My growth as a writer was like a rollercoaster. There was a time where I was at the peak of the rollercoaster, and that was back in High School. There were a lot of mistakes in my writing, for example, explaining, staying on one topic, being specific, and grammar. All throughout high school, I would get A’s, B’s, or my lowest would be a C+. High School was not really paying attention to the grammar as my college professors were. This was a whole new experience for me, especially when the word “rhetorical” came along, and I did not even know what it meant, fresh out of High School, imagine how hard it must have been for me. I knew what I wanted to write in my papers, but it was always difficult for me to thoroughly explain.   

Over time, I wanted my professors and audience to know and understand my struggles, primarily when I was motivated to write about them. In my development of writing, motivation was a primary thing I struggled the most, along with being specific. I’m the type of person to start with one story and end up on a completely unrelated story. It is challenging for me to stay on one topic. Besides, trying to explain can also be very difficult, as I mentioned before. I would just write and write, whatever came to mind, I made sure to put on paper because I knew that I would forget. At the beginning of the semester, it was great because I wanted to make sure I used enough rhetorical terms. Journal entries, free writes, and drafts really helped me somewhat overcome the specific part of writing. The learning outcomes made me want to revise and edit my writing, to make sure I understood my analysis and was correct in engaging with various writing formats   

As a writer, what I hope to accomplish is to make sure I’m specific enough and understand every piece of writing given to me. To comprehend the idea or prompt given to me, so I do not get out of context. In our essays, there were more grammatical rules that I previously did not pay attention to. All these steps to becoming a great writer had an impact and made me understand my stance, my attitude towards my first pieces of writing such as The Literacy Narrative and The Summary and Response essays are very different than the Critical Analytic Research essay, because as I improved so did my research. The critical Analysis Research Paper required a lot more research and analysis. At this point, I was going back up the path on the rollercoaster.  The journey as a writer is to always try and become better, so any audience can understand my viewpoints. Usually, through the semester, my two FIQWS professors made sure to explain and give us the rhetorical situations to use in our writing. I want to grab my reader’s attention, who may be looking for information about Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis. Or others looking for information on my writing structure. For example, in our portfolios and throughout the semester we used the mediums like TurnItin.com and discussion board questions, which helped us grow and obtain an understanding of Freud’s concepts as well as our annotated images, where we had to find and relate a picture to our studies of the semester.  

As an aspiring writer, I want to make sure my perspective is the essential point because if my rhetorical terms were not recognized, there would be no process of engaging with my audiences.  In our writing pieces, the systematic application we included in our writing was our library database. This was also another struggle for me because I did not know which ones would fit into my analysis, some of them did, and others were not what I was searching for. I have developed my writing skills by analyzing data presented through class and through the searches online. Alongside the struggle of using the database, I also had to unlearn some of my behaviors from high school, like poor citing techniques. I had always forgotten to cite areas in my writing where I did not think I needed them. As time went on and from the help of my professors, I improved my ability to cite and add citations when needed. Even when paraphrasing, there should be a citation because the idea was not your own  

Some of the course working outcomes were very beneficial to learn; at times, I almost forgot to have the prompt or small details that would affect my whole writing. I’ve developed my writing skills by analyzing data presented through class and through the searches online. I was able to engage in some social aspects of my writing, and ready to explore different genres of literature and incorporate them into my writing. These were the course learning outcomes that I was able to develop through this journey. Overall, the rollercoaster will keep going to reach its highest peaks.