Writing academic essays used to terrify me especially when it came to subjects that I really enjoyed. High school teachers often used terms such as “hard” and “brutal” to describe writing a college level paper would be. While I appreciated their desire to prepare me for the coming pages that I would encounter throughout my undergraduate career, they made paper writing appear as a fearful endeavor that one must battle their way through to the end. For most of my time in college, I followed this idea that papers were impossible monsters that I need to simply get through, but the reality is that academic writing is so much more.
Academic writing used to something that I feared with questions of whether I was choosing the right text or finding the perfect sources to back up arguments that I decided a professor might want to hear rather than the argument I felt compelled to make. Writing was a chore with a long list of bullet points that needed to be adhered to, and while I am grateful to my Education professors that further engrained this practices in a space where there was right and wrong instead of a chance to prove an idea or question to the audience. In my final year at the College of Charleston and during this program, I have focused my academic papers on my interested and explored ideas that I am excited about which has allowed me to see academic writing as so much more that just another thing that I have to do to earn a degree. Academic writing allows me to read books that class time does not allot space for and find journals and documents that further explore writers and their works in new light. I have become more appreciative of the process and finished product than I used to be as writing as enabled me to explore new avenues and ideas that previously would have been spared a fleeting glance.
One particular facet of my writing process that changed most significantly is my time management when it comes to my writing. I give myself time to flesh out ideas and fall down rabbit holes. In the past, I was the person who settled on a topic and gave myself a couple days to produce a paper which often meant that my argument was full of holes and contradictions. Putting in the effort to avoid procrastination has made me into a writer who has time to do the research that my writing deserves while also giving me time to edit and revise to a far better degree that I used to do. I now use a planner to plan out my writing timeline so that I can set goals and prepare myself for the task ahead while also allowing breathing room as opposed to rushing in the final few days to complete a project.
The most difficult part of the process for me quite often is the research that goes into the project especially when I have settled on a topic, but the secondary sources that I need to back up my stance feel impossible to find. This particular moment feels like a hurdle that is impossible to jump over. During Introduction to Graduate Studies, I had the idea of what I wanted my paper to look like, but finding sources that discussed The Black Tulip as more than just a historical text felt impossible which made it hard to write the paper. If one particular areas seems to drag on for a inoridnately long amount of time, I find it hard to stay intune with the project and the writing becomes even more tedious.
In Student Teaching, they always asked us how we felt we improved in the classroom and I have always had a hard time admitting to improvement in any capacity. I think it is interesting to consider that one of my reflections from that semester said my improvement for the week was they all of the kids were awake during my lesson. I have a similar mindset when it comes to my writing with small victories like completing a rough draft with two weeks until the final project is due, but overall the area in which I have seen the most improvement is in how I do my research with the time I put into looking for sources and vetting them. Discerning which particular papers are most beneficial to my research and letting go of ones that neither hinder nor help my argument. I think writing is like so many other aspects of what we do where practice makes us better every time we put pen to paper.
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