Why College Students Should Just Put Themselves Out There and Write About Their Interests
Coming from a college freshman :)
When getting all my payments, scholarships, housing applications, etc., done and ready to start college, one of the last things I did was register for my classes. I had an idea of what classes I wanted to take but I also had a list of ones that had to be taken, classes like math, uni or honors, wellness and physical education, etc. Based on the current schedule I had set for myself, there was only one class that fit nicely that would give me the credits I needed, and it was English 101 — College Writing and Reading I.
When preparing myself for the first day of class, I let myself imagine what each class would be like and the course load it would entail. When imaging my English class, I thought we would have to read boring articles or books and dissect them in long research papers, etc.
Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instead, my professor wanted to focus on daily writing and building our audience with our voices and opinions while also being able to generate ideas we could elaborate on.
He had a few assignments per week, but our main two were called “atomic essays.” An atomic essay is a writing that was around 250 words written on any topic you like that was posted to Twitter for others to like and comment on.
For the first couple of essays, It was hard for me to come up with ideas to write about.
I was also nervous about what others thought about my writings and if they thought they were too formal for Twitter or the opposite.
After about a week or two, I really found my niche and what I wanted to talk about weekly throughout my essays. For me, this was how we change the environment for the better, focusing on sustainability, extinction, climate change, and tips and tricks.
I slowly began growing an audience and getting feedback on my writings.
It made me feel wonderful that people were actually reading what I wrote and were taking the time to respond with similarities, agreements, and other ideas.
I used their feedback and decided to use some things I had been learning in my other classes to help generate ideas.
I started to expand my topics and include personal narratives which helped keep my audience engaged.
By about mid-way through the semester, is when I truly felt confident in my writing.
I was able to fully immerse myself in what I was writing. I also began sharing what I wrote with some close friends and family to see what they thought (which was a pretty big deal).
We then started to use all of what we’d learned by writing atomic essays, which were one to two-minute reads, and turned them into blog posts, which were five to ten-minute reads.
This started to stress me out all over again.
But by this time, I had developed a clear audience, college students and young adults/teens, and had clear, continuous topics that I stuck to.
So, I took my atomic essays and expanded on each one, still making sure to keep my readers engaged as well as making sure to stick to the point.
It took me a few drafts and editing rounds but after my first blog post, I felt self-assured in myself and my abilities. Still to my surprise, I had lots of positive feedback from people that I didn’t even know how they found my article.
I, now, truly felt confident in my ability to write about topics that interested me without having to talk in a formal, research paper, type of way.
At this time, I found myself enjoying writing in a way that I’d never felt before. I never really liked getting criticism or commentary on my writing before but because of how conversational it felt, it felt like I was improving myself and helping those around me with what I was writing about.
I cannot believe the improvement I have made since the beginning of the semester to now. I would like to believe it is all because I was able to put what I was thinking out into the world and get a response to it.
All of this to say, without putting myself and my writing out into the world for criticism and feedback, I would never be in the place I am now. Yes, sometimes getting a bad reply on something you loved can hurt, but I liked to look at it as an opportunity for improvement.
