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Ben Leonardi

Prof. Gary Vaughn

ENGL 2089

24 April 2017

Bringing it All Together:

Reflection on my Journey as a Writer in All Facets

There are details one is never made aware of until a task is done time ad infinitum. One

of those is the sheer volume of every single keystroke on my laptops keyboard, the noise

produced by every thought expressed through this technology, when I have been writing for

hours on end. Having never typed an essay the length of the likes assigned in this intermediate

composition class, the decibel level of my hammering keys is only one, and the least important

one at that, of the insights I have gleaned from this class. From this class, I learned that I am not

automatically a fantastic writer because of previous work done, that I must work toward

constantly improving my writing, and that being able to construct a decent-sounding sentence is

not the only important aspect of being a good writer. Those other aspects have been learning to

read complex academic composition texts that, in turn, taught and inspired me to further my

intangible skills like learning how to better critically think and research. Most importantly,

learning the true depth of the cross-curricular nature of writing is inexplicably important to both

being a good writer and being a good member of whatever discourse community one is a part of,

discrete from the broader English-writing community. Yes, being a good writer consists not only
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of being adept at constructing a thought, but knowing how to read complex texts, how to

critically think and research, and how understanding composition can impact any field of study.

I had never received a B on an English paper, or any other paper for that matter, until I

received the grade for my first essay in this class. Although I may have procrastinated on the

assignment, I did the same in all my high school classes. However, I needed to learn to write

differently. I needed to learn that thinking creatively is not just choosing a clever topic, but

phrasing and explicating things in a clever and unique way. In the vein of being a good writer, I

needed to learn how to read, and that was taught from the very beginning in this course. I simply

did not accurately read the prompt for my personal literacy, let alone example academic texts as

deeply as I should, opting to write about something that really could not be interpreted as a

literacy. I attempted to grab the broad ideas from the assignments text, without critically

reading all of it. I did the same for academic texts, understanding the writers individual literacy

without understanding what truly qualified it as such.

I began to learn how to read (about reading) before I could learn to write about writing.

This path led me to grasp more of myself as an active and critical reader, before I became an

active and critical writer and researcher. The broad and diverse texts offered and assigned by

this course in the time between my first and second essays helped my evolution. While I again

missed the mark in failing to read the prompt for the second essay, rereading the texts assigned

to help with and inspire my personal literacy essay and those assigned for the genre analysis

started to form some sort of image of what real writing is.

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Launching headlong into the massive research paper while still recovering from personal

illness in the form of my tonsillectomy, the most important moment in my evolution as a write in

the context of this class was constructing that ethnography, that piece of writing longer than

anything I had done before. I found that, when given the ability to just write something I had

thoroughly researched, words simply flowed. But from this essay, and from the reflection on

past writing in other courses and earlier writing from this course, I came to a realization.

In the past, I had thought writing consisted of one singular task: writing itself. Without

giving reading or researching or critical thinking a seat at the table, I did not understand how

cross-curricular good writing really is. Everything I read, I now read critically. I think about how

much research must go into constructing every sentence, choosing every word. I think about how

the audience, and more broadly speaking, the genre, affects those writers every move. I think

about which discourse communities people subscribe to, what each respective lexis is, and how

that must impact the rest of their life, not just the writing.

But most importantly, I began to think about applying the principle I use in the rest of my

coursework to my writing: that if I am not constantly improving, I am constantly getting worse. I

apply this to writing now by working on all factors of writing: not just improving my vocabulary

or looking at interesting sentence construction. Reading more rigorous texts, researching topics I

am interested in with more depth, and applying these skills to the diverse course offerings in

which I take part.

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This is the first English course I have taken at a college. And from this, I have learned in

an academic setting what true academic writing is, and hopefully, how to construct a bit of my

own. This is a skill inherently valuable to many a profession, most importantly, the academic in

any context. As I look toward my future and potentially toward graduate school, where I could

have to read many of these sorts of essays, I am glad to have experienced this as a freshman.

And while I certainly hope that my keyboard begins to get a little quieter, or maybe I learn to

type a little more lightly, those far more important insights gleaned from this class grant me the

ability to grasp personal goals professionally, understand different academic contexts and genres,

and hopefully and most importantly learn how to continually improve as a writer.