When I first realized how short this class was going to be, I worried about getting my work done on time. To my surprise, I found that the tight schedule actually helped me focus on my work. However, this didn’t stop me from gradually spending less time and effort on my work. Of course this meant that my first assignment was revised much more than the others. Although it could be because it was the only fictional assignment, and thus the one I enjoyed writing the most.
This first assignment was called Two Voices in which I was to write two papers on one event, each on a different point of view. One paper, Insanity and Brilliance, was written in a formal style while the other, A Pack of Liars, was written in an informal style. I spent more work revising those two papers than I did with my other assignments. I changed existing words to suit the style I was told to emulate. I also changed the order of my sentences to better lead one idea from the next. I even added a fragment or two into A Pack of Liars just to make it look more authentic. For example, “Devil creatures from hell in the basement.” Indeed, the greatest strength of that assignment was how authentic it seemed.
Conversely, the greatest weakness of the paper was that, in making it authentic, Insanity or Brilliance was too wordy and A Pack of Liars was too repetitive. Although the informal had a few mistakes such as, “To darn greedy…” the formal was devoid of spelling and grammar errors. What is lacking in was a decisive conclusion as is stated, “…I conclude that I shall look into this more carefully….” The reason for this was that I had revised the rest of the paragraphs three times already by the time that I had gotten to the final paragraph. By that time I just wanted to finish it.
The next assignment was my descriptive essay titled The Perfect Gift. In this paper I described my walk through a bazaar the day before Mother’s Day. The first draft on this paper was incomplete and lacked smooth transitions from one thought to the next. Upon finishing it everything had smooth transitions and a good sense of emotion, leading the reader successfully through the bazaar. Unfortunately, I had switched from present to past tense two paragraphs in. There were also some spelling errors, but the inconsistent tenses were the predominant mistake throughout.
The third assignment was one I had already encountered before in the 2007 Fall Semester: the Isearch paper. Unlike a research paper, an Isearch paper follows your personal journey towards discovering an answer. You give the dead ends and failures just as much weight as your successful attempts to gather information. My paper, A Major Dilemma, was written in an attempt to answer the question, “Should I dual major in Accounting and Computer Sciences?” The greatest part about this paper was that I solved a problem that had been dogging me ever since I started going to Delta. However, I barely revised it and only half of it was peer-read so many spelling mistakes were found.
My last assignment – not counting all the journals, in class writing, punctuation exercises, and this final exam – was a cause and effect paper I named The Effects of PC Gaming on My Life. This was a subject I was truly interested in, yet I couldn’t get away from my distractions long enough to write it well. I admit that this was the paper I spent the least amount of time on and most of it only completely revised once. Since it I made that paper so quickly, I suspect that there were a handful of spelling mistakes that I missed. However, it had a good introduction that had the human elements described in Chapter 21 of Writing Well. I took into account what my proofreaders suggested and hopefully made it satisfactory.
In conclusion, I learned a few tips on how to better my writing and perhaps guide others towards the right direction if they ask. This accelerated class also kept me from failing a second time and taught me that not all non-fiction writing is boring and dull. In fact, it helped me see writing, as a whole, in a new and better light. I may not become a famous author one day, but I will know the difference between a good writer and a bad one.
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