Hello class, and welcome to the blog.
In this first opportunity for a blog post, you’ll to discuss our relationship with writing. Some of us really don’t care for it, some of us don’t mind it, some of us might be trying to make a career out of it. Tell us what you like or dislike about writing. Keep in mind that there are several modes of writing—research, creative, journalistic, etc—and you might enjoy one of these forms while hating another. Does your relationship with writing reflect your relationship with reading? How Is writing something you do for fun? does your educational background affect your relationship to writing? Have your past writing teachers been nurturing or discouraging?
You don’t have to address all of these questions, but please feel free to use them as a jumping-off point for other facets of writing in your life. Also please include in your post some brief coverage of your last writing class, which I’m guessing for most of you was ENC 1101 or an AP class in high school? What do you feel you learned well from that class? In what areas of writing are you lacking confidence or would like to improve?
Like most weeks, your post should be around 200 words. More than that is certainly fine.
Hallal ENC 1101 Class Blog 
When pencil meets paper or fingers meet keyboard, something magical or tragic can happen. With me, it is most likely tragic. I have always struggled with writing and it shows. When I took my FCAT writing tests, I always scored in the “average” range and on the SAT, I scored the lowest in writing. It is like my creativity goes out of the door the second I begin writing or typing my thoughts.
There are many days I wish I could wake up with the capability of writing like Nicholas Sparks, J.K. Rowling, or even Harper Lee. But, then I realize that will probably never happen. I was not blessed like my younger sister with the talent of being a great writer. She will never face the pains I do when asked to write papers, poetry, or short stories, which is why I envy her. I mean, it is scary writing when you lack confidence in yourself and what you can do as a writer.
Do not get me wrong, I enjoy writing because of the freedom it can give you, but I am very hard on myself and I never feel like my writing is up to par. However, the past year I was asked to write a research thesis on the citrus industry in Florida and the problems it faces with pests, and I feel like hearing that I created an interesting and informative piece gave me a confidence boost. I just hope that through this class I will gain the confidence I should have and become a stronger and more experienced writer.
My Ap Language teacher told us writing is the door to communication on our first day of class. Sadly, that door is double dead bolted and shut in my face. I have always struggled in the subject not because it does not interest me but, because I find it challenging to hone in on my thoughts and transfer them to paper. It’s like my brain is too selfish to share with the rest of the world. This however does not affect my passion to read. Tell me to write a 200 word post I will be up baffled all night, but place a book in front of my face and I’ll wiz away. I mostly read fiction such as Harry Potter or I am Number 4 novels but I enjoy the occasional Shakespeare. I love how a piece of writing can change the perspective of an individual or spark a once forgotten memory. Through this class I am looking to improve my overall writing skills and hopefully put a foot in that door.
-Zachary Anders
I am one of the lucky few who had stellar English teachers in high school. All four years, I endured a cast of characters including a Grandma grammar Nazi, a firm yet laid back hipster, a lovably spastic foreigner, and a computer (I took English IV online via FLVS). Every teacher aided me in my ability to write. They taught me how to captivate my audience and appeal to each person who read my writing. Collectively, they motivated me to do my best and I ended getting a ten out of twelve on my SAT Writing and a six on my FCAT Writes. It was because of them that I was capable of accomplishing those scores.
Although I take great glee in writing, I do not enjoy reading. I would rather watch the stories develop on a movie screen than leave it up to my imagination. Now don’t get me wrong, the books I have read in school are phenomenal (except Catcher in the Rye. I find Holden Caulfield terribly annoying). I just cannot find it in me to sit down for an extended period of time and read a book with size eight font. I think that body language and facial expressions are to be seen in person, not read off a page. I think it is important to hear one’s voice when they speak to get a sense of the emotion behind what they are saying. With books, I cannot see a character’s physical attributes, expression or emotion; I have to take the time to read it. For me, when I read, I lose the human element of the book.
