Reflective Essay

            I’m not the biggest fan of writing, and honestly, I probably never will be. I’ve been told I’m pretty good at it by friends, family, and teachers alike, but I only really saw my work as decent at best. Maybe it’s because I normally don’t care for what I’m writing about as it’s usually some academic essay for school, I really don’t know. When I wrote the original versions of the three pieces that follow this, I wrote them because they were an assignment for class. While it is the exact same situation with this portfolio and the revisions, it felt different, like something clicked. I actually had fun writing all three revisions. When writing the original pieces, I was stretching to barely make 200 words, but with the revisions, the 500 or so words just flowed right out of my fingertips onto the keyboard. I have no idea what happened to me between writing the original works to the revisions, but whatever it was, it was a good thing.

            The three pieces I chose to revise weren’t necessarily my favorites or the worst I wrote for this class, but they were the ones I saw the most potential in for improvement, and I like to think I improved them tenfold. The first piece I ended up revising was the Extended Metaphor, not for any particular reason, that’s just where I started. As I read my original work over and over, I realized I really did like the actual metaphor I used. It very much applied to myself and I thought I could expand on that, so that’s exactly what I did. I made it a more personal piece, and while it’s not 100 percent factual, I’ve been in extremely similar situations before. After finishing the first part up, I moved on to the next revision, which was My Obsession. My Obsession was by far the easiest for me to revise; I can talk (technically write, I guess) about pro wrestling for days on end, especially if it’s about my favorite wrestler of all time, The Undertaker, which a good chunk of the piece was. The final piece and the one I had the most difficult time trying to revise was Why I Draw. It was the hardest because it was tough to put into words how exactly drawing makes me feel, it’s kind of indescribable, but I did the best I could. Digging deep down within me and figuring out why I do sink hours upon hours into drawing was an interesting experience, though.

            While I’m still not the biggest fan of writing, I do feel like this course has helped writing win me over a little bit. That’s the only explanation I can come up with on how I could go from being really disinterested in what I was writing during the making of the original pieces to breezing through and having fun with the revisions right now. Initially, I was dreading doing this final portfolio, but I ended up having a good time and the time flew right on by.