“I think your writing has improved.” Mr. Z said to me in a conference.
“Really?” I asked with uncertainty and a secret delight.
It was the first time I was affirmed by a writing teacher. I always considered myself as a student good at science, and I had no confidence in writing. But after hearing Brian’s words, I felt excited and motivated — it was also the first time I realized that I developed an interest in writing.
Looking back at this semester, I wondered what made me start to love writing, and I found an answer in my essays. The place essay was written in early September, and I can still remember how struggled I was to find enough materials to finish this essay. My brain was totally blank, and the essay was like a hard task for me. However, when I was revising it recently, I found that I had so many ideas to add to my first draft. I wanted to tell the readers about my own experiences and some interesting details that could make my essay more vivid and attractive. I tried to be specific when I was expressing my feelings in the essay so that my readers would understand and had a sense of being in the room with me. My ability of creative thinking was cultivated during the process of revising and was developed by asking questions at the end of my essays. At first, I did not understand the purpose of writing down questions that we could not answer, but after a whole semester, I discovered that these questions were exactly what guided my thoughts. When I was writing essays, I was asking myself questions and was curious about things constantly, and these questions and curiosities enabled me to look at my essay from a different angle. I felt excited every time I had new ideas that were derived from the original ones.
Another thing I learned was to collect other people’s ideas and stories. In my subculture essay, I interviewed many people in order to know about the investment club. Instead of focusing on the activity of investing, these conversations led me to explore some special human elements of this club. Meanwhile, it was my first time to interview other people, and I learned many useful communication skills that could benefit me in the future. Knitting the interview into the essay was challenging, but once I reorganized the structure of the essay, the main idea became very clear – the interview became a powerful tool that connected the ideas among paragraphs. Besides, I learned not to put all the information from the source to my essay but to select and extract the part that was related to the main idea to make my essay concise. I was shocked when I found out that my final draft looked nothing like the first draft, and was delighted to see the changes and improvements I came up with.
Now I am no longer afraid of writing, and I even obtain a sense of happiness when I am going through the “rabbit hole.” I have the courage to ask questions and explore unknown fields, and I realize that even though I am not able to answer all my questions, but sometimes the process of seeking answers is more meaningful than the answer itself. I really enjoy this semester, and I am ready to move on to my next journey.
Stories From Helen 