All in all, writing takes second place to conversing, but ranks way above reading because of the remarkable English teachers I have had. Although reading and writing typically go hand-in-hand, that is not the case to me. I prefer writing over reading.
The beauty of writing is that it is an outlet in which you can express yourself. You can write how you are feeling, stories, fantasies, and even things that you are too afraid to say out loud. For some it is an escape. To me, I think writing is essential to life, for it is the glue that holds communication and knowledge together. Without it we would not be able to create a language, speak to one another or text message our friends. Writing enables us to document things that are important and useful. History would never be recorded, and we would learn from word of mouth, which gets distorted as history goes on. Personally, as a visual learner I know for a fact that I would be a successful student with out writing. Although I don’t like to admit it, reading words written down in a text book or writing notes significantly helps a person to learn the material. If you don’t read or write, it would be extremely difficult to retain information because the human mind is a forgetful one. In all feilds of work, reading and writing are present. Living in the Twenty First century, people who are illiterate are at a serious disadvantage in the work force and without these imperative skills, they will never prosper.
Writing is something that I enjoy, but not necessarily something I would do in my own free time. I believe that the relationship with writing reflects the relationship with reading .Everyone needs a form of communication. A writer should try to communicate effectively with the reader and the reader needs to be able to understand the writer’s message.
My educational background does affect my relationship to writing. In my past English class, British Literature, I learned how to read from various time periods and write stories pertaining to them. I learned basic story structures such as archetypes, leitmotifs, symbols, etc. I feel I am able to discover and use them in a story successfully. I also learned how to take away the important messages from a story and apply it in my own life.
My past writing teachers have been nurturing in the sense that I should continue writing. They have encouraged me to continue writing in college, even if it is just for fun and in my free time. However, I feel I am lacking in the creative side of writing. I am far better in writing research and journalistic papers than fictional stories or poems. I look forward to becoming a better writer and using these skills later in my life.
-Lydia
Writing is my kryptonite. This is a problem because I know my major is writing intensive and I will need to excel in this area in order to perform well in my future career. I have always struggled with writing because I struggle to put my thoughts into words on paper. I personally feel I have plenty of ideas in my mind, but communicating them in a concise, clear, and educated manner is sometimes difficult. That said I love the research portion of papers because I am filled with amazing ideas and many different ways to approach a topic; the struggle is thus organizing my ideas into fluid words on paper. This is really the area I would like to see myself grow in, so that I will feel more comfortable writing on any topic and communicating to any audience clearly.
My last writing class was AP English Literature in high school and we wrote at least one short paper every week with a research paper at the end of the year. This helped me because it forced me to be able to write on many different themes and organize my thoughts quickly. The teacher was very supportive and gracious, which allowed me to truly be myself and allowed me to honestly show her my struggles so that she could come alongside me and help me become a better writer.
Writing can be thought of differently depending on the person. Personally, writing feels like a punishment. Constantly, thoughts pour into my head about the topic but without talking there seems no way to make sense of it on paper. I like the fact writing lets you express yourself and open your thoughts yet what is expressing yourself without showing any emotion about it. With all the different types of writing there is whether it be research, creative, or journalistic; the readers are eventually the ones who take the words off the paper and create what they want to see. One man can write a book about anything he wanted to but only the man who wrote the book can understand the true story behind it because it was his words and thoughts. The same things are very often interpreted differently depending on the person. Why couldn’t one thing I have read meant something totally to yourself. Chances are it probably will. I’m not trying to knock off writing and say that it is unnecessary because it is and truly is an important thing to be able to do: but what I am saying is that writing does not always make people think the same way about it. However, that can be a good thing.
