a poem, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke. I wrote this assignment the night before it was due. Poetry is not something that I enjoy, much less writing about it. I found it very difficult to focus on writing about the theme and other requirements of the assignment. Upon receiving the essay after being handed in, I found numerous remarks, one of them being about