As my writing for science class slowly comes to an end, I am able to kiss writing goodbye for a long time. Writing and I have never been best friends, much less friends. I hate her with a passion and dwelled the days that we would meet and plan. Despite my hate, I was never able to get rid of her. Each year of my life was filled with some writing task, and I could never get away.
I never really thought much about writing for a large majority of my life. I was never good at it and I think I just accepted it. Or atleast blamed the teachers for not understanding my vision. I felt like writing was an art and something that couldn’t be judged. Who’s to say what’s wrong or what’s right? How can you grade my creativity? I felt like all the english teachers were hypocrites. They all explained writing like it was a magical art that can only be judged by the writer, so why was I getting graded with poor scores. I left it at that, and never thought in any way about my supposed bad writing skills. This all changed in highschool. For my highschool, I went to a consortium school. This means no regents, and we took pbats (project based assessments) instead. Writing about this just makes me relive the horrors. We had to write an essay for every class imaginable. Based on how we performed, determined if we graduated or not, these pbats were very important. For english there is a special way the writing would be done. Usually we spent the whole entire school year writing one essay that’s almost 20 pages long. For the first half of the school year we would read a book and write an argumentative essay based on the book with 3 supporting details. Second half of the year we read another book with similar themes and we would compare any two characters from the books using the same three supporting details. Basically two essays combined. Then to torture us even more, we had to do an oral presentation on our work in front of a panel.
Doing this for every year burned me out. Especially considering the fact that it was never a good experience. i can’t ever remember getting higher than maybe a C or a B on an essay up to 10th grade. In 11th grade I took it very personally. I couldn’t understand why nobody liked my writing. I was convinced that I was a poor writer. I would get so sad seeing my essay handed back to me with all types of red scribbles and I just couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I would try so hard just to be scrapping for a B grade.
Ever since 11th grade I have always been conscious of my writing. I was always filled with anxiety with any writing assignment. I would dwell taking any class that had to do with essays. I just wanted to completely avoid it. Overall, I had the lowest confidence ever when it came to writing. With my FIQWS class I managed to get an A in both classes, but I worked way too hard for it, only adding to my hatred for writing. For the writing half of the class, I got a 75 for almost all writing assignments I turned in. each 75 just discouraged me from trying for upcoming assignments. If I was just going to get a poor grade again why even bother. Even for my USSO class I felt like I wrote a perfect essay that I put so much time and detail into. Once I got it back I saw corrections that dragged my work through the mud just to see a contradicting 85 for a grade. It just drilled into my mind that nothing I did was enough. Being in the writing for science class completely changed that.
I came into this class with the mentality of just getting over with it, just another difficult task in my life. But once I saw the overview of all the assignments, I was impressed. I thought to myself that this class is nothing like what I thought it was. I was actually kind of excited, especially for the children’s story. The class had a nice easy going flow, with hardly any pressure. Not once did I ever feel like I had no time and for once I wasn’t panicking for an assignment.
The class started off with a literacy narrative. I really enjoyed writing this assignment. For once I can freely talk about myself with being graded on structure. I think this is what held me back when writing. Starting off the class with this assignment did well with keeping my anxiety down for the rest of the class.
The next assignment was the first major assignment. I can admit having it titled major assignment kind of scared me but in the end I realized it wasn’t that bad. This is all thanks to the professor. He built the assignment up from the very bottom and made us all comfortable with the topic. The first assignment was a rhetorical analysis paper. To help us feel comfortable with the assignment, the professor gave lectures on things that make up a rhetorical analysis. Each week he would explain the importance of either the audience, author, and other rhetorics. When we did our first group assignment on the rhetorical analysis, all the lectures the professor gave helped tremendously. Also doing a rhetorical analysis without the pressure of it being a heavy graded assignment helped me alot. When it came down to actually writing my assignment I was so calm. For once I felt prepared for an assignment, and it felt good. I managed to get a 95 for my first major assignment and I’m so proud of myself for that.
The second major assignment was an inquiry research paper. This confused me at first since I wasn’t used to calling it an inquiry research paper. In the end I realized that it was basically all the same, a research paper. For this assignment I had a lot of struggles. The planning part was always the worst for me. It was only until after I started writing where all the ideas started flowing. At first I was very confused about what I even wanted to talk about or what to base my question on. The professor also helped with this. We had a really fun day in class where we played games on guessing the most appropriate inquiry question. This task helped me gain knowledge on exactly what the professor was looking for. He gave us an extra push by having a discussion board for what makes a good and bad inquiry question and why. After I felt like I really understood what was expected from me, I sat down and wrote my introduction. I must have had about 5 different introductory drafts when I started. None of them seemed to flow or was good enough. I got frustrated and changed my topic another 3 times. I just couldn’t make sense of what I was doing and what made it even more difficult is that I couldn’t find any supporting details. Again, the professor swept in and saved the day. He had a one on one with me on how to use the CUNY library database. If it wasn’t for this I probably wouldn’t have gotten the grade I did. After the much support and confidence that the professor gave me, I was ready. I confidently wrote my inquiry paper and received a grade of 110. One of the happiest moments of my whole college career.
The third major assignment was the one I looked forward to the most. It was also the one I was disappointed by the most. I remembered from the beginning of the assignment that I looked forward to this assignment. But then I didn’t realize it was a group assignment, nor did I realize that I would be in a group that lack in communication skills. This is the only assignment where I don’t really remember well. It was honestly a frustrating blur for me. I remember only having 2 days left to complete the assignment and my group didn’t even come up with a topic yet. Despite that, we were still able to pull something together right in time that it was due. The most memorable and happy part about this assignment was hearing other groups talking about their experiences and projects. I loved hearing the direction of their story and hearing the excitement in their voice as they talked about their story.
Now I’m at the end. It feels liberating. Looking back at high school, I never thought I’d get here. Being able to part from my enemy for a very long time, this never seemed possible. This is all I ever wished for but it feels like something is missing. It almost feels wrong that after this semester I’ll probably never be graded for my writing again. Maybe I don’t truly hate writing, just the fact that my writing is being judged. I actually came to like writing but now that i’m no longer required to write, who’ll read the creative work i’ll make if I ever make any. My audience my whole life has only been my professors, so who’ll be my audience now? These are the thoughts that I’m left with. Did I do everything I was supposed to? I think about all the trials I’ve been through and how I applied everything I ever learned this semester. I would honestly have to thank the professor for helping me build up my confidence in writing. And to writing, may we meet again.
