Precourse
On the writer ladder scale provided in the assignment I would have to rank myself as an “articulate ‘good’ writer at the top.” Writing is something that has never really been any sort of a problem for me, and because of this I do not really remember any paper I’ve written aside from the AP American History paper I worked on yesterday. As a result I don’t know which of the many papers I’ve written has been my best work nor which has been the most difficult; however, I’m pretty confident in the assessment I have of my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing.
One of the most important strengths I have in writing is that I actually enjoy writing. As you will soon become aware, and perhaps annoyed by as Ms. Zarkh was, I am a completely different person in my writing than I am in the classroom. You will see that I don’t really like to talk in class; this is mostly because I’ve found that talking in class does not effect how I perform on the assignments and tests that make up my grade. Also, I feel it’s best to let my work speak for itself. In sharing this with you, I am simply trying to prevent you from writing me off as an uninterested student. Aside from the fact that I enjoy writing my other strengths are that I am articulate, I have a pretty good vocabulary and I have a knack for manipulating the language – and, to keep from coming of as conceited, I’m only reiterating what has been written by teachers on my papers as they grade them.
Though I have been in many classes that have required me to write many papers, I have never before been asked to write a one-page, single-spaced paper on a simple question like the one posed here. Do I think of myself as a good writer? Well, in my attempt to fill this page, I believe I have discovered one of my weaknesses as a writer. As you can probably see, creativity (assuming I stay on topic) is apparently not my strong suit. I am comfortable when asked to critique or react to something I’ve read, but now that I’m being asked to analyze my own thoughts I’m finding it very difficult to write. Come to think of it, I would now like to retract the statement I made in my introduction and to say that this is one of the most difficult papers I’ve had to write; however, I will not go back and remove that earlier statement because doing so would ruin this documented self realization that has occurred as I am writing this paper, which in turn supports the responses we wrote today about how our lives teach us who we are.
I chose to take Expository Writing this semester to better myself as a writer. I am sure that I will come away from your class better prepared for the writing I’ll need to do in college, but I am not taking your class for that; I’m taking your class only to become a better writer just for the sake of being a good writer. Writing is something that is extremely important, and I am really looking forward to having to push myself and having to think, as I have had to do in this assignment, in the rest of the assignments you will be giving throughout the course.