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Alondra Islas
Speiser
Writing 2
Metacognitive Essay

Practice makes perfect. This statement is valid for my writing experience these past two

quarters. I have seen myself grow a lot as a writer before my own eyes. I started off with writing

1 and am now finishing writing 2. To be completely honest, I was not looking forward to these

classes because all my life writing has been my weakest performance in my academic career and

for that reason I despised writing. I disliked the idea of sitting down and writing long paged

papers. Surprisingly, I drew impressions upon these classes too soon because now that I am

almost done, I can say that they have been some of my favorite classes to take. Writing 1 allowed

me to find myself as a writer but writing 2 challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and

approach assignments on my own, without anyones guidance. I definitely feel like the professor

for writing 1 guided us through each assignment but coming into writing 2, everything changed.

The only reason I am mentioning this is because this contributed the most to my growth, the fact

that I was no longer being held by the hand by the teacher. This allowed me to trust myself as

a reader, writer, and thinker to guide myself through the assignments we had for writing 2.

This year specially, I learned many things about myself as a writer, reviser, reader, and

thinker. Something I have practiced since high school but never noticed its effect is writing really

terrible drafts. After reading Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott I realized how much I related

to her main points. She states that writing shitty first drafts can be really effective for the writing

process because it allows one to word vomit all their ideas out without worrying about how it

sounds or if it makes sense. She believes that the second and third draft is where one fixes all the

mistakes and improvises there writing. Before I ever read this piece I would unconsciously write

terrible first drafts, but now seeing how well it works I now write really shitty first drafts on
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purpose. For all my writing projects in the class I wrote bad first drafts but I used the second and

third draft to strengthen my ideas and organization, which allowed my writing to be a work in

progress. I found that this technique releases so much stress from writing and makes it more

enjoyable for me. I believe this is why now I enjoy writing a bit more than before.

Being a student who has now finished the writing 2 course and reviewing over the goals

of this class, I could say I was able to achieve them all. The overall writing 2 goals were for

students to be aware how writings are constructed through different genres and disciplines. As a

reader we evaluated the practices used in different writings and their goals to help us become a

better reader and writer. We researched one topic throughout the quarter to learn how it is

approached in different conventions. At the end of the quarter we learned how to achieve

advocacy writing to teach us how to approach writing in the real world. Reading other peoples

writing helped me implement some of their skills into my own writing. My knowledge on

discourse communities extended, where before the meaning of it was unclear but now I

understand its meaning and how to distinguish different ones. I also understand how to analyze

genre conventions, rhetorical devices, and literacy practices where before this was something I

didnt pay attention to in readings. I learned tips on how to research scholarly articles and receive

help from sources provided in the library. After reading several of the reading assignments for

the class, I was able to gain many tips to become a better reader, thinker, and writer.

In the article by Sommers and Saltz, they argue that beginner students in college are more

capable of learning new skills when they write on something that matters to them because it

keeps them interested in the topic longer in academic writing. Some of the experiences they

mention, I was able to relate with what I experienced in writing 2 because I found a topic I cared

about and was able to sustain this interest for a long time in academic writing. Because I
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remained consistent with the topic for every writing piece, the ideas continued to build on each

other or change. The more research I did the more I learned and the more I thought on the topic,

so this contributed greatly on the growth of my writing. For example, for the first writing project

I only learned the basic knowledge on climate changes about how it works and what it is caused

by. For my second writing project I was able to deepen my knowledge on the topic because I

learned how this issue is affecting agriculture studies, specifically the crop growth of soybeans.

Then I also learned the economic policies in different locations in the U.S in relationship to

climate change. Lastly for the third project I took in consideration projects 1 and 2 to decide how

I wanted to raise awareness on the topic. The construction of knowledge in this issue helped me

strengthen my ideas towards this topic and grow as a thinker, reader, and writer.

Coming from a person whos disliked writing for most of their life to now being able to

cope with it, is a personal major change. I grew up with teachers who would always tell me what

I was doing wrong in my writing and failed to tell me what I was doing right. Something that

gave my motivation to push myself as a writer, was that my writing 2 professor gave me

meaningful comments on all the writing projects discussing the good things I had. Instead of

mainly telling me all the wrongs, he pointed out what I was excelling in. The way I felt going

into writing 2 is completely different now that I am finished with the class. I feel more confident

and independent as a writer. I know I will continue to practice the skills I learned in this class in

my further writing classes. And continue to practice to get perfect.