My Writing Struggles

Writing is a key to success for countless students throughout all years of academic learning. Throughout high school, I did not have many problems. However, I had a few struggles which were the same through high school and carried through into my college career. Although I have trouble with writing, I try my best on every paper I write. There are a few reasons why I struggle with writing. A lack of patience is the main reason I have trouble with writing. Before college, I was unwilling to put a significant amount of time into truly understanding a topic, forming a credible standpoint, and editing the paper. Nonetheless, it was important for me to complete the writing assignments to have a grasp of writing skills. Although writing has played a significant role in my education up to this point, it will not necessarily be an important part in my career choice of nursing.
Throughout my years of writing, I have developed a few fears.
All of these fears relate to having impatience when forming credibility. This impatience results in the main struggles I have with writing. I find myself becoming impatient when I am struggling to find information about a topic and trying to form a credible position. One of the fears I have is not being clear concerning my position regarding the topic I am writing about. A majority of the time that I am given a writing assignment, I do not know much about the topic. The fear I have is that I am unable to understand the topic assigned enough to provide a credible response. Another fear I have is not having a full understanding of a topic and not writing enough. When I do not have enough knowledge about a topic, I do not provide enough knowledge to make an appropriate argument. Lastly, writing useless information regarding a topic to get enough written for a paper is another concern of mine. When I do not have enough knowledge about a topic, I improvise information to get enough written for a
paper.
My fears and difficulties coincide with one another. My fears and difficulties all relate to me being too impatient. I have several difficulties when I am trying to write. A majority of the time I do not take enough time to think about what I want to write before I start the drafts. When writing in-class essays in high school, I would read the prompt, think for a minute or two and immediately start writing my essay. A fair amount of time this tactic worked, however only because I was a high school student. Another struggle I have with writing is thinking of the right words to use. I think of synonyms that are not appropriate, give up, and write a word that does not fit in the context of the sentence. When I look up synonyms for the word I am trying to replace, I do not read the definitions of the word thoroughly. I write the first word I see and move on. This shows my impatient side because I do not spend enough time with the minor details of my writing. The last trouble I have in writing is turning in a paper without proofreading it thoroughly. When I wrote in-class essays in high school, I did not read the end product thoroughly and turned it in when I finished. I was either on a time schedule and could not edit it thoroughly or just got impatient with reading every sentence over again. Although it appears that I dislike writing, there are times I enjoy writing and find myself not becoming impatient with it. I do not necessarily dislike writing if I am interested in the topic. The only time I find writing undesirable is when I do not have a complete understanding of a topic or do not have any interest in it. I mainly appreciate writing about real life situations instead of writing a paper analyzing a book I read. I enjoyed writing considerably more in junior high since I was able to write about events in my life and activities I enjoyed in my free time. Once I got into high school, I started to have an aversion to English class as all it consisted of was analyzing books I did not enjoy in the first place. The analysis essays in high school made me frustrated because the teachers never taught us to analyze properly. This made me very impatient. I would get stressed very quickly because I was not sure if I was doing the essays correctly. My plan for the future is to work harder on every essay I write. I will strive to become less impatient when writing essays on subjects I have trouble with. I intend to revise and make several drafts of each essay. I will also strive to look for every “that” I use in my papers and make sure it is completely necessary before I use it. I will make sure I look at every “that” I use during the editing process. The last issue I intend to work on is learning vocabulary to use throughout my essays to replace average words with sophisticated words that make sense in the context of the sentence. I will try not to replace a word with the first word that shows up on the synonym list without looking if it fits in the context. With these revisions, I am hopeful I will succeed in my efforts to become a better writer.
I have come to college with an open mind to writing. I anticipate enjoying it again as much as I did when I was young. I desire to relieve my fears and reduce my struggles to make my writing better. Writing will be a sizable part of my life through my first couple of years of college English classes. However, it may not be as essential with the career path I have chosen.