The way that i look at writing is very similar to the way I look at running sprints. I know that I need to do both in order to be successful in english class and on the baseball field, but that still doesn’t make it any easier when i’m hit with the task of writing an essay or running. Writing has always just been something i’ve “had” to do rather than something i’ve “chosen” to do. The hardest part about writing for me is just getting started. Once I get my narrative or research paper going i feel comfortable and can usually find a way to make my writing sound good. However, finding the direction that I want my paper to head is most difficult for me. My last english class was the standard English IV honors that i took my senior year in high school. Most of the writing we did in that class was based off of stories that we read together as a class. We would have to find different themes in the story and our teacher would assign a paper that worked in with that theme. For example, when we were reading Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” we focused on the relationship between Antonio and Shylock. We then spun off of that theme and wrote a paper on the historical relationship between the Jewish and Christian community and the stereotype that Jewish men are often involved with moneylending. It was a very interesting class, I feel like the best thing it did for me was taught me how to be able to take a paper and be creative in the way I delivered the information to the reader. The main thing i need to improve with my writing is being more consistent with my papers and finding the direction i want to take my work.
When I think about writing I am neither discouraged nor excited. Writing was something that I dealt with through out High school. If I had to pick one favorite type of paper to write it would be a research paper because its a compilation of facts, not my opinions. I have never been one to voluntarily write a paper for fun, but once I get started on a paper the juices get flowing and I don’t have a problem. One aspect of English class I had difficulty with was analyzing poems or other pieces of literature. I always would think that the intent of the author was something totally different than what my teacher thought. Although, I do not think that there should be just one interpretation of a reading that is right. There is one type of writing that I do enjoy and that is journalistic. The ability to release all of your thoughts and emotions onto a piece of paper is very cathartic. I have a completely different relationship with writing than what I have with reading. I love finding a great read and being able to lose myself in a book. I used to get in trouble sometimes because I would read my new favorite book in my math or science class. I recently tried out audio books and so far I love them as well. I don’t think they will replace my tangible books, but they are a great alternative when traveling and when you want to hear the book come to life. In my past English classes I have loved (for the most part) all of my teachers. They have pushed my boundaries and helped become a stronger writer. My senior year I was in the standard honors English 4 course where we did the basic 12th grade course material. I don’t feel like I honestly gained much from that class other than some good books that we read. Overall in this course I am hoping to refine my writing skills and become more comfortable writing other types of papers.
I personally am not a fan of writing. Honestly, I believe I am not that big of a fan because I have never been taught how to write well. I have always been in Honors or AP English classes with other students who can string together sentences to make them sound like polished works of art. This is similar to when I go to the gym here on campus. I have been a tall skinny white swimmer from northern Maryland my whole life, lifting weights is not my forte. This highly differs from… well about every male on FSU’s campus. But I know to get decent grades in all my classes I am going to have to learn, practice, and perfect my writing skills, just like I will need to hit the weights to pick up some chicks here at FSU (That was a joke).
I am excited to learn and practice my writing skills in this years ENC1101 class. From the icebreaker the other day it seems as though we have a great group of students in our class and I am very happy that we have a smaller class so we can each have many of interactions with our instructor and all of our fellow peers.
-Austin P. Appel
Writing and I have always had a love/hate relationship. Hate is a very strong word so I can’t say I hate writing but I did not particularly enjoy writing when I had to say something unimportant in my life for 500 words or I had to write about how a certain author’s diction and syntax encouraged the audience to think about his or her point of view. Those non enjoyable moments happened in my high school AP LIT class but, I have to give my teacher credit because she helped me become a better writer for the topics I enjoy. Writing songs, short stories, and plays are types of writing that I thoroughly enjoy. I think of it almost as a hobby and it brings me great joy to express my feelings in that way. I like to read lyrics to songs and intriguing books that give me a spark to write something of my own. When I am writing a song, the world around me seems to dissipate with each word I write down and I love that feeling. You can say I have a love/ hate relationship with writing, but the love I have for it outweighs the bad.
-Renee Lemire
For me writing has always been some sort of an outlet. I prefer writing fictional short stories and stuff like that. I have done some research writing which was not too bad, but I prefer creative writing and I want to do some more journalistic writing. I like writing’s ability to connect people from various backgrounds and how writing is one of the few things that allow people to be on equal ground, even though each person can interpret the piece with their own understanding. The types of books I read are more like science fiction/ fantasy types of books, so it could have influenced the type of writing I like.
