Why I Write

Why I Write Writing skills are essential to many professions. Writing a proper resume is critical to securing a job, and the ability to write good and coherent emails to coworkers is part of keeping it. I am a mechanical engineering major; in all likelihood, writing will not be a vital aspect of a job. However, this does not mean that it is unimportant, writing skills will still be useful in college, and to a lesser degree at a future job. The writing skills developed in College Writing I and II will be useful to passing WAC courses such as History of Civilization I, which I will be taking in the fall. A large part of a student’s grade rests on writing papers for these classes. By learning to correct mistakes that have routinely lowered my …show more content…
Another writing skill that has improved my writing is remembering the audience, or, making sure that the essay would make sense to a random person who knows nothing about the topic it addresses. I also intend to intern at one of the research labs at the University. If I stay on this path, writing skills will be very useful to writing publishable research papers. Journals may reject papers that are not structured in a logical and understandable way. This is a skill that I learned in College Writing I and was able to practice and improve in College Writing II. Persuasive essays have a general structure that a student must learn to follow. One of the big improvements in my writing since taking both courses was that I was better able to connect my thesis statement to the following paragraphs and choose better more relevant citations to support …show more content…
Through peer review, I was able to learn from the mistakes of others and receive constructive criticism for mistakes or inconsistencies I may not have spotted myself. Mistakes of this kind are usually points in the essay where something needs to be explained or analyzed more thoroughly. The peer review process could have been more useful if I had written longer rough drafts. Most of the time, rough drafts consisted of the introduction paragraph only. One of the reasons for this was that I did not want to rewrite half of an essay if I chose to change the focus of the essay. However, it would have improved the quality of my writing overall if I had received constructive criticism on a body, counterargument, and conclusion paragraphs. This way, I could learn what mistakes I usually make in those parts of an essay and look out for