What I have learned this semester about writing stems mostly from my lack of writing.

Last year, I wrote at least once almost every day. Writing was a source of joy, comfort, and

energy. It was a place of appreciation for language and my mother tongue. I created a sense of

home through writing and it became an act of self care and a refuge.

This semester, however, I have rarely had the time or created the time to write for myself

outside of the obligatory academic setting. I have developed the ability to quickly generate

without much enthusiasm what is needed for an acceptable grade. I can summarize, analyze,

synthesize, and organize adequately. In this way, I connect with Victor Villanueva and his

experiences described in his autobiographical book Bootstraps. Despite my apparent growth

and development of skills, I do not believe that this progress constitutes as real growth as a

writer. What will lead me to real growth and development as a writer will be creating a

connection between the personal, creative, passionate writing and academic scholarly writing.

By connecting those two forms and styles of my writing, I hope to bring passion and

creativity into my studies and academic writing. I think that deciding and declaring my major

and taking classes I am passionate about will be a conduit to this growth. I also believe that

bringing personal connection, passion, and creativity into academic writing requires risk taking

in addition to genuine engagement with the material. I believe that good writing requires risk

taking and stepping out of ones comfort zone. I have taken risks in class this semester simply by

writing in academic and scholarly genre and style.

Through practice and repetition, my skills have grown. A good example of my growth in

writing due to practice can be seen in my rhetorical summaries annotated bibliography. At first I

viewed these assignments as time consuming, difficult, and uninteresting and I relied heavily on

the directions given to us. Eventually, these assignments became easy. I no longer needed to rely
on the instructions, I simply followed my newly learned formula for summarizing. While they

were still generally uninteresting, I was able to pinpoint the main arguments and messages that

we, as students of writing, were supposed to understand and the reading assignments made more

sense. I developed the skill of concise summarization through practice and repetition and was

able to apply that to papers in other classes. I was able to apply this skill to my writing in my

queer sociology class, where each week, we read a book and write an in depth book summary or

report. The rhetorical summaries also helped me read like a writer because I am now better able

to pinpoint key themes and information within the text that is important and that should be

included in a summary. This has allowed me to read, digest, and synthesise more efficiently.

The understanding that writing requires practice is one that good writers throughout time

and disciplines have understood and expressed. Dr. Barya discussed this during my interview

with her. When asked, what makes a good writer, and what are some suggestions for aspiring

writers, Barya said that writers write and that writing must be habitual. This is something I

can understand and relate to because as I mentioned previously, I used to write habitually and

experienced growth. However, I did not make the connection between writing as habit to

academic writing before now.

The rhetorical summaries also exposed me to texts and authors that I would not have read

unless required. While this was frustrating at first, I was able to engage with several texts that

enhanced my understanding of rhetoric. As opposed to many of the authors I have read in this class

throughout the semester, I enjoyed and connected with Nancy Sommers voice and tone in her

piece, The Call of Research. I appreciate her taking the time in the introduction to remind

ourselves show daunting and complex the conventions of academic writing look to first-year

college students because I think the ability to step back, and objectively consider the point of view

of students is a valuable piece of academic discussions about writing that is often looked over and
not included. I also like the connection she makes between child development and developing as a

writer although I would argue that, in actuality, development as a writer and as a person rarely

occurs in milestones. I would like to know more about the WPA Outcomes: what they are, who

created them? I like how she says we do not have an end point for college writing because i

believe that there is no endpoint for any genre of writing. Like Dr. Barya said in my interview with

her, she is constantly trying to make her work better and rarely does she feel like a piece is truly

complete. I connected a lot with Luisa in that she was surprised by the question marks in her

margins because what she wrote made sense to her. Sommers explains that later in her college

career, Luisa was able to move from writing idiosyncratic prose...to writing public prose that

engages readers. I would like to know how Luisa learned to do so as that is something I struggle

with in personal, creative, and academic pieces.

Another thing that Dr. Barya and I discussed that I learned more about in class this

semester is revision. In my academic and personal writing, revision is more like a finishing

touch; a process that focuses on grammar and formatting. I may revise the organization of a

paper or short story, add on to unfinished thoughts, or experiment with line breaks. While these

types of revision are important, minimal revision, or revision as a one step finalizing process,

puts a lot of pressure on the first draft. Setting high expectations for a first draft often leads me to

writer's block or having difficulty generating ideas. This semester, I learned to not set

expectations and allow for my first draft to be bad. I changed my perspective on drafts and

learned that by viewing a first draft as a place to simply put initial thoughts and ideas the

argument and overall content of my final product was stronger. My literacy narrative is a good

example of my growth in first drafts and revision.

The three student learning outcomes were not my main takeaways from class this

semester. However, upon reflection of my aforementioned growth and takeaways, the student
learning outcomes do tie in and connect with the broader lessons learned in class. It is difficult

for me to articulate the ways in which they connect because they are such broad themes that

connect in one way or another to all writing and communication. This class has opened my eyes

to what counts as rhetoric and communication and has made me realize that communication and

rhetoric are a part of daily life. A moment that illustrates this realization was when Professor

Graves argued that there are some things that exist only because we have words for them. I

thought that humans only create words to try and describe already existing things. These types of

discussions and dialogues are exemplary of personal engagement and creativity with scholarly

ideas that I strive towards in and outside of academia. Heres to more writing and more engaging

conversations.

Works Cited

Mettee, Holt. Journals 2016-2017. 2016-2017

Villanueva, Victor. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. National Council

of Teachers of English, 1993.

Mettee, Holt. Rhetorical Summaries Annotated Bibliography. Lang 120, 201.7

 Mettee, Holt. Boystown, Orne Book Summary. Soc 390, 2017.

Lang 120 Interview With Dr. Barya. Personal Interview. September 28, 2017.

Mettee, Holt. A Positive View of LGBTQ, Riggle and Rostosky Book Report. Soc 390,

2017.

Mettee, Holt. Literacy Narrative. Lang 120, 2017.