Writing Classes 101

Caty Bell

[please reformat title]

Throughout my years of school, my writing classes came difficult to me. I’ve never been a fan of writing papers which made them harder for me. The class sizes were all about the same size with 30 students at most. This was a positive since it allowed one on one time with the teacher. Also, in junior high my writing classes were only 45 minutes every day, but in high school they were 90 minutes every other day.

We would start by brainstorming and getting into groups to discuss. If we were writing a paper on a novel, we would talk about the book to make sure everything was understood. If the paper was on something else, we would discuss the topic together then make our own brainstorming charts. I prefer to use an outline because it makes the actual process of writing the paper easier since you just follow along the outline. On my outline I would start with the main topic and a thesis statement. After that, I would put my main topics with details underneath about each one. At the end I would reword my thesis for the conclusion. Of course this outline can not work for all types of writing assignments. With that being said, I would use a different outline to get my thoughts out on paper before beginning. In my previous writing classes, we went through multiple steps before turning in a final copy. This was very helpful to me because it allowed me to catch mistakes I had made. After creating a rough draft, I did peer edits and re read my paper a couple of times. The teacher normally picked who we would switch papers with to edit. I did not like this because the other student did not always care to show any effort and would not actually try to look for any mistakes. I do like the idea of peer editing, but I wish I got to choose who did it. High school had prepared me for writing papers and how to go about starting.

With a semester down at college, surprisingly, I have not been expected of many writing assignments. In one of my classes we had to write reflections every couple of weeks which was more of a journal. The reflections had to do with adjustments of coming into college and did not really need a lot of thought. Thus far, my writing assignments at college have been pretty open meaning there was a lot to talk about and not necessarily a specific prompt. Also, at college they pretty much said we had a paper to write then never talked about it until the day it was due and sometimes not even then. In high school, we talked about the paper almost every class and worked on it in class. This semester will most likely be different with the number of papers with the classes I am taking.  Finally, I have done well in all of my English and writing classes. I received mainly A’s with a couple B’s.