- What did you learn? What were your key takeaways over the year? What practices/habits/skills do you plan to take forward in Dartmouth?
This year, I learned a lot about myself as a writer, a student, and as someone who is considering a career in engineering and sport. To start with writing, I thought that I grew extraordinarily compared to my high school self. I learned how to properly write a variety of different types of papers, from a full blown research paper to a classic literature review. In addition to the variety of papers I’ve learned about, I have also learned how to properly format and about what specifically goes into an introduction and conclusion. Those were the two areas of my papers that I have previously overlooked, saying that the intro simply introduces what’s about to come, and the conclusion restates what was said. I now know that the introduction explains not only what’s about to come, but it also gives conceptual framework of the topic, explaining the topic deeper in best interest of the reader’s understanding. For the conclusion, I have learned that a good conclusion extends that argument into new ground, maybe introducing a new concept that is examined just enough to leave the reader itching for more, while being satisfied with the information given on the topic throughout the article. Another area where I think I improved immensely was in the transitions. Before, I would be very choppy and no one really said anything so I thought that it was good. However, this past year has opened my eyes to the bad habits that I thought were good, and has helped me fix them. Adding transitions, and actually noticing when they are needed, is largely done in the revision of the paper, which is another thing that was really introduced to me this year. I’ve never paid so much attention to my papers after I have finished it, but I agree that it is very necessary.
- How is college writing different from High School Writing?
In high school, we mostly just focused on the creative side of writing, and doing book reports. Once we would finish reading a novel, we would have to write about all the themes and symbols that we found, explaining what they mean and how they apply to the novel entirely. You never really had to read what the assignment asked because it was always the same thing. However, in university, it was never the same thing. Even when I thought I understood what it was asking, I would read through the assignment again and I would find something different. But despite the complexity of the task, there was always so much to talk about the topic, based on the different sides of what you are talking about. In university you have to pour more of yourself into the writing, and by that I mean going into and examining each and every detail of all the sides of the topic you are writing about.
- What do you most/least like to write? What does this tell you?
I actually really like diving into a topic so deep because it makes my feel like I’ve gained so much knowledge on the one topic, which I guess I have. Research papers are fun but at the same time tedious just because you have a lot of work to do, but in the paper you can document all the work you’ve done so it’s really cool and satisfying to visually see everything that you did. I would like to go into science, so writing scientific research papers would be right up my alley.