My AP English class that I took my senior was more of a literature based course, but we had an essay for everything that we had to read. It was a lot of comparison between different pieces of literature and a lot of research, so it was that class that improved my writing structure and research skills. My teacher taught us things like the importance of rewriting and improving each draft. But I know I need to improve on my grammar and different sentence structures, and I never fully grasped the MLA reference format. I have not written anything other than research and essays in a while so I might be a little rusty when it comes to creative writing.
-Le’otis Boswell-Johnson
I am very ambivalent towards writing, sometimes it’s fun, depending on the type of writing, but the majority of the time it’s more of a hassle. My relationship with writing most definitely reflects my relationship with reading. I’m not a big fan of reading, so writing isn’t one of my strong suits. I wouldn’t necessarily consider writing “fun”, but when I was writing my college essays I actually enjoyed it, mainly because I got to reflect on myself and had the opportunity to show my personality in my writing. But if I had to write either a critique or a research paper I’m pretty sure I’d rather fall out of a building.
I’ve had three really good nurturing teachers in high school that truly helped me with my writing, and one that was just horrible. She wouldn’t give really good critiques over my work, I just think she didn’t like me very well. But I did take AP English Language and Comp. the AP class mainly centered around rhetoric and how sentence structures could give a parallel meaning to the concept the author is trying to convey. Also in AP I was taught how to analyze any piece of literature and find satire (which is surprisingly hard at times).
Writing is all about perspective. Most of us sit in ENC 1101 with no other choice; sometimes I wish I loved writing. I view writing as my enemy, but I keep my enemies close. Maybe I am discouraged since English is my second language, many don’t understand how harsh it is to go somewhere where you are muted. Since elementary school I have not found it easy to be graded and compared to native speakers, after all, this is just another language to me. If I was given the opportunity to practice for 19 years, I am certain I would excel at it. Unfortunately I didn’t get that blessing.
Communication is the key of life; the simple fact that I can walk over to that Starbucks in the Strozier library and get my daily Latte is an accomplishment for me. My life has always been the plot of many obstacles, most of them which I have overcome, but some still haunt me. Writing is a double-edged sword, it is what allows me to do what I love, meet people and continue forward with my Engineering degree. It is what got me in this wonderful University, and what will help me express ideas and understand the world and cultures around me. I still wonder if I could master the art of writing like most native speakers, but most times I find myself pursuing my Engineering degree and leaving the writing to those that have been taught well.
Good post, but who is this? I need your name to give you credit.
Hello, its Alvaro Soares forgot to change my name for this post
While I do enjoy writing at times, starting off a writing project of any sort is difficult. It usually takes me a minute or two to even come up with a good first sentence. I sit there, staring at the screen, thinking, “what do I say?” Constant writing, rephrasing in my head, deleting, staring, and writing it over until I can get it right. Distractions, left and right, stray my mind away from my writing, causing me to lose my train of thought: music, Internet, phone, friends, food. Although the beginning is the hard part, once I get started, I speed on through.
Once I really get into it, I go through this feeling of “flow.” Everything just flows along, out my fingers, onto the keyboard, onto paper, and it usually stays. I just go, go, go. Everything else is just background noise that isn’t gonna make it to my head or into my writing. As I continue to write, it’s like I’m in a race. So many thoughts are coming out of my head so fast and onto the paper and it’s difficult to stop. If I stop it, I lose my train of thought and boom, I’m back at the beginning. As time progresses though, I’m back in the saddle, I’m speeding through, I type faster and faster until…. Suddenly my mind is blank. I have nothing more to say. But I’m satisfied with what I’ve written.
