Writing has always been a required part of my education but not necessarily a part I was interested in. Before coming to college at the Virginia Military Institute my writing skills were sub-par. Coming to college I have learned to correct mistakes in my writing, such as repetition and poor word choice, and I have learned better pre-writing and organizational skills along with improving my sentence structure. Entering into my next semester of writing I hope to be able to be clear and concise in my writing and take my vocabulary to another level. Though my failures heavily outweighed my success in high school writing, I continue to improve everyday to change the odds in my favor.
First of, reflecting on my high school writing experiences, I believe many of the experiences I had in AP English, senior year, paved the way for the writer that I am today. My teacher, Mr. Meister, made it one of the hardest classes I have taken thus far, however, both good and bad, it taught me what I need do and need not do in college writing. Many mistakes I experienced in high school occurred often to include: off topic ideals, paragraph organization, and unclear thoughts. These mistakes were not skipped over when he graded papers so therefore, a lot of the time, I didn’t get the best grades on his essays. Throughout the year, however, I learned what he was looking for and I improved on each essay until, I would say, I was finally successful. My last paper of senior year earned me an eight out of nine on the AP grading scale. The problems and successes of that last paper carried me into my first semester of college writing.
My first semester of college was essential to setting a baseline GPA for the rest of my cadetship. Using the lessons I learned in high school, I laid it all out on the table for my English teacher to discern and correct. Based on the fact that I held nothing back she was able to tighten my structure, repetition, and conciseness without taking out my personality from my writing. Throughout the entire semester I recognized three main things that I could fix going into my Spring Semester of 2016. My pre-writing and the order in which I did things needed to be worked on, I had to decrease and be able to recognize my own repetitiveness throughout my paper, and fix the organization issues throughout my entire paper, specifically which groups of sentences go together in which paragraph. Just like high school I improved drastically on these issues by improving one paper after another, and learning to recognize my mistakes more clearly. My last paper became probably the best paper I have ever written. It was based on a theory about Writing itself and I used all the skills I had gained my first semester of writing in order to project one of the most complex ideals I had come up with to date. It was based on the theory of Advancement Destruction, a term I coined myself, in which I analyzed technological advances in writing, making it more and more computer oriented. I came to the conclusion that instead of these advances actually being advances, it rather increases procrastination and will ultimately lead to the destruction of the importance of literacy in the United States.
Based on these experiences I have few reservations in my confidence going into my Spring Semester of 2016 English. With the confidence and skills, I gained Fall Semester, I believe I can carry the ideals into my writing throughout this semester no matter the topic. The only thing I will have to be concerned about is following my teacher’s guidelines on papers and not going off on a tangent. With the skills I learned this past semester and the things I will begin to learn about my writing this semester, I should have no problem being successful using the same writing style I’ve become accustomed to.
Overall, I believe high school writing set my baseline of essential grammar and ideals that have stuck with me since, even subconsciously. It also set a baseline of mistakes that I have learned to avoid. My Fall Semester of English has introduced me to the high level of writing that is expected at the college level. Reflecting on the last semester of writing I have learned specific skills of organization, pre-writing, and recognizing my own mistakes rather than having someone else edit my paper. My Fall Semester class had specific ideals of writing about writing rather than writing about a topic throughout the world. I believe this is what took my writing to another level and will make me prepared for the upcoming semester of writing. Lastly, I believe that the type of writing I do this semester will come easy for me by using the baseline of skills I acquired Fall Semester and my ability to talk which is exactly what this semester is about, arguing in writing.