How I Feel About Being a Writer

            Writing is one of the most important factors in person’s academic careers. Writing skills are incorporated in almost every single subject one learns from elementary school all the way through university and graduate school. Since an individual has to constantly convey his (or her) ideas and thoughts effectively, it is vital to learn how to refine his skills. If a person is not good at composing essays, no matter how intelligent he is or how astonishing his opinions are, he would not be able to communicate with other people or convince them to take his point of view.

            Truthfully, expository writing was not one of my choices that I chose to take this year. However, this does not mean that I did not like writing itself. When I was a freshman, I had to write several essays and compositions, which improved my writing. When I became a sophomore, all I remember is writing three essays in entire year, including summer reading critical lens. Not continuing to write hindered my skills immensely, and I noticed that my tenth grade English compositions were far worse than my ninth grade ones. I was afraid that taking any writing classes would bring down my GPA during my crucial junior year. When I received my schedule and saw “Expository Writing,” my first reaction was to panic. However, I noticed that my history report grades were going up, thanks to tons of assignments my history teacher gave out, and decided taking intensive writing class would do same to my English essays if I make an effort.

            Currently, I am having difficulty writing essays that are not in form of “research report.” I have hard time expressing myself and giving opinions of my own. Even though I have various thoughts and ideas, I cannot word and phrase them coherently in a piece of writing. My readers would often get confused, and sometimes I even contradict myself in essays. Any compositions that need personal insights or reflections are menace to me, and I do not have clear sense of communicating effectively through writing.

            Another problem I have is organizing my paper into paragraphs and make them sound coherent with each other. When I am writing research papers, I know the constituents that make up the whole subject, so I do not experience that much difficulty. However, when I am writing free-style, personal, and persuasive essays, it seems like all of the opinions I am trying to express are similar to each other. I often end up with a gigantic paragraph which includes every one of my thoughts, or a bulleted form with number of lists of my beliefs on the subject. This deters effective communication with my reader even more, and my paper would have a teacher’s comment saying “not clear/coherent here” or “confused with this paragraph!”

            By taking Expository Writing class, I look forward to challenges that I will face and expect by the end of this semester, I would be a better writer. I am willing to face my problems and fix them to improve my essays. I am also eager to start my research paper since that was the assignment I enjoyed most – “Atlantis: the Lost Kingdom” in Ms. Gokturk’s Freshman Studies class - during my past two years in all of my English classes.