Thursday, May 21, 2015

Abby's Reflection on the Semester

Writing as a Process

Working at the Writing Center has helped me tremendously to change my ideas of the writing process. I am so thankful that I have been able to spend a large part of my senior year working with other students as a writing consultant under Dr. Beam. Not only has helping other students with their assignments helped boost my confidence in myself as a writer, it has also showed me how far I have come since freshman year. The same exact problems that I had with capitalization, punctuation, misplaced modifiers, and formatting, are the same issues students now turn to me for help with. I find that I am easily able to connect with other students who are trying to learn how to fix their mistakes because I have made the same ones. Often, I will tell students that I also had trouble or even continue to have trouble with aspects of writing in order to encourage them that we will both learn how to become better writers together. 

I have acquired the most knowledge about the writing process through the students taking Composition I and II in particular, because their professors often require them to pre-write, make an outline, and then work on writing drafts of their papers. I knew that these were the steps, but I have not always been forced to follow them in this order. Mostly I have jumped from a prewrite or brief outline to *boom* a paper. However, for larger papers, such as Capstone, there is a much more complex process. Since I have spent the past two semesters working on my Capstones, I have seen my projects go from an idea scribbled on paper to something I did not expect it to be as I handed it in. Through drafting, peer reviews, and research, I would find that my projects would continue to change before they were finalized. Breaking large projects down into various drafts can make the work more manageable and less frightening. I am glad that I am able to help instill better writing habits in others, so maybe when they become seniors, Capstone will not be quite as stressful.


Image Credit

Remember that you can schedule an appointment with the Writing Center when you are at any stage of the writing process, not just when you are working on your final draft. In fact, I would encourage you to come see us when you are in the prewriting and planning stages of your paper so that we can make sure that not only are you fulfilling the prompt your teacher has given you, but that you are also able to make your paper organized and flow well together. Here is a copy of the link to our page on the RSU website so that you can schedule an appointment.

Happy Writing and I hope that you all finished the semester strong!

-Abby


No comments:

Post a Comment