At the beginning of the quarter, I felt that I was a fairly strong writer, but tot long after I found out how dangerous that assumption could be. Once I received the first essay's grade, I was shown where I really stood. I was not prepared for the high standards college level writing required me to meet. College level writing is much more difficult than any grade school I've ever gone to has assigned. Although it was challenging to really buckle down and get working, I have shown much progress from the beginning of the year. This can be shown within my first and last essays, which are included in my portfolio. Essay number one was on Bacon's Rebellion and how social classes played the largest role within the rebellion itself. My last essay was a group project, me and three others, and was perhaps the most difficult to both get done and get done well. Both of these essays have specific strong and weak points, as well as tie into my writing philosophy and style.
My first essay, on social classes within Bacon's Rebellion, was not originally worded well. This issue spawned from my inability to sum up or explain the information I acquired. I tried hard to get quality information into the essay, but I went through a series of high school thought processes trying to get it done. My brain needed to mature fast to get really great work done in such a timely fashion. So I finished the essay and turned it in on time, but the end result was not up to college standards at all; the information was lax, and it lacked a real voice. That problem, lacking a voice in essays, really stems from my educational career prior to arriving at PSEC; before I arrived at Puget Sound Early College, I mainly wrote informative essays. My instructor stressed the fact that we would not write informative essays since the beginning of the Writing 101 course. Since I received feedback on my first essay I have really worked on gathering more useful information and applying time management skills to my writing.
Many of the problems I had faced were not present in my next essay, or at least not to the extent in which they were in the essay prior. The second paper was on Patriotism within the original thirteen colonies. It was unique in the fact that I ended up working on it with one other person, which really required me to utilize a lot of different time management skills than normal. One of the main issues I had to deal with was the merging of two very different voices. I was able to manage my time well and ended with a paper that I felt proud of. My ability to get quality information had progressed quite a way in a matter of a few weeks, though still not up to par with the college writing standards. Also, my voice really shone through with this essay because I created a character and spoke through him. I was really proud of my second essay, as well as the progress I’ve made throughout fall quarter.
As my overviews of those two essays show, time management has greatly improved. Really, getting an essay or writing assignment finished is not the problem very often at all. I can get the final product done as quickly as I need to. My weaknesses lie within the actual essays themselves. Though I have been working on it throughout the quarter, I still find it hard to get useful information that is specific; I find myself using generalized information to base my arguments off of, or strengthen my arguments. Overall, I have made progress with my writing abilities. I have not gotten worse at anything, either gotten better or stayed consistently under par.
Two aspects of my writing must be looked at to get a good view of just where I stand with writing: my writing philosophy and style. My writing philosophy at the beginning of the year was as follows: writing of any kind must always start with a main idea to build off of. What seems to me to be the best way to show where I am at now would be to slightly skew the aforesaid sentence. I do not believe that it must always start with a main idea, but some sort of idea in general. An idea of what purpose the writing at hand must serve is necessary to find useful information about the paper. I guess my newly stated writing philosophy would be: writing must always start with the purpose of the paper in mind, so that information can be found in regard to the main idea. My style of writing has changed slightly; I no longer 'just write' as I would do in high school. Now I write with much more structure and organization. I tend to get to the point quicker, now that I have taken Writing 101.
A great amount of progression is shown from my second essay to the Writing 101 final. Since there were only two hours allotted for the essay to be written in, time management skills were used efficiently. I am very proud of this essay as a whole, actually. The thesis was well written and explained thoroughly throughout the entirety of the essay. One thing that I tend to do when writing is stray from the overall argument; this was definitely not an issue for the final exam, however. I followed the thesis quite strictly, which I feel very proud of. My final is definitely an example of my improvement throughout the quarter because it was better in both content and voice. It is most assuredly the paper I am most proud of myself for having written.
This quarter I learned how wrong it is to assume that meeting the standards of writing for high school meant that I was prepared for college level writing. That statement is shown in the progress that I have made within my essays. In my first essay, I didn't manage my time very well, and I wrote to simply get the paper done. However, my second essay went along much more smoothly, and was written with purpose. Even better was my final, where I took all of the necessary steps towards creating an essay, and implemented them in less than two hours. This is not to say that I have become the perfect writer. In fact, my first and second essays both show a lack of specific detail. They are both plagued with general information that doesn't support the thesis very well. Both my writing philosophy and writing style have changed slightly. Overall, I believe I have shown strong improvement in several categories such as time management and organization, but I still need to work on finding and utilizing specific information to support my arguments.
