My relationship with writing is still the same as it was at the beginning of the semester: love-hate. I struggle to begin my writing process, gather my thoughts, and turn them into intelligible words. However, once that process beings, I can’t be stopped. I only use my writing for academic purposes, rarely, if ever, venturing into creative writing, not because I am lazy or uninspired, but because I find that my creativity is better expressed in traditional art forms. Given the choice, however, between writing a ten-page essay and solving 50 calculus problems, I would pick the essay in a heartbeat.

There haven’t been any drastic or noticeable changes in my writing this semester. I am, of course, more conscious of sentence structure, word choice, point of view, and all that jazz, but I don’t think I’ve had a literary epiphany in the course of four months. I have learned to be more aware of how I phrase things, of the tense in which I write, and of having consistency throughout my writing. For example, I now take extra effort to tie all my paragraphs and sentences together to create a more fluid piece of writing. I don’t necessarily consider myself a writer, nor do I completely strike the attribute from my list of talents. Writing is a strength of mine that I exercise when I have to, but not often otherwise. Aside from the occasional sentimental birthday card or an eloquently vulgar text message I may send to a friend, I don’t utilize my writing for purposes other than schoolwork.

I enjoyed doing all the projects this semester, mostly because I was able to write about things that I was interested in, as opposed to a work of literature that was forced upon me. For the first essay on metaphors in a cultural artifact, I chose to write about the LGBT themes in the X-Men series. I had a lot of fun writing this piece because I got to take a commonly discussed topic in the Internet world and put my own spin on it by coming up with examples to support my thesis. One of the most helpful things I did when writing that essay was doing a first draft. That saved me so much time when I went to edit and revise it later, because the bulk of my thoughts were already written down, and I did not have to scramble to come up with a last minute essay. I found it very satisfying that I did not have to do much work on the paper the night before it was due because I had already written the paper a week before. That was a change from my usual method of writing papers, which contains lots of caffeinated beverages and glancing at the clock to make sure I get at least two hours of sleep.

For the single story research paper, I did not follow the same method as I did for the metaphor paper. When it came to writing the first draft of this paper, I found myself experiencing extreme writer’s block, so I couldn’t even get an intelligible sentence down on the page. I waited to write my draft, working on it for several days, up until the day it was due. The topic of my paper kept me interested in the subject however, since the stereotype of Italian Americans as being involved in the mafia has a particularly resonance in my life. Drawing on mafia classics like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos was also fun, because I was able to view them and analyze the problems that they create in the formation of this stereotype. Remediating this project was also a fun task. I was able to actually utilize the movies and shows I talked about in my research paper to create a visual form of it. Looking for clips and scenes was challenging, but in the end I think I pulled together a polished product for only two weeks of work.

Of all the work I produced this semester, I am most proud of my research-based argument paper. This project was also the most challenging thing I did this semester. I did a lot of research to find credible and useful sources for my essay, as well as call upon my cultural artifacts to create a sound argument. To date, that paper is the longest paper I have ever written, and I consider that an accomplishment since I usually have a problem with reaching word count and page limit. What I found most challenging with this paper was organizing all my material into a coherent paper. In the end, I wound up splitting my paper into three parts to keep all the words from looking like a jumbled mess of text.

This course has taught me that writing does not have to be a battle. In the past, writing always felt like a chore because I was not writing about things I was passionate about. In this course, however, I got to explore things that I was interested in, which made writing the long essays a little bit easier. Finding a topic you are passionate about is the key to learning to love writing, and while I don’t see myself becoming a novelist or venturing into creative writing, I feel encouraged by the fact that I know I can produce an eloquent and engaging piece of writing when I need to.