Week 3 Essay: My Writing Career

 

My typical essay writing setup (with coffee of course) Source

Being a student gifted in the areas of math and science, writing has always been a struggle for me. I believe I have great ideas and thoughts but always have a hard time expressing them. I also hate the formality of grammar, most likely, because I do not understand all the rules of commas and punctuation.

            In high school, I was part of the Gifted and Talented program where we focused on creative thinking and writing more so than the other English classes. We often did verbal analysis of literature through class discussions, inner-outer circles, class debates, and reenactments of scenes. We wrote papers, but it was not the core focus of the class. Each Friday, we had “Deeper Reading Fridays” where we analyzed song lyrics, music videos, and current poems. Our reading curriculum included books such as Water for Elephants and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo along with the classics like The Great Gatsby and Brave New World. The writings that surrounded these readings were not your typical essays. Often we would do short stories or recreate the central themes and symbols of the readings in a new original story, much like we do in this course. I enjoyed this type of writing rather than long essays or short analytical essays such as those we had to write for the AP exam. 

            Coming to college, I had one credit of my English and Composition done from passing the AP test and only needed one more course. I took an expo course titled Food and Power and loved the curriculum. I am a foodie at heart and a self-proclaimed chef so this class covered material I was interested in. That was the only reason I was able to endure that class. The ten page research essay and analytical essays were not my favorite, but at least I was writing about interesting material. My ten-page paper analyzed the culture of wine and I found it very interesting. Since this course, I have not written anything of that length in my college career. I am a Health and Exercise Science major and most of my classes are science courses with labs. There is not much writing and I am thankful. Most of my writing for my major is in my elective classes where we do one page analyzes on research articles in the field. Although I am glad my major does not require much writing, I am thankful for the skills I was able to learn in high school. 

In my future profession I will no do much writing. As a physical therapist you often have to write notes to the physicians documenting a patient’s progress in rehabilitation, but most of these notes are shorthand medical terms.