Last year I took AP English Literature. I’ve never been that great at analyzing stories, but I ended up in the class because of my grades in my junior year English Honors class. First semester, I had to write a nine page research paper relating to Dr. Faustus. We had many options, so I chose to write about all the parallels between the author and the main character, Dr. Faustus. Since this one took a lot of research, it was done in about a week and a half. Second semester I had to write a paper about symbolism in Dante, which, although quite a bit harder for me, got done.
-Becky B
My experience with writing teachers throughout the years has not been as intriguing as I would have liked. Junior year of high school, which is supposed to be the most important time of your high school career, my English teacher left us for a good portion of the year because she just gave birth to her first child. We were stuck with a sub who didn’t exactly teach us anything about writing and I still didn’t know how to write a college essay by the time senior year came around. Also, I never took an AP language or literature class because I didn’t care for writing, so I felt lost when it came time to apply to college and capture the admissions’ attention at FSU. Luckily, last year I was put in a former AP teacher’s class and learned more about literature, plays and poetry than ever before. We spent a lot of time studying Macbeth and Beowulf, going in depth about characters and underlying meanings. Although I do not enjoy writing so much for school and structural essays, creative writing and narratives are not too bad. I hope to learn a lot in this class because I do feel like I need some work in the writing department and I would like to enjoy writing instead of dreading it.
-Lauren A
As I embarked through my journey of high school english classes, I quickly learned that forming an opinion of writing wouldn’t do me much good. Regardless of whether I liked it or not, writing would always be an essential part of my education. Lucky for me, writing has always come pretty naturally to me. Although it can be challenging, writing isn’t something I dislike, in fact I’d take writing over college algebra any day. That being said, informative essays and research papers aren’t something I’d do for fun. Narratives and creative writing is where I’m strongest. The biggest struggle for me when writing a paper has always been getting started. Getting all the ideas swarming around in my head onto paper can be a tough task, but once I get going I’m usually alright. The topic of the essay makes a huge difference too. If the prompt is something interesting and relatable to my life, the writing comes out much smoother. I was fortunate to have great english teachers in high school which is half the battle. I look forward to what this class brings to my knowledge of writing and reading.
Throughout life we have all had someone say writing is one of the most important skills that you learn in life and they try to convince us that it can help control stress and allow us to express who we really are without putting ourselves out there physically. Well no matter how many times someone tells me those things I will never believe it. I find that writing, no matter what mode of writing it is, is quite boring. It could be from all the years that they only focused on FCAT type writing or the teachers that I have had in the past but I have never been able to figure out why people find it so enjoyable. As a kid I attempted to keep journals of what I did everyday but after a week or so I found it boring and would just toss the notebook out. Other times I have tried to write my frustrations out on paper instead of other coping mechanisms but I just felt more stressed after finishing.
The relationship that a person has with writing plays a huge part in their relationship with reading. I have always disliked both due to the feeling that I was not as fast or as strong of a reader as everyone else which probably lead to my boredom with writing. Do not get me wrong, I think writing is very important and for some people it does help them, but for me it is just not one of my strong suits.
In this first opportunity for a blog post, you’ll to discuss our relationship with writing. Some of us really don’t care for it, some of us don’t mind it, some of us might be trying to make a career out of it. Tell us what you like or dislike about writing. Keep in mind that there are several modes of writing—research, creative, journalistic, etc—and you might enjoy one of these forms while hating another. Does your relationship with writing reflect your relationship with reading? How Is writing something you do for fun? does your educational background affect your relationship to writing? Have your past writing teachers been nurturing or discouraging?
Writing is a powerful and yet meaningless act. The power of writing can come from the writer or the reader(s). Certain texts in history have been the cause of millions if not billions of deaths and lives saved. For example The Holy Bible, Mien Kampf, or The Constitution. Writing can also be described as meaningless because with the right speaker can be substituted with with the word of mouth or be delivered wrongly with the wrong speaker, My previous teachers in high school have meant to nurture my writing skills but have actually held me back in many ways. Writing is something that I do for fun, usually on my phone. I will write notes of tasks I need to complete or ideas I would care to remember. Sometimes I will even write speeches that I will give to people. In conclusion, writing is a very useful talent that I would love master; because all of the most influential people in the world have been writers or have written something.
