Wasi Imrose

Joseph Furlong

English 110

                                                                                         Theory of Writing

 

Born in a family of athletes and artists, I was a natural outcast. Indulging in sports for the majority of one’s time or spending hours crafting a creative piece always seemed unconvincing to me. My passion lied among science. My father, who played soccer professionally for a few years, would typically sit in front of the TV for hours fixating himself on various soccer matches. My cousins conventionally participated at local soccer tournaments and various writing and art competitions. Big parts of the conversations that occured during family gatherings were about soccer, cricket and poetry. It bored me. Instead I would try to enlighten them by talking about a recent rocket launch or the theory of relativity. It bored them. This underlying contradiction would travel with me to school. In my school, social acceptance correlated with athletic and artistic abilities. I was once again left with scientific books to satisfy my intellectual hunger. Although this did not establish me as a loner, I was left at a disadvantage in terms of making friends. However, I was persistent in my effort to be ignorant of such differences. I read more books. As an aspiring engineer and a hard core physics enthusiast, I had a tendency of quantifying all aspects of my life. While this tendency had served me well, it left me baffled when handling a few non-scientific activities. Writing was one of them.

 

Before I started college, I spent a considerable amount of time calculating the least amount of papers I can write and still manage to graduate. When I began college I stubbornly decided that my focus would solely be on what I wanted to learn. But that decision was met with futility when I learned that English 110 and World Civilization were two of my classes. The idea of writing papers had always left me in an exhausted state. Although I was decently skilled in tinkering with terminology and language, striving to express myself was pointless.  When attempting to write, I found myself sitting in front of the paper for hours with a blank mind not able to put my thoughts into words. It frustrated me.When writing research papers, I would suffer through every anxiety filled second that passed as time dragged me towards the deadline. Caffeine, food and panic attacks were common elements I would add to the process only to come up with a half baked paper earning a mediocre grade.

 

For my second assignment in English 110, I had to write an 8 page research paper on a topic of my choice. I saw this as an opportunity to further my knowledge on a particular field that I was curious about. Therefore I chose to write my paper on Bitcoin and the US economy. I spent days grinding through blogs and academic papers. I watched two movies and read an entire book on Bitcoin. Despite of all this I ended up receiving a C on the paper. Completely demoralized, I analyzed my paper and the efforts I spent on it. In doing so I realized that I had spent an excessive amount of time researching and filling up the paper with content while putting minimal effort in the key aspects of the essay including the structure and mapping and addressing the overall purpose of the essay. I was completely unaware of what a rhetorical situation exactly was. As a result, my paper had failed to acknowledge the basic requirements of the essay. I concluded that prior to submerging myself in intense research and rushing on actually writing the paper, I should have done one important task: planning. The planning includes putting in an initial stage of brainstorming where I determine the contents and purpose of each paragraph in my paper. I should put special attention to the research question and make sure it is fully acknowledged regardless of whether I have an answer to it or not. I had come to realize, the harder way, that if a sufficient amount of time is not spent on brainstorming and planning, the essay would be a mess. This was made evident with my research paper. Furthermore, the planning should not be limited to the structure and language of the paper. I have to make sure that clearly acknowledge what the professor expects from my paper. My first two papers for English required me to analyze the rhetoric situations and all my sources. Due to poor planning, I completely ignored the requirements and came up with a vague piece with little to no analysis. Proper planning would also require the amount of time that I should spend on different aspects of the paper. As a college student with two part time jobs, I had an extremely limited time and I spent most of it simply on research and learning. As a result, I rushed through the writing process, often completing them in the subways and in between breaks instead of a creativity stimulating environment. If I had spent my time more wisely and planned ahead, I would not have filled my paper with inert content with no analysis and no connections among my sources. I realized this after getting the C which was a reality check. It was an extremely harsh lesson for me because for a person who despises writing, unnecessary writing and harsh critique was a major set back.

 

My failures and setbacks in my very first semester of college has taught me well and greatly facilitated in the development of my theory of writing. I came to realize that, while I would still not be able to quantify the whole process, I can still apply some techniques and habits that are crucial to my success as an engineer. One thing I will do when creating writing piece would be to plan and divide the whole process into steps. Initially I would make sure I have enough time and an environment where I can be comfortable in writing. The ideal situation for this would be in my bedroom after midnight. I would be free of distractions and would be focusing completely on the paper with no time pressure. The next step would be to create something similar to a flow chart. Here I will determine exactly how many paragraphs I will have and what contents it will contain, the question that I will develop and its acknowledgement, addressing the rhetorical situation and the purpose of the essay and the time I will be spending in conducting research. Like my second research paper, I would not go as far as reading entire books and spend hours simply trying to learn the technical aspects of the subject. Instead I would choose a topic that I am well educated about and comfortable with. Additionally, I would narrow down on the sources that I will research and leave enough room for analyzing them and making connections among them. This kind of planning will provide me with a strong foundation and systematically guide me through the process.  

 

On the third assignment in my English class, we had to transfer the contents of our previous research paper into two other genres. Although, there was not much writing done in this assignment, I still managed to use what I have learned through my past mistakes. I planned ahead and chose my two genres to be a poster and a blog. I put special emphasis on the audience used my type of audience to determine my genres. The audience for my poster was subway travellers so I decided to use a pop culture reference in order to appeal to them. I used the character “Dobby” from Harry Potter and adapted the picture to convey a message about the US economy. The audience for my second genre were college students and so I created and published a blog on Bitcoin so that it would be easily accessible through all sorts of devices. Once again, I strongly feel that my work in this assignment could be considered successful relative to my other assignment and that was because I set aside time for brainstorming and planning on how my project was supposed to be and whether it meets the requirements of the assignment.

 

Throughout the semester in English 110, I have witnessed significant change in my own writing. From being an individual with terrible writing skills, I was able to understand and transition into a much better writer. Although I believe I still have a long way to go, I have developed my own theory of writing which will form the foundation for future writing endeavors. The whole process was significantly facilitated through my involvements in class. My instructor had provided with several short assignments including free writes, article analysis and annotation. Through these assignments I was able to practice more writing. We created multiple drafts and went through several revision processes which were significant aspects of my planning process prior to and during writing essays. Through peer reviews, I was able to get feedback on my writing through multiple perspectives. All these play key roles in my theory of writing. I will continue to make use of these methods and the techniques I personally learned in writing throughout the semesters in the upcoming years.