Using the material we’ve just drafted, I want you to continue writing and introduce yourself as a writer to the rest of class. You can approach this introduction in many ways, but the point is that we should learn more about your interests, talents, experiences, and/or aspirations when it comes to writing.
For example, you might expand on the narrative you started a few minutes ago and use it to open up a discussion about what kind of writing appeals to you (or doesn’t) or has been significant to you in your life. You might tell us more about your writing process and describe what it’s like as you move through a project. You might share with us what makes you proud about your writing, or, conversely what your fears or anxieties about writing are. You could also explain your strengths as a writer, as well as the areas you know you need to work on.
As you conclude this introduction to yourself as a writer, take a moment and look ahead to the next ten weeks. What do you hope to learn as a writer this quarter? What will make this course a rewarding experience for you?
Once you’ve composed your introduction, take a moment to edit it for clarity and correctness. Then post it here as a comment before you leave class. You should aim for about 250-350 words. I look forward to reading your responses.
I was twelve. I remember sitting in the little downstairs choir room in my church with my best friend Lillibet. On December 8th, 2004, she lost her mom to a two year battle with breast cancer. We have been best friends for so long it seemed like she was partially my mom as well. It was a few days later and the two of us sat there attempting to write memories of Patty. There were just so many: sad, funny, angry, and happy. We had to choose. We only had five minutes to talk between the two of us so the perfect ones needed to be picked. We argued about the lists we had both written and we laughed and cried. Besides the two of our voices, there was no noise in that basement. It almost seemed perfect even though there were so many imperfections about that moment.
ReplyDeleteWriting isn't my favorite thing but I think that over my years of writing I have become an accomplished writer. Sometimes it can get far too wordy and that is something that I really need to work on. Another thing I need to work on is organization. Usually when I revise I can see these things but in a first draft usually all of the paragraphs are in a completely different place then they will be when I finish the final draft. Depending on what I am writing I tend to organize my thoughts differently. Sometimes I just like to write for a while to get things out on paper and then go back and rearrange and revise. Others times when I write, I try to turn out some sort of outline to help guide my writing and then after that I go piece by piece with the topics that have common themes. I usually write the body paragraphs first and then write the introduction and conclusion. I don't usually write a lot unless I need to for school so I usually don't like people to read my work unless it is my teacher. Obviously in this class I am going to have to move past that and so I hope that in the next ten weeks I can figure out how to. During the next ten weeks, I hope to become better at giving people constructive criticism and also reading things thoroughly and figuring out how to analyze them and incorporate my own perspectives. I think getting to know my peers through there writing and learning about them in different ways will be really rewarding for me.
Last quarter I had to take an in class writing test on my computer. A list of 5 questions were given to the class ahead of time in order for me and the other students to prepare for them. Only 3 of the 5 questions would be chosen by the teacher on the day of the test. I walked through DU campus on a cold Tuesday morning at about 7:45 on my way to Sturm to take my exam. I walk into the small, 1 table classroom with my other classmates. I could smell my hot coffee as I sat down to reach into my read backpack for my computer as every other student does the same. I can here whispers about which questions would be chosen and which questions people wanted to be picked and which questions they didn't. The teacher passes on the papers as I begin to hear sighs of relief from some and curses from others. As we begin all I can hear is the click click of laptop keys. I was able to complete this assignment and email it to my teacher by the end of class although the entire night before I was stressed until that very moment.
ReplyDeleteFrom this experience I have realized that I get very stressed out when I know I have a large paper due. I usually have problems planning ahead on big papers and keep from writing until a few days before it is due. Things I usually like to write about are stories about things in my life that are personal or things that have happened in my family or friends lives which impacted or changed them in some way. I also like reflecting on something or writing a personal opinion on a topic that I am interested in such as some sort of event or crime that has occurred. By writing my own opinion I cannot be right or wrong. I usually just like to free write no specific structure and usually do not like to share what I write with other people even if it is for a grade. Also, I always have to plan out what I am going to write, create some sort of outline. An outline makes me feel less stressed and just helps me to put all my thoughts into words more easily.
