Entering into this class, I did not feel as though I had any real strengths as far as writing was concerned. Writing was never something I was particularly concerned about-- I knew I was never going to be a great writer, so I just ignored the process of writing and of learning how to write and just got through the process as best I could. I never spent any real time learning how to write or learning what it took to be a good writer. Although I enjoy reading, I would never say it is one of my main hobbies, and I feel that that fact probably influenced my inability to write as well. It probably did not help that I thoroughly dislike writing, and I find the whole process tedious-- although I find it much less tedious than I used to.
I have become somewhat more adept at catching my mistakes when I write, although I still do not consider myself to be an expert by any means. Sometimes when I am reading over my work it sounds as though someone else is writing; like I am reading someone else’s thoughts and sentences. Sometimes when I read a particularly bad sentence I cannot believe that I could have written something quite that terrible, but I try to be less hard on myself than I used to be. I think part of my problem in the past was too much of an insistence on being perfect, and now I am working on focusing less on perfecting my writing and more on getting something down on paper.
When I finally wrote an essay that went well for me, it was a fantastic feeling. I wrote an essay entitled “The Rigors of Nursing School,” which is the standard by which I judge my essays now. I felt that I was clear, concise, and cohesive in that essay, without overstating my points or exaggerating, which is something that I sometimes have a tendency to do in my writing.
In my nursing school essay, I wrote: “Nursing school can be very tasking; keeping things in the right perspective can help a lot. This will enable one not to give up easily when things get tougher. A positive attitude and a clear point of view will enable one makes it in nursing school. Nursing school is very tasking, one will experience ups and downs but with the right attitude and drive, one will make it.” I am happy that I did such a coherent job expressing my opinion on nursing school, and I am proud that I could properly express my excitement over nursing school as a whole.
Despite my successes, I have also struggled throughout the semester. I can proudly say that the essay I struggled on the most was the first essay that we wrote, so I am happy to think that I am improving in my ability to communicate.
In this first essay, I wrote the following words: “So a few days before we were suppose to leave and after I had already sold my car, his friend thought it would be a wonderful idea to make a detour down to Los Angeles. I had no desire to go to LA because we had lived there for seven months the year before. I advised them we had the money to just get to Portland and get a place and that was it. Although since it was one against two, we decided to drive straight across and then north instead, I could tell at this point this was going to be a very bad trip.” While this is not necessarily terrible writing, it is full of grammatical and spelling errors that I could have easily found if I had been paying closer attention to what I was writing at the time. However, I was convinced of my inability to write well, so I did not even think about polishing the essay the way I should have.
I still make more grammatical and spelling errors than I should. I think this may be because I type more slowly than my brain works, so I need to work on reviewing my work to be sure that what I am writing matches up with what I should be saying, in terms of grammar and spelling. I have found that reading my work aloud seriously helps me with addressing any issues of spelling and grammar that may arise. It is particularly helpful for catching things like words that are not misspelled but are missing a “d” or an “s” at the end of them-- this used to be so problematic for me, but I am doing much better with catching these errors now.
Run-on sentences are the worst problem for me in most cases. Once my brain starts to work, my fingers do not like to use periods to stop the thoughts, and I begin to use run-ons to express myself. Luckily, I have not had a similar issue with sentence fragments, although I am certain I have made errors like those in the past. My major method for catching any issues that I might make has become reading my essays out loud with a red pen in my hand. This allows me to see and hear the errors and mark them down.