The last writing class I took in high school was English Honors and our teacher would always tell us to write responses about the stories that we read. To me, writing can be hard at times when I don’t know how to word a certain phrase. For example: I think of an image in my head and it’s hard for me to put in words. My favorite writing is creative writing because that way, I am not limited. I have a huge imagination and often times, I can picture a storyline and I will include a certain part of it in my writing. My least favorite writing is research papers. I don’t like where we have to look up a bibliography or nonfiction and write a paper according to what is on the internet or in books. But don’t get me wrong because I still love to write.
I usually like to read fiction books and sometimes, I will remember how they write and mimic them on my piece of writing. My parents always tell me that if I read more books, my writing skills and English language will improve. I come from an Asian background and since English is not my first language, I will sometimes make grammatical errors and stumble on ideas. But when I was in ESOL, I would write a response or journal everyday so I could improve step by step. I love all my English teachers back in high school because they are the ones who help me get more comfortable in writing all sorts of genre. I have confidence that from here onwards, I will become a better writer.
-Michelle Wu
Writing has never been my strong suit and probably never will be. I am not a great writer, in fact, it is my bane. I wish I could write all the great stories that I have floating around in my head but, every time I try it never works out. I can associate myself with Laurie Moore’s short story “How to Become a Writer,” in that I may try and try again… but my writing is always lacking.
In the past, I have had teachers that chose to ignore teaching the mechanics of writing in favor of teaching “Better reading skills.” It wasn’t until my senior year that I found a teacher who nurtured the art of writing. My AP Literature & Composition teacher went out of her way to ensure our writing skills were improved as much as possible before leaving her class. She challenged us to be better writers through practice: 2-3 page papers due each week on short novels we we’re assigned. Her class was where I learned I had a desire to write, but lacked the prowess. My relationship with writing is a Love-Hate. In ENC 1101 I hope to develop my writing skills to the point that i can write with more confidence.
-William Dell-
My journey in creative writing can be traced back to elementary school. I drew inspiration in the subject from my second grade language arts teacher, Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Wright is by far my favorite teacher I’ve ever had in my entire life. It’s shocking looking back on some of the stories I wrote in second grade, because of how impressive my grammar and ideas were. I owe my advanced writing style at such a young age entirely to Mrs. Wright. She had us writing two papers a month about the topic of our choice for the entire year. She would then hole punch everyones’ stories and make them look extremely decorative by putting a very appealing cover on them. I still have two of the stories I wrote in second grade sitting in my room, “The Day I Broke My Leg” and “Baseball Blues.” I also believe that my hobby of reading creative fictional stories is derived from Mrs. Wright. I began my endeavor in the Harry Potter series at a very young age. To date, I have read all of the books in the series and seen all of the movies. I’m the furthest thing from an avid reader, however. Rarely will you see me reading a book and when you do, it’s because it was assigned for class. My distaste in reading is accompanied by a hatred of writing research papers or literary criticisms. In my senior year english class we were forced to write both of these types of papers. I hated every second of it. From my enormous term paper on Huck Finn to writing a literary criticism on “The Great Gatsby”, the malice I was feeling felt never ending. I like the idea of writing in this journal every week for a semester, however. I feel like it will strengthen my writing skills while at the same time help me get to better know myself.
-Louie Copley
Personally, I hate sitting down and reading or writing for fun. It is more of a chore rather than a fun task for me. As to why I’m not entirely sure. My family has a high educational background and a stable income which I believe adds to my brother and I having more resources and ultimately getting higher grades in school. We have never struggled with reading or writing. I believe coming from a family with a high educational background and stable income adds to us choosing to play games, or oboe in my case, rather than sitting down and reading for pleasure. My brother and I have had every resource available to us from the “rich” schools we went to. These resources have given us a strong foundation for our basic reading, writing, and math skills which has given us the opportunity to become slackers and still score above the average student on our quizzes and papers.