Over the next 10 weeks I hope to become more confident with my writing so that when a teacher tells the class that there is a large paper due I don`t stress about getting it finished. Rather, I know what I have to do I outline what I am going to write and be confident that I will turn it in on time and receive a good grade.
As I grew up writing in school, confidence was lacking in my writing, however during senior year I found a niche in creative writing that changed my writing dramatically. I took a creative writing course that ended up becoming my favorite class. In general, I am a very creative person and I love new experiences, especially those that develop into challenges. Poetry, my least favorite type of writing, was my challenge. I hated poetry for years and once I began writing it in creative writing and I established confidence in myself I grew to love it. Along with poetry though, I found memoirs, short stories, and long fictions to be fascinating. It hit me one day, Sheridan, the girl with no confidence in expressing her opinions, couldn’t wait to sit down at a computer every day and type away. My English teachers even began to notice a change in my analytical writing as my paper grades skyrocketed.
ReplyDeleteI am the type of person who bottles emotions and refuses to address feelings openly but writing provided me with an outlet. For example, senior year of high school, during creative writing, one of our first assignments was to write a memoir of one of our favorite moments. I sat down to write my story about that summer of working at a sailing camp with my seven closest friends and started to cry. People were sitting all around me in the lab and I did everything I could to hide my tears. I rarely cry and couldn’t quite figure out what had sparked the tears but as I started reminiscing on the summer I felt like a piece of me was missing without these people surrounding me all day long in school like they had at work. We spent incredible times together and the effect we had on one another’s lives was tremendous. I am the type of person who hides feelings and emotions but writing about these people who meant so much to me finally broke down that wall blocking the communication between my heart and thoughts. I realized how writing allowed me to connect my bottled up emotions and feelings to my hand in order to express them freely which generally made me much happier. As I continued writing throughout the term, outside of class I started recognizing more about my friends and family because writing opened my eyes to detail.
I hope to gain more confidence as a college level writer and be able to write papers with ease along with little stress. If I can accomplish these two goals, this course will be rewarding experience.
I’ve always considered myself more of a reader than a writer. Writing was never my favorite subject throughout school. However, over time, I’ve learned that I do not dislike writing in general; there are just some kinds of writing that I prefer over others. For example, I don’t consider myself a very creative person. I’m not very artistic and I think that it is due to this attribute that creative writing is very difficult for me. I find poetry very interesting and entertaining, but I’m not a very good poet. My favorite kinds of writing are persuasive essays, proving theses, and descriptive writing.
ReplyDeleteI am also definitely a procrastinator. Unfortunately, when I write I like to wait until the last minute to complete assignments. It’s difficult for me to write a little, take a break, and then resume writing again. Instead, I like to sit down and get all my thoughts out at once. As soon as I’ve finished my assignment, I go back and re-read it to correct any mistakes. I think this system works for me because my best work is always completed when I am under a lot of pressure.
In my life, I would say that I am most proud of an essay competition that I won in my senior year of high school. This essay was supposed to be written about character and the winner was to receive a scholarship through the family that was sponsoring it. I ended up spending the last couple hours before it was due in the library at my high school, frantically writing my essay. I believe that writing under this pressure was extremely beneficial to me, and I ended up getting the essay in on time and winning the scholarship.
As a writer, I am not very comfortable with sharing any of my compositions with other people. I don’t mind reading or proofreading other people’s work, but I am not the strongest writer in the world, and I prefer not to share that with other people. The kind of writing that I am strongest in is descriptive writing. If it is something that I enjoy, my writing can actually be pretty decent. For example, I love to ski. If I got assigned a piece that had me describe what I experience during a specific time while I’m skiing, I would be able to do well. Dialogue is definitely my weakest point. And it might be that I am just more inexperienced in that form of writing. Obviously, it also helps if I take a strong position on the subject of which I am writing about. When I get passionate about things then the quality of my writing greatly increases. I can also write all day about any of my specific experiences. Anything that has to do with my family, basketball, or rugby I can write about. I can also churn out research papers pretty easily. If I can get focused enough then I can just sit and not get up until I have a full paper in front of me.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of the next quarter, I hope to become a more confident and accomplished writer. I hope to be able to expand my writing skills to things beside simple descriptions and research papers.
