Before
this past year, I had never been fully confident in my writing. I always felt as if I was an insufficient
writer, trying hard but not succeeding. In the past 8 months, I can honestly
say that I have improved greatly as a writer, and in ways that I didn’t even
know I could. I am proud of the work
that I placed my name on in English I, and I know that without the feedback and
criticism I received from not only my peers, but also Dr. deGravelles, I would
not feel as strongly as I do today.
The very first piece of writing that we
turned in on Turnitin.com was our literacy narrative. When given the assignment, I knew exactly
what I would talk about and how it changed who I am today as a writer. Overall
I was fairly satisfied with the work that I did here, because I had only a few
errors (mainly incorrect punctuation with quotations, and comma splices). Getting the feedback from Dr. deGravelles set
me up in a position where I was not only sufficient in my writing, but I was
also confident.
After we wrote our literacy narratives,
we moved on to writing profiles. I had
chosen to profile my good friend, and write about how she managed her life as a
recent freshman. My rough draft for this paper had been about what she did in a
day, and my teacher pointed out to me that I should choose to focus on one or
two things about her characteristically, and why that makes her who she
is. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t fully
grasp the concept and my literacy narrative turned out to be a mess. Overall, I
did okay, but I did not reach all of the requirements that were set for
us. Each of my scores on the rubric was
brought down an entire letter grade because of this. I had also thought that my voice throughout
the piece was substantial, but I ended up receiving a “D” in that category. Looking
back, I should have known that a good paper follows every guideline on the
rubric, and I honestly don’t know why I didn’t follow it in the first
place. Receiving a 28/35 on this piece,
I was put into a mindset that in order to receive good scores and succeed, I
would have to work very hard.
Out of all the papers that we wrote
this year, the hardest one to write for me was definitely the literary
analysis. When we were given the
assignment, I should have known to pick a short story that I could effectively
write a literary analysis on. Instead, I
chose what I wanted and read from a collection of humorous holiday-themed short
stories. After choosing a story and
starting the writing process, I quickly found that finding a thesis in my story
was tricky, but I pushed on through and made do with what I had. I wrote my literary analysis, unsatisfied of
what I had put my name on and turned it, but I luckily received great feedback
from Dr. deGravelles. My voice in this
work was awkward, and my understanding of rhetorical situations was clearly not
what I had thought it was. She had also acknowledged the challenge that I had
with writing my literary analysis, which made me more comfortable with letting
her know how I felt about my writing. My
feedback and conclusions from my literary analysis made me 100% sure that I was
going to try my absolute hardest for the next paper that we were going to be
assigned to write.
In Social Studies, shortly after Christmas break, we started to
do research on a global issue. We were
told that our research would tie in with a project in English class, and we
needed to make sure that we had all of the requirements in order to move on
from the research stage to the writing stage.
Unfortunately, my social studies class was not prepared for the
requirements in our English class, which in turn made research not fun. I had to do a lot of research on my own time,
despite the seemingly endless amount of time that we were given in Social
Studies. However, I realized early on in this project that though it not may be
easy, I needed to improve overall in my writing, which I concluded by assessing
the writing that I had completed earlier on.
I chose to write about overpopulation, and how it affects the world
environmentally and economically. I completed a lot of research, which made
writing the paper itself quite enjoyable.
I like to write, but writing this paper was different. I was very proud of my writing every step of
the way, and the feedback that I received through peer editing was a wonderful
confidence booster. I received comments
such as “near perfect draft”, and “this is an awesome paper”. That along with my comments from Dr.
deGravelles boosted my confidence to an entire new level. Not only were my peers and my teacher proud
of my writing, but I was too. I think that this paper helped me to realize that
in order for others to be proud of your work, you yourself have to be proud of
it too. Writing this paper was sort of an epiphany for myself as a writer, as I
was finally completely proud of my paper, and it showed.
A while ago, we completed the WrAP
test, as we do every year. We were given
the rubric, and told to fully review it, as we should always try our hardest to
receive the highest grade we possibly could as writers. Normally, I write three pages of whatever I
come up with relating to our prompt, but this time I only wrote a page and a
half of well-developed ideas of downloading music and what I thought about
it. For some reason, I was completely
satisfied with my page and a half, and was even more satisfied when I had
received my scores of mostly 5.0’s and only one 4.0. With a total score of 29.0, I had written
less than I had on any WrAP test I had ever taken, and made the highest score
out of all of them. I was amazed as I
reviewed my writing, only reaffirming the fact that in order to succeed in
writing, you have to be proud of your work too.
With all of the feedback that I have
received this year, I realized that I struggle in a few general areas, being my
ideas and voice throughout writing, and also dealing with rhetorical
situations. Though towards the end of
the year, these struggles started to go away a little bit, they are still
present in my writing, and it is something that I look forward to improving on
over the course of the next few years.
With the help that I have received this year, and the help that I will receive
in the years to come, improving in these areas is definitely a possibility for
me.
Looking back on this year, I am more than happy with my
improvement as a writer. As I was
completing these assignments, I had not thought much about what it was helping
with in the long run, I only thought about how they were not fun and they
seemed like a burden. After this year of English, I am so excited to move on to
what will come next year. I never
thought that I would be the writer that I am today, even if I have only
improved just a little bit. Next year, I hope that I can improve even more as a
writer, especially in the areas that I struggled with this year, such as
rhetorical situations and especially voice and overall ideas. However, I am
thankful for all of the work and struggles that I pushed through this year, as
it has not only made me eager for what is to come in the next three years of
high school English, but I am finally fully confident with myself as a writer,
and I am so excited to see myself improve even more.
