This short essay highlights my thoughts on writing over the course of my academic career. I share some experiences that I have had with writing and how it has shaped my feelings on writing today.

Theory of Writing

As a child, I learned to read relatively early compared to kids my age. The library became a place of escape, as I would find myself there every week choosing new books to venture in. When I first began to write short stories for my first-grade class, it was a way of documenting my life in a way I’ve never experienced before. I was then exposed to poetry, where I could turn otherwise meaningless fragments of words into something of significance by straying away from conventional prose.

Fast forward to middle school, and writing has become a chore. I was greeted by document-based essay questions in my sixth-grade social studies class, where I analyzed several series of documents and considered them to answer prompts relating to history. Learning about the Mayans and the Incas and their early battles was not something I looked forward to and was not something I enjoyed. Furthermore, writing essays about it was even more of a pain. With this began my everlasting habit of procrastination. Putting off assignments till a couple of days before the due date has become a norm at this point in my life.

As I entered high school, I decided to join the school newspaper. I became a writer for the Editorial section, because I found that I only enjoyed writing about topics I have control over. In the editorial section of The Survey, Brooklyn Tech’s School Newspaper, I was able to express my thoughts about anything I desired. Seeing my name on the front page left me elated when we published the first print edition of the year. Writing for a target audience that didn’t consist of teachers who were grading a paper felt good, and it was an experience that gave me insight on the process that actual newspapers go through when publishing papers. I soon started writing for the Sports section due to my interest in basketball, leading me to make a top 10 list for the top NBA basketball players at the time. This resulted in some controversy after being published, and the excitement I felt from the responses of students with differing opinions was unmatched.

Despite my involvement in the newspaper, I became lazier as the years passed. My procrastination worsened and writing for The Survey became a chore rather than a passion. Combined with AP courses requiring essay after essay to be submitted, I started to feel unmotivated to write at all. Writing assignments days before the due date turned into writing them the morning right before class. Due to this, there has not been a single paper where I have had more than a single draft. That single draft would be my final draft because I was too lazy to review my work.

Coming into college, I was not expecting such a workload. Although I don’t enjoy writing essays, I never found them to be difficult or very time consuming to write if I focused. My expectations were quickly surpassed as I was greeted with a 1500-word essay. Throughout high school, I was never required to write more than a page or two, let alone 1500 words for a single essay. Nonetheless, I put off the work until the last day and somehow managed to complete it, only to be greeted by a 2000-word essay right after. This was my first time writing a research paper, so it was all very new to me. It was not fun, but it did teach me a few things. I am now more familiar with the process of researching material in order to write extensively on it and am more aware of being open to other counterarguments that may be valid regarding my topic. Writing this research essay has benefited me since it may be useful for when I must communicate an idea or research that I may have in the future. Even though I’m in a STEM major, writing plays a large role in communication.