Personal Essay Sample: My Writing Skills

This semester has been very challenging for me. I have been through quarantine and many mental battles while juggling the life of a college student. This course itself has had its times where it felt like everything was trying to swallow me alive. However, I can honestly say that it has helped me in the writing portion of this course. I know what you’re thinking, “how can possibly stressing about the semester help improve a person's writing skill?”. This course not only helped me improve on my writing skills by giving me  insight on how to tap into the audience's emotion and mind but also helped me improve on having a strong mind. As I said before, I have been through hell when it comes to my first semester as a freshman. The anxiety attacks I experienced during this semester were all relieved in my essays. Everytime I seem to have an essay due in this particular class, is usually when I would start to feel the pressure of the other classes caving in. I then had to learned to take a breathe and realize that all the feelings, I’m feeling can be put to great use by simply just letting my fingers type what my brain is saying without doubting myself. Though I experienced some running into a brick wall moments, I can genuinely say I enjoyed partaking in the class. 

Ever since I was younger I enjoyed the luxury of writing but didn't enjoy the luxury of being told what to write. I could have been placed at a table and given a pencil and paper, and told “you have an hour to write about any topic, any topic at all.”. You will soon see my hand start moving quickly, as if someone flicked on a switch place on my wrist. I loved the feeling of being free when I write, not having any limitations nor repercussions on the words I expressed. The older and older I got, the further and further I felt my passion for writing slipping away from me. It seemed the older I got, the stricter the course became. I began to grow negative feelings towards the English composition courses I encountered. As I was falling out of love for the elegance of writing, I was falling in love with the adrenaline of sports. As I reflect on the times when I realized I was losing the love for writing, I perceived it as a long painful break up; in a way. And what do people usually do after a painful breakup? They find coping mechanisms and mines so happened to be adrenaline. I was involved in track, wrestling, and softball; all sports that you have to be aggressive in the mind for and always be on your toes with one step planned ahead. I took that passion I once had and just simply moved it to another thing. I transformed that elegance into aggression.

When coming to SIU and enrolling into this course, I believed it would be a perfect opportunity for me to relight that passion that once drifted away from me. I was correct to think so, although I did go through my difficult times in writing some of the essays assigned; I appreciate the openness of the topics for each unit. I seemed to discover a pattern in my thinking when it comes to me struggling in a unit. Sometimes I find it difficult to actually relay the image I have depicted in my head onto a document. This causes writer's block for me and takes me longer to comprehend one unit then the other. The first time I ran into writer's block in this course was in Unit three, the rhetorical analysis assignment. I found this unit quite difficult due to me over thinking the unit as a whole and quite not understanding the unit exactly. The unit was basically based off citation, I thought the unit wouldn't be as challenging due to me participating in a citation assignment back in high school. When actually sitting down and writing the essay for Unit three, I questioned myself a lot and allowed my thoughts to consume me. Consume me to the point where I felt I wasn't going to receive a good grade on the unit when I was finished. I had to learn to not let my thoughts consume and to take a breath when I felt as such was happening; this taught me strength over my thoughts. Once I finally completed the assignment and received my grade, I realized I was stressing for no reason and received a B; with the bonus of teaching my teacher something new also. Due to this Unit being one of the difficult units to write for, it helped me register the way I think when it comes to writing. Instead of going to the dark side and thinking so negatively, I should always start with an open clear mind; this will help the thought process flow easier. 

When addressing the other units, I can't complain. I didn't struggle with them as much as I did with Unit three. I feel as if this is due to the assignment requirements seeming very fair and easy to me. For example, the very first unit we were assigned was the literacy narrative essay. The essay was assigned to tell a story about a hobby you improved in. This for me was easy as pie, I simply chose the hobby of me running track. This was due to me being invested in this hobby as young as seven-years-old, I experienced big and great change through such and was excited to share just a change. When discussing Unit two, the Ad analysis essay;  I can say I did experience a little bump in the road thanks to my high school for failing to teach me about ethos, pathos, and logos. Before even attempting to write the essay required for unit two, I had to teach myself more about ethos, pathos, and logos. After doing my own research on ethos, pathos, and logos, I was finally confident enough to start my paper. Once writing the paper I felt relieved, the type of relief where it feels as if a weight was carried off my back. I was excited to complete the assignment not only due to me just wanting the assignment to be completed but also due to my confidence in my advertisement choice and being happy on actually knowing how the audience's emotion, logic, and credibility affects the way they read.

I appreciate the stress and the tears that I have put into this class. Without such taking place, I strongly believe the challenge of this class is what made me take writing seriously again. I learned instead of bottling up all that emotions from different things can easily be split out on a blank piece of paper. Yes, the challenges from this class were difficult and did make me shed a couple of tears but without so I wouldn't have made the self-improvements on my writing style nor found the passion for writing again.