My first essay, on social classes within Bacon's Rebellion, was not originally worded well. This issue spawned from my inability to sum up or explain the information I acquired. I tried hard to get quality information into the essay, but I went through a series of high school thought processes trying to get it done. My brain needed to mature fast to get really great work done in such a timely fashion. So I finished the essay and turned it in on time, but the end result was not up to college standards at all; the information was lax, and it lacked a real voice. That problem, lacking a voice in essays, really stems from my educational career prior to arriving at PSEC; before I arrived at Puget Sound Early College, I mainly wrote informative essays. My instructor stressed the fact that we would not write informative essays since the beginning of the Writing 101 course. Since I received feedback on my first essay I have really worked on gathering more useful information and applying time management skills to my writing.
Many of the problems I had faced were not present in my next essay, or at least not to the extent in which they were in the essay prior. The second paper was on Patriotism within the original thirteen colonies. It was unique in the fact that I ended up working on it with one other person, which really required me to utilize a lot of different time management skills than normal. One of the main issues I had to deal with was the merging of two very different voices. I was able to manage my time well and ended with a paper that I felt proud of. My ability to get quality information had progressed quite a way in a matter of a few weeks, though still not up to par with the college writing standards. Also, my voice really shone through with this essay because I created a character and spoke through him. I was really proud of my second essay, as well as the progress I’ve made throughout fall quarter.
As my overviews of those two essays show, time management has greatly improved. Really, getting an essay or writing assignment finished is not the problem very often at all. I can get the final product done as quickly as I need to. My weaknesses lie within the actual essays themselves. Though I have been working on it throughout the quarter, I still find it hard to get useful information that is specific; I find myself using generalized information to base my arguments off of, or strengthen my arguments. Overall, I have made progress with my writing abilities. I have not gotten worse at anything, either gotten better or stayed consistently under par.
Two aspects of my writing must be looked at to get a good view of just where I stand with writing: my writing philosophy and style. My writing philosophy at the beginning of the year was as follows: writing of any kind must always start with a main idea to build off of. What seems to me to be the best way to show where I am at now would be to slightly skew the aforesaid sentence. I do not believe that it must always start with a main idea, but some sort of idea in general. An idea of what purpose the writing at hand must serve is necessary to find useful information about the paper. I guess my newly stated writing philosophy would be: writing must always start with the purpose of the paper in mind, so that information can be found in regard to the main idea. My style of writing has changed slightly; I no longer 'just write' as I would do in high school. Now I write with much more structure and organization. I tend to get to the point quicker, now that I have taken Writing 101.
A great amount of progression is shown from my second essay to the Writing 101 final. Since there were only two hours allotted for the essay to be written in, time management skills were used efficiently. I am very proud of this essay as a whole, actually. The thesis was well written and explained thoroughly throughout the entirety of the essay. One thing that I tend to do when writing is stray from the overall argument; this was definitely not an issue for the final exam, however. I followed the thesis quite strictly, which I feel very proud of. My final is definitely an example of my improvement throughout the quarter because it was better in both content and voice. It is most assuredly the paper I am most proud of myself for having written.
This quarter I learned how wrong it is to assume that meeting the standards of writing for high school meant that I was prepared for college level writing. That statement is shown in the progress that I have made within my essays. In my first essay, I didn't manage my time very well, and I wrote to simply get the paper done. However, my second essay went along much more smoothly, and was written with purpose. Even better was my final, where I took all of the necessary steps towards creating an essay, and implemented them in less than two hours. This is not to say that I have become the perfect writer. In fact, my first and second essays both show a lack of specific detail. They are both plagued with general information that doesn't support the thesis very well. Both my writing philosophy and writing style have changed slightly. Overall, I believe I have shown strong improvement in several categories such as time management and organization, but I still need to work on finding and utilizing specific information to support my arguments.
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