I am a non-traditional student and decided to start a new career after being in the medical field for 18 years. I looked into several different fields and decided to enroll in Early Childhood Education. I have worked in Scouting and always enjoyed helping children. Unfortunately, when I enrolled at UALR, none of my previous credits would transfer into the system. This meant I had to start from scratch. Even while I thought about going into teaching, I wanted to teach English and Composition.
Gale Lankford was my instructor for Composition 1 and 2 at the Benton Campus. I felt I needed to brush up on specifics, but my writing was good enough to get through college. My writing seemed adequate for my classes and I did not have to put much effort into the items I wrote. I believe maturity had a lot to do with my efforts more than anything. Plus, I have always enjoyed writing and it has always come naturally to me. I would rather write an essay than take a multiple choice test.
After two years of college, I decided to change my major to Professional and Technical Writing. Dr. Anderson had a big influence on that decision. I was taking his online Nonfiction class and was enjoying the feedback on my writing. I thought I knew how to write and then I was showed another way. Dr. Anderson says he took a chance with me in response to my Immersion Project and waited fearfully on what I would do. He reviewed my paper and made multiple comments about where my errors were and different ways I could go about fixing it. He worried that all of the explanations would scare me and discourage my writing. I felt just the opposite. I knew Dr. Anderson was not adding comments just to do it, but he wanted to bring out the best in my writing. He was not going to tell me to do something that was bad or because he disagreed with my opinion. I felt he wanted to push me to bring out my best writing, and that is what his comments helped me to do.
Dr. Anderson saw something in my writing that I did not. His responses in Track Changes opened my eyes to my weaknesses and strengths. By the end of the semester my writing was evolving into real writing. I was looking at the words on the page and able to see my true style of writing. Dr. Anderson had guided me to slow down and write the way I was truly capable of. My dreams of being a professional writer were awakened, and now I felt I truly had direction for this career change. By the end of his class I reviewed my work and saw the changes come alive in my writing.
The next course that changed my writing was Editing for Style and Usage. I felt the course would help me brush up on some basic skills, but I did not feel my writing would grow much. I was a little anxious about the class, because I thought it would be like high school where I would be diagramming sentences. I learned about the benefits of style sheets and cutting the fluff to get to the meat of my writing. During the semester I found specific words I overused and abused. Now, I look for those words in all of my writing and still use some of the lessons I learned from the class. I am more aware of simple items that take away from my writing causing my point to be lost in an endless supply of nonsense.
Each class I have taken has caused my writing to grow a little more in some way or another. I learned how to edit my writing to get to the meat of the words. I learned how to revise while looking for problem areas. I learned the art of persuasive writing and how to truly persuade someone to my side. Then, I learned collaboration and learning from my peers about my writing.
Peer review and collaborative writing is very beneficial. I learned how to listen to what other people were saying about my writing. Autobiography was wonderful for workshop feedback. I would read aloud and then listen to what caught the student’s attention in my writing. How did I make them feel as they listened to my story? Did they tune in or out? Their feedback made me realize I could write and people were interested in what I had to say. This was a wonderful sensation and was more encouraging than what the instructors had to say about my writing in many cases.
I felt Dr. Crisp taught Autobiography without lecturing the class. She treated the class as a workshop and we learned from each other. We were guided through the semester and our growth seemed natural. The students became the teachers through encouragement and feedback. I looked forward to reading my pages and wanted to read more. I wanted the feedback on my stories to see if I was on the right track. One of the best parts with Dr. Crisp was the “tell me more” feedback. It was a great time to listen and realize what people wanted to hear more about or needed to be cleared up.
Now, I am trying to finish my autobiography so I can release it to a publisher. The encouragement from the class has caused me to truly pursue this endeavor. I am not someone that says I intend on writing my autobiography, I am actually writing it.
Through Persuasive Writing and Autobiography the collaboration gave me the courage to work in the Writing Center as an intern. I have felt an intense closeness to the instructors and peers in the writing center. We are a family of writers trying to encourage each other all the time. I actually want to show up to work in the writing center and look forward to my time in there. Just that feeling encourages me to work harder with my writing while helping other students grow theirs.
A huge eye opener for me happened this semester. Many of my classes had me free write from time to time. None of the instructors explained the benefit or did this on a regular basis. Free writing was sporadic at best. In the early classes I felt free writing was similar to “Bell Ringers” my kids did at public school. In other words, it was just busy work. I have found out just how far from the truth that is.
I learned the benefit of free writing is to help weed through the trash to bring out the best writing, and it should be practiced daily. I wish my early instructors had explained the true benefits of free writing, and how much benefit I could get from writing nothing of importance. Learning to make free writing a habit has helped me to work on my autobiography and another book I am currently working on at the same time. I look forward to growing this new skill over time and improving my writing.
Another class I enjoyed was Document Design. I was apprehensive to take the class online because I could not ask an instructor directly about doing specific things. Dr. Jensen assured me that I would not be sorry for taking the class online. Dr. Kuralt did a great job of utilizing the Internet and discussion boards to learn how to bring graphics into any document. One of the fun things to do was to try and create a bad design. We would design a project using all of the appropriate colors and backgrounds and then we were asked to do our worst! Since we all posted our work online we could view each other’s bad and good designs. I felt there were times when creating a bad design taught me as much as putting together the finished product.
I wish we had more time with the final two projects we worked on in class getting the instructors feedback, but other than that the class was a real turning point for my writing. Even writing this piece I want to add graphics and change the background color to bring the document alive! I still might, we will see in the end. I think since I have some creative ability with this blog I will leave the writing itself alone.
Publication with Dr. Greer has been a wonderful class this semester. Learning how to grow a potential book from an idea has been great. I came up with a book idea last semester and waited for this class. I thought I had it all figured out and knew how to write the book. I learned so much with the book proposal, searching for publishers, doing surveys to find out if the book will work. I feel my book has a real chance of being published after I get it wrote because of what I have learned in this class.
After going through these different courses, I feel better about the ones I am currently taking this semester. Grant Writing and Legal Writing are geared toward professions in the big bad world. I am glad I waited to take these courses because I do not feel my writing was ready to take on such a responsibility. Two years ago I would have thought very differently, but now I know. I feel Grant Writing may lead to a real career for me in the writing industry because the class is real and we work with real clients, not hypothetical situations.
The only problem I saw with the course was scheduling of classes. This spring I wanted to take four courses that ended up being scheduled at the same time. They were not available online so I had to make some tough choices. I am happy with my classes, but given the chance there would have been one or two changes. I still plan on taking some of these courses, but now they will be when I am in the Master’s Program.
I have enjoyed all the instructors in the writing department. Each one has helped my writing grow in different ways. I always felt the instructors wanted to bring out the best in my writing through encouragement. There is such a family atmosphere and even though I am a student I have felt as though I have been let into the family because of my love of writing. It has been a wonderful experience growing into a better writer through the encouragement of the staff and students. I feel I owe the instructors a lot of thanks for their encouragement.