Goal 1 - Sentence Clarity and Word Choice. My first writing goal is to improve the clarity of my sentences and my word choice. I struggle with cramming too many words into one sentence to make it seem more complete. However, by doing this I only confuse the reader about my meaning and crowd out my voice. My sentence structure can also be very confusing because I use unnecessary phrases. For example, in my honors application essay I wrote the sentence, “And so, just like all the other naive cynics that I didn’t know I was among until now, I resigned myself to not becoming involved in politics at all.” This sentence is lengthy and contains unnecessary words. I realize how confusing it sounds when I read it out loud, which is why I will read my future reading out loud in order to improve my future writing. Hearing it will allow me to hear the flow of my sentences. I will also comb through my writing for unnecessary/repetitive words so that my points are clear.
Goal 2 - Argumentation. My second writing goal is to improve my argumentation through connecting my ideas more. In my honors application essay, my argument and reasoning had several gaps in it because I didn’t connect my ideas clearly. In Ashley Carruth’s feedback on my essay, she said “I understand your argument to be that we need to see the shades of gray in politics/events... how will that help address the self-protective element you identify to be the root cause of inaction and ostensible apathy? Your paper would benefit from a more clear connection between those dots.” In a nutshell, Ashley told me that two of my main points in my argument were unconnected and had an unclear connection. I made the point that seeing things in shades of gray would benefit us, but I didn’t say how that would benefit us or change our apathetic ways. In this way, my ideas were unconnected which made my argumentation weak. In my writing in the future, I will make sure to prevent unconnected ideas by first planning out my ideas. I should have a short, written summary of my ideas and how they connect to each other. I could even use a visual tool such as a word web to help me organize and connect my ideas.
Goal 3 - Active Voice. My third writing goal is to use active voice more and passive voice less. I used lots of passive voice in my honors application essay, which made it hard to understand and less engaging. For example, I used passive voice in the sentence “In the essay ‘Habits of Highly Cynical People’ by Rebecca Solnit and the article ‘Beyond Cynicism About Government’, the concepts of naive cynicism and political cynicism are explained and critiqued in today’s society.” The use of passive voice made it less engaging and slightly confusing to read. This also happened when I wrote the phrase “have revealed to me” instead of just “revealed to me”. In the future, I will read over my sentences after I write them in order to change my use of passive voice and use a more active voice. I can also look up more examples of passive voice and active voice to see the difference between them and more clearly distinguish them for myself.
College Essay Revisions Writing my college essay was a hard feat for me because I struggled with voice and descriptive language. Furthermore, I used too much analysis and didn’t include enough scene to alternate it with and make my writing interesting. However, between my drafts I believe I grew dramatically by reorganizing and clarifying ideas. For example, in my first draft I barely had any scene or specific story to tie my writing to. The rest was in a very unengaged voice with flat descriptions. For example, in the sentence, “[a]t the time, I was ten years old and there was nothing I wanted more than for my sister to get better”, my voice was not particularly creative or engaging. The feedback that I received was to bring in more action and a story to be engaging and to possibly broaden my topic. In response to this and in my own revision process, I realized that I didn’t like my first draft at all because the language and structure was too boring. So I reorganized my essay to have a much more interesting angle that focused on three aspects of one topic. Then I went through and re-spiced my writing with descriptive language and metaphor. I had to treat it more as a piece of artistic writing than an academic essay. The previous sentence that was too bland was revised to be “I’m ten years old and I use every shooting star I see to wish for her recovery.” This new sentence is much more creative and I believe it expresses my voice as a writer.