Week 1_1/15/16_ Previous Writing Experience

In high school, I truly only had one writing class and it was during my last semester of senior year. To be quite blunt, I learned very little about writing thanks to those who lacked common sense in my class because they couldn't grasp how to write a simple term paper. My teacher ended up doing everything for us, which aggravated the life out of me because I wanted to learn how to do all of it on my own. To put this experience in short words, I had very little positive experience in that class. My experience was very negative, which in turn, made me extremely angry because I actually enjoy writing and that classes made me begin to despise it. To go into more detail about the negative side of my experience, which may sound like a small rant, I apologize in advance. The people in my class would complain about every little writing assignment that was given, even though they KNEW it was a writing class, therefore they wouldn’t do the assignment or they would have their girlfriend or boyfriend do it for them. To me, this seemed so unnecessary because if you’re 18 years old and cannot simply write a paper on your own, you shouldn’t be allowed to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities for the high school. Moving on, the instruction I was given when taking that writing class in high school was very poor because my teacher was doing as little as possible when it came to challenging the students and that is all I have to say as far as high school goes. As for college goes, the instruction I was given in this past semester was outstanding. My teacher was a grad student but you wouldn’t have guessed that due to how well she gave instruction when it came to assignments. Without her instruction during last semester, I would have had nothing to write down when it comes to beneficial things I have previously learned.  What I found truly beneficial from this experience was the feedback because without it, my papers would have been an absolute mess. It taught me to proofread my papers more carefully and thoroughly so that I’m not just turning in whatever I typed in the first place. That was something I struggled with for most of my time that I have been writing. I would just type out whatever came to mind and move onto the next part without even bothering to go back and edit my paper. Which is why I ended up with a C in English 1500, but now I have learned that I cannot just type a paper and turn it in without editing. The writing that has been expected of me so far has been fairly challenging, in a good way, and very enjoyable. Compared to my high school experience, the writing we do is so much more enjoyable because you’re on your own rather than everything simply being handed to you with the expectation for you to be creative. To give an example, it was like someone handing you a white crayon and a white sheet of paper, then expecting you to have a beautiful, visible drawing. That was what my high school writing experience was like in a nutshell. Let’s just say, my college writing experience has been exceptional compared to high school. As far as the rhetorical efficacy goes for high school writing courses, the expectation was so low that you could roll over it, needless to say I did well when it came to writing for that class. As for college though, the expectation was much higher and I found that wonderful. My work in those classes, compared to high school, was much more professional and made a lot more sense grammatically. Which is why my love of writing has grown in such a short amount of time and that is why my college experience surpasses my high school experience greatly.