My Writing: Courtney Smith

There were lots of opportunities for growth this semester. One thing that I had never done before was creating different types of thesis statements. (This post is "Thesis Statements" on February 1st.)  It was interesting learning about what types of thesis statements there were, which is useful because the thesis is such an essential part of the paper. I think I can use this as a tool in the future to fine-tune my theses and make sure I am expressing the right ideas. I've also been able to experiment with things that I had never been exposed to before; for example, when writing the "playful pre-write," (I posted this as "Playful Pre-writing" on March 14th) I was able to get a better sense of where my thesis was headed.  It was a great way to try different paths of thinking and use a variety of things to develop more solid ideas about what kind of paper I wanted to write. In the past I did not have creative ways of approaching a paper, so this brought in new ideas and helped me to really absorb the text. It was also good for me because I am an outline addict--I outline absolutely everything that I possibly can so that I can see my work start to finish. I did this thorough outline for the Donne paper (entitled "Writing Plan and Record: Courtney Smith" and posted on January 16th) but didn't for the last paper. I think it helped me to try different types of pre-writing and do whatever felt comfortable for me at the time, since getting started can seem impossibly hard at the beginning. There was also, of course, plenty of practice researching, which was a great experience.

One thing that was helpful for me was the partner writing that we did for the final research paper. There was enough flexibility that we could make this process our own while still having the structure of reporting to someone that you were writing. It was also nice to discuss ideas with other people, especially on the final research paper. Even just working through ideas out loud brought new thoughts to me that I hadn't had before. Sharing during any and all of the writing process is a stretch for me, since generally writing is strictly individual during most of my school years, but it was good for me to see the benefits of branching out a bit.