my writing journey through school essay

my writing journey through school essay

My Writing Journey Through School

1. Introduction

My writing journey began at a young age in elementary school. I can remember being made to write creative stories and hating the very thought of having to do such assignment. Before, when writing wasn’t my strength, the thought didn’t even cross my mind that it might be enjoyable. I didn’t like completing such work because teachers always critiqued my writing based on spelling and grammar, because it was the foundation for good writing. I don’t blame my teachers for not allowing me to express my imaginative creativity because children were taught the correct way writing should be done. It wasn’t until Grade 9 when my perspective on my writing completely changed for the best. I had an English teacher who taught me a method to express my creative side of writing. She also wanted me to express how I felt on certain issues, and she made me confident enough to write the truth. At first, I was just completing work because it was an assignment and I had to do it. But when she returned an essay I completed with a huge smiley face on it, saying “Wow! Excellent work! You have a powerful voice in your writing, A++”. This was the first time any teacher had ever given me the highest mark, and I can’t say there was a time when I felt better about my writing. Ever since then, it has been my favourite subject and I became much better at it.

2. Early Struggles and Improvements

Initially in elementary school, my writing wasn’t easily understood because I didn’t distinguish much between literacy and literate forms of language. I also didn’t know proper punctuation, grammar, or spelling. My spelling was poor; I often just wrote the general sound of the word, and I didn’t use a spell check or dictionary to find the correct spelling. My teachers frequently commented that my writing was like verbal diarrhea, and that my ideas were good but I needed to prove it and explain it more. In intermediate school, my writing was improving, yet I still had many struggles. I would write body paragraphs that had no connection to the thesis statement or topic sentence. I had a good understanding of creative detail but a limited understanding of what made a grammatically correct sentence. At this stage, my teachers were encouraging me to choose my own topic and plan and write stories for homework, as they saw this as a strength in my writing. Yet again, they still commented that my work was difficult to understand and it had a lack of proof and explanation. At the end of my intermediate schooling, I was introduced to my first example of an exemplar, and my writing was peer and self-assessed using a rubric. This showed me what I needed to include in my writing to get a better grade. From that point until the end of high school, I still had struggles, yet I received better grades for my writing, proving that I had improved. During my later years in high school, although not as many as I previously had, I still had struggles with my writing. But I knew what I had to do to achieve higher grades, and with a lot of effort, I usually achieved this. From the very first time I was introduced to NCEA and found out what I needed in my writing to get the higher grades, I worked with an end in mind, and this proved to be successful for me.

3. Developing a Writing Style

With the middle ground of sophomore year came AP US History. I still remember the gut-wrenching feeling I got in my stomach when I saw the summer assignment. Who does a DBQ the summer before the class?! This setup had tons of potential to improve my state of writing. A Document Based Question (DBQ) is an essay written from primary and secondary sources around a prompt. There are only a few that I can remember, but my DBQ writing is something I will never forget. A common issue with writing a DBQ is the student leads off with a source and a given opinion. This shows no actual document analysis and often sounds forced. My first DBQ had a goal. The 2008 College Board scoring rubric consisted of seven points. There is a point awarded for a thesis, five points for document analysis, and a point for suggesting additional document or point of view. I wrote these seven objectives down on a post-it note and kept it beside my keyboard. With the objectives and the prompt beside my keyboard, I began to write a practice essay. When I was finished, I took out a colored highlighter and marked out each objective fulfilled. I will always believe that was the turning point for my writing. It gave me a guideline and a blueprint to writing a successful essay. This is a tactic I continue to use today. The more I wrote DBQs and practice essays, the more my writing and document analysis improved. DBQ writing was tough, but it established the groundwork for the writing techniques that will carry me to the present time.

