The poet Charles Bukowski said “Don’t try”. This philosophy is something I try to emulate in my everyday life especially my writing. The phrase itself doesn’t mean not to actually try or put little to no effort but instead to do what feels natural or what comes to mind without overdoing it or trying to try. This semester, we had many assignments short and long of which challenged me and I was unable to uphold this philosophy. The two that come to mind is the 8 elements project as well as the technical description. Both pieces of writing had to be though out, researched, refined and detailed which is something I personally dislike. I consider it boring and limiting but still had to be done. What helped me with these assignments was the help of other students. I used a lot of what they did and wrote as references. I also never did a first draft on these topics because I had no idea on how to tackle them based on the fact that it had to be done a specific way in which the work was meant more for the audience rather than a piece of work from the writer. Other students work was very polished and every sentence had “useful” information with no fillers and got straight to the point. Based on the 8 learning objectives, I think I achieved some success/accomplishment. For example, I was terrible when it came to using the library for articles and finding something that fit the assignment. After some youtube videos and trial and error, I found useful articles. Also, I realized that I had to revise my work since I had run on sentences and sentences that didn’t flow. After a student who reviewed my work told me this, I started to implement it this strategy myself. However, things I don’t think I achieved was the technical writing were points and statements had to be precise with no filler and repetition by rewording/ rephrasing sentences. I am pretty sure I did some of this in the technical description and 8 elements assignments. I tried my best to limit it and come up with other things to say but once I ran out of ideas I went back to my habit. The other assignment which was the group assignment was similar to the technical description but in terms of the writing aspect I didn’t offer/contribute much. My group mates took a majority of that  work as just filled in here and there. I did the youtube video instead, which now that I look back on was actually garbage on my end. Now that I look back on it, it was probably the one assignment I could have as creative as possible and had the most fun with but instead I presented it like a script and it was very boring to watch. That part was on me because I took up the task, not my group mates. The rest of the assignments such as the discussions, the self reflections and writing piece were we had to talk about ourselves were things I personally enjoyed. I can type and write without much effort and thinking in terms of how I am going to structure the sentence or if has to contain certain information or quotes. I can just ramble on and on until I met the page requirement. Also, looking back at the self reflections they probably helped my writing the most since I had elaborate on my experience with the assignment rather than just finish and submit. It made critical of myself and think of why did I struggle with certain assignments and made me more aware of myself. This then led to incorporate certain things, some not all to become a better writer. 

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.