College Writing Review

Although I won't be graduating with this major, the majority of my college career has been spent taking classes for a Letters degree, which can be best described as literature, history, and philosophy. In reality, the philosophy part was not as much of a major role as the literature and history, but still came into play now and again.

Needless to say, I did a lot of writing over the past 5 years. Not all of it I enjoyed, but there were some memorable prompts here and there. Only a small part of my writing experience was in the form of in-class essays (which, by the way, I absolutely despise). In those instances, I do not judge my quality of writing at all. Although, admittedly, I think my knowledge of the general functions and structure of essays helped me in times when I didn't know the answers as well as I should have.

The majority of my writing consisted of midterm and final papers. For a long time, I felt as though giving page requirements was one of the worst things a professor could do when assigning an essay. Who is to say that I cannot fully and knowledgeably answer an essay question in four pages rather than six? In the end, it usually led me to being redundant and repetitive and overall lessened the quality of my work. But on the flip side, when it was a topic I was truly interested in I felt that a twelve or twenty page requirement pushed me to do more research.

My capstone paper, although the longest, was not the most intensive or challenging paper that I ever wrote. Last semester I took a class called Gender and the Constitution and my final paper discussed the way twentieth century men use physiology to determine social and political norms for women, especially when it came to their professional abilities. That was likely the most most difficult paper I had to write only because the topic was so fascinating and there were so many parts to it that I don't feel I had enough time to really include everything and therefor have a well thought-out paper.

This class is the first class that has ever required me to write fiction. While some may not think that has any place in an academic setting, I think it was hugely successful in pushing my mind outside of the small, confining box that is everyday higher education. There is certainly more to the world than writing research papers and memos and e-mails. This class showed me that writing can actually be an enjoyable experience, not just a way to make a passing grade. In most academic writing, the point is to prove yourself and your opinion to the reader. In this class, the writing is to express your opinion and present it to the reader. Whether they agree with it or not is completely up to them! And the story is no less a story if they don't quite like where you went with it. Good writing can still be appreciated even if you don't necessarily like the characters or the storyline.

Happy puppy picture, because why not? (Source)