Hello, my name is Tanner Krall. As we are all in college, we have clearly had to write a lot of papers, essays, and letters to various individuals or groups for various reasons. When it comes to my writing, and me I enjoy certain topics that I can relate to. Like most people, I enjoy writing about things that I am passionate about. I feel that when I can emotionally connect to a topic, the quality of my work improves. This may include a topic that I agree with, or strongly appose. Regardless, for me it is always easier to write when I can relate to a topic or show interest.
ReplyDeleteWhen writing, I almost always struggle to get started and actually begin. Whether it is on the computer or on a sheet of paper, I hate the beginning. Because before I even begin, that screen or those lines seem to stare at me. They know that until I finish whatever I’m working on, that assignment owns me. Yet I find that after I do begin, and I have formed my thesis statement and introduction paragraphs everything just flows together. While this is not the case on every piece I write, I do find starting the most difficult part of any assignment.
As a writer, and with the writing I do, I seem to almost always struggle with the same thing. And that is supporting my point. I could have the best topic and an incredibly strong thesis, but I wouldn’t be able to do a thing to support it. This is a definite area of my work where I can and would like to improve.
When I was in my previous school, I had took one international student writing class. I remember the first assignment was to write an unforgettable thing that happened to me. The assignment required four to five pages. This requirement shocked me, because I had never wrote any English essays more than two pages.
ReplyDeleteI started to write this assignment a week earlier and I did brain storm for the topic that I can write about. Then I picked up the one that is about I missed my international flight. The flight was on 12:00 AM, but I thought that was on 12:00 PM.
After I down with this “long assignment” I went to the writing center to find help. After I went to the writing center I revised it and then I went to the professor’s office hour to asking for some suggestions for my first assignment. After that I revised it again.
Finally, I got a good grade on my first assignment. It is not only effect on my final grade in that class, but also give me more confidence to write.
The reason for I am afraid of writing is because of my weakness of writing. That is grammar. Sometimes I wrote something that I want to explain, but people just can not get it. That is because of my bad grammar I guess. Therefore, I hope during this course I can improve my writing skill first, and I hope that my writing can be more easier for people to read.
There are many times in which there has been a necessity for me to compose a piece. One example of this is for school. There are many different instances for school for which I have written. In my senior year humanities class, for example, we had several writing projects that we were graded upon. One essay sticks out particularly well in my memory. This essay was about what we believed in, be it Snickers bars or World Peace. Because I have such a vested interest and passion for music, I “believed” in music (not to say that I don’t now!) When I first started writing this paper, I wasn’t sure how to even begin. All of the examples of “I believe” essays that we were shown had a catchy introduction; how was I to do that? After a little bit of thinking, I decided on an opening. This beginning used redundancy to its advantage; to make a point, in essence. I described things I knew about music, things I like about music: “I believe in the expression that is made possible through this medium, especially improvisation, I believe in the theory behind what drives people around the world to dance to the rhythm” etc. After the kickoff point, after removing my literary bottleneck, the words flowed from my mind to my computer via invisible zip line.
ReplyDeleteThis piece was relatively easy for me. I love music; how hard is it to write about something you love? I have difficulties writing when a) I don’t have a vested interest in the prompt at hand, and b) when I can’t pick a side of the argument. For whatever reason, I’m an un-opinionated person. On a “which political party are you” survey, I scored one point off of dead center between Democrat and Republican. Dead center! How does one side with one aspect of an argument when they “like” both sides (or is indifferent about the argument itself?) My hope for this class is that I learn to take positions on arguments for a piece of writing.
