The first week of the Writing One class I wrote down two goals I wanted to achieve by quarter’s end. First being getting an A in the class, which I hope that goal will be accomplished; my second goal was a personal goal of being a better writer than when I started the course. That goal was more complicated than I originally planned for. I believed that in order for myself to become a better writer that just meant use more intelligent vocabulary and limit my run on sentences (I have a lot of them). Writing one taught me that in order to achieve my goal of being a better writer I had to understand more about writing and be better at the little things in writing. When I say “the little things” that means I had to get better at revising, transitions, and how my style of writing is being perceived by the reader. It is similar to golf, when someone asks me “how do I get good at golf”? They expect me to say “you know I am just blessed and hit a lot of golf balls” which couldn’t be more wrong. Ya I am blessed with talent but talent only takes you so far, I still to this day have to get better with practicing and gamplanning, same goes for writing. Revisioning played a big role in helping me get the best grades possible with these papers.
Our two main papers this quarter were the Narrative Inquiry and our Rhetorical Analysis essay. I wrote my Narrative Inquiry paper on a miscommunication I had with a peer. I ended up getting a B on that paper, professor Saur and I sat down to discuss the reasons behind her choosing of the grade. She told me that there was greatness in my paper, however I needed to go back and “clear things up” to showcase my greatness. There were multiple instances in my paper where instead of expressing my frustration and explaining the situation, I instead went straight to “well that’s life”. By skipping the whole explanation of the awkwardness of the situation I did not develop the crucial pathos that my paper needed to contain and it failed in giving the reader a good read.
The rhetorical analysis essay was an essay where we had to choose something that contained a rhetorical argument and that we interact with daily. For my Rhetorical Analysis piece I chose to write about music. I wrote about music because music is a big part of my life and it is something I interact with daily. My musical choice was “Memories” by David Guetta. I chose the song “Memories” because whenever I hear that opening intro all the memories of this past summer, my friends and I`s last summer before college, my favorite summer yet. The revision process for my rhetorical analysis on rhetorical analysis paper was slightly different than that of the narrative inquiry. This revision was mainly focused on the structure more than the details. I had the same paragraph three different times so for starters I deleted two of them. The next action I took was taking a second look at my paper and then changing the tone to more of an emotional tone. We discussed how the emotional approach would bring out my writing of my friends and I`s last summer together.
After finishing this project, I reflected and saw how far I have come with my writing skills. I have really enjoyed taking this class and am glad I did not get a high enough score on the placement writing test. After many blog posts I have learned so much about writing by simply reading other articles and reading the different perspectives authors have. Even reading how writers feel about their own struggles in writing.
Barnes` Blog (Writing 1) 