Before stepping foot in the classroom, I knew I would enjoy writing for the social sciences because of my interest in the topic. However, regarding writing, I knew I was a good writer because of my experience in my FIQWS class last semester. During this class, I got to know my strengths and weaknesses as a writer; I am good at creative writing and started writing as a hobby. I enjoy journaling down my life because it allows me to reflect on any thoughts and feelings that stood out that day. In doing so, I get to know myself better and question certain aspects of my life that I can improve on. Throughout this course, we began every class with free-writes, and I came to realize that at times, I am not aware of my own thoughts. It surprises me that there are things that I believe but don’t acknowledge, to some extent, my thoughts become real once I jot them down on paper.
Even though I like expressing myself, a weakness of mine is being a perfectionist; I try too hard to express what I want to say flawlessly. As a result, I get writer’s block because I get fixated in attempting to state what I want in a perfect way, which stops me from writing what is genuinely on my mind. Expressing my ideas is also a challenge I have had to face because I get stuck on how to verbalize my thoughts just as it is on my mind. From this class, I learned to overcome these challenges. Through the multiple assignments that were given, I learned that when I verbally express my thoughts out loud, I am getting it out of my head. This technique helps me because instead of overthinking my thoughts, I just express it. After I hear what I have said, I proceed to write it down. Another helpful technique is brainstorming. For example, as I write this paper, I jot down everything that is on my mind. The idea is to get my thoughts out of my head. Once it is out of me, I start revising and enhancing it to a much better version of it.
I have improved in writing about myself because, in the letter of introduction paper, I remember I had trouble analyzing myself and writing about my strengths and weaknesses. I didn’t know much about my good and bad habits as a writer. I just wrote papers because they were required, and I had to complete them. I didn’t give much thought on my writing process, however after I was done with the paper, I learned who I am as a writer, and now I can apply my knowledge to my other writing assignments. This had to be my favorite paper because it was based on me. The paper that I despised the most was the research paper because of the number of articles and journals I had to read. As I said in the letter of introduction, I don’t like to read. I like obtaining knowledge and information; however, I don’t like the process of reading because it is time-consuming. If I had the power to acquire knowledge without reading, I would be extremely grateful. Since I don’t like to read, I made sure to pick a topic and a subgroup that greatly interested me. It had to be a topic that involved psychology because that is a potential major choice of mine. I chose child development because of my little siblings, and because I wanted to know more on the topic. The topic itself made the paper more enjoyable, so I didn’t mind reading and gathering information to conduct my research. Starting the paper was challenging because it was a research paper and not a creative writing paper, I had trouble with organization, and I felt like my information was scrambled all over the place.
The ethnography paper was overwhelming because of the amount of time and work I had to dedicate it on. Not only did I have to conduct interviews and attend an event, but I had to be very descriptive and detailed. I didn’t know how to describe my surrounds very accurately because I was at a loss of words. It was hard to come up with verbs that perfectly fit the item, place, or person I was describing. On the other hand, this assignment was enjoyable because I interviewed my friends. I had fun asking them questions, and I knew they liked talking about themselves and their personal experiences. However, writing ten pages was not fun; I had trouble transferring the information I received from the interview to paper. I had to select specific details down because the interview that was supposed to be 15-20 mins ended up being an hour conversation on our childhood, reflecting on how money did impact us in several ways. Also, it didn’t help that I kept on procrastinating on the paper, I had the information and the ideas of what to write about, but I was stuck on being overwhelmed on the required pages, ten pages was a lot. However, as I finally started to focus and concentrated, I ended up filling six pages, and then my problem was to condense and select key answers and observations from my field site and interviews. Overall the class positively helped me grow as a student; it pushed me to get out of my comfort zone, having to interact and work with people, participate more in class, and conducting interviews.