How does an artist create a painting? He or she cannot simply look at a canvas and a picture appear. The artist must be equipped with proper tools to create a masterpiece: paint and brushes. The same can be said about writers. Writers are not born with the knowledge of writing an attractive paper. They must be given tools of writing and shown how to utilize them. Artists and writers without proper tools will be nothing more than blank canvases and empty pages. I used to be a blank canvas, but a teacher gave me the tools I needed, and now I am a polished portrait. My experience as a writer began at a young age. I was subjected to writing book reports throughout my elementary years. I saw nothing good in them. I was a free-spirited child and …show more content…
I wondered about what was for lunch rather than staying focused on the plot line. When I needed to recall the content of the story to write, I was stuck. I spent countless hours staring at a computer screen hoping the words would come to me, but they did not. My mother suggested that I avoid thinking about the due date and simply write, but I still struggled. She became frustrated with me, and I with her. I threw my hands up in despair and declared I would never be a good writer. It was not my fault that I struggled. There was nothing fun about book reports. My teachers did not make them enjoyable in any way. They did not teach the class the joy that can be found through writing, no matter what the subject is. They did not show their students what it meant to have a voice. They did not encourage me as a writer, they simply recorded my mistakes. I was not given the tools I needed to become better. I feared writing. As I got older, and closer to my high school years, people warned me about the dreaded essays I would have to write. The thought of having to write more than one page of words terrified me. My turning-point in writing occurred in my first English class in high school.
Fear radiated from me like the heat of the sun on the Sahara Desert. My fingers tapped and my leg shook. I had heard stories about the teacher. She was tough and she did not hesitate to give a student what he or she deserved. My first essay experience was a disaster. I tensed up and my mind clouded. I did not know how to write and in the pit of my stomach I knew my teacher would fail me. Anxiety imprisoned me. The day came for me to receive my graded essay back. Red marks covered the pages. I scanned my eyes over the words and began to lose vision to the tears welling up in my eyes. I followed the lines to the bottom of the page and stopped cold. I will never forget the last line on the page, “Great work!” I turned to my teacher and told her I did not understand. How could my essay be great work when it contained so many mistakes? She explained that the mistakes a writer makes does not define the writer. Just because I did not have the tools to write a proper essay did not mean I was incapable of doing great work. It was a simple phrase of only two words, but it gave me confidence, and a feeling of hope I had never had before. I sat a little taller in class that day. The teacher further explained that her job was to give us the right tools and if we used them writing would be a breeze. This was music to my rule-following ears. I work best when I have guidelines and instructions to follow. I
used the tools she gave me and slowly my writing evolved. I asked questions, and I made mistakes, but I never gave up hope that I would become a good writer. I finally found my voice. I gained an overwhelming confidence. Now, my essays make sense, and I do not struggle half as much as I used to. Even when I write about boring topics, I know how to add my own personal touch. My writing has flair. Getting started is still a struggle for me, and at times, finishing is also, but I do not know a writer who does not struggle! I still fear failure and I second-guess myself always, but writing gives me a sense of accomplishment that nothing else does. Writing comforts me, invigorates me, makes me confident, and I even take pleasure in it. Writing does not have to be difficult. It can be an awakening experience, a comforting accomplishment, and a stress-relieving hobby. Writing is like art: a blank canvas, or a beautiful masterpiece, if only the artist is given the proper tools. Once I found my voice, my mind opened up and I saw writing in a whole new light. I am no longer that blank canvas.
However, when it came time to write the essay, I was confronted with my old enemy, writing. Writing and I have a history, I have never enjoyed being in the presence of writing, due to its both mentally and physically taxing requirements. Despite our deeply rooted feud, there are times where I cannot simply dismiss writing, and generally with help such as guided activities, exemplars, and therapy; Writing and I can put aside our differences for a brief moment of time. One example of this is in my argument, In the beginning sentence I feel that I was able to reach what was expected of me by created a strong counter argument and quickly proving it wrong: “Some might argue that if an individual has grown fond of an illusion, then why wake them from that joy? Now, that is a fair point, but as we see in the book, if they wake up, they realize how unhappy they truly are.” As I face more and more of these assignments where I am forced to implement writing, I grow more accustomed to the process. Writing might not be my ideal major, but I understand its importance. While I dread typing a 5 page essays, I know they are coming. Better I struggle know and learn than struggle later and
My relationship with writing has been much like roller coaster.Some experiences I had no control over. Other experiences were more influential. Ultimately it wasn’t until I started reading not because I had to read but because I wanted to, that's when my relationship reached change. I would have probably never cared about writing as I do today if it weren't for the critics in my family. When I was a child, my aunts and uncles always been in competition with who's child is better in school. I have always hated reading and writing because of the pressure to prove my family wrong was overwhelming for me. I had to prove them wrong and show them that I was capable of being "smart" which according to them was getting straight A's in all your classes.
