The past semester has opened my eyes to my writing process’s flaws as well as its strengths. The assignments were a challenge as I had not encountered them often in the years I have been writing. My experiences in writing consisted of pure fact or pure fiction and I found the educational narrative very unique such that I could blend storytelling to inform. This first assignment was a great way to start the year since I’ve always preferred writing in fiction. Although the narrative portions were not entirely fiction, I enjoyed the way I was able to portray it as one. I bolstered up a moral to the story where there was none, it was almost a lie when I said, “This experience helped me a lot in preparation for college life. I found that many students in most of my classes aren’t very talkative. I had the similar feeling of being surrounded by people yet feeling so alone.” However, even if what I was teaching was exaggerated, I still went through these events. I had always wondered what my life would be like if I were a character in a book or a movie. In this way, I could write how I could have better handled an experience as I did in reality. Reflecting on myself as objectively as I could be very new to me since, of course, memories usually have associated feelings. This assignment helped me understand more about how to shape characters and their environment. It helped me see myself as a character before I could learn how to bring my characters to life.
The next assignment was a bit less fun for me as it involved citing sources. I still hate how having to find a quote disrupts the flow of my writing. Typically, I like to find quotes that can blend into my writing and say what I want to say for me. Transitional phrases like, “The author says” are a nightmare for me as everyone uses them it feels like déjà vu if I type out even one of them. Finding sources and researching was the best part of the assignment, however, when it finally came time to write the assignment, it felt like a double-edged sword. I consumed so much information on this topic since I was so invested and now I had to choose only three that could touch all the bases. It almost felt like I wanted to be a whole source myself; I just wanted to dump all the information I gathered. I had always hated the feeling of only regurgitating what I was fed like a baby bird. I took my conclusion as the place to finally release what I had been injecting into my brain for hours. The throbbing metaphorical vein on my forehead receded when I could finally use my own opinion expressing how “as I continued my research, it became apparent that this relief program was not sufficient for many of the people that it was supposed to help.” In my government class, where I had previously done a similar assignment, I had to mind my words when I wrote that letter to a government official, but it was a relief nonetheless to be able to express my information to someone-anyone. You can ask anyone that was within shouting range when I did this assignment, and they'll probably remember my info dump on my topic. I also discovered a new study method this way since after all this talking I know all this information has a special place in my long-term memory.
As much as I would’ve liked to gather all my thoughts and shove it all in a ted talk, I knew I’d sound crazy like some government conspiracist. The infographic made sure that I could be kept civil and logical. The timeline helped summarize and show rather than tell what was happening all this time. No amount of my rambling can amount to the pure fact that, “The medallions were going to be distributed to good drivers, but the TLC voted down the idea. They instead auctioned them off for nearly $200k each (~over $300k today).” I really liked this assignment for the flexibility and the ability for me to take a step back to choose what I really want to accomplish with the research I’ve done.