-Joey Glassman
My name is Harrison Archer, I am from Washington D.C., and I am not what you would call a writer. In my early high school years writing presented itself as a task, something so bothersome that I would leave it to the last day to write a seven page essay on something I knew nothing about. As I have gotten older and matured, I have accepted writing as a way to express myself and have found it as something that is able to ease my nerves and put me in place where I’m focused yet creative, driven but still patient. Since I have been in college, I have surprised myself. I have gone from comments that read, “No thesis”, to “great thesis”. I don’t really know how, I don’t feel any smarter, that’s for sure. It’s probably just luck. I think what I can accredit this recent increase in writing brilliance (just kidding) to is my acceptance of something that I once loathed, and have somehow turned it into something positive. Now, I milk writing for everything that it is worth.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure when this transformation took place, but what I can tell you is that it has made school much more enjoyable, and a little bit less painful. In the end, I’m happy to have embraced writing so now I have one less thing to worry about. I’m looking forward to this writing class so that hopefully I take my writing skills to the next level. Thanks for listening, talk to you soon.
When I was little, writing was my life. I wrote poems about every topic imaginable and short stores on everyday events. I would sit down with a pen and journal in hand and just write to write. Things have definitely changed. Ever since high school, writing is what I dread most. I think being forced to write about something I didn’t care about changed my views. I don’t think of myself as a very strong writer. I stress about a small writing assignment and think about it for days. I make a few drafts and then spend hours on it the night before it is due to try to make it perfect. My biggest component to tackle is time. It takes me hours to put my thoughts into words. It is difficult for me to get my writing started. I usually skip the introduction and go straight to the point. I leave the introduction for last. I think I do a decent job describing details. If I know what I am writing about, I can expand on it.
ReplyDeleteIn the next ten weeks, I hope to be able to become a stronger writer and more confident with it. I don’t particularly like to share my writing. It would be nice not to stress about assignments and be able to get my thoughts onto paper.
Somehow, my laptop was opened on my crossed legs and I was staring at a blank white Word document waiting for my words to be spewed across the page. I was not used to the feeling of inability to write down an event that just happened to me, but, this time, that white page was more like a white wall. It taunted me knowing that I could put words on the page but also that those words would be a Guernica; a collaborative explosion of anger and sadness without an obvious form of organization. If I were going to write this down, it had to be coherent, otherwise, it would not help me. The gears in my brain turned unevenly, some too fast, some too slow, and some not at all; it was a jam. After what felt like hours of that white wall staring me down, I was finally able to write and the words raced from my head to the keyboard seeming to leave burn marks on my screen.
ReplyDeleteSince the age of 6, I have always used writing as a form of stress relief and expression, even if it is never seen by another’s eyes. Seeing information on paper is the easiest way for me to process and understand it, therefore, I relive every bit of what I am writing about and put it into words on paper. If the writing is not about a past personal experience, the blank film in my brain somehow becomes imprinted with the images of what would be happening in the world of the particular writing I am working on. Fiction is a favorite genre of mine, but, only if I am the audience. Anytime fiction has been my goal, the words come out sloppy, disorganized, and quite the opposite of entertaining. However, if the real world is the topic, language shuffles its way onto pages and, frequently, has a hard time stopping. My work is always train of thought at first; of course I will consider the topic before hand and organize in my head as best I can, but my mind always takes me in a different direction than first planned. Once I have said all I need to say, I’ll go back and reorganize if need be. Writing for someone else about my self is my greatest challenge: What would normally be a fluid work suddenly becomes a choppy sea with occasional intelligence tossed around.
When it comes to writing for school, I either write far too much, or far too little. Unless the theme or question in the topic I am writing about is one where I find myself bursting at the seams to discuss, I am somehow able to answer and discuss that question or theme in a matter of a few sentences. Of course, this doesn’t actually explain everything that should be explained, but for whatever reason, in my mind, there is always a simple answer to the question. I know this isn’t always true and I hope to be able to dig deeper into the topics so that I may find more to write about. This phenomenon is the only time I ever consider writing a task; otherwise, it is a joy for me.