I must confess that I do love to read about oboe and other band geek stuff. I had to write a research paper in my English 4 honors class last year about any topic I wanted. I chose to write about reed making. My friends would harass me about how I was not going to be able to write five pages about oboe reeds, but I did it. Surprisingly it was extremely easy too. I actually had to shorten my paper to fit the requirements. The best part about writing the paper was how easy it was to get myself to work on it. I guess I don’t slack when it comes to something I’m passionate about.
~Kaitlyn Klingberg
Unfortunately, I was never blessed with a writing teacher that was even worth remembering or giving recognition to. My AP composition teacher my senior year of high school lacked the ability to really make us want to write and be creative. By giving us boring and non interesting topics to write about, I dreded the moment that 7th period class rolled around. I myself do enjoy writing, though. If I could pick any topic I wanted to write about, or get assigned an interesting subject, I’d be completely satisfied. I believe that written work is better when someone has a true passion for whatever they are writing about, rather than it being forced upon them. Interesting events going on in our world today completely have an effect on people’s writing. But I do love creative writing. I am not the most artistic person, but I do have a large imagination. Research papers arent my most favorite thing to write about, but if I have a connection with the topic I find it so interesting. It is enjoyable for me to research all this information that I may have never known about.
My love of writing first came from my love of reading. I remember just loving reading even in kindergarten. I had great teachers that really encouraged reading and writing. Writing creatively is, for me the best type of writing. Being able to create worlds and character that can forever be remembered is just an amazing thing to be able to accomplish. Writing becomes boring and I believe people begin to hate it when you have to right analytically. Things such as long research papers just really discourage people from really enjoying writing. I can’t say this is true for everyone but for me it is. I feel writing research papers constricts my thought process, I feel as if it’s absolutely horrible. I’ve always written creatively on my own, never in a class setting. When ever I did have to write in class it was some long research paper where I had to have all these sources and talk about a topic I had no interest in at all. That’s a problem with research papers at least for me I could never get invested in them. I don’t feel as I’m bad at writing research papers its just I would rather write a short story or a journal something more on a personal level. I would like to improve me vocabulary and spelling in my writing.
I started to gain an interest in writing when I was in Kindergarden. I had a journal where I wrote fiction stories all the time and used my imagination to pretend that I was a writer. I would write about anything and everything and I wasn’t scared to just let my mind wander and write. When I was young, writing was easy. It didn’t have to be in a particular format, and it didn’t have to follow any guidelines, so I was good at it. As I got older, school forced me to write the way they wanted me to. This meant it got harder. I have always loved to write, but when I got to high school, it wasn’t fun anymore. It was more a task for me. I took some AP English classes and some honors ones. These taught me great skills for my writing, but they also didn’t allow me to write the way I wanted to. I had decent teachers who encouraged me to do well on a daily basis, which definitely helped. I need to learn how to be a good writer under any circumstances. I am hoping that being in this class can teach me how to do that and teach me to love writing again. I know I am not the best at it, but I also know I have great potential. I think having a small class this semester will be a great way for me focus and learn how to become the best writer that I can. I would like to improve my vocabulary because it is one thing that is not too strong when I write. Research papers were also always a struggle for me because I never found them fun to do, which most people can agree with me on. I know we will have a lot of these, so I hope to get better at writing those as well.
