Here’s my work from Professor Metenko’s English Writing course. You can navigate to my essays from this class above.

This semester I believe I improved in my writing skills. My understanding of transitional tools to engage the reader more deeply has been refined as well as my abilities to find appropriate, trustworthy sources to develop my arguments. After this semester, I think that I have learned to choose words that better fit the sentence and overall points I try to make. Words however aren’t the only things I choose more carefully. My main takeaway from this course was to write about what I am truly interested in as a reader myself. Write for others and your work will be uninspired, but if you write for yourself, you will always be satisfied.

Our first assignment was to write an essay about a narrative story from our own lives and when writing it follow the example of such pieces we looked at as a class. When trying to think of a topic or a story to write about I was having trouble coming up with an experience that I felt truly defined me. My mind kept going back to a story that I had from my freshman year of high school but I didn’t feel right when going to execute the piece. I had used this story for other school projects in the past and although it was certainly a defining moment in my life, it felt wrong to belabor it in my work. That being said, I thought it was a memory I was very much in touch with and could use that to my advantage when writing it out. So I chose to write about it for my best shot at doing well, but in doing so I could feel my voice faltering. This was due to the disinterest that had accrued in me from reusing the subject so often.

Another issue that I seemed to be having when writing my pieces this semester was I would find myself not being able to figure out how to avoid writing in the first person. This, I learned was not a proper way to write a formal essay. In the case of the Narrative Essay assignment, the line could be muddled because, after all, this was to be a story that had previously happened to me so I should in fact tell it from the point of view of myself. In future projects, the rule would become clearer and I would more closely adhere to them.

The next paper we worked on was the Exploratory Essay. This paper was a lot less general in the topic we would be focusing on. The paper was to be aimed at the idea of murder. But, this topic could be approached in many different ways. Murder isn’t a topic that I spend much time per day thinking on, but in a way it is. It comes in different forms for all of us. When you think about gun control, you think about murder, when you think about religion you think about murder, and especially when you think about war you think about murder. War is something that we’re all to a certain degree interested in and I have been fascinated with the concept of war and the figures of historical wars. So despite the fact that the subject of the paper had been predetermined and decided for me I was still able to turn into something I was passionate about. For that reason I could start to hear my voice come out again.

In the last assignment of the semester, we were given free rein to explore any topic we wanted to look at. In this one, we would be arguing our point when, after researching, we had come to a conclusion on our own about the subject at hand. For this, I chose the issue of campaign finance reform in the United States, somewhat of an unknown but deeply important problem for the country to solve. With my prior knowledge and passion to learn more and persuade people of its urgency, I was off and running. I took a deep dive and sought out sources one wouldn’t typically use for a college paper like this. But I think the sources I brought together drove the point home and helped me to explain the topic.

Although I felt strongly about the pieces I was creating they didn’t exactly line up with the expectations that were being held of me in the class. Even though I may not have been striving to meet the requirements of the assignments, I did work to incorporate my unique perspective and to create something I myself would be proud of or at the very least interested to take a look at. If you aren’t passionate about a subject or a way of doing things you’re sure to end up with something no one will want to read.