To whom it may concern,

Before coming into college I felt my creative side to writing was taken away bit by bit and soon I was left with the dreaded five paragraph format. I did not know how to write proper academic papers. I loved writing and still do, I just never thought my writing was ever good for a professor’s liking. Before coming to SUNY New Paltz I wrote only 1 paper that I truly felt proud of. I was not prepared for college writing or professional writing.Coming into this class I was a little more worried because I had to change my schedule around and this was not my original class. I didn’t know if I would be interested in the topic and to write papers about topics that are uninteresting is grueling.

I used to procrastinate and wait days or even hours before a paper was due to start writing. Since the papers were usually the same it was easy for me to just easily write them. When writing my papers I found it difficult to relate my papers back to each other. While my writing process changed to account for this, it was still difficult. Having to think 2-3 papers ahead, makes u think is this paper even good. Some moments were very confusing but I was writing about a topic that always made me laugh so it helped me push through and encourage me to write better. Going into the second half of the class, I will be using some more of the techniques that I learned in ENG 160 like outlines and reading out loud, to improve my writing in this class.

I have gotten sharper in my editing skills and taking constructive criticism. For a while taking criticism was hard because sometimes I wasn’t sure on how to fix the problem. I felt stuck and sometimes just let the problem be. I have learned now with more helpful feedback, how to fix papers and how to adjust them. Something I still struggle with are topic sentences and how to create them.
With these skills I am able to write better papers for my other classes like Black poetry and even Intermediate Italian. I look forward to taking these skills into my new classes in the upcoming semesters.

 

Sincerely,

Courtney McGee