While I have always been confident in my writing style, my approach to scholarly essays was especially challenged in the humanities courses I took with Professor Aalgaard (CEAS Department). So far in my college career, I was only accustomed to writing research papers and factual-based, argumentative papers. However, in my Proseminar and Storytelling in the Japanese Empire courses, Professor Aalgaard tasked us to write opinion-based, persuasive papers. Since this was a new style of writing for me, it posed a significant challenge for me initially.
After receiving a lower-than-anticipated grade on our first major assignment, I sought advice from Professor Aalgaard on how I could improve my writing. He was very supportive and helped reframe some of the strict preconceptions I had about academic writing, which were strongly ingrained in me during high school. He reassured me that I had an excellent scholarly writing voice, which offered some relief about my capabilities. However, I admitted that I needed help developing analyses for non-factual-based arguments. He encouraged me to let go of the fear of using a first-person point of view in my academic writing and suggested various strategies to help materialize my analytical thoughts onto paper.
Thanks to his guidance, I was able to improve my writing and received a better grade on the second major assignment. Throughout the semester, I continued to refine my skills, culminating in a final project proposal that I was particularly proud of. The positive feedback I received showed me just how much I was able to grow in an area that was previously unfamiliar to me. Although I have nowhere near perfected the art of writing persuasive, analytical papers, I feel more confident tackling this kind of assignment now.
This experience showed me that I have a strong ability to adapt and improve upon various writing styles, a skill that was honed through constructive feedback and persistent effort. In fact, this motivated me to become a Writing Mentor for FGLI students in the following academic year. I had previously believed that only English majors or people who were “good at writing” could become writing mentors. However, after I attended the opening information session for the position, I delightfully learned that anyone can be a writing mentor as long as they can define what good writing means to them. Hearing this sparked a passion in me to share my knowledge with other students who might be going through the same writing challenges that I faced.
There isn’t just one way to write a college essay. Different courses have different requirements and exposing myself to different types of writing greatly helped develop my writing skillset. This, along with actively seeking advice and feedback from my professors, helped me improve my writer’s voice to become more adaptable to different situations.
