I believe my greatest strength as a writer is my understanding of the basic form necessary to write a formal essay.  With the proper knowledge, I can easily write a multi-page papers very quickly, as every paper I write follows the same basic format.  Looking back at all of my writing, it is easy to see that it all came from the same person.  The language is not very complex: I write very much in the same style as I speak.  I don't try to fill space when I am writing, but rather try to stay to the point.  It took me a few years to understand the idea that many of my peers call "bullshitting" a paper because that simply is not how I write.  I feel this is a strength of mine because I don't fill my papers with needless information.  At times this hinders me when there is a length requirement for a paper, but I would rather keep my reader interested than just fill  my work with unimportant information.

Since I am writing this during my senior year, I will not lie and say what steps I will take to develop my writing skills.  Instead I will say simply that I have read all of the feedback professors have given me in response to my work and tried to incorporate what they have to say into my later works.  In additon, I have always carefully read paper requirements to be sure that I am closely following the guidelines given.  I've found this to be extremely important, because it is impossible to do well in a course if you don't follow the rules the instructor gives you.

Because my work generally follows the same form, it is eary for me to quickly write papers.  I have gotten a lot of negative feedback from my peers because of this.  While it may take them hours or days to complete a paper, I can turn mine out with much greater ease, and this often upsets other people.  To this, I can only say that I had an incredile high school writing teacher who taught me a few simple rules of writing that I continue to follow today, and for this I am very fortunate.  The feedback I received in my seminar, as well in other classes has generally been very positive.  My one difficulty came on study abroad where the expectations for essays are very different than they are in the US.  However, by discussing this difference with my instructors and listening to their feedback, I was able to quickly adjust my style to their expectations.




Created May 6, 2003
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