End of Term Reflection
Over the course of this semester, I faced many difficulties and obstacles in this creative writing class. Throughout the semester, I have learned that my abilities as a writer are something that I need to reach for and put in effort for. I, personally, am not able to just sit down and suddenly have a whole story immediately come to mind.
During this semester, I learned how to look at books differently while completing my independent reading for this class. I am now able to more able to recognize and identify different styles and methods used in others’ writing. While doing my independent reading, I was able to go beyond just summarizing the stories and events in my independent reading books. For example, in Reading Journal #8 on my weebly, I recognized that the author Tommy Wallace often used literary devices, such as Euphemisms, in his book We All Looked Up. Another thing I learned about reading through my independent reading is how to identify and break down parts of a poem. On my weebly, in Reading Journal #14, I was able to identify the types of stanzas, rhyme schemes, structuring, and repetition patterns that were present in the poem normal by Madisen Kuhn.
I do not feel like I know much more about literature after this semester. We spent a lot of time on poetry and not much on actual stories. This semester we spent a majority of it reading and writing poetry. Reading poetry was easier to accomplish rather than writing poetry. However, reading poetry can be challenging at times, there are many components to a poem and more times than not, the words in the poem do not fully reflect the meaning. Although it was difficult at times, I enjoyed writing some poems and such during this semester. For example, I really enjoyed doing the blackout poetry assignment. I also enjoyed doing some of the unconventional writing project. I had one poem in particular that came out decently well and that I felt good about turning in.
Sharing your work and writing can be scary, especially when you are not very confident in what you wrote in the first place. Because I always felt hesitant to share, I feel like that hesitance was always evident in my writing. I did not push myself to show my full potential in my writing. I always got constructive feedback from Mrs. Szczembara on my writing assignments. For example, in my Pastiche first draft, she gave me specific suggestions on how to improve my story by recommending that I add “his obsessive thinking a little more at the end.” Peer feedback also helped a lot, I was able to share my work and my writing with a few people I am friends with, which made it less nerve wracking to share my works with others. Over the semester, sharing aloud was not as difficult as it had been in the beginning.
During this semester, I made the mistake of not putting creative writing high enough on my priority list. Getting myself to focus on writing and being creative was extremely difficult for me this semester. My mind was set in a constant mode of just answering questions and either having the right or wrong answer. This struggle showed in my writing and in my grades. I have not been happy with my grades in this class since the very beginning, but it was more effort than I had time for to truly try my best to change them. Often times I wouldn’t put much effort into my assignments because I just couldn’t get any ideas in my head or if I had an idea, I was not able to then transfer that into writing. I wholeheartedly believe that my writing did not improve over this semester and that in no way did I grow as a writer. In all honesty, I do not see myself writing creatively much in the future. Hopefully, when or if that time comes I will then be able to come up with ideas and such to complete those hypothetical assignments, but I do not know how often those times may come up. As a junior, I have been pushed in the direction of frequently writing informational research essays or those that are persuasive for major tests in my near future such as the SAT & AP World History tests. My brain has been trained to write things that have evidence and factual information in it, which has made it even harder for me to be creative. During this semester, lots of things happened outside of academics that contributed to my struggle in this class. I was sick. A lot. I have been sick since Freshman year and it is something that can be out of my control at times. In total, I have missed 8 days of creative writing, over a week. On top of this, I struggled with my mental health at times. My uncle passed in the fall and I couldn’t go to his funeral in Texas because I could not miss school. In the long run, I definitely could’ve and definitely should’ve done better in this class. There were so many factors all at once that prevented myself from doing the best that I could in this class.
During this semester, I learned how to look at books differently while completing my independent reading for this class. I am now able to more able to recognize and identify different styles and methods used in others’ writing. While doing my independent reading, I was able to go beyond just summarizing the stories and events in my independent reading books. For example, in Reading Journal #8 on my weebly, I recognized that the author Tommy Wallace often used literary devices, such as Euphemisms, in his book We All Looked Up. Another thing I learned about reading through my independent reading is how to identify and break down parts of a poem. On my weebly, in Reading Journal #14, I was able to identify the types of stanzas, rhyme schemes, structuring, and repetition patterns that were present in the poem normal by Madisen Kuhn.
I do not feel like I know much more about literature after this semester. We spent a lot of time on poetry and not much on actual stories. This semester we spent a majority of it reading and writing poetry. Reading poetry was easier to accomplish rather than writing poetry. However, reading poetry can be challenging at times, there are many components to a poem and more times than not, the words in the poem do not fully reflect the meaning. Although it was difficult at times, I enjoyed writing some poems and such during this semester. For example, I really enjoyed doing the blackout poetry assignment. I also enjoyed doing some of the unconventional writing project. I had one poem in particular that came out decently well and that I felt good about turning in.
Sharing your work and writing can be scary, especially when you are not very confident in what you wrote in the first place. Because I always felt hesitant to share, I feel like that hesitance was always evident in my writing. I did not push myself to show my full potential in my writing. I always got constructive feedback from Mrs. Szczembara on my writing assignments. For example, in my Pastiche first draft, she gave me specific suggestions on how to improve my story by recommending that I add “his obsessive thinking a little more at the end.” Peer feedback also helped a lot, I was able to share my work and my writing with a few people I am friends with, which made it less nerve wracking to share my works with others. Over the semester, sharing aloud was not as difficult as it had been in the beginning.
During this semester, I made the mistake of not putting creative writing high enough on my priority list. Getting myself to focus on writing and being creative was extremely difficult for me this semester. My mind was set in a constant mode of just answering questions and either having the right or wrong answer. This struggle showed in my writing and in my grades. I have not been happy with my grades in this class since the very beginning, but it was more effort than I had time for to truly try my best to change them. Often times I wouldn’t put much effort into my assignments because I just couldn’t get any ideas in my head or if I had an idea, I was not able to then transfer that into writing. I wholeheartedly believe that my writing did not improve over this semester and that in no way did I grow as a writer. In all honesty, I do not see myself writing creatively much in the future. Hopefully, when or if that time comes I will then be able to come up with ideas and such to complete those hypothetical assignments, but I do not know how often those times may come up. As a junior, I have been pushed in the direction of frequently writing informational research essays or those that are persuasive for major tests in my near future such as the SAT & AP World History tests. My brain has been trained to write things that have evidence and factual information in it, which has made it even harder for me to be creative. During this semester, lots of things happened outside of academics that contributed to my struggle in this class. I was sick. A lot. I have been sick since Freshman year and it is something that can be out of my control at times. In total, I have missed 8 days of creative writing, over a week. On top of this, I struggled with my mental health at times. My uncle passed in the fall and I couldn’t go to his funeral in Texas because I could not miss school. In the long run, I definitely could’ve and definitely should’ve done better in this class. There were so many factors all at once that prevented myself from doing the best that I could in this class.