Kathryn Kennedy
Writing and I have a love-hate relationship. When I was in lower school writing was so much fun. There were no rules; you could do nothing wrong. Everything was excellent and just FANTASTIC! Little did I know that things would change…forever. Now there is this rule and that rule, commas don’t go there, that’s a fragment (and that’s just the basic stuff). It takes a lot to write a good paper, essay, story, journal, etc. There is a whole process that goes along with writing something, anything. First and foremost, the most vital step to starting a piece of writing is having something to write about. You can’t write about nothing, but then again, even writing about nothing is writing about something. Once you have your topic, you must focus your whole life on this said topic. You need to think about it, you need to talk about it, you need to be about it. You need to step into the world of this topic and explore every corner. Focus, focus, focus. (Yes, I know that’s a fragment.) Focusing is probably the hardest thing about writing for me. I get bored, I take breaks, I look up and see a weird indentation in the wall that looks like a wolf holding a balloon, I get hungry, and then I go eat. I’ll wander back to my paper, glaring at those two measly sentences desperately wishing this nightmare would come to an end. I will hold it off to the very end, dreading those 3,000 unwritten words that are eating me alive inside. I will procrastinate like no one has ever procrastinated before until the time comes to “do or die.”
Right about now you are thinking to yourself, ‘Where is the love? Where is the love, the love, the love?’ I do love writing about topics that I am really interested in and am passionate about. I get motivated and really into it. I get lost inside its world and have a hard time snapping back to reality.
Last year I took AP Language which was an amazing class that taught me so much about writing and rhetoric. Every little word has a purpose. Everything about that word is vital to its meaning: it’s placement, it’s context, how it’s written, everything! I want to improve my sentence styles and creativity.
This one made me laugh. Well done, Avery.
That was Curtis’s above
Writing is not on my top ten lists of things to do. Whether I have to write a research paper or a short blog I’m never motivated to write. I wish I could enjoy it and not view the process as a task, but I feel that my past education in English classes have not been up to par compared to others from different schools. When a person is good at something they tend to enjoy it, and since I’m not that great at writing I don’t like it that much. I don’t know if a person is taught to enjoy something or gains that ability on their own, but either way with all the classes and teachers I’ve had only one teacher challenged me and tried to make my class enjoy writing. He left after two weeks of class.
Organization and focus are two things I lack when it comes to writing. I always feel like I have a good idea of what I’m going to write until the time comes where I actually have to write. I like short and simple answers and when I try to write and elaborate on some idea it is a struggle to expand on my idea. With this class hopefully I will be able to improve my writing ability to what I need for my future classes and career.
sorry my computer is acting weird if its posting multiple.
and ignore the one saying mine is above
I wish I enjoyed writing, I really do. Most teachers say writing provides the freedom to communicate almost any thought or opinion, but for me, I always find myself in a state of frustration. I feel as though I always have so many ideas, but when I go to actually put them on paper it is nothing short of a struggle. In math or science there is generally always one answer…solve the problem and that’s it. English has so many more opportunities for the “right” answer and it truly frustrates me. I think I can generally put together an adequate introduction and conclusion, but sometimes my ideas in between are a little blurry.
The last English class I took was Honors English my senior year of high school where we didn’t do that much formal writing. As much as I don’t necessarily enjoy writing, I do like being challenged and I don’t think that a lot of my teachers have done this. I think being challenged this year will have a huge impact on my writing. In the end I think I am decently proud of what I write just getting there takes a lot of time. I think if I had to choose though I enjoy writing about personal experiences or something that truly interest me the most. But along with my opinion about writing I would much rather write than read. I think this class has the ability to change my opinion on writing as long as I give it a chance.
I am not a big fan of writing. I had to write a lot in high school and I hated doing it. I’ve never been good at writing. I did improve a lot in AP English Language during my junior year of high school but my writing is still below average. I have had some great writing teachers and some very bad ones in the past. After my senior year English class I got substantially worse at writing because my teacher didn’t assign many writing assignments and when she did there wasn’t good feedback on the paper. I am a math person; my favorite classes have always been my math classes. I never looked forward to going to English class. I don’t like to read and only do it when I am required to do it for school. I haven’t read a book for fun since elementary school because I don’t have the patience to sit for a while and just read. My last writing class was AP English Literature. I don’t feel I learned much in the class. We read a lot but didn’t do as much writing on the books as we were supposed to do which has had a negative effect on my writing. I don’t have a lot of confidence in writing introduction paragraphs, which hurts my overall paper.