Click on the other two tabs associated with this page to read the writing pieces referenced in the following reflection.

Reflection on Pre-Dartmouth Writing

I think that these two writing pieces in combination are an accurate representation of my writing ability before my Writing 5 class at Dartmouth. Honestly, I thought I was, and still think I  am, a pretty good writer. My school had very talented and demanding english teachers and throughout high school I was exposed to rhetorical analysis, literary analysis, research papers, and even historical and data analysis in writing contexts. However, because so much of my writing in high school was very academic, I never felt as comfortable writing creative pieces like my college application essay. It wasn’t until senior year, in my AP English Literature class, that I tried creative writing again in earnest since elementary school. Because this college application essay was written at the beginning of that year, it is not my best creative writing piece but it accurately exhibits my comfort level with the genre. I think during elementary school, when you are first introduced to all of the various tricks of style, you overuse them far too cheesily and then move away from them entirely. Once I got to high school I had to learn how to mature my style and creative writing and that is still something I am learning and improving. The research paper, on the other hand, was a culminating project in my senior year of high school. Throughout those four years I took numerous AP history and english classes so by the time I wrote this paper, the analysis and research process was very familiar for me. I had gotten very good at interpreting material and articulating my thoughts and analysis of it through writing and that has definitely served me well in my Writing 5 class. Obviously, I wasn’t perfect at this by any means but in high school I far preferred assignments that required this type of thinking to creative pieces, although they often required more time and work.  Overall, although I came into Dartmouth a fair writer, these pieces from high school don’t compare to my writing now.