With the middle ground of sophomore year came AP US History. I still remember the gut-wrenching feeling I got in my stomach when I saw the summer assignment. Who does a DBQ the summer before the class?! This setup had tons of potential to improve my state of writing. A Document Based Question (DBQ) is an essay written from primary and secondary sources around a prompt. There are only a few that I can remember, but my DBQ writing is something I will never forget. A common issue with writing a DBQ is the student leads off with a source and a given opinion. This shows no actual document analysis and often sounds forced. My first DBQ had a goal. The 2008 College Board scoring rubric consisted of seven points. There is a point awarded for a thesis, five points for document analysis, and a point for suggesting additional document or point of view. I wrote these seven objectives down on a post-it note and kept it beside my keyboard. It was so simple and something that could be done the night before and still produce an A-grade paper. This was not helping me in my writing, and it was not helping me in critical thinking. This five-paragraph cycle was the only way I knew how to write, so that is what affliction I told Mr. Jackson. He gave me a pencil and a piece of paper and told me to write a five-paragraph essay about anything. After I was done, he read it over and said that my days of writing five-paragraph “lies” were over. I needed to learn how to write a real essay.

During my freshman year in college, my reading and writing skills were not up to par. I would write essays and they would not convey the message I wanted to get across. My writing was more directed towards completion rather than an actual process. The basic five-paragraph essay that we all learned in grade school was sufficient to pass by. It is easy. You begin with an opening paragraph that has a three-part thesis. The body section is broken down into three paragraphs, with each one pertaining to the three parts mentioned in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion wraps it up. It was so simple and something that could be done the night before and still produce an A-grade paper. This was not helping me in my writing, and it was not helping me in critical thinking. This five-paragraph cycle was the only way I knew how to write, so that is what affliction I told Mr. Jackson. He gave me a pencil and a piece of paper and told me to write a five-paragraph essay about anything. After I was done, he read it over and said that my days of writing five-paragraph “lies” were over. I needed to learn how to write a real essay.

4. Overcoming Challenges and Achievements

My biggest challenge that I have encountered with my writing was writer’s block. It’s something that every writer will face at one time or another. I remember in 10th grade we had to write a 3-page paper on a book we were reading in class. We were given the whole class period to write it, I figured I would get it done in no time, but when the time came to put pen to paper, nothing came out. I was stuck. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say or how to start the paper. This caused me a great deal of stress because I knew I would not have time to do it at home and there were barely any more class days left. I actually waited until the day it was due and quickly scribbled 3 pages with about 25 minutes left in the class. It was terrible, but it was better than nothing. This event caused me to realize that I need to meet the challenges of writing face on and that I would need to further develop my writing skills if I wanted to avoid this happening in the future. This was an important event in my writing career because now when I hit a wall I use my resources to tear it down. Writer’s block is something that can be easily overcome by doing extra brainstorming, free writing, or working on other parts of the writing and I am living proof of that.

It may not seem like it, but writing is something that is challenging and full of little victories along the way. This chapter in my writing journey has to begin with my experiences as a little kid. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Most of it was gibberish but I did a lot of it. My love for writing started with stories of adventure and mini books that I would share with my family and my family only. I knew that writing was something that I was good at and enjoyed.

5. Conclusion

Someone will say “how arrogant! To assume that your worthless mental meanderings could be of interest to anyone.” Well, this is the height of arrogance and a moot point. For we all think our mental meanderings bear enough weight to be worth communicating, and it is a matter of selecting your medium. Mine has been the written word, and my only regret is that I have not always had the patience to realize my thoughts in their most felicitous form. But as a wise man said, to understand is to have created, or something to that effect. I have sometimes, though rarely, created to understand. And in the end, there is always the searching after that perfect phrase or piece of wit which will never come, but which continues to urge the endeavor. Aye, there’s always mas and to mas, but this is a good place to stop.

So what next? What indeed. No one will publish this aside from me. Certainly getting this bound and deposited in the university library will have a questionable impact upon my academic career. In this document, I have recorded my motivations, achievements, and failures in the hope that someday I will read back over it and see an organic unity and cumulative development. I have put forth the notion that life has been a learning experience, and I have attempted to encapsulate in words the thoughts and thought processes which have brought me to this point with the primary and perhaps deluded belief that it will have some significance to someone. The naivety and self-importance of youth, can’t beat it. But it was worth doing nonetheless.