The Life of I: The Building Blocks of My Future 

One girl, one world, one dream. Only I can determine what is destined for my future. When examining myself and my writing process, I’ve learned a lot about the great writer that I have become to be. My improvement in writing is a clear example of how a person can significantly influence their academic journey and even future. My writing has not only changed me as a writer, but as a person. I realize that if I was able to considerably develop so much into a writer I am now, from the writer I used to be, then I can develop myself in other aspects like becoming a better student or person. When authors write a book, their main goal should be to try their best to influence the readers to believe everything they are saying. Not only was I able to believe the author, but I used the same techniques in my own writing. The book, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, is a book whom poems allowed me to think about writing in a process that is not commonly used. This book allowed for the use of the rhetorical device, pathos, in order to pour my emotions into my readers. There were times throughout my life I have struggled with doing assignments that made me think for myself and plan for my own paper, but that has changed with the maturity and development of my writing by different factors, including the book. Through the process of analyzing myself while writing, I realized the things that I do during that time plays a big role in how I developed as a writer. There are some assignments that are easier for me to work with than others. Those assignments have allowed me to take the easy way out, instead of the way that will teach me. In order to test that theory, I compared myself writing the same texts in two very different locations. My purpose is to learn some things about my ways of writing that I never payed attention to, by using unconsidered resources. I was able to in the end consider what I’ve learned by taking a step back after finishing this assignment and reflect on the growth of myself as a person overall.  

The process of my writing always has been to plan first, then review, execute, and lastly, clarify my main point. This writing strategy has changed in many ways over the course of my academic life. I learned a lot about my writing that I was not aware of. Looking back at my writing from my old papers, I’ve noticed that when comparing two papers, one from when I first wrote out my writing process, and the other from my recent writing process, there was a significant change. My first writing process paper showed that I was very confused about how to convey my thought. This process was non-beneficial. Based on the way that I wrote out my writing process, I realize I struggled with constructing all my thoughts and collecting everything together. I did everything I could to improve myself to get where I am now, at Virginia Military Institute. I had to fill out a lot of applications and paperwork. For track, I had to write an essay for my coaches explaining why I chose VMI. That essay was a huge influence on the start of my growth in writing because that was my first impression on my coaches. I made sure that I wrote that essay with everything I had within me. Furthermore, while writing those papers. I was considerate of my grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Doing this prepared me mentally for the intensity of college-level writing and was one of the things that allowed me to be where I stand now with writing. This was a major impact on my life as a student and my future.    

In high school, all the essays that’s were given to me had a prompt made by the teacher that told me what the teacher specifically wants from me. I favored this way either because I never looked forward to writing an essay that I had to put much thought into, or I didn’t have time to put enough thought into an essay. The prompts were essentially an easy way out. Luckily my writing has changed. Now I can write well without having any prompts and having anything to tell me what to do, I can make a creative, thoughtful essay myself. With having the teacher that I do and being in the first semester in college, I noticed that I am not given the typical prompts or expectations I am used to. Rather, it seems to be that everything I have written was based on how I feel about the topic and it was expected from me to give my own twist on the prompt. I am not usually given this style of the essay, but I began to prefer it more because of the feeling that I need to express myself in any way I can. That feeling mainly comes from the fact that I attend the school that I do. Being a rat at Virginia Military Institute is difficult because it prohibits you from being an individual and having your own train of thought, therefore writing is the only source I must have to acknowledge my individualism. The maturity in my writing that I see when comparing two papers is the ability to have a plan with my process. I used to overthink a lot even before I began to write my paper, but now I can think of what inspires me and bring together ideas. This kind of process has helped me significantly.   

The two different texts that I compared myself writing was a history essay in school and out of school. I wrote my history paper partially in school and partially out of school. It was different locations, but the same paper.  During the time I recorded myself while I was writing and planning out a history essay, I realized the strategies that I now use have been significantly different from the strategies that I used to use. When I compared my first strategy, I realized that I got distracted easily, a lot because I got bored with writing period. This is also because I was at home where there are the most influences someone can have around. Some of those including my friends, television, and my bed. I’ve noticed that those three things have done a good job in distracting me from what I am supposed to be doing. Now when I write, I stay focused on my goal and I engage in what I in am writing. My grades have also benefited from now writing this way. More important than grades, my professors in many of my classes notice my efforts that I put into all the papers that I submit. One example of this is in History class I can apply the skills of time- management and organization, that I have learned in my Writing and Rhetoric class, to my all my essays and papers. Another thing that distracted me while at home was the internet and social media. When I did assignments at home, I would often sit in my room with the television on and my phone or laptop right next to me. This gave me easy access to check it whenever I got a notification or call. Doing this while writing made it impossible for me to efficiently do any writing, therefore causing poorly written assignments.  I never realized the effects this had on me. When I do my work at school, I rarely can get distracted. This is easily done because as a rat, I do not have my phone. Not only do I not have my phone currently, but I don’t have influences around me that would distract me. People around me at VMI, like faculty, dykes, and cadre, support me to only do my work. Regarding time, it took me much more time at home to do my work because I had all those distractions. At school, time is still an issue due to being at a Military Institute, but I can manage it much better. From a result, I never keep my phone with me now because that was one of the biggest distractions. Since I make sure that I separate myself from my phone, I can focus and collect my thoughts which result in a better paper.   

The book, Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur, is a book about love. Although not the typical book that would be used to help with discovering my writing process, it was one of the biggest influences on the growth in my writing. Milk and Honey is a book of consecutive poems made to build confidence in specifically females. Not only did I go to the book to give me confidence in myself, I read the book to build my confidence in the creativity of my writing. One of the poems that changed my writing forever was a poem that used love and intimacy words to compare with how writing made the author feel. The use of words like “erotic”, “love”, and “lust” was used in the poem by Rupi Kaur. These words really had a way of talking to my soul because it gave me a feeling of comfortability, and I felt like I could relate to this type of feeling of love. With respect to pathos, emotions were used to engage the reader, the author was successful with this. Most importantly Kaur did what was supposed to be done, engaged the reader so intensively that it influenced me to write my own papers the same way that she did so. Most people would not typically think of going to this book in order to write a literacy paper, but since I did, I have gained a special skill that differentiates me from many other writers.  

In conclusion, the most important thing to take away from this assignment is that writing is not only something that you should work on just for school and grades, it is also beneficial for everything you will do in life. In the future, beyond college I plan to take with me the knowledge that I have now and apply it to my everyday life. I have seen the improvement in my writing by keeping many of the influences that are around me away. Social media was the biggest influence on the destruction of grades, but the academic journey that I chose to embark in, gratefully did not allow it to be an interruption anymore. The purpose of choosing such an odd book that talks about lust and femininity in comparison to a literacy task about the process of writing, is to make people aware that life is what you make it. If you’ve got lemons, make an amazing essay that has nothing to do with what you’re reading. In a learning point of view, one of the things that I can apply this learning experience to is my career. With the skills that I have now of time managing, using the correct grammar and punctuation, and following the specific guidelines to the teacher’s rubrics and syllabus, I can be successful in any career that I choose to do. In my favor, writing has built me into a better student, person, and future businesswomen. I have grown a huge respect for the power of writing and the benefits that come from it.