Retrospection on Writing

Yuwei Chen

Retrospection on Writing

When I saw the news saying that after 15 years Leonardo DiCaprio was embarrassed about his performance in Titanic, I did not expect that I would feel the same way when I read the college application essay I wrote one year ago. Although I submitted the final draft because at that time I believed it was the best revision, now I can immediately point out a couple of mistakes and weaknesses. The essay did not have adequate details about what I did in a program about finance and money management, and therefore it was confusing. Moreover, it had many weaknesses such as rough transitions and grammatical mistakes. If I were the admissions officer, I would not accept the student who wrote such a piece of crap. Nonetheless, the process of retrospection not only shows my weaknesses in writing in the past, but also enables me to see my progress in writing over time. After taking two writing classes in college, I am able to apply techniques I learned from these classes to revise my essay to a better draft.

When I went through my essay, I first noticed that the sentence structure I used was strange and confusing. With limited writing practice, I was unable to put clauses and prepositional phrases in the right place in a sentence. Sometimes I put too much information in one sentence but did not arrange it in an order that was easy to understand. When I was reading sentences with unusual structure, my thoughts jumped between phrases. Thus, I believe readers will have to put extra effort into understanding the sentence, which interrupted their understandings of the essay as a whole. If I were going to revise it further, I would rewrite long and complex sentences into short but clear ones. For example, sentence...

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... the end of the essay, I brought it up again, but stated that “my choice [to participate in that program] gave me more experience” and helped me mature. I considered it a decent ending, as it portrayed my transformation after attending the program and restated the thesis.

Compared to last year when I wrote this application essay, my writing skills have improved. I am able to do a better job on smooth transitions and essay structure. Looking back, I am capable of picking up some flaws in many aspects in my essay. However, I still have to learn to use precise words and clearly demonstrate my thesis through precise descriptions. In order to gain progress, I will cultivate the habit of recording new words and try to use them in my writing. With enough accumulation of vocabulary and the awareness of logical narration, I will be a better story-teller in terms of writing.