My Writing :: Education Writers Teaching Essays

My Writing might get; then again, maybe you won't. I guess it depends on the situation. There is a "me" behind everything I write. That I know because if I didn't exist, neither would my writing. But I've come to the conclusion that there is more than one possible "me" used in my writing instead of "me" falsely portrayed as something I'm not. Each "me" is distinct and appears in its proper writing situation. The first paper we wrote for this class is an excellent example of me hiding behind, but not deserting, my writing. My paper on the metaphor for a university falls loosely under the category of "The Official Style" because it contains a plethora of passive "be" verbs, prepositional phrases, and gender-neutral nouns, such as student, instructor, and everyone's favorite: one  ­ to avoid using that whole he/she thing. Reading over it this weekend, I decided that I still agree with my metaphor although I have a different perspective as to where I place myself in my vision of a university. I'm glad that I didn't actively place myself in the paper because ten weeks later, I'm looking at that metaphor differently. As I thought about my metaphor, I realized my perspective as a student changes depending on what part of the quarter or year it is. At the beginning of each quarter, and especially each year, I try and convince myself that I want to place my studies first, but by the end of a quarter, and especially the year, when I'm waylaid by many assignments, I'm sick and tired of school to the extent that all I want is to finish up whatever I'm working on and be done with it. This is very unfortunate when you consider that the work at the end of the quarter is usually worth more than earlier assignments. When I wrote our first paper, I honestly believed that I fell in the middle between my idea of "good" and "bad" students, but I sway back and forth between each side every quarter so I think I'm neither  ­ and not in the middle either. My writing style changes the same way my perspective as a student changes. It changes to fit the situation. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not as intelligent as I try to portray myself. Don't get me wrong; I'm not implying I'm stupid, but I do feel the need to "dress up" my writing for classes and make it read more scholarly so that I seem smarter than I really am.