I have never thought of myself as a writer. My high school was never known for the quality of its writing program and I rarely got decent feedback on my papers. A lot of the time it was easy to get away with typing up something the night before it was due and still get an A. I would be able to write pages and pages of memories and stories in my friends yearbooks, but when it came to analyzing books or articles, my mind would go blank and I wouldn’t know where to start. Some of my most important writing was never done in school. I have never kept old essays or research papers, but the writings I do keep are letters from friends or mentors. At a summer camp I went to, we would do a program where everyone writes something they admire about everyone else on a piece of paper. I have multiple sheets of paper that were used for this program. Seeing that people look up to me is so much more important than who the protagonist was in “Antigone” or my opinion on the book “Beloved”. The things I have written to other people could have completely changed their lives or given them more confidence. Because I know this writing is important to people, I have always had more incentive to write it. I have never been told that my essays for school have changed someone’s life, and I think that is part of the reason why I have a lack of motivation when it comes to writing research papers or analytical papers. I get anxious that I am not saying the right thing in my writing or The quarter, I want to be more interested in what I am writing about and have the ability to make my writing easier for others to read by making it more organized.
ReplyDeleteLast quarter in my FSEM class we had to write a final essay on an adolescent issue in the world and relate it to 8 different social issue definitions. It was due on a Friday morning and the Monday before I had not started. So I went to the library and found a nook in the back where I could focus. I opened my computer, opened up a blank Word Document, and then sat there. I had no idea where to start or how to relate my issue (Invisible Children), to a single social definition. I then pushed back my chair and went over to the mini library cafe, and ordered my all time favorite; a hot chocolate. As I walked back to my nook in the back of the library and sipped on my hot chocolate I was able to relax and try focus at the task at hand. Once I sat back down, the history of Invisible Children just flowed out of my finger tips onto my keyboard. Finally I had ideas on how to create a paper that fit together. The other part of the paper, in which I had to relate the world issue to specific definitions we learned in class did not come so easily.
ReplyDeleteI understood the definitions and my choice of topic but no meaningful examples were coming to me.
When it comes to writing, I would not say that it is my forte. I am able to admit that I do not consider myself a talented writer. I am the biggest procrastinator you may ever meet when it comes to any sort of writing assignment. I tend to stress over long writing assignments because I am not confident in my work. My biggest weakness as a writer is sitting down and starting the paper. Once I start I usually can do a decent piece of writing.
In the next 10 weeks I want to be more comfortable and confident with my writing. I have learned a great deal about my writing from past experiences but I am not confident. I hope to learn better grammar as well as structure of paragraphs to make a long paper flow and sound connected. If I proofread each of my writing assignments and put in my best effort I think this course will be a rewarding experience for me.
Three years ago on may 21st my best friend died. He was hit in the head playing lacrosse and died. For his funeral I was asked to write a eulogy about him. I talked about the good times we shared, his character and goodbye. I wrote this in my room wearing the black sweatshirt he bought me for Christmas. I was sixteen years old at this time. This was a difficult speech to write. It’s hard to put into words his character, all the good times we had, and saying goodbye. The main emphasis I stated was he would not want us to morn but to celebrate his short but accomplished life. I also talked about how he impacted me and how he has made me the person I am today. It took me a very long time to write this and was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life but will always stick with me.
ReplyDeleteHello, my name is Jeremy Noble. I am from Canada and play on the lacrosse team here at Denver. The only class where I have had to do extensive writing here at Denver so far was in was my freshman seminar. In the class I had to write over 20 pages for papers in the class. I do not have much of a writing background or previous writing experience. I took english throughout high school which is where I did most of my writing. I am unsure about my writing strengths but I do know some of my weaknesses. One weakness that I have while writing is that I tend to be incoherent and repeat what I am saying often. One of my goals for this class in to be more clear and concise in my writing. I also hope to get better at editing my own material and revising it to make it better material. I am not an avid writer or a reader. I do not mind reading but it is not a passion of mine. One of the things i dread the most is when I have to write about certain things that I dislike. I have a very short attention span so when I have to write about things that do not interest me it is very tough. Most of my writing comes when I am either on facebook or my cellphone.