Personal Narrative: What I Learned In My Writing Process

Throughout the years I have dreaded writing because I lacked the skills necessary to be an efficient writer. I would spend so much time stressing over all the skills I didn’t know that I never had the time to enjoy the writing process. By taking this course, I have learned valuable and essential skills to make the writing process more enjoyable. Furthermore, over the course of this semester I have flourished into a more confident and focused writer. A major factor that has contributed to this shift in my writing abilities is the process by which I write my papers. Before taking this course, I never saw the importance of prewriting, and I truthfully thought of it as a waste of time. However, I now consider it to be absolutely essential to my writing process. Through brainstorming, list making, and outlining I have learned to organize my thoughts into a structure that makes sense for the topics I write about. Not only does it help me to focus my ideas around a central topic, it also helps me to have better time management when writing papers. Before I started prewriting, I would wait until the last minute to write my entire paper. Prewriting helps me to take it a little bit at a time,
thereby making the entire writing process feel more tolerable and easier than trying to tackle a paper all at once. Another factor that has helped enhance my writing is all of the technical information that I have learned in this class.
My writing is easier to understand and more effective for communication because I have learned valuable grammar and punctuation rules. I always thought that if I didn’t understand grammar rules by now, there would be no chance for me to ever understand them, but this semester proved me wrong. Now, I enjoy learning about these rules, so they stick better in my mind. I’ve learned that it is the seemingly miniscule aspects that can help or hinder me when writing. For example, placing a comma in the wrong place can alter the entire meaning of a sentence. It’s crucial for me that my grammar and punctuation make sense and do not distort the meanings of my
sentences. The most noticeable change that has made me a better writer is my attitude towards writing. Before this course, I was insecure about my writing abilities. It was not until I wrote my first synthesis paper of the semester that I noticed how profound the change in attitude was for me. The idea of writing a long paper on a topic of my own choosing was daunting, but through writing that synthesis I learned a great deal of information and realized how far I have come as a writer.
The combination of learning priceless information, along with having a professor who encourages students to think for themselves, has made me a more confident writer. All of my former teachers put harsh restrictions on what I could and could not write about; getting to choose my own topics to write about has encouraged me to explore my thoughts and think critically about the world around me.
Writing is a necessary tool for communication in today’s society. Therefore, knowing how to be clear about what one wants, needs, thinks, and feels is imperative to one’s survival and sense of self. Throughout this semester I learned the importance of prewriting, correcting grammar, and trusting my ideas to communicate in an effective, clear way. It has made me a better and more efficient writer. These are tools that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my life.