Personal Reflection - Essay Example

? Personal Reflection Writing for me meant being able to express what you think and feel to your readers and mostly shaping their minds to think and feel the way you do after. However, after this course, I have learned that writing is a whole lot of deeper expressions one would realize once one understands the real essence of which. Taking you through my personal experience and journey of my writing, I could say that the first writings I made would be more of explanations, which was one of the things that we have learned in the styles of writing, and none of the other three which were exploration, analysis, and synthesis. I thought writing by explanation or simply retelling a certain story where the main idea comes from another author or perhaps another person’s idea would be a lot safer and easier as you would only have to expound on what an author’s line or idea meant and adding up a little commentary of yours which would not really welcome new thoughts that might not be accepted by your readers. In a way, writing this way would give you less need to think and just more of taking it from someone else’s point of view. However, through the whole course, I realized that writing made up of mostly explanations is something that people would probably think the same as already, which defeats that whole thrill of giving your readers something new and personal. We all know that we read books, journals, or blogs to be able to get something new or to feed any curious thought. Thus, I have learned to move forward by encroaching my writing with exploration which is the next level of writing I learned in the course. This is the face that I would say I enjoyed a lot learning as a writer, as I would now feel braver to insert new thoughts, parallel or not to my readers’ thoughts, express myself even when it sometimes seems like no one will agree, and at the same time get excited with the fact that someone else is going to read something that comes from what I think. Indeed, writers need not to be scared of one’s audience. After all, that is why there are different genres of books because of the different depth and trail of thoughts that are always welcome in writing. In the end, you would not have to blame yourself for giving your readers a lousy or totally strange read because they picked you and not vice versa. Realizing these, I had the guts to write not only based on the sources or principles given me to explain but moreover, explore in my writing like I would explore a new place or perhaps check out someone I am really interested in. Of course, though writing is really a very interesting thing to do, I would say that it also has challenges to give you as a writer. For me, one of the greatest challenges I faced in the whole course would be learning about analysis and synthesis and applying these two in my writing. This is because of the fact that both would require one to see beyond a certain topic, fact, or perhaps a thought and be able to unite it with one’s thoughts even when all the while there is not a thing you truly are interested with or hold true. Aside from that, I think that another strong challenge I faced would be having to write a beautiful piece that had to describe a great experience when all the while I was feeling a different mood, specifically sad and disinterested. I handled this challenge by changing the basis of everything I write from the goal of the task instead of my emotions. Although emotions play a big part in influencing the mood of one’s writing, it is important to go beyond emotions and go beyond that by transcending oneself to the state of mind a certain topic would require you to have. Also, I learned that I should divert focusing on what I see to what people see. I veered away from using myself as the center point of my writing and put myself in the shoes of those people whose thoughts I have to analyze and interpret. Then, I learned that being a good writer is not only about being able to share your thoughts with everyone else but is actually being able to see through your reader’s eyes and make meaning with the world by telling a story they would see themselves being a character in, irrelevant the topic may be. Throughout this course, we have written so many kinds of writings in different styles and structure and if I were to choose one writing that I am really proud of, it would be the descriptive essay I wrote to tell of the experience my daughter and I had in Disney World. This is because of the fact that though a descriptive essay would be one of the simplest writing styles one could do as a novice writer, as you would just have to use descriptive words to tell a detailed story of one’s experience, I think I was able to involve the readers in the experience instead of just narrating it by not only using vivid descriptions about the grandeur of the place but at the same time the putting the emotions to life that ensued during the experience. Thus, I am really confident that though adults would no longer have a thing for fairytales that entails welcoming imaginations of simple things and joys about a totally usual experience, perhaps a visit to Disney World, I believe that I was able to bring out the enthusiasm of a child in the readers which is something that I think is hard to achieve by just a mixture of flowery adjectives put into writing. Indeed, this course has taught me a lot about myself, who I am really as a student, a writer, and at the same time in life. I think that as a student, I am someone who has a lot more to learn in terms of the style and structure of my writing and being able to veer away from writing in such a way as writing a blog of my own experiences, thoughts, and feelings and making it just a tool where I can rant about things. As a writer, I understood that an effective one would be someone who is able to involve one’s readers by seeing things in other people’s point of views. As a person in general, I think that although I may not have the qualifications of being someone who has been there and done that, my writing can make a difference and already influence people. All these learning would lead me to wanting to know more and cherish the power of writing. That is why, in order for me to continuously be able to enrich the quality and influence of my writing, I would need to determine my audience well and my purpose of writing to continuously be relevant to my readers, from all walks of life by using the principles of explanation, exploration, analysis, and synthesis. Also, though I learned more about my writing that helped me to improve it, I would need to constantly remind myself that I can still learn and never actually stop doing so from people who might not be better or perhaps better than I am. Therefore, looking at the holistic experience I got in this course, I would say that I deserve to get a 90/100 score because of the following reasons. First of all, I was able to go beyond only narrating a story and being so safe in my writing and share more to my readers. Aside from that, I have seen writing in a deeper level than just doing so for this course’s sake. Now, I write not because it is required in class but because of the fact that it is a voice that has a right of being heard. Read More