Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Written But Not Read By TheFlyingScotsman

The beginning. Anger filled my thoughts when I wrote my first few pieces for this English class. I had always hated English and I convinced myself this class would be no different. I wrote about how I didn’t like writing, especially in my first paper about the jacket, “To be honest I have told my life story so many times that I would really never like to tell it again. So I don’t plan on writing it down.”, I refused to do assignments properly, and spent as little time as possible on my work. This was clearly reflected in my pieces, which were full of plot holes, poor word choice, and incorrect grammar. I thought I was right though; this is how I would rebel against my teacher, against everything. The only person I hurt though was myself, my papers were bad and therefore I got bad grades, and what was worse was the message I was trying to send wasn’t being received. It didn’t translate, what I was writing was not what I was trying to say.

The middle. Confusion and bitterness, replaced all other thoughts. What was my teacher trying to say to me and why does nobody understand where I am coming from? I have such a clear picture of what I want to write, why does nobody see that same picture when they read my papers? The class recites Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, but who gives a shit what some Greek said a million years ago, it doesn’t make any sense now. I write what I know and if people don’t like it, well fuck ‘em. I give little consideration to people who don’t agree with me or perhaps can’t comprehend my mind. I write what I can and think that there are always limits to what people will like, “To sum up one’s life or to try and explain how they became the person they have become is an almost impossible task.”, my identity paper was the best example of this. I was unable to relay my own life to others.

The End. Realization and humbling make me feel like an ass these days. I finally begin to understand what my peers and teachers have been talking about. It’s not about what you write, but about how you are read. I am an opinionated writer and therefore my readers usually fall into two categories, agreement and disagreement. To those that agree I come off as strong, bold and edgy. To those who don’t I come off as arrogant, pushy, and wrong. At the beginning I did not realize this and in the middle I didn’t care, but now that I know and can see myself doing it I have so much more power over my writing and of others perceptions of me. I have changed so much as a writer by coming to the realization that different people will interpret my work in different ways, and I have to try to accommodate them all, not by making them all agree with what I am trying to say, but to have them understand where I am coming from. I think I started to figure this out in my unit two reflection letter where I said “I've realized I am an angry and bitter writer, which I find funny because that's not really who I am.”

The Future. Supervision and constant evoking will be necessary whenever I write. I have a tendency to unknowingly make my writing too casual. While this adds “to my style and makes my papers easy to read” as my current English teacher put it, it can also subtract intellectual qualities. Both styles can be positive or negative depending on the audience, being aware of this now I can switch to in between the two appropriately. As I said before writing is not about how you write, it is about how you are read, now that I know and understand this I can move forth and be a more powerful writer. I can understand that being casual is not appropriate in a research paper and being too formal isn’t a great way to connect with a young audience and lastly that you can’t assume anything about your audience, such as them grasping a subtle inside joke between you and your teacher. Having someone read and then understand what you were trying to tell them is the ultimate goal in writing and grasping that knowledge is the first step. I know that there are many more steps to me becoming a great writer, but now that I have taken the first one I can’t wait to get out there and take the rest.