This includes the revision of my first Essay. I chose to revise this essay, because it was the first one I had completed for my Writing and Rhetoric 101 course. When I did the assignment, I did not poses as many of the writing qualities and capabilities as I did for the other two, all of which I learned during the course. I mainly used the grade assignment that I received back from my professor to guild my revision process.
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Enabling the Writer Within
ERH 101, Section 1
Date Due: June 3, 2015
Date Sub: June 2, 2015
Paper 1
Help Received: Peer-revision,
Murray, Lammot, King,
Goodman, Haruf writings,
Class paperwork and discussion
My earliest and most significant memory of writing in my life, is when I was a child. My mother had me write in a journal, especially when I would travel out of the country, and she forcefully encouraged me to write in it. I would jot down a summary about each day, and I never enjoyed it. This was mainly due to the fact that I was relatively forced to do it. and I felt that I would never care for simple activities that I had done in the future, or if I were perhaps to reread these entries, I would not remember what had occurred on that specific day. For those reasons, writing has established a firm place on my dislike list, and I have never really enjoyed it since.
Further along in my childhood I recall performing paragraph write-up sessions in my fifth grade class. The teacher had a large poster paper and as a class we came up with a paragraph about roller coasters for example. She informed us about catching the reader’s attention with hooks and proper sentence flow. As sixth grade came, however, my concepts and opinions of writing twisted very negatively. My teacher would have us write many long essays on short poems and I hated it tremendously. Even my teacher in middle school agreed that analyzing poetry was not just about writing long essay, but more of understanding of what the author intended.
It was not until this time in middle school where I began to understand how to interoperate what the author was saying. Although from then I began to constantly question this process. It is dependent upon us, as individuals, to derive the author’s tone, opinions, and meaning behind texts while reading. To me it seems unimportant, particularly because everybody has different opinions and many may not agree with each other. I asked myself, what if we are completely misunderstanding what the author wrote. Quite possibly, the author might not have a legitimate purpose or deeper meaning behind certain sections or the whole piece in general. There was no specific literary pieces that I considered this concept, it was generally when I had to analyze any piece of poetry or the work of Shakespeare, for example.
Moving into high school, I completed business letters, resumes, narratives, and many analytical literary pieces. When applying for my Eagle Scout rank, it was required that I submit a report and essay to a committee. This committee would then review my request and decide whether or not to approve said request. I heard back from the committee about a month later. They had sent me a congratulations letter. I was then awarded the rank of Eagle Scout in the spring of 2014.
In the past, the purpose of writing was to complete an assignment and to receive a grade for that writing. Due to this required completion, I have never seen writing as a pleasuring activity. While I was in high school, the purpose of writing papers, was so that we, as students, could analyze pieces given by the teacher. I do not relate myself to the authors of the pieces I analyzed, because the reason for me writing, was not the same as the authors. Although there is a difference in the reason for writing, both activities are forms of writing. The authors of these pieces had different motivation for writing, some did it for the entertainment of others, i.e. books and stories, but others had an alternate reason. Many people wrote to inform the public of current events or presented information about new inventions, social problems or discussed political ideas.
I do not perceive writing as a positive activity, although I do think it is vital for our society. It is the method in which we, as a whole, can document what is occurring for historical records. It is a way to express opinions and exchange ideas, of course this method is not the only means of interaction. Writing holds roots in almost every single form of communication. When delivering a speech, for example, the spokesperson most likely dictated his thoughts ahead of time, revising and reviewing to create an adequate presentation. Great orators organize ahead and fully develop their thoughts several days, weeks or months in advance to a speech’s delivery. Another example of this communication would be music. While there are many forms of this medium, a significant amount not using words specifically, composing music using notes and rhythms appears to be a language of its own. With that language musicians are capable of reading the music, processing the information specified and preforming to the authors intended outcome, much like those reading poetry or a novel. There are countless styles and genres, with some songs containing lyrics and meaning, while others may just be instrumental. It is an art form that involves an important form of writing and the passion that is associated with it.
Through my history of writing I never did any poetry for fun or free writing, I only wrote when I had an assignment in school. The term “freewriting” came as an oxymoron to me, everything I had done in the past had been for a requirement. The concept of “freewriting” seems absurd and very abstract to a person who had never received any enjoyment from writing in general. Although, I believe that writing for many people is a very effective medium of communication in today’s society. On social media individuals post or blog about random events in their lives very frequently and compose concise reports of what has occurred. Although I read and write more and more every day due to the increase of social media presence, from my unpleasant history of writing. I see it as an activity forced upon me by my superiors, whether teachers or parents, solely because they had instructed me to do so, whether it was for a grade or some other academic purpose.
As part of my extreme displeasure of writing, I will often delay its completion as a form of retaliation or simply disinterest in undertaking the assignment. My writing process mainly includes creating a single rough draft which I will edit and revise as I go along. I mainly create compositions in this fashion due to my terrible habit of procrastination and possessing limited time with which I must complete the assignment as a result. Once I have completed the draft, occasionally in class I exchange my drafts with other peoples and receive feedback. Then I alter minor errors, such as grammar issues, sentence fragments, and overall flow. Primarily the draft I create the first time is what is usually refined a small amount.
These mediums of writing, music, books, articles, poems, etc. within our society are extremely important. It allows us to communicate in politics, inform the general public, entertain and express views and opinions on the world. Writing is encompassed in every aspect of communication and many of the events and attitudes that are experienced during this time period would be forgotten, overlooked and undocumented. As said before, writing may be used for entertainment, stories, for example, may be told may be extremely positive, others may be controversial. People in the future will depend on the writings that were created during today’s time, as a way of understanding what happened.
As I have grown and have further developed my role in society, it has become apparent how dependent we are on writing and communication. This reliance on writing for communication, via text or instant messaging, emails, and electronic reports to name a few, connects everybody. It is exceptionally challenging to imagine or predict society deprived of writing, primarily due to the immense influence it has within our environment. In today’s technologically advanced age, the aspect of writing has taken on additional responsibility. Technology without a doubt has spread writing’s influence throughout the world. Yes, in earlier eras letters and books were written and writing was still profound in that society. However, the influence is miniscule compared to the rate at which information it exchanged today. We demand writing in order to keep the peace and maintain basic survival.
In the future, my role in society will hopefully be as a civil engineer. During that time I expect to be composing many reports and building requests which will require an intense level of formality. Again, I do not view my future self as a person who writes as an emotional release, as way of expressing myself or just for the sake of writing. Nevertheless, that does not exempt me from having the responsibility of knowing how to do so. While attending VMI, I hope that I will be able to view writing as a positive medium of communication, and be able to develop effective strategies for adequate writing styles.
Throughout my time here no doubt my classes will mainly be centered on math and engineering, I anticipate papers on major mathematic figures, and environmental or structural reports for engineering courses. When addressing work in literature for my English and any other humanities courses, I will be required to analyze literary compositions, and look for the deeper meaning of the author.
As an example, each author read about in this course had a different topic or area of writing. They explained their views on, writing environments, shitty first drafts, attitudes towards writing, restricting the inner critic and allowing what you write to define you. From each passage I gained a different perspective on writing, and a new, optimistically positive, outlook and mindset towards writing. Realistically, during my time at VMI, I will strive to master proper writing skills in order for it to become as easy as math or sciences comes to me.
Going back to my future as an engineer, I do not want to have to worry about spending large quantities of time revising and rewriting reports. Instead, I would prefer if I could exhibit the necessary skills to construct sound reports and have the ability to easily fix mistakes without having to stress out. I am very optimistic about learning effective abilities in planning, developing, and composing.