Semester Review: How I Have Grown As A Writer

  Going into the semester, media writing was a concept that I had been introduced to but had never done. Gaining a grasp on this style of writing was easy in some ways, but hard in others. In this short semester retrospective, I will explain what I learned, and what I think I could have done better/what I am still struggling with.

Before this class, writing to me was a process of following steps that I learned when I was in middle school: Make an opening paragraph, a couple of body paragraphs, then conclude. This was pure essay writing, and it was a habit that I had grown comfortable with (honestly, I still do it). I always knew that writing outside of what I thought as correct was possible, but I felt that it might get graded harshly for not following the parameters that had always been drilled into me. I'm not going to say this class was a revelation against that thinking, but it did help me to branch out a little. 

When talking about pure, straight-up writing, The thing I struggle most with is knowing when to start a new paragraph. When I am thinking, I tend to backtrack and reiterate. This can sometimes translate into my writing. For example, In my most recent assignment for this class (podcast first draft) I meant to make it more of a tutorial on how to make music on your computer. I ended up going off on a tangent and then had to come back to my main point. By the time I was done, my first draft was a jumbled mess with a big blob of a paragraph in the middle. That being said, I was able to fix it the second time through. 

Even though I still struggle with knowing when to transition, it is still a skill that I grew this semester. In week 3 I received some feedback on my interview piece. It stated that I should transition more, and not point out every time I make a transition. This makes for much more concise writing and allows for a smoother reading experience. The big issue I had with this was like this. If I was doing an interview, I might state every question I asked rather than analyze the conversation that I had with the person. My writing would seem more like a list, and less like an actual news story. This made for bad media writing. I had a few assignments where I struggled with this concept such as week 7’s news writing assignment. I also had some assignments where I did a good job making transitions, such as week 6’s journal.

All in all, I think that my biggest takeaway from this class is that it helped me to think outside the box when writing. After going back and reading through some of my work from the beginning of the semester, compared to what I have written now, I can notice a big difference in quality. That being said, there are still plenty of places I can improve as I continue my writing journey.