Over the course of my academic career, I can safely say that, I have written more essays, research papers, and response papers than I can count. However, those types of formal and conventional writings have restrained me from learning how to truly write. Therefore, as my tenth and final blog post, I decided to pay tribute to the blogging assignment for teaching me how to write and the many other skills I have learned along the way.
In high school, when I was assigned a paper to compose there was always a certain structure I had to follow and a specific prompt that I was required to answer. Therefore, when composing those assignments, I was never given the opportunity to truly be creative and express my voice because it isn’t encouraged in conventional writing styles. In addition, it often became a struggle to illustrate originality and have my writing ‘stand out’. The reason for that being, more often than not, I was writing the exact same paper, answering the same exact prompt, with the same exact format as the other thirty students in my class. Therefore, writing became a set step-by-step procedure that I wasn’t allowed to stray away from.
Thus, when I began the blogging assignment, I struggled because I was very unfamiliar with this style of writing. There wasn’t a certain structure that I had to follow and there wasn’t a prompt that I was required to answer. The blogging assignment allowed me to disregard the conventional writing style and structures because of its open-ended prompt. Additionally, I was able to use my voice more freely and conversationally. In contrast to the writing I was doing in high school, I now had more freedom to write about the information I learned in class and how it relates to my personal life or other things that interested me.
At the beginning of the semester, I recall feeling very anxious about this assignment altogether. I wasn’t confident enough in my writing or myself, which is why it had taken me sometime to post my first blog. However, as the semester and the blogging assignment come to an end I’ve come to realize how much I am truly going to miss blogging. I am grateful to have had this opportunity that allowed me to grow as a writer and enhance my writing skills. I am proud and amazed by myself and the amount of progress that I have made in such a short amount of time and I owe it all to this assignment.