Personal narratives allow you to share your life with others and vicariously experience the things that happen around you. Your job as a writer is to put the reader in the midst of the action letting him or her live through an experience. Although a great deal of writing has a thesis, stories are different. A good story creates a dramatic effect, makes us laugh, gives us pleasurable fright, and/or gets us on the edge of our seats. A story has done its job if we can say, "Yes, that captures what living with my father feels like," or "Yes, that’s what being cut from the football team felt like."
I am an undocumented student at UC Davis. When I am asked a simple question such as, "describe your personal experiences", I ask myself: Where do I begin?
Learning to read and write is something we all have experienced. Some experiences being difficult than others. As a kid, I can remember trying to read the daily newspapers, different types of magazines, books, and addresses on mail; basically, I tried reading anything that had words on it. My favorite thing to read were the back of cereal boxes. Nothing made me more excited than sitting at my white and pink Barbie table and chair set eating cereal while eyeballing the back of a cereal box. Only being able to correctly read one or two words, it was the first time I really felt accomplished.
Being told to write any kind of essay is not an easy task. I have never felt confident about what I am writing about. Since I was young, I have always struggled to put all of my thoughts into an essay. However, some of writing skills have improved from being a weakness to becoming a strength of mine. Throughout this course, I have struggled with developing an idea I am trying to deliver, and I have also struggled with sentence structure and punctuation; however, I have made some progress in being able to write precise, articulate sentences and organize my thoughts through the paper, I still have to work on improving my writing skills.
For me, writing is like my 13-year-old self. That was the age where I started to really familiarize myself with hobbies I enjoyed such as a painting, playing the guitar, and making videos. It is how I feel towards writing also; it is full of so many different styles and genres, all of which give an opportunity for the writer to be creative. Writing is different for every individual, but for me, writing is a creative and thought-provoking process.
This semester I learned many new things in my English 1301 class. I took this class last year but I had to drop it because I didn’t have a professor explaining the work to me. And I really didn’t understand what I was doing. At first, I was scared to take this class. During my high school years I wasn’t that good of a writer. I thought this composition class was going to be hard since I sometimes thought it was hard in high school. My writing experience was good and sometimes bad. This semester in the composition class I had many writing strengths and weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses is what helped me learn the errors I was making while writing essays this semester.
After making a hasty mental check to reassure myself I am prepared for the next day of class, I review my lesson plans one last time, sit back, relax, and ponder just exactly how I plan to go about grading the thirty essays tucked away neatly in my folder. Despite the method's classes and all of the other education courses I had taken at college, I felt ill-prepared for what lie ahead. "What's worse than writing a paper," I asked myself, only to answer quite obviously, "Grading one."
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
There are many different types of events that shape who we are as writers and how we view literacy. Reading and writing is viewed as a chore among a number of people because of bad experiences they had when they were first starting to read and write. In my experience reading and writing has always been something to rejoice, not renounce, and that is because I have had positive memories about them.
One might call it a writers block, or lacking creativity but whatever was happening, it took me a long time to get this poem on paper. I feel as though sometimes, when I get an assignment to write something creative, I struggle to use my emotions and feelings naturally to write it. I would call myself a songwriter, and for the most part I don’t find it difficult to write a song, but for some reason this poem was a challenge. I think I worry too much about “trying to sound poetic” rather than using the skills I have accumulated and just writing what my head and heart feel to write. One day I sat down to write and it just came to me and then I had my poem! It was a great journey and process because it took me such a long time to write something
“Class, welcome to class. I am excited to meet all of you. We have lots of exciting things that we are going to be learning this year and one thing we are going to learn is how to be writers.” My new teacher, Ms. Shaw gushed. I twisted my head, to look around. I didn’t need to, I already knew there wasn’t a solitary window and imaginarily I slapped my forehead and fell to the ground writhing as if I were in immense pain. As if a million miles away, I heard Ms. Shaw declare “The hardest part of writing is being willing to share what you write, so the first thing that we are going to do is to get to know each other.” I heard as my body continued to spasm. Would anyone would notice if I ran out of the class screaming, I pondered? With another
Thank you for being my composition teacher this semester! Starting this summer, I expected a class with essays due every other day―I was delighted to find out that actually only one essay was due per week. I thought this class was going to be self taught lessons about how to write. But after, I realized that everybody knows how to write, it’s just learning about using proper words and finding your own voice―which is what I got from this class. Knowing the right verb to use was a struggle I faced at the beginning of the class.
In this class, I have learned many things not only about different college and career pathways but about myself as well. I used to be clueless about what I want to be when I grew up. I didn't know what path to take despite my sibling already know what path they want to take. So in this class, I finally learned how much writing played a part in my life. It never occurred to me that I could make a career out of something I thought of as a hobby. I learned that I wanted to pursue writing and include it in my future. Before a career though, I needed to pass high school. Having a sister already in high school, I knew most of the information about credits and grade point averages. My parents would tell me to take classes that could help me with my career but I didn't know what career I wanted to pursue which ultimately led back to box one of finding out what I wanted to be.